Dark Comedy
Before Christmas and After
Genre(s): Coming of Age, Dark Comedy
Logline: Broke and at odds about how to get through the holidays, Christmas is beginning to look a little like a disaster for the Donovan family, and then they buy a puppy – and it begins to look like a total catastrophe.
Synopsis:It's Christmas and thirteen year old Charles Donovan is just trying to keep his family from each other's throats. His mother is fed up with work, his brother is in trouble with bikers, his boozing uncle is visiting, and his father has just escaped from prison. When his older brother threatens to leave, Charles goes against his mother's wishes and purchases a dog as a Christmas gift – and gets unexpected results.
Bio:
CLEM MARTINI is a writer based in Calgary. His works for the screen include documentary, long form drama, comedy and series television
CLEM MARTINI, Writer
8428 64th Ave. N.W.
Calgary, AB T3B 4H3
Tel: (403) 288-1138
Fax: (403) 288-1138
martini@ucalgary.ca
Agent: Janine Cheeseman
Aurora Artists Inc.
19 Wroxeter Ave.
Toronto, ON, M4K 1J5
Tel: (416) 463-4634
Or contact Praxis
Lady S
Genre(s): Dark Comedy, Drama, Romance
Logline:
To maintain her freedom and improve her lot in life, a seductive, impoverished widow plays both ends against the middle with her grown daughter, her family, and various men, but is undone by an ungovernable passion for an unsuitable lover.
Synopsis:
Jane Austen's first novel – dark, funny, sexy, with a heroine quite unlike the well-behaved virgins of her later works – is the basis for this screenplay.
In terms of content and tone, Lady S suggests a late-night tryst between Dangerous Liaisons and Sense and Sensibility. The book, like the lady, is controversial. Some Austenites tend to suppress this early work, finding it too disturbing for the gentle-Jane canon. At first glance, this story does seem far removed from the girlish goings-on of later Austen; but in fact Lady S introduces a vigorous female spirit whose wit and strength of will are very much in keeping with the bright, assertive, deliciously outspoken heroines of Emma or Pride and Prejudice.
Lady S spans one year in the life of a notoriously alluring female libertine, a woman who, according to one rival, “has to have all the men”. At thirty-six, lovely, wicked Lady Susan is considered decades too old for the multiple amours she’s conducting; but such perceptions do not deter her. Recently widowed, encumbered with an awkward teenage daughter, large debts, and a bad reputation, she knows the marriage market may now be her only salvation. Yet, passionately drawn to a wholly unsuitable man – penniless, seductive, married Manwaring – and repelled by the prospect of renewed marital imprisonment with some wealthy 'protector', she risks all to live and love on her own terms. Her attempt to follow her heart, to survive husbandless on charm and wit alone, is doomed; but even when her greatest feat overtakes her and she is forced to wed a rich, brainless fop, her dignity never falters. Ironically, her daughter, despite dreaminess and (in her mother’s view) a dangerous lack of self-control, ends up gaining the love match Lady Susan is denied.
Lady S offers many pleasures: a tale of erotic intrigue in which mother and daughter vie for love, sex, and money; a comedy of manners wherein social and sexual hypocrisy are exuberantly laid bare; a compelling narrative whose satire is rooted in Freud’s timeless question 'what do women really want?'. Above all, in the person of Lady Susan – complex, seductive, indomitable – the screenplay brings to light an original and fascinating character.
Author Info:
MICHELE ADAMS has an M.A. in English literature, and a special interest in the 18th century. She has published fiction and reviews, recently completed a novel, worked for CBC Radio as a writer/broadcaster – and continues to freelance as writer/editor in a variety of forms. Her second screenplay, Fat Girl, set in 1963 Winnipeg, tells the tragi-comic story of a love triangle involving a fourteen-year-old boy, a beautiful nun, and the quirky “Fat Girl” of the title.
MICHELE ADAMS, Writer
1149 Lily Street
Vancouver, BC V5L 4H5
(604) 253-5828
madams@idmail.com
Agent: Dacia Moss
Lucas Talent
(604) 685-0345
Sex Lives of the Saints
Genre:Coming of Age • Romance • Dark Comedy • Drama
Logline: Set in 1963, a tragi-comic coming-of-age triangle unites fourteen-year-old Michael with a beautiful nun and teenaged Danuta - over a year of change, he discovers lust, betrayal, Lives of the Saints, and learns that passion and purity aren't mutually exclusive.
Synopsis: A sweet-bitter coming of age story set in a prairie town (Winnipeg), during and after the 1963 Cuban Missile Crisis. The protagonist, Michael, is an edgy Grade Eight student at Holy Ghost Parochial, where classes are routinely interrupted by air raid sirens and 'Nucular' war drills.
No big deal for Michael, son of two Polish war survivors; apocalyptic expectation is in the blood. His problems lie elsewhere. For one thing, he's trapped ... between home, where life with his wounded parents plays like an endless WWII movie, and the would-be-macho world of his peers. Comfortable in neither sphere, he's become a talented escape artist, sliding by on loner cool. But when the classic coming-of-age issue – Encounter with the Eternal Woman – surfaces, Michael's 'cool quest' is fatally undermined.
It begins with his crazy Mom, powerfully, even horribly female, with her emotional demands and gory tales, all starting with the same exhortation: "Listen!" And you do, as long as you can stand it – but, pretty soon, you gotta go.
Then there's Michael's love object, ethereal, elegant Sister Lioba, a nun at the Holy Ghost. Beautiful, brilliant, challenging, her chill purity turns Michael on even as it awes him. images of the saints' varied martyrdoms, once just part of the Catholic wallpaper of his world, suddenly grab Michael's attention in a way that's not pious. Soon he's having visions of his chaste mentor, scantily clad and pierced by celestial swords.
Yet, while he yearns after Lioba, Michael is also drawn to an oddball classmate: vulgar, plump, mouthy Danuta, iconic 'Fat Girl' of the school. He doesn't like like Danuta – but there's something about her goofy humour, weird insights and, above all, her blonde lush femaleness, that's more than OK, even compelling ... as long as no-one knows. Hot prairie summer continues; loopy late night talks turn into make-out sessions on Danuta's front porch. Michael tries to keep it a secret, but inevitably everyone finds out... even Sister Lioba.
How painfully uncool to be linked to the Fat Girl: and then Danuta ups the ante, insisting they 'go public' at the local diner. The resultant tug of love leaves Michael caught between the very different demands of two women – and two creeds. His 'correct' choice speaks to the linear thinking that automatically opposes flesh and spirit. But life – and women – aren't so simple. Danuta and Sister Lioba both hold secrets, contradictions that will finally explode (like the Nuclear bomb) Michael’s facile world of polar oppositions. In the end Michael, revealed to himself as the 'Fool of Cool', discovers that love, lust, and the Lives of the Saints aren't mutually exclusive after all.
Author Info: MICHELE ADAMS has published fiction and reviews, recently completed a novel, worked for CBC Radio as a writer/broadcaster – and continues to freelance as writer/editor in a variety of forms. Her first feature script, Lady S, a satiric romantic comedy, is an adaptation of Jane Austen's first novel. Her current screenplay project traces a contemporary, tragi-comic tale of deceit, smoked meats, and the dark anguish of unrequited love.
MICHELE ADAMS, Writer
1149 Lily Street
Vancouver, BC V5L 4H5
(604) 253-5828
madams@shaw.ca
Agent: Dacia Moss
Lucas Talent
(604) 685-0345
Or contact Praxis.
The Taxidermist
Genre: Dark Comedy
Logline: Widowed taxidermist falls in love; finds life complicated by ghosts.
Synopsis: Since the death of his wife, taxidermist John O'Keefe has thrown himself into his work of advancing the art of taxidermy as a viable alternative to cremation or burial. Why not preserve more than just memories? And when a lonely old woman dies of heart failure, John seizes the opportunity to put his theory into practice. Things, however, begin to get complicated when the police investigate the old woman's disappearance. Further confusing the situation is a recently widowed bookkeeper who enters his life, re-animating matters of the heart. Question is, can John destroy the crowning achievement of his profession for the sake of love?
Author Info: RODGER COVE is the author of six screenplays, in a variety of genres. He lives in White Rock, BC. Further bio information is available upon request.
RODGER COVE, Writer
(604) 535-5588
Or contact Praxis.
Trapline Lodge
Genre(s): Comedy
Logline:
A dark comedy about greed, the pursuit of false grails and wayward real estate…
Synopsis:
So, there’s this cabin. It doesn’t look like much: it’s brown, small, built for skinning game and drinking moonshine. It’s in the northern Canadian wilderness, just below the tundra line. Very “Hinterland Who’s Who.” Not exactly prime real estate. But it’s mobile. That’s right, the thing has moved at least once. Mainly due to some hydro-electric flooding, but also because it doesn’t want to be found.
Who cares, right? Funnily enough, lots of people, including Etienne, a young Métis bush pilot; Rachel, a tough-as-nails ex-stripper with a penchant for revenge-related violence and Alan, a slick Montreal realtor who’s in so far over his head he doesn’t even bother to hold his breath anymore. They all want this slippery hunk of logs and will roll over on each other repeatedly in their scramble to get there first. Why?
Did I mention the thing is booby trapped? It is. TNT up the wazoo and wired with trips that activate spring-loaded cue cards containing sardonic snippets like, “You shouldn’a oughtta touched that!” or “Nice move, genius, now kiss yer ass goodbye!” Now, what kind of an eccentrically-maladjusted-cartoon-freak-mining-millionaire would you have to be to decorate a little cabin like that? You’d do well to ask Archibald King, ‘cause he’s the architect of all this mayhem. But you can’t. He’s dead. And his old cabin – and all that it contains – is up for grabs.
Okay, so what exactly is in this cabin? I bet if you polled our protagonists you’d get a few different answers: treasure, the promise of material wealth, a shot at a better life…in practical terms it contains the clues to a unique discovery; an accidental, yet incredibly valuable bounty from history, handed down and kept secret by a legendary coureur des bois, appropriated and hoarded by King, and the cause of endless speculation and plotting by those who seek it. Lofty, huh? Tip of the iceberg…
It would all be so much easier if the fortune-hunters could just get a hold of Mike Molson (nee Awashish), the keeper of the keys and the only living creature who knows where the cabin’s been moved to. Trouble is, Mike doesn’t know anybody’s looking for him and is content to shuffle around the northern Cree communities, tending to his many businesses, maybe getting in a spot of painting – a favourite hobby and hidden talent – or cracking open a cold case of his namesake.
But, hang on, what about our greedy, backstabbing, cabin-seeking trio? They throw everything at each other: telephones, grandfather clocks, handcuffs, henchmen, speeding cars, dive-bombing airplanes, careening ski-doos, not to mention the traditional guns, knives and humiliating insults to get what they want (or what they think they want). Sound like a lot? But wait, there’s more…
Nobody told them about Crazy Pete. Like a pesky poltergeist or some other mischievous evil you can’t put down, there’s a grizzled, cackling, unbalanced, shotgun-wielding old French trapper out there on a souped-up snowmobile, prowling the cabin’s perimeter, keeping prying opportunists at bay and cursing a Cordon Bleu streak.
Okay, well, how does it turn out? Badly for some, worse for others. Our realtor gets a slimly-deserved second chance, and Mike Molson gets a new canvas to copy. Sounds like a movie, right? Well, good, because that’s what Trapline Lodge is: part Fargo, part The Grifters with a soupcon of Kill Bill and a dash of Something Wild. So strap yourself in and hang on for a fast, funny, thrilling ride. Only, don’t look over your shoulder…
Bio:
Matt Holland is a screenwriter and an actor from Montreal. He is a graduate of the M.A. program in Creative Writing (English Literature) at Concordia University and of both the Writer’s Lab and the Professional Screenwriting Programme at The Canadian Film Centre. His short script, Drop Off, was produced as part of the OMDC’s Al Waxman Calling Card Program; and his first produced feature screenplay, Gone Dark (a.k.a The Limit), premiered at the Montreal World Film Festival and was released by Universal. It was directed by Lewin Webb and stars Lauren Bacall, Claire Forlani, Henry Czerny and Pete Postlethwaite. He wrote and directed the short film, Whistleblowers Anonymous, a Moc Docs 2003 winner, which had its network broadcast on CBC’s Rough Cuts and its festival premiere at NSI FilmExchange in Winnipeg. Matt is currently writing for the Showcase series Moose TV.
Matt Holland, writer
Hiatus Productions
5226 Jeanne-Mance Street
Montreal, Quebec
H2V 4K4
tel. 514-270-0518
fax. 514-270-1651
cell. (514) 502-3821
e-mail. hiatus@aei.ca
AGENT: Geoff Brooks
The Characters Agency
8 Elm Street
Toronto, Ontario
(416) 964-8522