From: Dom Serafini
To: Cathy Malatesta, Lawless Ent.
Re: Script idea
Outline: A Sicilian-American marries a Scottish lady in England during WWII. Their American son acquires E.U. citizenship and U.K. citizenship. Scotland separates from the U.K. and son acquires Scottish citizenship. U.S. Homeland Security sees that he has four different passports (U.S., E.U., U.K., and Scottish) and immediately notifies the CIA.
Note to Cathy: Ending needs some tweaking since Scotland has not yet separated from the U.K., so veteran retired U.S. studio executive Tony Friscia still has only three passports, which still makes for a record-setting number of passports, since most dual citizens around the world have, well, dual passports.
This is how Friscia explains his becoming a citizen of the world: “My mother, Florence McCorquodale, was born in Glasgow, Scotland and married my American father Salvatore, a sergeant in the U.S. Army, at St. Ambrose Roman Catholic Church in Kidderminster, in England, during WWII.”
Note to Cathy. Here we can insert a scene wherein Salvatore rescues Florence from her munitions plant during an aerial bombing in London.
For Friscia, getting his first passport was easy since he was born in the U.S. some 73 years ago. To honor his father’s Italian background, he acquired Italian citizenship in 2002. He got his E.U. passport the following year.
He also managed to get E.U. passports for his son, Ryan, now evp at Neon Films, and daughter Lauren, now CMO at Tapjoy, in 2003, several years before they left the U.S. to attend graduate courses at St. John’s University in Rome, Italy. Ryan’s son, Jaxon, received his own E.U. passport in 2020 at just 15 months of age, but because of some bureaucratic requirements, Friscia couldn’t manage to get an Italian passport for Ryan’s Chinese-American wife, Alice. However, he said: “I haven’t given up. I’m still trying.”
Note to Cathy: Here we can insert a subplot about a Chinese Foreign Officer who contacts his Italian counterpart to lodge a protest and a veiled threat to pull out of a $5 billion investment in the shipping port of Palermo.
Then, when the U.K. split from the E.U. because large E.U. subsidies were distorting the U.K. economy, Friscia’s E.U. passport was no longer sufficient to honor his mother’s legacy, so in 2021 he became a British citizen. That same year he also got his Royal passport. He commented: “When the U.K. was in the E.U., I did not bother to apply.”
Note to Cathy: We should close with Friscia watching a large demonstration in Edinburgh, Scotland in favor of Scottish independence on television.
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