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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
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Skin to Skin
Genre: drama
Logline: The most intimate bonds of love are tested when Katrina and her sisters get sucked into a vortex of preparations for their mother’s unexpected wedding.
Synopsis: Katrina’s life is seemingly perfect – she has a loving husband, a beautiful daughter and a doting mother. But caught between the priorities of her own family and the emotional demands of her larger-than-life mother, Bunny, Katrina has little sense of her own desires and priorities. When Bunny suddenly announces she is marrying her childhood sweetheart, Katrina believes she will get the breathing room she so desperately needs in her own life. Finally someone else will take care of her intense, mercurial, charming and infuriating mother.
But neither Katrina nor her two older sisters can resist the force of Bunny’s grandiose wedding plans. As maid of honour, Katrina gets sucked into Bunny’s script for the perfect day. Dina, the emotionally removed eldest sister, tries in vain to stay out of the fray of the preparations, while Bethie, the middle child, competes with Katrina for Bunny’s love.
As Katrina clashes with Bunny throughout the elaborate wedding preparations, she fears that marriage will not change the hold that Bunny has on her. As new opportunities present themselves in Katrina’s life, decisions need to be made that threaten the paradox-ridden relationship she has with her mother. Katrina’s sense of self begins to dangerously erode. It seems that Katrina might sacrifice everything to keep her mother’s love.
Bio: Ines Buchli is an actor’s director, who brings her depth of experience in the theatre to her work for the screen. She trains actors at the prestigious theatre program at York University. She has brought her passion and commitment to countless theatre productions, and her short films, many completed at the Canadian Film Centre, have gained international recognition. Ines’s most notable work as a filmmaker is FOXY LADY, WILD CHERRY, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, received numerous awards and nominations, and sold to international broadcasters including Showtime/Sundance Channel, HBO Latin America and IFC Canada.
Marlene Rodgers is a writer, producer and script consultant with sharp dramatic instincts. She began her career as a development executive, working at Canadian funding agencies and the CBC Movies and Miniseries Unit, and she has worked extensively as a story editor. Marlene has helped dozens of screenwriters, producers and directors to tell the stories they want to tell. Now she’s telling her own stories. Marlene has produced two award-winning short films, CLEVELAND WOOD’S LAST DAY ON EARTH and FOXY LADY, WILD CHERRY. Her screenplay for FOXY LADY won a Leo Award for Best Screenwriting. In addition to the many honours and awards the film received, it got notable accolades in the press. Cameron Bailey called the film “a snapshot of teen girl mortification to match anything Jane Campion has done.”
Contact:
mprodgers@telus.net
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Sounding Line
Genre: drama
Logline: A marine microbiologist starts to lose touch with reality as his marriage unravels while he investigates the possible extinction of a gigantic species of fish.
Synopsis: Avery Hobson works at a mundane job as a marine biologist, his days spent peering at tiny specimens through a microscope. Like his wife and his teenage son, Avery has fallen into a rut of routine, feeling empty and unfulfilled in his day-to-day life.
That rut of boredom changes when Avery is called to investigate a giant sturgeon found washed up on the shore of the Fraser River. The Pacific Coast White Sturgeon is an astonishing creature, known to grow thirty feet long and live for over a century – and it has the ability to place itself in and out of a coma state at will. Avery is out of his element, but the sturgeon falls under the jurisdiction of his office.
In his excitement Avery heads home early, only to be confronted by the fact that Nicole is having an affair. Avery walks out, shocked and in a silent panic. The security of his world has been pulled out from under him. He drives away in a daze, almost crashing over a cliff. He idles on the precipice; to drive forward is suicide, but what life awaits him in reverse? Avery decides and clutches the gear shift.
Then, Avery’s world turns upside down. He suffers underwater hallucinations, making it harder and harder for him to hang on to reality. Afraid to return home, he spends his nights in his car and tries to maintain normalcy at work. At the same time, every new day brings another report of a dead giant sturgeon.
Meanwhile, the lives of his wife and son are similarly spinning out of control. It’s as if each of them has torn through the thin veneer of civilization and is now exposed to a harsher, more chaotic reality.
Avery manages to track the cause of the dead sturgeons to a point in the canyon, and, during the expedition, his boat capsizes in the rapids. Avery recognizes the underwater environment from his hallucinations. He follows a sturgeon to the river bottom and finds his own car, parked with the headlights still on, with himself inside it, as if he’d driven off the cliff those many days ago. He realizes he’s been existing in his own version of a coma state – just like the sturgeon – and that it is his choice to awaken or drown. He finally fights for life, thrashing his way to the surface.
Sounding Line explores the depths of human consciousness with magic realism and sly humor. It’s a family drama in dreamstate, grounded by a suspenseful narrative that is in constant forward motion. And there’s some really large fish.
Bio: Andrew McEvoy is a two-time Praxis Fellow as well as a Praxis Story Editor Intern. He has produced credits in both feature films and episodic television, and his sci-fi script The Pixelated Man was the unanimous winner of the Slamdance Screenplay Competition. He is a screenwriting instructor at Vancouver Film School, and presently has three features in development: a comedy, a thriller, and another sci-fi. His Praxis script, Sounding Line, is currently free of any attachments. Along with his writing career, he has frittered away much of his precious time as a photographer, ski instructor, and cartoonist. He also prides himself as being a walking talking encyclopedia of obscure punk rock.
ANDREW MCEVOY, WRITER
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Stealtown
Genre: Drama
Logline: A road crew of poker hustlers head to Hamilton to take on a local gangster.
Synopsis: Jimmy, Dan, and Liz are poker hustlers who know that the only way to win is by cheating. They are a road crew. They work small town games, traveling across Ontario, cheating the locals during poker nights at the Legion Hall and Lion's Club conventions.
But something is eating at Liz. She's desperate to go back to her home town of Hamilton and settle a score. She drags Jimmy and Dan with her to take on Milan Bosic and his father, Vlad – an ex-Serbian army war criminal and smuggler. The three conspire to cheat Milan and Vlad out of $300,000. But when Jimmy gets involved with a teenaged prostitute and Dan's ability to manipulate the cards goes south, they face far more than they ever bargained for.
Author Info: WILLIAM ZMAK is a screenwriter living in Toronto. He has achieved quarter-finalist status in both the Nicholl fellowship and Chesterfield Writer's Film Project competitions. He is currently a resident in the Professional Screenwriting Programme at the Canadian Film Centre.
WILLIAM ZMAK, Writer
(416) 892-9468
wilzmak@funcow.com
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