Screenwriting : Movie about the 1960s and its culture change by Brian Hagen

Hello: I have never written a play or a script. Even so, given the current political climate, it occurred to me that a movie that speculates about the source of the “Me generation” might be apropo right now. Here is what I have in mind:

Opening scene (in 1962) has a small group of college students very worried about the Cuban missile crisis (which is occurring right then). They are attending a rather conservative campus, and when they attend a “beat poets” gig, they start talking about how their parent’s generation just doesn’t understand that the campus “in loco parentis” policies seem to be an overreach. After all, when they are back at their parent’s homes on break, and hanging out with their peers who are not in college, it is apparent that those people (of the same age) are not having their lives micro-managed. This doesn’t seem right: how can the students be expected to “grow up” when they are not even allowed to speak their minds? One of them tells the others about how in the 1950s, his father had been secretly interrogated by the FBI on a Communist witch hunt merely because the man’s ancestry was from Eastern Europe. The father had subsequently been blacklisted, and also warned not to tell anyone, under threat of being sent to prison on false charges. Only the family knew of this until now. The revelation underscores the students’ distrust and resentment of authority figures. They want to graduate with good marks and go on to lead so-called normal lives, but matters are starting to get clouded. They decided to “make nice” and “behave themselves” for now, but the seeds of doubt have been sown.

As the story unfolds, the group remains friends after graduation, but the changing times start to have effects on their relationships. 1963:The JFK assassination, the Birmingham, AL marches. 1964: the British invasion. 1965: more troops are being sent to Vietnam. 1966-67: the hippie movement grows and the protests increase. 1968: the growing violence and generation gap all across America has these young adults worried and scared for themselves, for their young children, and for all of America. 1969: the 60s reach a huge crisis. The short-lived hippie movement has now crashed and burned. 1970: They are raising their kids in gradeschool, and decide that since their faith in the government has been severely dashed, maybe it now makes more sense to focus on “what’s in it for me …“. Scene near the end: “I don’t know, man; something tells me that this Nixon guy is going to get himself in big trouble someday”...

I think that maybe the story arc of the characters could contrast the almost rosy-eyed optimism that they had when they started college with their growing confusion, anger, and fears as the decade progresses. Since these things change people a lot, they could display rapidly altered perspectives on the events of the day.

I do not expect to get any credit in case someone does a movie like this. I would just like to see a really serious treatment of that generation’s beginnings, cultural struggles, and eventual disillusionment.