Brainstorm This! – a movie based on a legendary 982-hour task force meeting at Cleveland’s Minsick Bolts – will begin filming in that city next summer. The longest task force meeting ever recorded, it ran from July 7 to August 14, 2015.
“The group was organized to discuss ways to improve company morale,” says the movie’s director, Will Sunish. “All it was supposed to do was decide whether or not to give out free doughnuts once a week.”
Instead, he says, things went off the rails. The 17 members argued for 13 full days over whether to call themselves a task force or an ad hoc committee. Then two factions developed, one advocating glazed doughnuts, the other a violent overthrow of management. At one point the group denied other employees restroom access. Soft drinks were thrown. One couple fell in love. On Day 12, three members stormed out, boarded flights to Venezuela, and were never heard from again. Helen Weems, an elderly secretary, continually fled the meeting in tears, her feelings hurt.
Finally, with office security guards cowering in fear, the Cleveland Police Task Force Task Force was called in to break things up.
“This is a classic tale of what happens to man vs. Corporate America when pastry is thrown into the mix,” says Sunish, who also directed What the Math Teacher Figured in 2011. He says it was three more years before the company convened another morale task force. This one met for 22 minutes and agreed to half nutty/half cream filled – not for free, but at a bargain rate of 30 cents each.
Brainstorm This! is being produced by SearchMuch Entertainment, with Minsick receiving $16 million for the rights, plus 8.75 percent of the gross. Actor Jake Wardell was reportedly attached to the project at one time, but became unattached during a windstorm.
