Director Frank Darabont created this Frank Capra-inspired drama based on a screenplay by his friend and one-time schoolmate Michael Sloane. Jim Carrey stars as Pete Appleton, a screenwriter in the Hollywood of the 1950s. Petes on top of the world with his first motion picture Sand Pirates of the Sahara just released to theaters and his romance with a beautiful starlet (Amanda Detmer) heating up. However, his triumph turns to dismay when hes called before the commie-hunting House Un-American Activities Committee and advised by a studio lawyer and his agent to play ball with the witch hunters. Depressed by the film industrys weak-kneed reaction to the hearings, Pete gets drunk and drives his car north along the California coast, where he crashes from a bridge and wakes up on shore the next morning suffering from amnesia. Wandering into the nearby small town of Lawson, Pete is mistaken for Luke Trimble, a lost hero of World War II who, like most of the areas young men, never returned from the war a decade earlier. Luke has soon reunited with both his father (Martin Landau) and his one-time girlfriend (Laurie Holden), and finds that his reappearance has given the citizens of Lawson an emotional boost thats sorely needed. When he refurbishes and reopens his familys decrepit movie theater, the Majestic, Luke revitalizes Lawson just as his memory of his true identity begins to reassert itself. Sloanes original script for The Majestic (2001) was entitled The Bijou. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide