Here is my next script project. I believe there is one person on this thread now in England, but possibly from Poland originally, and would like to hear from him. I'm seeking help from people familiar with the period and the south coast.
DESOLATED
Marcus Sanford, October, 2016
ask@interplans.net, 360-460-9473
PO Box 1074, Sequim, WA 98382
Logline: An orator and free-thinker in early 1800s south-coast England murders a coastal shiplightman whom he thinks knows that his girlfriend put their baby in to the waves of a huge storm to get rid of it. The speaker goes on a tirade against Christian faith, and seeks to be published, like Thomas Payne, just as Pastor Peter Holford has perfected his material on the historic event known as the destruction of Jerusalem, in a wide speaking itinerary. Both skeptics are silenced, and leave the country.
Synopsis: The south coast lighting system which once warned London of invasion is now also in use as a lighthouse system to save ships from crashing on reefs, manned by Admiralty shiplightmen. As one storm approaches, Abner Pruitt sees a girl with a basket walking into a receding tide where she leaves the basket. Leaving the light momentarily to check on her, he dashes down the escarpment, and makes contact but she is frightened and disappears, and he returns.
The girl tells the father, progressive orator Fitzwilliam Summers, she has been seen, and Summers becomes obsessed with protecting their plan. He lurks around Hastings long enough to hear of the approach of another storm, and decides to ambush the lightman while on duty once his light is up, not realizing it is another lightman.
Summers then goes on a tirade against the Christian faith, totally absorbed in Payne’s material.
Evangelical pastor Peter Holford has an encounter with a reader of Payne in a pub. The reader is quite sure that Christian belief is doomed because it seeks to be evidence-free, and because it refers to faith as that which is separate from proof. Holford is inspired then to go public with his research on the destruction of Jerusalem in 66-72 AD, and merrily jokes to Payne’s follower that he ‘will visit the pub more often!’
Public debate of Holford and Payne/Summers?
Not only has most of England received Holford overwhelmingly, but Payne and Summers have almost no sales. Payne decides to leave for America.
Since the Admiralty has learned when the girlfriend of Summers was ‘in confinement’ and there is no child, they know the motive for the murder. The interview of the intended target is in the newspapers. Summers now realizes he killed the wrong man, and leaves for Australia.
In a final scene, the Huxley family who slurped up the material of Payne and Summers, discuss how they next plan to assault the church, but now realize they can’t touch Christ and the desolation of Jerusalem, and evangelicals have seriously cut in on their slave-based profits. Instead, they are going after creation, looking for a biologist who is willing to write the scientific paper necessary, to make creation look as silly as possible, and maintain the racial-biological superiority of white races.