THE PITCH
The Lords of Acid is a 9-episode epic crime saga thematically based on Dante’s Inferno and the 9 Circles of Hell. Set primarily in The cornfields of Nebraska from 1993-2001 and inspired by true events, we explore the crossroads where the unspeakable truth meets the unbelievable. A wide-ranging emotionally charged story of corruption and redemption told through an intimate and sometimes massive cinematic scope, understanding when the story calls for cerebral and nuanced chess moves between two people in a room lit solely by a roaring fireplace and when it needs a HEAT-inspired fed raid in the middle of the burning man festival towards the series climax.But more importantly, it understands that the story is only as captivating as its characters, and that is where LOA shines. Whether it’s our small-town valedictorian turned femme fatale, Karma Kane or a backwoods super genius named Earl Hitz, The Lords of Acid bursts with a cavalcade of tragically flawed, eccentric and relatable characters.A heartfelt love letter to the nineties decade and to the great true-crime stories of the last 20 years – a messy, toxic marriage of human drama and precautionary fear can only be described in four words… The Lords of Acid
The short and sweet deal is this. It is a well-written character crime saga that checks all the HOT buttons right now;1. It’s a TV series. No one watches movies. It’s always “what shows are you watching?” So it’s binge-able much like “Mindhunter” and “Breaking Bad” was on Netflix.2. It’s nostalgia bait. Everyone is obsessed with the 90’s. Take your daughter to H&M or any fashionable clothing store. It’s all 90’s now. It’s the hit decade currently on tv too. Several hit shows have all taken place in the nineties or early 2000’s. People love rewatching and reliving moments in history that they were alive during.3. It’s an untold relatively unknown true story exposing government and academic corruption at the highest levels. Doesn’t matter your party affiliations, people love scandals, especially ones they didn’t know existed.4. The main story is driven by every single character’s search for their own definition of freedom. Whether it is freedom from cuffs and chains, financial freedom, or psychological freedom from past trauma. What is more American than the search and acquisition of personal freedom?5. A cautionary tale but also one of redemption for our heroine, Karma.6. Sex ,drugs, rock n roll… and oh yes, unspeakable violence.
CREATOR’S STATEMENT
This series is loosely based on the true events that occurred in the 1990s during the reign of The Acid King of Wamego.
It is a money and drug dealing chess game played between Ultra intellectuals, global criminal elements, and government officials during the “War on Drugs.”
Visually, the time and era will be portrayed as nostalgically as possible. Our ideological premise is to expose the hypocrisy and corruption of government.
Especially as related to selective immunity from prosecution and the clandestine use and confiscation of drug revenue.
And in a larger context to expose the danger of giving any government agency too much power under the guise of good intentions.
Our cavalcade of characters are both pulpy in their presentation but as authentically human as they come. All of them are extremely intelligent in their own right, Ivy-league-educated opportunists and would-be criminals.
They begin by working with government officials to assist in the “War on Drugs.” They become research assistants and informants for the prosecution of drug manufacture and distribution conspiracies.
They get involved deeper into the investigations and are granted immunity from prosecution for their cooperation.
This immunity evolves into a license to steal and eventually kill. The government ultimately realizes that they have created a monster and can do nothing about it, or can they?
THEMES
“You don’t find acid it finds you.” This Hunter S. Thompson quote hints at our underlying thematic presence. Stories of falls from grace, and stories of redemption from the darkest reaches of human existence are all on display for the audience to see.
Every character is seeking some form of freedom. Whether that freedom is as literal as it gets, or freedom from guilt or loss, a big concept tackled in the nine episodes, is what freedom is defined by each of our broken protagonists and dastardly antagonists.
All nine episodes have their own separate theme as each is based on a circle of hell as described in Virgil’s descent through hell in Dante’s Inferno. In each of our nine episodes, the title corresponds to one circle of hell, becoming darker as we follow our characters in their individual journeys.
Some will trend toward the light and many others will be sucked down deeper into the abyss. This dichotomy of the human heart and the destiny of the immortal soul is illustrated by the choices our characters make.
The 90’s era will be on full display through the eyes of our heroine, Karma Kane. She is much like Dorothy Gale on her way down the yellow brick road toward Oz, although in a much darker representation.
Karma, a small-town valedictorian turned stripper, will take down a drug empire run out of a decommissioned missile silo. She outmaneuvers federal agents, Berkeley intellectuals, and a criminal genius, all among the cornfields of Nebraska.
LOGLINE
The story of how a small-town girl turned stripper outmaneuvered federal agents, Berkley intellectuals, and a very dangerous global criminal organization, to bring down a drug empire led by a Russian crime lord, all among the cornfields of Nebraska. Based on true events.
SETTING
Lords of Acid sews together a wide spectrum of worlds by the common thread of greed, drugs, and violence. From the ice-creams shops and old farms in the heartland of Midwest America, to the underbelly of the FBI and a criminal syndicate of ivy-league chemists.
We follow the characters on a colorful yet bloody trip that converges in the depths of a decommissioned missile silo turned chemo-lab by an enigmatic backwoods genius.
WORLD OF THE FBI
Hard cutting greens and deep straw yellows. Old bricks, harsh lights, realistic bleak government building texture. Leather high-backs, warm glowing lamps, and wooden bookcases.
WAHOO, NEBRASKA
In the heart of America with a population of less than a thousand, Wahoo sets a warm and cozy rural summer-time nostalgic feel with hot concrete, lush buzzing woods, and aging buildings packed with tones of brown, orange, and greens. Flaring, intimate, and immersive.
PAUL BOZART
Bozart made a vow to aggressively take drugs off the street himself after his father was killed under mysterious circumstances. Bozart is overzealous and aggressive with his tactics. Tom Webb, the newly appointed “Drug Czar” and Bozart went to law school together at Stanford and became lifelong friends.
Webb uses Bozart as an attack dog in tough situations. Bozart believes that to defeat a criminal element, one must fight fire with fire. He will lie, cheat and steal to get a conviction. Bozart has no family but finds solace at the bottom of a bottle. He drinks to kill pain and reciprocates that pain onto the criminals he hunts.
KARMA KANE
An intelligent and driven small-town valedictorian, working her way out of the white-trash trap she was born into. Her days start at the bakery, and end stripping at Emerald City. Underestimating her is a mistake.
Her perceived naivete and unusual beauty make her a stealthy manipulator. When Karma meets Troy Davis and Clark Nash; two encounters that will change her life forever, sending her on a path of drugs, money, sex, torture, and ultimately survival.
EMERALD CITY
The homegrown women of Emerald City can only be seen through clouds of cigarette smoke, pulsing in green and red neon light. The walls of twisted glass plating lined with yellow runners that guide you in the darkness. The seedy backwoods exterior reveals the shining gem of the prairie, gentlemen’s club.
THE SILO
The Silo has many looks, depending on the night… or what drugs you’re on. As a chemo-lab, the stark concrete textures are washed in cool blue glows and harsh orange cuts. However, when the acid hits and the parties blast off, an aberrated cosmic rainbow of pinks, purples, and yellows dance, twist, and melt into the room itself and the people inside.
“THE WIZARD” EARL HITZ
The backwoods mastermind chemist behind some of the most notorious and powerful synthetic drugs and psychedelics of the 90’s. He sees fractals and atoms in his dreams and claims himself a wizard.
Earl believes that he is charged with bestowing tools to magically alter consciousness. He has an eidetic memory and is a voracious reader. He promises to return to his craft as soon as he is out of prison. Earl’s intelligence is indisputable, but wrapped in a very strange and unorthodox package.
DAVE HITZ
Dave Hitz is a streetwise, white trash, 20-something. He’s feared because he is tough, ruthless and wild, but is loved for his unique sense of humor and no-fucks attitude. He comes from a long line of Kentucky bootlegger. After beating the sheriff’s son to a pulp in a bar fight.
Dave fled to Nebraska and moved in with his eccentric Uncle Earl. He acquires his chemist uncle’s private drug synthesis notes after a raid. Now, with Earl in prison, Dave is in search of someone capable of exploiting the formulas to make a mint.
TROY DAVIS
The heir to a billion dollar nuts & bolts manufacturer. He drives a bright yellow Porsche 911 to show it. With his connections to the world of chemists, psychedelics, and the criminal underworld, he is given immunity by the FBI to infiltrate the designer drug labs across the country.
Troy believes, he is always the smartest person in the room and can match wits with anyone on any subject. He is a very amicable and a pathological thrill seeker. He is driven by the thought of easy money as a means to conquer any new challenge. He calls himself “Scary-Smart.” Troy uses the system to gain anything and everything he desires, no matter what the cost.
CLARK NASH
Clark Nash grew up in the Midwest, in the late sixties. After excelling in high school, he wandered the country and wound up in Berkeley. He made friends at the coffee shops in the Haight-Ashbury district and those friends convinced him to attend classes. Professor Dimitri Makarov took him under his wing and nurtured his talent in chemistry.
After the fall of the Berlin wall, Clark started his doctoral research in the former Soviet Union. He researched the manufacture and distribution of methamphetamine analogs and the possibility of their spread worldwide. His research gained the attention of the DEA and in the late 80’s he began to work with them. Clark struggles to afford his Ivy League Ph.D. and it is rumored that his contacts in Russia are more than clinical.
DIMITRI MAKAROV
Dimitri Makarov is a psycho-pharmacologist, Berkley professor and author. Dimitri is credited with introducing MDMA “ecstasy” to psychologists in the late 1970s for therapeutic use. He has written how-to books on synthesizing entheogens and their use. He has discovered and synthesized numerous psychoactive compounds.
Dimitri was one of the founding members of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. He is passionate about expanding the mind by way of chemistry. He is currently one of the leaders of the Entheogen Network and the New Global Order of the Brotherhood. He considers Clark Nash as the son he never had. Dimitri is the foremost authority in analogue
drug research.
BEHIND THE SCENES
AESTHETIC
Lords of Acid’s style is a mesh of 90’s nostalgia, bleak yet warm Nebraska summer days, and a unique psychedelic lens that looks beneath the surface of the world we thought we knew.
A trippy atmospheric art-house look and pace, balanced with an intimate look into the minds of a criminal ensemble, spikes of realistic hyper-violence, and gritty yet striking locales ironically set the stage for this limited series.
Much in the vein of the classic Wizard of Oz, we follow eccentric individuals spiral down their yellow brick road, layers by layer. The silo will bear visual and story driven similarities to Dante’s Inferno and its circles of Hell.
The Lords of Acid will take extreme care in curating the right feel and tone from an array of pop culture and classical motifs accompanied by a soundtrack chock full of psychedelic deep cuts and radio hits of the time, such as: Bush, Jane’s Addiction, Stone Roses, Primal Scream, Front 242, Nine Inch Nails, My Life with the Thrill Kill Cult, etc.
The mantra “Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it.” – And the exposure of the hypocrisy of good intentions is our theme, which uncovers personal and political grey areas. Right and wrong become subjective through different perspectives, inside and outside the dark corridors of the mind.
SELF DESTRUCTION (Production Song)
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Contact
Tommy O
402.968.9591 | @ergotommyo
jonathon Goodro
402.680.8279 | @jg_film
production office
5600 South 59th Street, Suite 105 Lincoln, NE 68516