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Before Christmas and After
Genre(s): Comedy
Logline: A dysfunctional family discovers new choices and the possibility of redemption in the middle of what is quite possibly the worst winter and worst Christmas holiday ever.
Synopsis: The Holiday Season at the Donovan household looks to be turning into a very glum affair. It’s minus thirty-three outside and snow coming down like it may never stop. Alice Donovan has purchased the sorriest looking Christmas tree ever. Her alcoholic brother Sid is coming to spend December
on her living room couch. Her kids are angry at her because she has recently divorced her husband Harold, who will be spending this Christmas and every Christmas for the foreseeable future in the pen, for armed robbery. Doug, her oldest son, has gotten himself into some financial trouble after racking up a series of gambling debts with a member of the
local bike gang, and is contemplating dropping out of school and fleeing the city. And while her youngest son, Charles, is excelling academically, he is absolutely terrified that his family is on the verge of completely disintegrating forever.
The holidays would be a complete bust except for two seemingly unrelated events. The first event occurs on Christmas morning when Sid presents Doug with a Labrador pup that he received in exchange for some empty bottles. This, as it turns out, this is an inspired decision and has a surprisingly
uplifting effect on Doug, who as it turns out, loves dogs.
The other event occurs when Alice wins her family a news year’s eve dinner out at the local pizzeria, resulting from of new year’s resolution she composed and entered in a competition. The resolution, which involves making hard decisions and turning things around for her family, places Alice on a collision course with her oldest son, when Doug discovers that his new pup has a congenital bowel disorder that will require medical
attention the family cannot afford.
Then Alice’s ex shows up, on the lam from prison, with a jail buddy, Kenny. Harold invites Alice and the boys to join him in what he optimistically describes as a ‘road trip’ to Mexico. When Alice declines, the situation suddenly becomes fraught.
This is a story of a dysfunctional family that discovers new choices and the possibility of redemption in the middle of quite possibly the worst winter and worst holiday ever.
Bio: Clem Martini is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter and novelist. He is the author of Feather and Bone, The Crow Chronicles trilogy, a three time winner of the Alberta Writer’s Guild Playwriting Award (Nobody of Consequence, Illegal Entry and a Three Martini Lunch), a winner of the National Playwriting Competition (The Life History of the African Elephant). His anthology of plays, A Three Martini Lunch was short-listed for the Governor General Award and he is currently the Head of the Department of Drama at the University of Calgary.
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
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Bleed
Genre(s): Drama
Logline:
An edgy contemporary drama about three women, their relationship, their sex lives, and a stalker who threatens them all.
Synopsis:
Bleed is a contemporary dramatic thriller about three women facing their demons with men. Recently single, Alexis is a cold, attractive VJ who is unwittingly being stalked by Jason, an obsessed fan. In an attempt to get to her, Jason sleeps with her room-mate Jeanette, discovering that she has a penchant for video taping intimate liaisons. Ines leaves her boyfriend when he says no to keeping their baby. She moves in with Alexis and Jeanette and together they battle with their stuff around men, their friendship and lives threatened by the machinations of the obsessed and disturbed Jason.
Bio:
A graduate of the film program at Simon Fraser University, PENELOPE BUITENHUIS has worked as a director/filmmaker in Canada and Europe for the last 16 years. Her feature film credits as director include Boulevard with Rae Dawn Chong, Lance Henriksen and Lou Diamond Philips; the thriller Dangerous Attraction; and Trouble, written and directed in Berlin, which received Best Film honours at numerous festivals.
In television, Buitenhuis directed the Gemini-nominated CBC MOW Giant Mine, as well as several television series episodes including Hope Island, Madison, Wind at my Back, Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, Lonesome Dove and the pilot for Cold Squad. She has also written and directed three documentaries and fifteen short films. She is in development with a new feature script, Punk Not Dead.
PENELOPE BUITENHUIS, Writer
2098 E. 19th Ave.
Vancouver, BC V5N 2J3
Agent: Carl Liberman
The Characters
Tel: (416) 964-8522
Brand High
Genre: comedy
Logline: A rebellious teen suspects students at her new school are being used as lab rats in a personality branding experiment, unaware she is being groomed as the poster child for XronoInc's new Rebel Brand
Synopsis: Something is seriously whacked at my new school.
Why are these snooty kids (with their TeenBrands and designer clothes and expensive cars) treating an under-achieving-skateboarding-smart-ass slacker like me like some kinda rock star? Even the creepy principal is being nice, which is really weird since the principal at my old school called me Devil Spawn and confiscated my skateboard, like, a hundred times and tried to get me expelled for jumping cars in the parking lot.
All I did was try and stop the school bully from running over that girl my first day... and convince my holographic tutor to go on the lam... and refuse to let 'em put that computer I.D. chip in my arm.
The turning point was getting shot by that hall monitor. It was only a paint gun but I didn't know that cos I was kinda spaced out on this MoodBright chocolate some kid had swiped from the XronoPsych lab and I thought I'd been shot and did this whole "too young to die" death scene, which kids thought was hilarious but really pissed off the hall monitors and the Name Brands, who kinda run things around here.
My new BFF Maria says you need a TeenBrand to fit in, and claims the celebrity lines of designer clothes and matching shoes and accessories are the ultimate in one-stop-shopping. The school is swarming with kids dressed up as Paris TrendSetters, and Beckham All-Stars and 50 Cent Gangsta's! They're like Stepford Teens with their off-the-rack personna's.
And why am I the only one who's worried about students having seizures while watching TeenBrand commercials? And why are so many kids ending up in the emergency clinic after trying freebies and samples from the XronoFactories?
I think they're using students as lab rats to test new products and ideas, but this really hot guy, Rafael, says the real threat is XronoPsych. He claims they're doing mind-control experiments and wants my help to break into the lab... which could be a problem cos my Mom kinda runs XronoPsych, which she says is just a clinic to treat kids with anxiety, but it that's true why did she get so freaked out when I asked about that girl who got sent up last month and no one's heard from since.
Maybe it's time to get out of XronoVilla (the resort town XronoInc built for its executives and their families), and check out the real Mexico. Mom says there's nothing to see in the maquilladora industrial zone where we live, just miles and miles of XronoFactories and shanty towns for underpaid Mexican workers along the U.S./Mexico border.
Rafael's says I'll have to sneak out the service tunnel cos XronoSecurity won't let me leave without a pass. Sounds kinda paranoid to me. This isn't a prison - they can't keep us here against our will. Can they?
Bio: JoAnne Bennison is an award-winning writer and freelance journalist raising champion black standard poodles and two daughters with her pollster husband in Roberts Creek, BC. She is currently adapting the Praxis script Brand High into a novel for the YA market.
JoAnne Bennison, writer
jbennison@dccnet.com
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