Pluto Belt

Synopsis/Summary

"Every boy should remember that he is in reality just what he is when alone in the dark". Boy Scouts Handbook, 1911.

If this were a Hollywood pitch, the egocentric screenwriter might say ...

"Alright fellas. You remember 'Titanic', right? Well, imagine if 'Titanic' met 'Stand be Me'. A group of kids, all between the ages of eight and twelve, venture off into the Australian bush for their springtime Cub Scouts camp. But while they're out there, a great, unseasonal bushfire occurs. They're all trapped out there, hemmed in on all sides, and their only chance of escape is to reach the highest point in the area - a remote and wooded ridge called Pluto Belt - in the hopes that the rescue or media helicopters might spot them.

"Of course, I need not tell you that this isn't the whole story. It's the final section, where everything comes to a head. First, the reader has to get to know these children, fall in love with them, hate them, whatever. And there's a bunch of stuff with the adults involved as well. The father of two of the kids - Jeremy - resigns from his position as deputy head at a Catholic school after its values policy is radically transformed to appease modern sensibilities and, on top of other clashes, he is asked to take temporary leave for upholding his Christian beliefs in defiance of an argumentative Muslim student. He seeks validation amongst an unsavoury group of right-wing pundits and risks tearing his family apart when his first son begins to question his sexuality.

"David, the volunteer leader of the Cub Scouts, has him own marital issues as his wife grows increasingly impatient with his unwillingness to find work after suffering a mental breakdown in his last one. Little does she know the woman he had to fire (the guilt of which led to his breakdown in the first place) has been intimate with him since her dismissal, and is now carrying his child. These stories will all intertwine, forming a modern portrait of ordinary Australian families in the twenty-first century; of parents grappling with new and threatening ideas of social justice; pubescent children navigating the confounding maze of awakening sexuality ... all catastrophically interrupted by a natural disaster which may or may not be a metaphor of the volatile times we live in.

"So what do you say? If it's done wrong, it risks coming off as a desperate, emotionally manipulative mess with disquietingly old-fashioned pretensions. But, if we pull this off, it just might be the most heartbreaking, yet also the most powerful dissection of masculinity, the modern family, and the present social zeitgeist in years. Come on, go for it you crazy bastards. Find your balls again and do it".

The author, on the other hand, would never voice such lofty ambitions ...