FILM COLUMN: BRAVE NEW ROSENBERG
Some Notes and Short Schnopsis by Richard Elfman
First play the CD…fade up some bouncy Latin music. Now…picture the shabby storefront offices of the Rosenberg Detective Agency of East Los Angeles. Harold Rosenberg is a younger Woody Allen-type: neurotic and insecure–particularly in the detective business he inherited from his uncle. Pancho, his pint-sized partner, is an expert with the ladies but rather incompetent with anything else. Business is kind of on the rocks, and Lavonda, the hefty, ebony office manager, spends most of her days doing her nails and honing a sharp-tongued comic wit at Harold and Pancho’s expense. At last, a lucrative job comes their way: to find a beautiful girl who seems to appear and disappear in their vicinity. Things are looking up! Harold and Pancho find the girl, give chase, and then…the stunning red-haired beauty literally disappears through a brick wall!
Apparently, a giant pharmaceutical corporation is looking for her in a big way, as her intra-dimensional DNA is the key to medicating most of the world’s youth (and everyone else, for that matter) to treat the latest and most pernicious mental disease ever discovered: Attention Deficit Hyper-Activity Anal-Rectal Disorder–ADHARD!
Billions are at stake, and Harold and Pancho are now offered a ridiculous price for apprehending the girl. As if it isn’t complicated enough tailing a girl who goes in and out of another dimension, she somehow falls for poor Harold. In her surrealistic universe, filled with nothing but gorgeous super-models, things are based on opposites, and Harold is the hottest guy imaginable.
Events are further complicated by the Russian mob, led by Boris, an angry super-midget, who is also seeking the all-powerful, mind-controlling DNA. Then stir in the Chinese agents out to make the same score. Harold and Pancho are chased, beaten, punched and shot at–forcing them to take some clever, evasive measures, like Harold posing as a Hassidic rabbi accompanied by a squadron of East L.A. gang-bangers, which Pancho has enlisted for protection.
Harold, of course, also falls head-over-heels for the girl, the beautiful Athena. Pancho warns him that a bi-coastal relationship may be hard enough–but multi-dimensional? Forget about it! So do Harold and Pancho save their skins…or save the girl…or save the world? Good questions–and all settled in a thrilling, slam-bang climax!
The film is a quick-paced, music-driven comedy fantasy with some dazzling aerial/acrobatic dance sequences performed by (professional dancer) Jenna Elfman, choreographed by Jacques Heim (Cirque de Soleil “KA”), to original music by Danny Elfman. Although “Brave New Rosenberg” takes a few swipes at our greedy, pill-popping, corporate culture, it is primarily a fast, fun, furious ride, with humor, both gross and subtle, punctuated by absurdist yet sublimely aesthetic musical numbers. Wow!
(The film isn’t even shot yet and I’m ready to give it glowing reviews in the magazine I publish!)
Yours truly,
Richard Elfman
writer/director
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