Breaching the Wall

Erich Musick and CJ Wostratzky

Actors:
Hans (Son) – a new, secret unknown German talent, Matt Wostratzky
Klaus (Father) – Charlton Heston
Wolfgang (Berlin Wall Guard) – Sean Connery
Family – extras
Other Berlin Wall Guards – extras

Setting: (in order of appearance):
Hotel in East Germany
Family’s House in West Germany
Both Sides of Wall
East Germany on a crowded street
Coffee Shop in East Germany

Plot:
Hans, the youngest of a family of six children and a father of three is in East Germany on business when the Soviet Union decides to close its borders. Hans’ father, Klaus becomes worried when his son doesn’t return from his business trip on schedule, and he doesn’t hear from him for a week. Klaus gathers his family together to tell them he’s leaving to go search for Hans. He decides to go about doing this by getting a pass to enter East Germany. After a long week of waiting for a pass and still no word from Hans, Klaus is finally able to enter East Germany. Meanwhile, Hans is frantically searching for a way out of East Germany, but can’t find one. He decides to get a hotel closer to the border, where he can find a better and easier way to escape. Since Hans and his father have not been keeping in touch, Klaus goes to the town his son was staying at before he switched hotels. The people at the reception desk at the hotel aren’t allowed to give out the room numbers of guests, so Klaus has to go door-to-door (all one-hundred rooms on each of the six floors) to search for his son. After knocking at all 600 doors, without luck, Klaus has no clue where to look next.

Back at his hotel, after having been stuck in East Germany three weeks longer than planned, Hans is thinking up a plan of escape, not knowing that his father has since entered East Germany. After hours and hours of watching the guard rotation and escapee checks by the guards posted at the wall-building site, Hans finally comes up with a route of escape. That night, anxious to leave, he tries to escape, but is seen. After being chased for an hour, Hans comes to a town and hides there until morning.

The next morning, as Hans is walking around town, he sees wanted posters with a description of a man resembling himself, but doesn’t take much notice to them, since the man in the description seemed stockier than he was. Although he didn’t know it, he was the man described on the wanted poster.

By this time, Klaus has gotten sick of looking for his son. He wants to see him so badly, but his hopes that Hans is still alive are decreasing. He sees one of the many wanted posters and is so stunned that he goes to sit down so that he doesn’t have a heart attack. He is still worried, but at least he knows his son is still alive. Klaus goes to a nearby coffee shop, sits down, and orders a cup of coffee. As he looks around the coffee store, he sees someone resembling his son, but thinks he’s dreaming. Why would a wanted man be sitting there in plain sight for everyone to see?

At the same moment, Hans looks around the coffee show for no reason at all and sees who we know as his father. Hans just shakes it off and doesn’t believe it’s his father; how and why would his father be in East Germany? After all, he wasn’t allowed to leave the country, why would people, including his father, be allowed in?

Then, Klaus walks over and sits down by Hans, still not believing that the man is his son. They begin talking about events that only family members would know about, and realize that they really are the person they look like. Klaus quietly warns Hans that he is wanted so that no one hears and gets him in trouble. They leave the coffee shop together and find a hotel to go and make a plan. Since Hans can’t risk being seen, Klaus goes into the hotel, gets a room. They disguise Hans so no one could recognize him and then go to their room and begin working on an escape route.

Together, after reuniting, they come up with a clever way to get home. Klaus is allowed to leave the country, since he got the pass to enter/leave the country, but Hans must stay in East Germany. They decide to strap Hans to the underside of Klaus’ car and drive through the border like would normally be done. The next morning, they pack up the car and leave. As they near the border, they stop inside a tunnel on the highway to strap Hans to the bottom of the car without being seen doing it. They continue on until they get to the border.

At the border Wolfgang, a guard at the border between East and West Germany, gives Klaus a hard time and “thoroughly” searches the car for hidden passengers. When he finds nothing, (he fails to search the bottom of the car) he lets Klaus (and, of course, Hans) leave East Germany.

Klaus and Hans make it home safely to their families and have a happy reunion time. Everyone is overjoyed that they’re all back together in free, non-Communist West Germany.

Everyone lives happily ever after.