Mindcage (2022) screenwriter Reggie Keyohara III, based on an idea by Director Mauro Borrelli.

I was looking for a book called Save the Cat. I don’t really need to find it, because anybody that has ever read any of my stories knows plot isn’t my strong point. Spoiler, when I’m writing The Cat Dies, but it’s unintentional. I’ve no idea what I’m doing, and neither has has my loyal band of fellow writers. And I blame the devil. Amazon are pushing Mindcage, which is why algorithms rule the world.  

It has a zillion great reviews and yet it’s straight to streamline. Maybe it’s not. I don’t really care. Let’s imagine instead Mauro Borrelli having a meeting with a guy called Reggie Keyohara III. There’s a great story just in their names. So Reggie is taking notes, because Mauro is the one with the cash (please note this didn’t happen, although I do sometime take notes, but for Mindcage it was just necessary to keep my eyes open).

So Mauro says, ‘I’ve got this idea, Remember Silence of the Lambs, that was so good it was made twice. Anthony Hopkins as the demented killer, and that other Scottish actor, whose name I can’t remember? Anyway, Hannibal Lecter. Let’s put a guy in a cage and have a copycat killer. Get someone with some heft, someone with some Oscars. We’ll not give him a name, but stupid hair. We’ll call him The Artist. We’ll call him John Malkovich.’

‘That’s great.’ Reggie makes some notes, which read this guy isn’t really plagiarising. I do hope he doesn’t have a female cop called Mary Kelly, (Melissa Roxburgh) who’s kinda naïve, but gutsy when she needs to be, but not like her in Silence of the Lambs that won an Oscar (shhhhh).

‘Let’s get a cop with the kind of name you can shake hands with, Jake Doyle, (Martin Lawrence) from a successful franchise, and give him a troubled past, and lines so wooden he can’t even point a gun at himself without shooting his dick off.’

Cut to the movie. Mary asks (Robert Knepper) Sheriff Owings (while being tough, yet vulnerable) how did Mr Wooden catch the Artist?’

Drawl: ‘Damn fine detective work’.

Anyone that has seen Mindcage (and left a review) knows the murder victims are left rather beautiful. Statues with elaborate feather wings. Hmmm. Even with the help of the devil, or the angel Samuel, they’d weight a ton. To leave on the altar of the church, at such a high vantage point, the devil would need to have driven a forklift truck down the nave, lifted the victim up and reversed backwards, leaving no rubber tyre marks in the pattern of 666.  

That aside.

Mauro tells him, ‘Fling in a bit of voodoo as in Angel Heart. What’s good for De Niro is good for any 71-year-old father. Phew, that sizzling Lisa Bonet was hot.’

‘What about a bit of Fallen? Denzel Washington plays a hard-bitten detective who witnesses the execution of a serial killer. But by god or the devil, the serial killers start again without him. What’s happening? Is it cross-contamination like Covid-19? Or have I lost the plot?’

Save the Cat? Fuck the cat. Let it die with the turkey.