Meet Steve Guttenberg like you’ve never seen him before in…
STEVE GUTTENBERG (Police Academy, Three Men and a Baby, Cocoon) stars as himself in an animated head trip
created by
Joe Frankel & Bill Gienapp.
In the 1980s Steve Guttenberg put butts in the seats and food on the table for a great number of Hollywood filmmakers and studio executives.
He starred in some of the biggest movies of the decade.
And then something happened that nobody saw coming…
…he moved to France and became the most celebrated actor in Europe.
He became the poster boy for fragrances, sports cars & telenovelas.
He played the great roles from Cyrano to Lear and the Marquis De Sade.
He lived more like a god than a man…
… until now.
Les Characters
STEVE
Steve carries a seemingly bottomless cup of good will for all and never passes up an opportunity to help someone. His guilelessness and blind faith in humanity’s inherent goodness often puts him in danger, but no matter how craven, self-serving, or outright depraved the people he meets, Steve remains hilariously upbeat, un-jaded and unflappable.
JOHNNY 5
Steve’s best friend and former Short Circuit co-star is everything Steve isn’t: sensitive, brooding, intellectual and a hopeless romantic. It irks Johnny to no end that Steve succeeds at everything while he is marginalized for not being human and he’s secretly developing a screenplay (“Les Machines”) that dramatizes their relationship and represents the plight of robots like him.
GISELE
Gisele has no ambitions other than to tend bar at Café Ennui and to stoically withstand life’s many indignities. She doesn’t want kids. She’s all but given up on love, and she denies her feelings for Johnny by cycling through a series of passionless relationships. Steve’s sunny, extroverted nature is an affront to Gisele’s cool, French fatalism and his and Johnny’s madcap schemes always find a way of drawing Gisele out of her comfort zone.
ARNAUD
Arnaud is crude, churlish, coarse. He has no style. No culture. No refinement — and certainly no qualms about leaning on Gisele to settle his bad debts both at the racetrack and in polite society. From horse-racing to bootlegging to cock-fighting, there’s no telling what Arnaud will do next. Why Gisele is dating him remains a mystery. Only Steve is capable of finding any good in Arnaud’s borderline-criminal personality.
LA POINTE
Daniel La Pointe’s passion for dragons earned him the nickname: “The Komodo Dragon.” His reach extends far into France’s criminal underworld. His friends in the billionaire elite give him infinite resources. For two decades he had successfully eluded capture, despite being number one on Interpol’s most wanted list... and then he met Steve. Only Steve has seen La Pointe’s real face and lived, and now La Pointe is determined to bring him down at any cost.
KINSKI
Steve was only six when he saw Klaus Kinski in Aguirre The Wrath of God and decided to become an actor. For years he voraciously followed the infamous actor’s career - and then he died, just as Steve was coming to prominence. It was Steve’s great regret that he was unable to help Kinski overcome his violent rages and addictions… and it’s therefore doubly ironic when Kinski reveals he’s still alive and steals the lead role in Steve’s passion project.
THE STUDENTS OF ENNUI
The “students” are a group of like-minded marxists, revolutionaries and beatniks who sit around and daydream about toppling the capitalist system. Gisele is initially non-plussed when they decide to make Café Ennui their home base, but learns to accept them when she realizes they mainly just take steps to install pay phones and trash receptacles in under-serviced neighbourhoods.
MANN CERVÀNT
After Steve liberates him from indentured servitude to Daniel La Pointe, Mann gets a second lease on life and signs up to become a revolutionary with the students of Ennui. But, when your whole life has been spent as a hunchbacked, feral manservant to a megalomaniacal despot, you’re liable to misread the room. It isn’t long before Mann takes the revolutionary principles of the students too far — setting off bombs, bumping people off, and forcing Steve to question whether rescuing Mann was actually a good thing.
Le Pilot
Steve is invited to a dinner party at an opulent French chateau in the woods where he is wined and dined by the world's most famous billionaires. Everyone from Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk to Alice Walton and Warren Buffet is in attendance and Steve has rarely felt so validated... until the horrifying truth is revealed: he has inadvertently stumbled into a "most dangerous game" scenario and the billionaires intend to hunt him to the death for their own personal amusement. What follows is a phantasmagorical chase across the grounds of the estate, as Steve is pursued by laser drones, long-range rockets and even a remote-control clown operated by his mysterious host, Daniel La Pointe.
Steve escapes with the help of Gisele and the students of ennui, only to realize that the video he posted during the chase has gone viral and led the world to believe he’s dead…
At first it seems like a lucky break, but when the internet tributes begin pouring in, Steve is disheartened to learn that, although he’s won every major acting award in France, his fans still remember him most for the carefree 80s comedies of his youth.
Such self-knowledge is sobering even for someone as happy-go-lucky as Steve, and thus launches him on an odyssey of the soul to find his true purpose and use his celebrity influence to make the world a better place.
But first he will need to summon all of his skills as an actor - impersonating people, adopting colourful disguises, and drawing from his stage combat training - to survive continued attempts on his life from Daniel La Pointe and the billionaires who now view him as a liability.
