Status: Active Development
Writer: Lorraine Devon Wilke

Synopsis

"30+ SWM seeks 70-something heartbreaker."

A reluctant ex-fiancé takes a wild ride in search of his dying father's long-lost love, convinced she carries the key to happiness for them all.

Dan is 33 and marrying Jane in July. Almost feels pretty good about it... doesn't even mind the vault into adult life that will inevitably follow. Until the moment Jane discovers he slept with a former girlfriend weeks after they'd started dating. His argument: it was once, it was 3 years ago, it was "overlap"... what's the big deal? Hers: "Get out!"

So it's next door to Bob's. Bob, comfortably gay, quite the cook, and a fellow photographer, offers Dan solace and a room. Dan loves Jane, knows Jane loves him, and figures once the dust settles, it won't be long. It's long.

His sister, Lucy, convinced of the "soul mate theory" - one love-one lifetime - suggests that Jane simply might not be his...soul mate, that is. The ramifications of which send him spinning. His life-plan shattering to pieces all around him, he's further shaken when Jim, his oak-tree of a father, the loud, opinionated, ass-kicking force that has overshadowed most of his life, is suddenly and unexpectedly downed by a stroke. While his slightly daffy, always endearing mother Esther takes cheerfully to the nursing activities with Lucy's help, Dan is left to ponder the meaning of life, a quest profoundly altered when he comes upon his father's journals.

Reading the thoughts and words of a man he loves but doesn't really know proves a revelation, particularly when he discovers that his father harbored an unrequited love in the form of a beautiful woman named Barbara, met and lost decades earlier. Dan is transfixed by this mystery, certain that this woman was his father's soul mate and that his own life would have been far different had they gotten together. When at the hospital he hears his unconscious father utter what sounds to be the name "Barbara," the light bulb goes off. Convinced that the righting of this long-ago wrong would set the world straight - and just might prove the soul mate theory – Dan hatches a plan to find this woman. Against the better judgment of pretty much everyone he knows, and with no plan as to what he'll do when he gets there, Dan sets out on a mission fraught with detours and semi-hilarious peril.

Clues lead him to Oakland, California, where along the way he meets the lovely Fiona, herbalist and flower child, and his life changes once again. Fiona assists him in his quest while quietly and erotically shaking up his world.  When, against all odds, he finds the elusive Barbara, the ultimate discovery of who she is and how she truly fit into his father's life leaves him staggered, as does the ultimate reality of the "fantasy" that is Fiona.

Defeated but inevitably changed, he stumbles back to Los Angeles. Once there, he's surprised to find the world, and the people he left behind, suddenly different, clearer...more real to him.  And the various truths he uncovers in that realization bring him back to the home and heart he left behind.

Director: Brian Gilbert (Tom & Viv, Wilde)
Writer: Thomas Crawford
Location: San Francisco/ Dublin
Producers: Marion Rosenberg/Penny Perry/E.M. Davis/Jon Kaplan
Co-production: Gabriel Pictures / Element Pictures
Status: In Development

Synopsis

Everyone has his own take on love and romance. There are the cool cynics, who consider love nothing more than a cosmic ploy to extend the human race; there are those who were weaned on Disney treacle, who can only accept one love for a lifetime and crave romantic gestures like a drug.

There are moderates of course, but this is not about them.

Generally the extremes don't meet and they normally don't live together, except in the case of Alfredo and Jane - Alfredo, restaurateur of Spanish descent, talented Flamenco guitarist and unshakable believer in the happily ever after; Jane, the levelheaded pragmatist and adamant columnist for a left wing weekly. They co-habitat happily in the cheapest house in San Francisco. Alfredo won Jane's affection only after a long and relentless campaign. Now she's satisfied with the way things are, but Alfredo requires the ultimate surrender - a lengthy, moving church wedding with a lot of promises made, legally binding. Jane thinks that that's a stupid idea.

They take a trip to Dublin to attend the wedding of Jane's sister, and they take along their dog, an amiable mongrel named Nick. Like a lot of people who travel with their dogs, Jane and Alfredo have equipped Nick with a changeable dog tag in the form of a small unscrewable keg. You put a note in it with the animal's latest contact information. Upon arrival in Dublin, Jane decides to be clever and writes "Hello, My name is Nick. I am an American and I am lost." on the note, and she puts the address of her parents on the verso.

Alfredo learns more about Jane's aversion to sentiment when he meets her family. Her parents live in a state of married cold war; the wedding is called off because the bride loses interest. It's easy to see why Jane might be skeptical of Love. On a walk in St. Stephen's Green, Nick's keg unscrews and the note is lost - this happens all the time with those things.

While he certainly understands Jane better after this trip, Alfredo loves a challenge and renews his romantic assault on Jane, determined to charm her into doing something rash. She repeatedly rebuffs him - she cannot live a lie. It's not that either of them is unhappy - in fact they're quite the couple - it's just that Jane will not jump off of Alfredo's cliff.

Alfredo would probably have accepted that, except that Jane's mother forwards a letter that she received one day after the non-wedding, addressed to Mr. Nick. The letter was penned by a certain young woman who found the dog tag note in the park and improbably took it as a romantic cry for help, and she vows her enduring love for the emotionally lost American. At first Jane and Alfredo share a good laugh at the woman's expense, but when it's followed by a stream of others, all beautifully written by someone who seems to be Alfredo's soul mate when it comes to the more demonstrative side of romance, he decides that he must find out who this is.

So he pretends to go visit his own parents in Spain on the pretense that they've been run over by a bus, and he returns to Dublin to find the woman of his dreams. His guilt at lying to Jane is immense of course, as is his risk of losing her. He begins to feel like an ass but that's nothing compared to how he feels when he finds out who the perfect woman actually is.

Synopsis

Autumn of 1945 finds two Marines coming home from the Pacific war: Scoop, depressed and arrow-straight, and George, a driven and talented womanizer. Our two heroes meet by chance and then follow a young would-be beauty contestant, Jill, onto a bus and into the rural California of America's Golden Age.

On the way, George concocts a plan to host a Beauty Pageant in a small town as a way to seduce young women. They'll approach local girls as contestants, they'll contact local businesses to provide prizes, and give the theater owner a cut of the door take. They'll meet women and make a little money. They have such success with the first contest that they move the operation to other towns. Jill, initially attracted to and then skeptical of George, signs on as a partner with a feminine touch. Along the way they are also joined as assistants by a big, doughy woman, Mrs Moriarty, and a petit girl Gertrude. As the boys try to maintain a professional façade, they encounter love, jealousy, vigilantes, the Law, and even a surprising development between Gertrude and Mrs Moriarty.

"The Beauty of It", a romantic comedy from happier times.

(Original Screenplay by TM Crawford)

Where You End Up In Life is a Lot More Important than Where You've Been.

Especially When You've Got NO PARTICULAR PLACE TO GO.

Synopsis

NO PARTICULAR PLACE TO GO is a Character Driven Fish-Out-Of-Water Comedy Like No Other. It's The Story of One Very Cool and Crazy Fish, Johnny Sullivan, an Escaped "RocknRolla" Convict. While On The Run, The Gods Intervene and Johnny finds Himself Befriended by a Colorful and Loveable Group of Mentally Challenged Adult Men who are on their way to Summer Camp on Long Island Sound. With The Guys Help and Posing as One of Them, Johnny eludes The Cops.

With NO PARTICULAR PLACE TO GO, what would be a better place to Lay Low than a Summer Camp for The Mentally... ahhhh... Unusual? In Theory, Yes. But it isn't Long Before Our Convict wishes He was safely back behind Bars. If Johnny Sullivan wasn't Nuts before He got to Camp, He's now certainly Well On His Way Down The Road to Lunacy. Finally, this Constant Bombardment of Trust and Love from The Guys finds a crack in Johnny's battered Con Man Armor and He will Never be The Same Again. And Neither Will We.

Synopsis

Jack Everett was a standout young detective in the homicide division of the Los Angeles Police Department. A beautiful young wife, a home by the beach, he had everything he had ever dreamed of. When a child is killed in a tragic incident in the field, Jack is unable to deal with the fallout. A prisoner in his home, a victim of his own agoraphobia, those closest to him struggle to help him move on.

When his ex-partner, unorthodox Dan Fencik, shows up at his door asking for his help on a private case, Jack turns him down. Fencik implores him, sharing the details of the murder of a young stripper who washed up in Avalon Bay. When Jack learns she has a young son, only then does he feel compelled to help out.

Once he begins to dig deep into the case, he discovers a world of blackmail and deceit that runs up and down the social ladder of the ritzy vacation island of Catalina, California. Aided by Dan and the local Police Chief, Frank Becker, Jack gets closer and closer to discovering the truth. But when more people begin to die, Jack gets too close for comfort. What was once a routine homicide case has now put his life and those around him in very real and immediate danger.

As his phobias blur the line between fantasy and reality, Jack works feverishly, teetering on obsession, to find the identity of the killer and the truth behind the murder of Lisa Marie Sherrill.

This story is based on a true incident.