LES GARCONS

A notorious French thief breaks into a museum and gets an unexpected surprise.

Crime capers. We love them so! Nothing captures a viewer’s imagination more than a priceless artifact, ferreted away by a daring cat burglar. Hollywood feeds our fancy with this genre regularly, treating us with star-studded movies such as The Oceans Eleven series, To Catch a Thief, The Score, Entrapment and of course The Thomas Crown Affair – an art theft film so popular they made it twice!

What do each of these entertaining films have in common (besides the pilfering of objets d’art?) A charismatic anti-hero who relies on style and stealth over violence.

Talented writer Jean-Pierre Chapoteau continues this grand tradition in Les Garcons. His worthy protagonist? The masterful and dashing “Jean-Luc The Great.”

As debonair as they come, our suave “master of all thieves” is blessed with great cunning and flamboyant skill. His daring criminal exploits include pilfering jewels right off the Pope, and “lifting zee necklace off of zee Queen of Spain as she dined in a room of one-hundred friends.” Not bad for a career cad’s resume.

His current target? The valuable painting “The Tree and the Fly”, displayed at a local museum. Unfortunately for this Master of Shadows, his best laid plans quickly go awry.

Jean’s caught red-handed by Tye – a young star-struck security guard. Tye triggers the alarm… then asks if he can have his picture taken with the criminal mastermind.

Have his picture taken? Never! Jean-Luc denies his ardent fan’s request. In a cunning game of cat and mouse, he demands to be taken to the “closest room of rest.” Guided into the break-room, an increasingly concerned Jean-Luc bargains with his captor. Let him go free… and perhaps a picture’s not out of the question.

Footsteps approach. All seems lost. But a clever twist proves the old saying: “never, ever trust a thief!”

About the writer: Jean-Pierre Chapoteau started writing feature length scripts in 2005 then focused on shorts in 2009. Since then he’s had three scripts produced and two more optioned. He has won several awards for his shorts and has become a moderator at the site MoviePoet, who specialize in the craft of the short scripts.  Jean-Pierre was a finalist in the RAW TALENT Competition for his faith based feature length script: ‘Far From Perfect.’ And was also a semi-finalist in the SLAMDANCE teleplay competition and a finalist in the OBSWRITER teleplay contest for his adapted teleplay, Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Guardian.  You can contact Jean-Pierre Chapoteau at:  jeanpierre425 (a) gmail.com

Pages: 6

Budget: Low. Two actors. A few cheap props. A school hall or all purpose room dressed to look like a museum.

About the reviewer: Gary “Rolo” Rowlands cut his teeth on sketch comedy and was a commissioned writer on Spitting Image, a hugely popular sketch show in the UK that regularly attracted audiences of 8-10 million a week. He has several features available and is currently rewriting his contained supernatural thriller Offline. He can be contacted at gazrow at hotmail dot com

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