• The Story

  A down-and-out LA actor with a knack for impersonations finds his circumstances completely reversed by a chance meeting with a look-alike stranger. After a night of drinking with his new friend discussing the possibilities made possible by their similar appearance, the stranger offers the actor a ride home. On the way there is an accident and one of them is killed. The survivor finds himself in the hospital with amnesia and everyone assuming he’s the stranger, the right-hand man for a mob boss. The survivor plays the role that's expected of him, despite the fact that doubt about who he is, weighs heavy on his mind. Life becomes a balancing act between the role he finds himself playing and the search for who he really is: the down-and-out actor or the mob consigliere?

• The Players

• The Sample

• The Concept

  THE METHOD is the first in a series of Neo Noir Crime Mystery Hybrid Graphic Novels from Web Media production company MRPwebmedia. The graphic novel has achieved new status as an important media art form, and resource for movie and television productions. At it's most fundamental, graphic novels provide consumers with great entertainment, and television and movie producers with a ready made storyboarded pre-production blueprint.

  The convergence of print, video and sound technologies incorporated into today’s numerous multimedia viewing environments, prompted MRPwebmedia to create a hybrid graphic novel series designed to work in print, the Web, on television, and in movie theatres.

  Traditionally graphic novels relied heavily on top quality artwork presenting a rather basic conventional 1950s style good-guy-bad-guy story aimed at a younger audience, but times have changed. Graphic novels have graduated from the domain of adolescents to the world of mainstream entertainment. Today’s cynical audience has a closer kinship to the Film Noir anti-hero protagonists of 1940s than the goody-two-shoes of 1950s, and as such, storytelling needs to reflect that societal zeitgeist.

• The Format

  

  Rather than just create a standard graphic novel that leaves little room for sophisticated dialogue and story nuance, MRPwebmedia has created a format that combines a screenplay with an illustrated graphic novel style storyboard presentation, designed to be read by a consumer audience, and produced as a television series or movie.

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What’s Coming?

• The Method Universe

  THE METHOD is a new graphic novel hybrid written by Jerry Bader and produced by MRPwebmedia. It is the first in a series of Neo Noir Crime Mysteries presented in a new storytelling format designed for the multimedia crossover venue age.

  The Method Universe encompasses an ensemble cast of characters that live, love, and labour in order to survive in a world fraught with mystery, danger, and intrigue. If you like THE METHOD you’ll love what we have in store for you:

• The Comeuppance

  When mob boss, Carmine DeSalvo, finds out his accident-prone, amnesiac right-hand man, Arnie Bernardo, isn’t who he thinks he is; when he decides Arnie’s girl, Lonnie, is too tempting to resist; and when hit men, Vito and Sid, figure Carmine is past his best before date; somebody ends up dead. Let’s not forget the guy running the mob’s movie operation is skimming.

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• The Grist For The Mill

  Things get complicated for Detectives’ Grist and Dime when they run into a case of murder that reeks of California corruption. When wannabe actress, come party girl, Lizzie Short, turns up dead on a beach behind the home of a prominent studio executive that works for ex-mobster Arnie Bernardo, anything is possible. Finding a murderer in a town thick with sex, betrayal, and revenge is no easy task for Grist and Dime.

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• The Red Emperor

  Grist and Dime are at it again, but this time it involves the Chinese triads; a tailor that moonlights as a hit man; an ex French DGSE agent that happens to be Detective Dime’s boyfriend; and a kooky group of characters right out of central casting. The question is, who killed Peter Pretty Boy Chen and why; when the prize is only a cheap statute that anyone could pick up at any Chinese souvenir shop?

• The Redhead Rip-Off

  Mix a gorgeous redhead with a historic name, an old man, who happens to be one of the best forgers of Austrian artist Gustav Klimt, and the second son of a triad Dragon Head, and you’ve got a recipe for big money mayhem. What could possibly go wrong when an oddball group of grifters attempts to con a Chinese gangster, who happens to employ a group of professional confidence artists?

• The Incident Report

  USAF war hero, test pilot Major Willard White knew better than to file an Incident Report about an unexplained encounter while on a test flight, but what he didn’t realize was the report was going to get him killed. After being threaten by his superiors and a shadowy NSA character, White attempts to protect himself by sending the report to a disgraced reporter and his beautiful rookie partner, both looking for a career-making story. Getting the story out turns out to be an exercise in maneuvering through a maze of intimidation and dead bodies resulting in an unconventional solution.

Why Neo Noir?

• Neo-Noir is the modern reinterpretation of the Film Noir; it incorporates new cinematic technology and techniques with the emotional and psychological point-of-view of the 1940s and 50s. The post 911 War On Terror combined with the housing collapse of 2007 has created the same kind of societal angst that gripped people during the Film Noir heyday.

• Decade Has Its Personality

  Film Noir (Dark or Black Film) is a term coined by French film critics describing the American pulp fiction crime melodramas of the 1940s and 50s. It’s a cinematic style and genre that reflects a menacing and fatalistic point-of-view. It combined a post-depression angst with a cold war era fear as interpreted by German expressionist directors and cinematographers, and their American and British devotees.

  Every decade has its over-arching spirit: a zeitgeist that defines the era for history, both illuminating and hiding its realities. The 1920s were The Roaring 20s with its anti-authority speakeasies and flappers, while The Dirty 30s were dominated by both financial and human depression. The 40s were The War Years, overshadowed by anxiety, atrocity, and nobility, while the 50s ushered in an era of consumerism, and paranoia fostered by the beginning of The Cold War.

  Film Noir was a mirror of society. The psychological perspective of the time was reflected in both art and commerce, and it parallels much of the same feelings in today's society. Understanding the zeitgeist of a particular time period is vital to effective storytelling.

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