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