Fal-net > Tierra Del Fuego / Summary

a tense, dramatic screenplay by Michael A. Weintraub

TIERRA DEL FUEGO ("LAND OF FIRE") IS THE STORY of a young man's journey into a self-designed delusion. Julian Crisp, a rich, playboy orphan nicknamed "Batman" for his anonymous philanthropy, lives in the big city, surrounded by the large buildings that bring him comfort. Orphaned in a fire that consumed his mother when he was just three years old, he discovers a new facet to his life, one of destiny as a religious messiah.

Julian receives strange letters in the mail from a woman, known to him only as Mary, around the same time he starts to receive strange wounds, similar to the stigmata of Christ. As he enters the wondrous world the wounds give him, Julian trades in his radical animal and environmental rights beliefs for the new religious obsession he gains.

Mary is a disciple of a man called the Preacher. Under his tutelage, Mary, in a series of telephone calls and mailings, convinces Julian of what he already knows — that the world is crumbling around him — and what he does not: that he is the one to save it.

Over time, a friendship with a young cancer patient renews Julian's optimism in the world and prompts him to heed Mary's call. Julian gets a new obsession and sheds himself of past problems as he begins his new life as a self-proclaimed religious messiah.