> Synopsis

Logline:
It’s not me. It’s the world that’s crazy.
("Ik ben niet gek, de wereld is gek")

Factual Background:
11 March 2002, twenty minutes past nine in the morning: John R. —a 59-year-old bus driver—arrives at the reception desk of the Rembrandt Tower in Amsterdam. He is heavily armed and is carrying a bomb in his briefcase. He takes the doorman and 17 others hostage in the lobby and demands to speak with Philips CEO Gerard Kleisterlee. He wants to warn people about the fraud aimed at consumers and about the menace of widescreen television. Just one hour later, all of the Dutch television stations are already showing his letters of protest. The Rembrandt Tower is hermetically sealed and surrounded by police snipers. Kleisterlee doesn’t make an appearance. When John R. realizes that his actions have failed, he withdraws into a toilet and shoots himself in the head.
The film OFF SCREEN provides a (fictitious) pre-history to the above facts: John’s frustrations, his bizarre (coincidental?) encounter with Kleisterlee, their impossible friendship (or is it something else?), their rivalry and John’s fanatical, armed attempt to force the Chief Executive of Philips to do penance publicly.

The Film:
Fear – that is the key concept in the consumer industry. People are talked into being afraid of something (e.g. cardiovascular disease) and then offered a means of redemption (thanks to Becel). People who don’t have a mobile telephone that can also take snapshots simply don’t count these days. They are losers.
John Voerman—a reliable but rather solitary bus driver in his late fifties—is fascinated by the power of the media and the multinationals, as well as by the position of consumers as underdogs. He bombards the consumer columns and programmes in newspapers and on television with detailed letters in which he calls attention to fraudulent practices. For some time already, his wrath has focused on the emergence of widescreen TV. Not only are they unsightly, costly and worthless, but also dangerous, according to Voerman, due to the radiation they emit and to their potential for manipulating viewers.
By coincidence, John meets Philips CEO Wesselinck during a bus trip. They start talking. It turns out that Wesselinck is familiar with Voerman’s protest letters. They remain in contact, and Wesselinck takes him into his confidence, giving him inside information. The advance of widescreen television appears to have much graver implications than John had suspected …
A bizarre, ‘impossible’ friendship develops between the two men, in which the Dutch television personality Astrid Joosten (whom John admires and who is preparing a television interview with Wesselinck) will play a decisive role.
Jealousy casts a cloud on the friendship. John begins to distrust Wesselinck’s openheartedness and his expressions of regret. He decides to help Wesselinck. By taking hostages and a holding a press conference in the Rembrandt Tower, he will force him to make amends publicly….