The Sofa
This is the story of a sofa. It starts at an upscale furniture store where a snobbish, mid-thirties woman is dragging her husband and an exasperated salesperson around shopping for the perfect sofa.
She finally finds a frame she likes, then selects cushions (foam, down, innerspring, etc.), fabric, and throw pillows.
It is delivered three months later and is put in an elaborately decorated living room, where it fits in quite nicely.
A few years pass in a montage of shots showing that the sofa is rarely used but frequently dusted/vacuumed.
The montage is interrupted every so often for shots of the woman’s daughter making out with various boyfriends and the woman catching her husband with a maid/house cleaner, and then one in which the husband catches the wife on the sofa with a pool boy.
After a period of maybe 4 years, the woman is once again in the same furniture store with the same exasperated salesperson, but a different husband (the pool boy) being dragged along.
The woman mentions to the salesperson that she is getting rid of the old sofa and immediately the scene shifts to a shot of two guys loading the sofa into a truck and taking it to an apartment the daughter is sharing with two friends from high school- they’re all attending the same college about 50 miles down the road.
We pick up the story with the sofa being hauled up three flights of stairs to the apartment the girls are sharing. It is placed as the sole piece of furniture in the living room, in front of a small TV mounted on the wall in front of the sofa.
We get another montage of shots, this time featuring all three girls making out on the sofa with various boyfriends (or girlfriends - it‘s 2012), a bunch of different people waking up on the sofa after various parties, a girl crashing on the sofa for a month and a half after leaving her boyfriend, lots of sex by lots of different couples, and a number of shots of the three girls watching different shows.
A consistent shot of them all gathering every Tuesday for two straight years to watch a show they all like, and maybe a scene of an embarrassing failure of one of the girls trying to seduce another or a boy who is gay. The girls also have a cat for a short while that tears up the legs or maybe arms of the sofa.
In the girls third year of college, one of them has dropped out to follow some guy to Europe. The two remaining girls take on a new roommate who has a ton of furniture, so the sofa is sold, this time to two guys who share a small apartment.
The montage involving the two guys is simple - they play a lot of video games, get high and/or drunk, and have three or four sloppy attempts at making out with various women. They also get a dog about four months into ownership of the sofa, and the dog sleeps on the sofa, as well as peeing on all four corners. The guys at one point duct tape the arms that the cat scratched up. There are also shots of guys crashing out, and guys watching porno while whacking off.
The guys are evicted from the apartment after about a year, and they leave the sofa behind as they bail. The sofa ends up being taken home by one of the crew hired to clean up the apartment.
The guy who takes it home is a poor immigrant with no real possessions. He replaces three lawn chairs in his living room with the sofa. He has various friends come over to help him fix up the sofa - a friend who works for a steam cleaning biz cleans it for him, which makes it look fairly decent, and then a friend who works as an upholsterer in an autoshop replaces all the fabric the cat tore up with (miss-matched) swatches.
The montage of the fixed up sofa is basically his kids playing (making forts, etc.), his wife sewing or reading or watching soaps, and his friends and him watching sports on a really small TV.
The next destination for the sofa is a friends apartment, as the immigrant guy has saved up enough to buy a home and buy some new furniture.
The friend is kind of drug dealer seedy, and the montage shows a lot of miscreants either doing drugs or having sex with prostitutes.
The sofa is then abandoned in the apartment for awhile when the friend is arrested and hauled off to jail. The sofa is eventually tossed in a dumpster by the apartment manager.
A couple of guys in a truck see the sofa in the dumpster and rescue it, taking it to their trailer in some very seedy area on the outskirts of town. The montage with the trailer involves the guys fighting with their women, and passing out - a lot. There is one scene where a guy is forced onto the sofa and cuffed by the police. There is also one very tender love scene with one of the guys and one of the women.
The sofa is left behind when the guys move out to go back to Michigan, but leaving the girls behind. The next people who move into the trailer are a very young couple - she might be an underage runaway. We see them having lots of sex on the sofa, but we also see her sitting up later crying quite a bit. The girl at one point does make the comment that she loves the sofa because it is so soft and comfy.
Finally, one morning the guy wakes up and finds a note on the sofa from the girl stating she was going back to her family. The guy goes into a frenzy and accidentally catches the sofa on fire. He manages to get the fire out before the sofa is really harmed, but he has to get rid of it because of the smoke damage. He takes it to a swap meet with just about everything in the house. A sharp-eyed shopper recognizes the quality manufacturer of the sofa and buys it for $20.00.
The guy who buys the sofa takes it back to his garage where he takes it apart. The next scenes we see will be the guy buying new foam for the seats from one of the three girls who had the sofa in college (she works for a foam supplier), and buying fabric from one of the other girls (she works for a store like Joann Fabrics) who lived in the apartment, on the recommendation of the foam girl.
The next montage shows the guy completely rebuilding the sofa to a point where it looks new. He then takes it to his restored/antique furniture store.
One of the warehouse men is one of the two guys who had the sofa after the college girls had it. His buddy he lived with visits him at the store one day, and introduces him to his new girlfriend, the daughter of the woman who originally bought the sofa (the daughter was the girl who dropped out of college to go to Europe). All three of them sit on the sofa and remark how familiar it seems.
One of the girls who was left behind by the two guys who returned to Michigan comes into the store as they sit on the sofa. She is the girlfriend of the other warehouse man. She too remarks that the sofa they are sitting on looks oddly familiar.
The sofa is then shown being sat on by a bunch of different people, including the immigrant guy, his wife and their kids, the drug dealer seedy guy friend of his with a girlfriend/wife (the other girl who was with the Michigan guys - he’s cleaned up and doing well now)
The young runaway girl who left the guy who sold the sofa at the swap meet is shown looking at the sofa with her parents - two uptight religious types. The parents sit on the sofa and make the comment that they can’t imagine this sofa being in their home because it’s too soft.
The two guys who returned to Michigan come in to the store to look at the sofa and they are now a gay couple. The guy who sold it at the swap meet is seen outside the store looking at the sofa through the window, a young girl with a baby at his side. He is heard telling her that someday they’ll have a sofa that nice.
The ex-husband of the original purchaser of the sofa comes into the store and looks at the sofa with his new wife - the housekeeper he was caught having an affair with.
Finally, the woman who originally bought the sofa is shown with an interior designer and yet another husband (maybe a different pool boy she had yet another affair with?) The Interior Designer is explaining how putting together a room with older pieces of furniture adds to the ambience of the house, as every piece brings with it the rich history of it’s former life.
The statement the Interior Designer makes after the woman nods her approval is “You never know how many people enjoyed the best moments of their lives on this sofa.”
This story idea is copyright 2012 by Christopher R. Bakunas and may not be used without express written consent. And money, lots and lots of money.
Indie film possibilities. Not blockbuster. Maybe in a foreign language... ;)
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