Scripts for Option

Angels

Genre(s): Mystery/Suspense/Thriller/, Drama

Logline:
A psychologist who is helping the police to investigate the abduction of two children, finds herself connected to the victims in a way she couldn't have imagined.

Synopsis:
Katherine Ward is independent and determined. She's had to be to make it as a criminal psychologist in spite of a hearing disorder. But when the crisis she's trained for arrives, she's not prepared for the emotional toll or the physical danger.

In this case children are disappearing, and Katherine struggles desperately to discover the predator's pattern before another child is kidnapped. She faces indifference and even hostility from the police, especially Lt. Valerie Gill, a poker-faced cynic who has to prove her competence through contempt for Katherine's methods.

As the case unravels, so do Katherine's emotions. Childless herself and trying to adopt, she finds her personal passions merge with her work, especially when a startling link between the victims reveals a plot to exploit reproductive technology and leads back to her own family.

The predator will threaten her. The truth will overwhelm her.

Bio:
BRIAN WATSON is a screenwriter who has studied theatre and film in BC. He has written several feature length scripts and worked as a script coordinator. In the summer of 1999, Brian was granted a Professional Internship from British Columbia Film and interned in the story department of the Phil Savath/Susan Duligal CBC series These Arms Of Mine.

BRIAN WATSON, Writer
(604) 273-9962
Watson_lapres@hotmail.com
Or contact through Praxis

Charlie's War

Genre(s): Drama • Mystery/Suspense/Thriller

Logline:
19 year-old Charlie Boyle falls under the spell of a charismatic white supremacist and tracks down an anti-racist vigilante who is trying to kill him.

Synopsis:
Charlie Boyle is a high school dropout with attitude to burn. Playing guitar with his new band is the only thing that truly turns his crank. When the band finds itself without a place to practice, Karl Hoffert lets them use an old cabin on his property. Hoffert has a secret agenda -- he is a white supremacist. Two members of Charlie's band belong to his National Front and he figures the music will attract kids to the movement. But he's going to have to bide his time; Charlie has made it clear he 's not interested in playing in the 'house band'.

When Charlie's father finds out what he's up to, he orders Charlie to stay away from Hoffert. But Charlie has never listened to his father and he's not about to start now, not when the band has landed its first gig and he 's fallen in love with Hoffert's 17 year-old daughter, Julia. Charlie storms out of the house and into Hoffert's welcoming arms.

Julia knows Charlie is making a mistake in trusting her father; she begs him to get out before it's too late. But when an anti-racist vigilante blows up the band's cabin, nearly killing a little girl, the die is cast. Charlie joins forces with Hoffert in a hunt for their enemy. The hunt sets off a deadly chain of events that forces Charlie to confront his dark side before it destroys both himself and the love he has found with Julia.

Author Info:
MICHAEL BETCHERMAN is a Toronto-based screenwriter. His first feature film script, Still Waters, won the Gold Award for Best Thriller at the Houston Film Festival (WorldFest Houston). His television credits include Street Legal, Side Effects and Exhibit A. He is currently writing and producing Justice Denied, a 90 minute pilot for TNT about the wrongfully convicted.

MICHAEL BETCHERMAN, Writer
142 Robert Street
Toronto, ON
M5S 2K3
(416) 924-2143
(416) 924-1617 Fax
bumper@interlog.com

Doubleblind

Synopsis:
A five-year-old boy witnesses the violent death of his father. After forty years of successfully repressing that memory, David Stone's life begins to unravel as he realizes the reality he has created is held together by a web of lies. David begins a search for truth that eventually destroys the carefully constructed myth of his past.

The discovery of a lost diary coupled with the intense need to know how and why his father died drive David Stone to abandon his marriage and his fear. Spurred on by the disturbing contents of the diary, he begins his own investigation into the "closed case" of his father's "accidental" shooting. With the tenacity of a dedicated detective he uses the contents of an old love letter, newspaper files and his own memory to piece together the events that occurred on a cold fall night in 1968.

David soon discovers that a little knowledge can be dangerous. Strange things begin to happen. He meets the son he never knew he had and foils a blackmail attempt. He is stalked by a mysterious stranger and his home is ransacked. His suspicions of foul play confirmed, David Stone finds himself the next most likely victim.

ALAN MACINROY, Writer
(604) 779-2947
(604) 331-1877 Fax
sparta800@live.com

 

K.A.R.M.A.

 

GRANT MCKENZIE
grant@grantmckenzie.net
http://grantmckenzie.net

 

Melting

Genre(s): Drama, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller

Logline:
A family of four is caught in a drama of survival in a gigantic traffic jam.

Synopsis:
On a sweltering Labor Day weekend, the Lewis Family -- Martin, Barbara, and their sons Jeff and Owen -- are returning from their cabin on the lake. They get stuck in a traffic jam on a causeway that goes through a marsh while waiting for the ferry that will take them on the last leg of their journey home. Eugene Danner, a man in a car behind theirs, approaches Martin with a problem: a trouble icon on his dashboard won't go away. Danner believes that the icon portends some nameless disaster. He's so desperate to escape the traffic jam that he trades his luxury car for Jeff's bicycle and cycles away.

Owen wanders off and when Martin searches for his lost four-year-old, he encounters the world of the jam: a man dismantling his car's engine because it won't stop dieseling; a survivalist auctioning off a truck load of frozen meat that's starting to thaw; a taxi driver who leaves the meter on, "Just for the hell of it; it doesn't mean anything" he reassures his distraught passenger.

Carrying the remaining supplies from their summer cabin, the Lewises are better off than most, but tensions inside and outside the family rise. Martin feels an embarrassing sense of competition growing between himself and his eldest son, Jeff, on the cusp of adolescence. Then he finds a photo-radar traffic ticket in Barbara's purse, and the photograph shows a stranger with her in the car.

Barbara can't get Danner's premonition out of her head. Her fears aren't helped by the vague news reports on the radio. No one seems able to find an end to this seemingly limitless traffic jam. Barbara wants to walk home, but Martin, who looks upon their 30-year-old Vista Cruiser as a member of the family, refuses to abandon it until Barbara gives him an ultimatum: she's walking out with the kids whether he comes or not.

As they pack a few supplies in preparation to leave, a motorcycle cop arrives and tells them that they must remain with their car until traffic begins moving again. It's starting to look like Danner was more prescient than crazy. What began as a two-hour wait for a ferry becomes something more bizarre: a struggle to live within the self-contained world of the traffic jam, and ultimately, to escape it.

Author Info:
During production of a radio drama for the CBC over fifteen years ago, DAVID JONES overheard a recording engineer grumble "This is more of a film than a radio script." Taking the complaint to heart, Jones began writing screenplays on purpose.

Since then, he has had three of his screenplays – Daycare, People I Don't Even Know, and Melting workshopped through Praxis. A fourth, Wide Awake, is currently in development with Forefront Entertainment, and Daycare is in development with Ranfilm Productions.

Jones' fourth non-fiction book, North American Wildlife, was recently published by Whitecap Books.

DAVID JONES, Writer
796 East 13th Avenue Apt. 3
Vancouver, BC V5T 2L3
(604) 873-2106
davejones@telus.net

Agent: Dacia Moss
Lucas Talent
(604) 685-0345

No Immediate Danger

Genre(s): Mystery/Suspense/Thriller

Logline:
A self-centered journalist discovers her compassion and integrity when opportunism pulls her into the center of a tragedy.

Synopsis:
Cassie Evans promised herself she'd be in the big leagues by the age of 25. But here she is at 28, covering zoning disputes and soap box derbies at the Nanaimo Citizen on Vancouver Island. When a corpse washes up at the Indian reserve, stark naked and painted purple, Cassie knows this could be the ticket to her dream job -- the crime beat at the Vancouver Herald.

As Cassie pieces together clues -- some of which arrive a little too conveniently -- the evidence points to a band of peaceniks squatting at the edge of the reserve to protest the US Navy's submarines visiting the Base across the bay. Poking around the reserve, Cassie discovers five tiny white crosses in an overgrown cemetery. Maybe the peaceniks were involved in these deaths and the stranger discovered it. She shares her speculation with her boyfriend, Rod, who's second in command at the naval base, and with her friend Sue-Li, the local coroner. When a submarine sailor turns up dead in an alley soon after Cassie questioned him, her investigation takes a new and far more dangerous turn.

In the end, she has no job, no proof, no credibility, and definitely no shot at the Herald. But she has her life and the truth -- at least part of it. From a shack on the reserve she will continue the research that has cost at least two people their lives. And if she has to write fiction to tell the truth, then so be it.

Author Info:
KIM GOLDBERG is an award-winning journalist and author specializing in environmental and Native issues. Her 1991 book Submarine Dead Ahead: Waging Peace In America's Nuclear Community details the efforts of a Vancouver Island peace group to end the US. Navy's nuclear submarine visits to Nanoose Bay. She is the 1992 winner of the Goodwin's Award for Excellence in Alternative Journalism and an active member of the Writers Guild of Canada, The Writers' Union of Canada, the Canadian Association of Journalists, and the Periodical Writers Association of Canada. She has a second screenplay available - an environmental thriller set in British Columbia's ancient rainforest. Latest Book: Where to See Wildlife on Vancouver Island.

KIM GOLDBERG, Writer
35 Prideaux Street,
Nanaimo, BC
V9R 2M3 CANADA
(250) 741-8577
(250) 741-8577 Fax
goldberg@freenet.carleton.ca

The Outskirts of Paradise

Genre(s): Mystery/Suspense/Thriller

Logline:
The Outskirts of Paradise is a film noir story about Stan Wheeler who has an affair with another man's wife, Darlene Forzani, but they can't leave town together until they find the money that her husband has hidden in his junkyard.

Synopsis:
The Outskirts of Paradise is a film noir story about Stan Wheeler who has an affair with another man's wife, Darlene Forzani, but they can't leave town together until they find the money that her husband has hidden in his junkyard.

The Outskirts of Paradise is a noir story of lust and greed on the wrong side of the tracks. It all begins in an abandoned rail yard where Daryl Getz swaps a bundle of cocaine for a briefcase full of cash.

Laid off and almost broke, Stan Wheeler hits the highway to Creston Beach hoping for a job in the sawmill. After driving all night, he's forced by car trouble to pull over in the shabby town of Paradise. He is picked up by C.W. Getz, an opportunistic tow truck driver, who hauls Stan's car to Paradise Auto Parts.

By the time he has paid C.W., Stan has little money left for car repairs so he ends up working for the owner, Earl Forzani. Earl is a washed-up stock car driver with a restless wife, Darlene, who takes a real interest in Stan. Against their better judgement, Stan and Darlene are drawn into a passionate affair behind Earl's back.

After lots of steamy sex, Stan and Darlene try to run away together but they don't get far on their limited money. Discouraged, they return to Paradise Auto Parts feeling as if they have no way out. One night, an opportunity presents itself when Earl gets drunk and passes out in a running car. They almost let him die -- but C.W. arrives to deliver a car and ruins everything.

Routinely searching the old car, Stan finds a briefcase full of cash -- more money than he's ever seen! Now he and Darlene can get out of town as they had planned. But Earl finds the briefcase and stashes it for himself. At the same time, he learns of Stan and Darlene's affair and forces Stan off the property. Darlene stays behind to try to find the money, while Stan holes up nearby in a low-rent motel where she can still sneak out to meet him. But time is running out as Earl plans to spend the money on an expensive motorhome to take Darlene to Las Vegas. To make matters worse, C.W. Getz gets wise to what's going on and schemes to get the stash for himself.

With four people vying for the ill-gotten cash, opportunities for a double cross multiply. Just when he thinks he's got it all, Stan discovers the ultimate irony in his greed -- and all he can do is laugh.

Author Info:
MONTGOMERY BURT has written teleplays for Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone, one of which won second prize in the Writer's Digest Writing Competition. His radio drama Leonard McTivey's Last Day at Work was produced for CKNW Radio. For the past twelve years Montgomery has headed Upwords, an ongoing screenwriters workshop that develops new talent. Outskirts of Paradise is his third feature film script; he is currently writing a thriller called Oceanview Motel.

MONTGOMERY BURT, Writer
1288 East 14th Avenue
Vancouver, BC   V5T 2P3
(604) 875-0660
montyburt@telus.net

Or contact Praxis

The Pyramids of Marathon

Genre(s): Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Romance

Logline:
The Pyramids of Marathon combines romantic comedy with the spike of a thriller — a contemporary road movie with a menacing stop-over in a one-industry town that forever bonds two stranded travelers.

Synopsis:
The Pyramids of Marathon is a romantic comedy that turns deadly serious. The journey follows the Trans-Canada highway around the autumn curves of Lake Superior to the small Franco-Ontario community of Marathon.

George (Georgina), an artistic thirty-year old, on the mend from a broken heart, is driving home to Winnipeg. She is a passionate photographer, in love with abstract black and white imagery. Lately though, the images in her photographs seem more real than her life.

Traveling the same road, is the dangerously charming Franco, a former biker trying to go straight. Nineteen, he is a sleek leathered rider with an open smile and seemingly no particular destination.

The Trans-Canada Highway washes out and, stranded, George and Franco find themselves sharing the last hotel room in Marathon. It is a one-industry mill town totally dependent on the marketplace, and things have been collapsing for quite some time. Fewer loggers are employed, the fate of the mill is in question and now, a vocal contingent of environmental protesters has arrived, accompanied by the flash and scrutiny of the media. The last thing Marathon needs is more bad news.

With a questionable future, the Town struggles to find a solution to Marathon's slow demise. Led by their mayor, a former hockey hero, Eugene, they will do almost anything to keep their town on the map — maybe even murder — and George and Franco have driven right into their midst.

Author Info:
MICHAELIN McDERMOTT is an independent producer/writer/director. She spent three years as a Service Producer for the Discovery Channel and a decade as a stills photographer on various features, mows and television series. Michaelin has produced and directed a rock video, two half-hour dramas and work-shopped two of her short screenplays. She is presently writing the action-adventure feature The End of Later

MICHAELIN McDERMOTT, Writer
(604) 687-5702
mikenpaul@telus.net