I’m pleased to announce that we’ve begun work on our next production project Angeleno. Currently, we’ve got the synopsis and characters fleshed out for Angeleno and have already written the first season series bible.
Keep an eye out for updates and upcoming info about Angeleno‘s production schedule. We’re very excited about this one. For more information, please follow my Instagram. Additionally, you can learn more about me by reading my Biography page.
Angeleno Tagline & Logline:
Tagline
“It is never too late to start pretending.”
Logline
A man addicted to call-girls listens to their life stories as he tells them his. Based on true stories.
Synopsis:
Angeleno is the story of Richard Wegener, an anti-aging expert. Approaching sixty and divorced with two estranged teenagers, Richard has recently found out a life-changing secret. His mother has disclosed to him that the man he’s always thought to be his father isn’t.
Inspired by the call-girls who come to see him once or twice a week, Richard decides to turn the seemingly tragic event into the last-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make his dream come true. To become an actor by putting all his savings into the making of a series based on his life. A life based on a lie.
Through intimate yet funny conversations with the women in Rick’s life (other call-girls, an actress named Star, and his ex-wife), we will follow Rick’s journey into the making of the series. The story will unravel as the women also disclose to Rick their “other” lives. Call-girls as doctors with dogmatic parents, writers with bipolar family members, and accountants with family secrets; the actress as a psychic without a home; and his ex-wife as the joyous, fun-loving woman Rick always failed to see.
Angeleno follows Rick’s story from a desperate crisis and bankruptcy to success and stardom in the Latin scene in LA. And just when Rick thinks he’s finally made it, the past catches up with him when the Mexican mafia and his half-sisters come after him following the success of his series.
Angeleno Characters:
RICHARD WEGENER
Richard is a man reaching his sixties who is now facing the dark side of the American dream. Since childhood, he’s always felt like an outsider. Having been the target of bullying during his teenage years because of his Latin complexion, he made it a goal to make it into American society one way or another. It was his father who taught him everything he needed to know about white-collar crime. After all, it was, he confessed to his son, the way he made his first money to then make it legitimate.
Rick’s true dream (to be an actor) had some short-lived moments of success, with small parts in popular TV shows. His biggest obstacle was the fact that people didn’t quite know where and how to cast him. His last name, Wegener, gave the wrong impression about this very Latino-looking actor. However, in his white-collar crime activities, he was quickly successful and made money. This granted him access to parties, friends, women, and influential people. He began his “legal” and successful line of business in the 1990s, after he got married.
Only 25 years later, with his marriage fully disintegrated and two teenage kids who act like strangers to him, he wonders what was it all for. Consequently, his addiction to call-girls has become his only escape from his reality. The devastating confession from his mother that he’s not really a “Wegener” but the son of a Mexican pilot seems to be the last straw in his decaying life. However, it might also prove to be his last chance to be himself. To accomplish his true dream. His ability to pretend everything is always fine, to live parallel lives, will be the main obstacle to overcome in order to achieve success.
MOTHER
Rick’s mum is a tough woman. A survivor who had to bring up a child in a very racist American landscape. Very attractive in her early years, her seductive skills and her ability to charm and persuade people got her to make her way as a pregnant woman who had run away from her Mexican home into America to avoid being judged by the extremely conservative Mexican society.
She marries Doctor Wegener who, in love with the beautiful Latina, agrees to give her last name to her unborn son. Rick is the “love of her life”, she adores him and sees no wrong in him. She’s very religious, but at the same time is attracted to “bad hombres.” The men who love taking risks and doing petty crimes – like her husband, and her son. She lives in a nursing home which is where Rick goes visiting her every other week, and where she confesses to him the secret she doesn’t dare to take with herself to the grave.
DR. WEGENER
Rick’s adoptive father was born in Germany. However, he immigrated to America in the 1930s because of the war. He learned everything he knew about optometry from an optician company, which he also robbed slowly but surely across ten years. By the end of that time, he quit; and with the money he had taken and saved during those years, he set up his own optician.
Rick works for him as an assistant during his teen years. It is during this time that Rick tells him of his dream to become an actor. Dr. Wegener gives what he thinks is his best advice in return. He tells his son the secrets of living a double and criminal life in order to make enough money to then start a “clean” life. It is, according to him, the way of the American dream.
Acting is too risky: everybody wants to be an actor in LA. Dr. Wegener keeps the mother’s secret from his adoptive son all the way to his grave. He never confesses the truth to Rick. However, on his dying day, he does tell Rick that his biggest mistake (Rick’s) was marrying Maya, his selfish, unpredictable wife. Dr. Wegener plays the role of a mentor to Rick in his teenage years.
MAYA
Maya, Rick’s ex-wife, is a somehow unpredictable woman, who in the eyes of Rick has always been unfaithful, unreliable, and unattainable. Her dream has been to set up her own yoga center with the man who was her lover before asking for a divorce from Rick.
Her mother, once a promising writer and actress, fell into disgrace due to a litigation process with a big Hollywood director over a script she wrote about aliens and spaceships, which she alleges the director stole from her. This led Maya to grow in a very bohemian environment, her mother surrounded by singers, musicians, and artists in a very hippie community.
However, Maya hates the world of entertainment because of this. Furthermore, this is perhaps the reason why in the mid-nineties, Rick drops his aspiring acting career forever. Because of her troubled childhood, she’s always looking for stability and avoids unpredictability. She strongly opposes Rick’s dream to make a series, since she thinks it will take away from her and the children the possibility of a stable home.
JEREMIAH
Rick’s youngest son is also Rick’s Achilles heel. Jeremiah disclosed to his father he wanted a sex change since his mother found a suicide note on his desk. Jeremiah spends hours on a computer game where he lives the life he dreams of: the life of a woman. This troubles Rick’s macho view of the world. Accepting his son’s view of the world in order to be a companion for him along the difficult teenage years will prove to be Rick’s most difficult challenge.
STEPHANIE
Rick’s older daughter is also a living image of her mother. A pragmatist and highly intelligent woman, she thinks Rick’s life decisions in terms of his acting career are wrong. She only appears in his father’s life to be critical of him and to be the “messenger” between Rick and Maya. However, by the end of the story, she will prove to be more loving, accepting, and understanding of his father than expected.
SEVERINE
Severine (that is, of course, her artistic name) is a call-girl who is also an aspiring writer in the tough landscape of Hollywood. The daughter of a bipolar woman, and she herself suffering herself from bipolar disorder, Severine is the kind of person who through sudden, passionate sparks gets people to make life-changing decisions. Her curiosity is what leads her to investigate her client’s life (Rick’s) a little bit deeper, and listen to the crisis he’s currently going through. She’s also a tough negotiator, who will get Rick to hire her to write the series about his life. Her never-ending curiosity and hunger for the truth will lead Rick into unknown, dangerous territories.
THE CALL-GIRLS
The Call-girls are Rick’s true and only confidantes. They listen to him and understand him, as they also have “double lives”. Some of the women’s lives are more difficult than others.
Aisha, a woman with Indian roots, confesses to Rick how she was sent to take part in a forced marriage in India before she managed to escape and become a doctor. Being a call-girl is her way of rebelling against her conservative parents. Annajita is an accountant for her Iranian family. She secretly runs a massage parlor where she offers sex to her customers in return. Jessica, once a promising athlete who lost her dream due to an accident during her early twenties, is an attractive Polish woman who now fears getting old. Finally, Erika is a former soft-porn star now turned into a sex-therapist who dreams of having a child and who sees Rick as – a potential father.