Scripts for Option

Geraniums Are Red

Synopsis:
A woman who leaves her “house on the hill” for an outlaw is usually seeking adventure. But it is not adventure that drives Anna Kerbey. It is the desire for understanding and acceptance. Her handsome husband gives her neither. But Jean Guy, the Cajun bank robber, does.  Or is he a con man? Is it all a sham? How far will she go to protect a man bent on self destruction? How far will he go to prove his love is real?

Anna has struggled with marriage to Eddie, a man who pays attention to little other than his own personal pleasures, which include hunting, fishing, gambling and drinking. He does love her. He just doesn’t know how. Having a sickly child doesn’t help the situation. Eddie feels lost and angry. Anna feels lonely and betrayed. She finds solace in her work as a teacher and writer until a man sitting in a jail reads a story she has written and decides to contact her.

When Anna leaves her job and her husband to go on the run with her daughter and her new found love, she knows things will not be easy. Her lover is an escaped convict. She will live a life on the run. What she has not counted on is Jean Guy’s need to be chased, to be punished, to be living on the constant edge of danger.

Her love is put to the ultimate test when Jean Guy calls Kansas to see if he is still being hunted. His love is put to the ultimate test when he discovers she is permitting herself to be sexually abused to save his life.

Bio:
Carolyn Mamchur, professor, writer, consultant is author of twelve scripts, two children’s books, two books of poetry, four books and over thirty articles on education and psychology. A Jungian, she uses archetype to teach writers, directors and producers.   Another screenplay, Sunnyside Canal, is optioned by Stuart Margolin. She works as creative consultant and story editor for Telefilm and CBC. Currently, she is completing her third trilogy of novellas, The Sun, the Moon, the Stars. You can see her complete CV on her web site www.educ.sfu.ca/mamchur/

CAROLYN MAMCHUR, Writer
(604) 736-4060 Fax

Agent: Shain Jaffe
Great North Artists Management
(416) 925-2051
Or contact Praxis

I Forget

Genre: Sci-fi/Romance/Horror

Logline:
I FORGET is a tragic love story about hypnosis, plagiarism, inter-
dimensional travel and home surgery.

Author Info:
Born laughing to a beautiful art teacher and a handsome math teacher in the picturesque snows of Ontario, Mark Schroeder was raised in the Caribbean, Australia, Mexico and Canada. Mark worked as a reporter/photographer in his teens and then studied English and Film at York University. He began screenwriting within a week of expulsion, apprenticing as a story editor at Wolf Films, a small production company in Toronto. There he developed projects with other writers and wrote four features of his own –– earning funding from the OFDC, Telefilm, The Ontario Arts Council and FUND. Mark’s collaboration with Allan Magee of Screenwrite Entertainment on one of his original screenplays led to further teamwork creating proposals for CTV, Disney, Sunrise and the CBC. Looking for a film job that could sustain his writing habit, he stumbled upon the bizarre cult of location sound recording. For more than ten years he’s been eavesdropping on hundreds of directors, as he pays the rent working on innumerable TV series, features, MOWs, commercials and shorts, while completing another two feature scripts, winning the Creative Crib Screenplay Competition and a Praxis Fellowship. Mark's first short film, INSTANT, was the completely unnoticed hit of the 2009 Vancouver International Film Festival.

Contact:
mark@artemisdreams.com

Lady S

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance

Logline: Adapted from Jane Austen’s novel “Lady Susan”. Desperate to stay ahead of her creditors without marrying for money, beautiful Lady S deceives and beguiles her grown daughter, her family, and a wide range of men, ’til passion for an unsuitable lover overcomes her calculations, exposing her to the vengeful hypocrisy of 18th century high society.

Synopsis: Pretty, recently-widowed Lady S has problems: huge debts, a troublesome teenage daughter, and a very bad reputation.  Plus, the clock’s ticking ... she’s almost thirty-six!  In 18^th century England, wedding some rich old man should be her ticket out, but —  been there, done that —  she really doesn’t want to, especially once she hooks up with sexy, penniless, married Manwaring. 

What to do?  Lady S tries to get by on wit and charm, ‘singing for her supper’ as permanent house guest of the rich and famous, but though she’s a model of discretion, every time it’s the same story: the men get horny, the women get jealous... and Lady S gets the boot. 

All she wants are the freedoms men enjoy, but she’s definitely not a guy, and the double standard rules.  Sense and sensuality clash as she struggles —  to educate her daughter Frederica in the harsh ways of the world, to repel marriage proposals from snobs and dolts without losing the roof currently over her head, and to keep her wayward passion for Manwaring properly hidden — but, as her feelings grow, so do the risks she takes to be with her lover.

At last a reckless choice puts Lady S at the mercy of the hypocrites who govern her world; yet even when she’s driven from Society, forced to wed a gormless marquis (whose IQ is even smaller than his waistline), and banished from England, her dignity never falters.  In a final ironic twist, her daughter, despite poverty, dreaminess, and (in her mother’s view, at least) a shocking lack of self-control, ends up gaining the love match that Lady S cannot achieve for herself.

Bio: Michele Adams has an across-the-spectrum interest in writing. She has scripted three feature screenplays —  Lady S (adapted from Jane Austen's first novel Lady Susan), Sex Lives of the Saints, and The Kindest Thing — and is currently at work on two more. Her screenwriting has received development and support from Harold Greenberg, Movie Central, Telefilm, Manitoba Film and Sound. One of her short scripts won the first Praxis Out-of-the-Hat contest; another won the CBC/BC Film Signature Shorts competition. She also freelances as copywriter/editor, has worked for CBC Radio as a writer/broadcaster, and recently co-authored a commissioned radio drama, Year of the Crab, for the Mother Corp.  Her stories have been published (Geist, The Fiddlehead, Event, Canadian Fiction), dramatized on CBC Radio, and performed at arts festivals (Banff, Harrison, etc.). In 2006 she won The Fiddlehead fiction prize and in 2008 she was one of the winners of the BC Federation of Writers short story competition; her novel Grim Sausages was short-listed for the Metcalf-Rooke Award, and her collection Bright Objects of Desire was recently published by Biblioasis. In addition to writing, Michele has an ongoing commitment to teaching; she has taught Literature, Communications, Creative Writing, and Screenwriting at UBC, VCC, OLA, VFS, and SFU. She is also a script analyst for Praxis and is on the Harold Greenberg Fund, Praxis, and Telefilm lists of story editors.

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.

Sex Lives of the Saints

Genre: Romance •  Comedy • Drama

Logline: A quirky coming-of-age set in the not-so-swinging 60s. Thirteen-year-old Michael’s trek into lust, betrayal, and the world of the Spirit takes him where he’s never been, and — finally — to the place where passion and purity collide.

Synopsis: Sex Lives of the Saints tells the story of Michael, an edgy Grade Seven student at Holy Ghost Parochial in 1961 Winnipeg, where classes are routinely interrupted by nuclear war drills.  No biggie — as the son of two Polish war survivors, apocalypse is in Michael’s blood.  His problems lie elsewhere.  For one thing, he’s trapped: between home — where life with damaged parents plays like a looped WWII movie — and the jerk-off world of his peers.  Comfortable nowhere, he slides by as a loner... ’til he starts noticing how different girls are, and everything goes crazy.

It begins with his Mom, scarily female with her tears, rages, and gory tales.  Then there’s Michael's love object: ethereal Sister Lioba, a teaching nun at his school. Beautiful, challenging, her chill purity turns Michael on even as it awes him.  He yearns for Lioba, yet also finds himself secretly drawn to odd-ball Danuta, the school’s Fat Girl.  Though he can’t like like Danuta, there’s something magnetic about her goofy insights and lush femaleness; soon, furtive late-night talks burgeon into hot make-out sessions on her screened front porch. 

When Danuta insists they ‘go public’ at the local diner, fat jokes and fists start to fly.  Police show up, Sister Lioba is appalled, and soon Michael’s torn between the demands of two women . . . and two creeds. He chooses, then finds out Danuta and Sister Lioba both hold secrets, contradictions that explode his world of opposites —  and signal that love, lust, and the Sacred may not be mutually exclusive after all.

Bio: Michele Adams has an across-the-spectrum interest in writing. She has scripted three feature screenplays —  Lady S (adapted from Jane Austen's first novel Lady Susan), Sex Lives of the Saints, and The Kindest Thing — and is currently at work on two more. Her screenwriting has received development and support from Harold Greenberg, Movie Central, Telefilm, Manitoba Film and Sound. One of her short scripts won the first Praxis Out-of-the-Hat contest; another won the CBC/BC Film Signature Shorts competition. She also freelances as copywriter/editor, has worked for CBC Radio as a writer/broadcaster, and recently co-authored a commissioned radio drama, Year of the Crab, for the Mother Corp.  Her stories have been published (Geist, The Fiddlehead, Event, Canadian Fiction), dramatized on CBC Radio, and performed at arts festivals (Banff, Harrison, etc.). In 2006 she won The Fiddlehead fiction prize and in 2008 she was one of the winners of the BC Federation of Writers short story competition; her novel Grim Sausages was short-listed for the Metcalf-Rooke Award, and her collection Bright Objects of Desire was recently published by Biblioasis. In addition to writing, Michele has an ongoing commitment to teaching; she has taught Literature, Communications, Creative Writing, and Screenwriting at UBC, VCC, OLA, VFS, and SFU. She is also a script analyst for Praxis and is on the Harold Greenberg Fund, Praxis, and Telefilm lists of story editors.

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.