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.
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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