Big Man On Campus

takes place on the campuses of the Claremont Colleges in Pomona, California, especially at Miles' alma mater, Claremont McKenna College. It is about a little-known real program run for decades by the U.S. State Department, of placing the sons and daughters of high-ranking foreign officials into special slots set aside for them at America's best colleges and universities. The thinking is that a good American education for these children of the overseas elites will buy friendships and enlightening thinking about our freedoms and democratic principles by these future leaders of their respective foreign countries.

The case here is Ramfis Reyes Stroessner, the son of the military/political leader of Paraguay, who arrives on campus in his limousine, with bodyguards in tow, to study government and economics. With the bribe of a full scholarship, the Dean of Men assigns him a senior "friend" and roommate, Jack Quick, to help the young foreign student get acclimated to college life in America. Ramfis is an immediate handful, however, outraging some dorm Seniors whose suite of rooms he commandeers. His families' troubles in South America follow him up to southern California as well, when a hit squad appears to assassinate the son and heir of Paraguay's dictator. They fail to blow up his limo, and Ramfis wins over his dormmates by being the first to successfully complete the Scripps Off-Road Challenge, driving his four-wheeled drive Jeep across the women's college campus at night without being caught!

The rebels bring in a specialist in edged weapons, the "Ghost," an albino hit man, to take out the young Latin American, but Jack and Ramfis kill this assassin in a bloody fight in the midst of a dorm party. Ramfis buys himself out of trouble with a frightened Dean by endowing a chair in Latin studies in his family's name, but the rebel guerillas can't be bought off so easily. They kidnap Jack's coed fiancee, Perrie, and try to blackmail the Anglo Senior into killing his roommate, Ramfis, for them. Instead, Jack and Ramfis track the guerillas to their rented house in Claremont and attack it with his bodyguards on their four-wheeled Honda motorcycles. A shootout ensues with the motorcycles careening around inside the house. Several bodyguards and the rebels are killed or wounded, but the head terrorist finally tells them that he's left Perrie tied-up in her Psychology lab back on campus.

Jack rides off to the rescue on his four-wheeled motorcycle, and Ramfis manages to dismantle a bomb's remote controls just in time. Their dorm celebration later is interrupted by the tragic news that Ramfis's father has been assassinated down in Paraguay, and the college boy has to fly home to take over his family's affairs, perhaps even run for President in the new elections he will propose, carrying on his father's legacy while at the same time instituting more democratic principles in his conservative, under-developed country. Jack and Perrie plan on honeymooning there, perhaps even sticking around for a year to help Ramfis through his country's governmental crisis.

This politically-correct, college-oriented movie features more serious political overtones than just sex and beer and rock and roll, and is suitable for a low-budget feature or cable movie due to its few sex scenes, limited nudity and violent content. Screenplay available from Hoodwinks Productions in Los Angeles (310-578-5404).