Screenplays

Demystifying Mental Illness from the Perspective of a Survivor

FREAK:

FREAK: SCREENPLAY

Interview:

http://links.visibli.com/25e78040e40427de/?web=876f83&dst=http%3A//www.moviebytes.com/ContestDetail.cfm%3FInterviewsTab%3DTRUE%26InterviewID%3D347%26ContestNumber%3D689 

Plot

We meet RYAN ALEXANDER, 17, as his parents drive him to Wakefield Academy, a posh prep school in New Hampshire. Ryan, who suffers from Tourette’s and has numerous tics and eccentricities, arrives at the school amid several students’ derisive laughter. However, one student MARILYN CAMPBELL and a teacher MISS AUSTIN are sympathetic and attempt to mitigate the effect of the students’ teasing, specifically that of JASON OZER and RANDY WYMAN, who with their girlfriends Marilyn and SUSAN OLSEN, tease Ryan mercilessly. Ryan works for the school library, keeps a journal, and drinks in his dorm. Marilyn tries opening up to Ryan, who obviously has a crush on her.

The audience spends some time alone with the central characters in the story, from Ryan (as he unpacks his luggage and discovers a couple items his mother had hid in his suitcase, family photos which leave Ryan at ill ease, and many books he seems to adore)...to Marilyn (who writes an 'I Miss You' letter to her late father -- she writes him in secrecy throughout the story -- and actually mails them)...Ozer (who is on a difficult phone call with his father whom he accuses of being a 'father' to all the other kids except him)...and Miss Austin (who has built a shrine in memory of her sister, who also died too young -- Miss Austin hears from the Dean who lightly warns her of her 'on the fence' standing as a teacher.)

Ryan’s life soon settles into a routine – working in the library, getting drunk at the local bar and writing in his journal. In the philosophy class that he and Marilyn and the others take, Ryan shows an interest in the class that the other students don’t. He tells Miss Austin that he suffers from a form of Tourette’s Syndrome, which causes him to nervously twitch and stutter uncontrollably, especially in tense situations.

Ozer has been pressuring Marilyn to sleep with him, but she’s not ready for that yet. She learns from him that Ryan is only attending Wakefield Academy because of a scholarship, the same way she was admitted. That evening Ryan gets arrested for public intoxication, and Miss Austin gets him released. She drops him off at his dorm building. After discovering he doesn’t have his keys, he tries to climb up a drain pipe but falls to the ground. Marilyn had been watching and rushes out to help him. He takes her to a cliff overlooking the coast just as the sun starts to rise. She chastises him for his drinking.

Marilyn and Ryan start spending more time with each other, much to Ozer’s consternation. Ozer sneaks into Ryan’s room one night and discovers Ryan’s journal, including an entry that declares Ryan’s love for Marilyn. Ozer steals the journal and hurls it off the cliff. Miss Austin invites Ryan to lunch with her, and he shares a bit about himself with her.

Ryan discovers his journal is missing. He goes for a walk to the cliff and finds Marilyn sitting there, crying. She tells him about Ozer’s pressuring her for sex. The two spend the day together, becoming better acquainted. She tells him about her father having committed suicide, and that she sometimes wants to do the same because she misses him so much. Ozer bumps into them and pulls Marilyn away.

During another lunch, Miss Austin reveals that Ryan reminds her of her late sister who suffered from cerebral palsy. The sister died, and Miss Austin holds herself somewhat to blame. Ryan tells her that he’s going to enter the essay contest held at the school. Sometime later, Miss Austin finds Ryan crying at the cliff. She tells him that he needs to accept himself as he is.

One day Ozer, standing outside the classroom window, hurls a rock at Ryan’s face. The impact swells Ryan’s eye up, and drives him into a rage, causing him to throw books and desks around, screaming. He retreats to his room and destroys that too. Suddenly, he snaps out of it. Later, he tells Miss Austin he’s given up smoking and drinking. He has started writing his memoirs. He tries apologizing to Marilyn for his outburst, but she’s hurt that he treated her as if she were Ozer.

Weeks pass into months. Ryan has managed to stay clean and work on his memoirs, even having to start again from scratch after Ozer destroys his computer. Miss Austin’s job is threatened by the parents of the other students who feel she’s being generous to Ryan and Marilyn. Dean Winterbourne encourages her to be more lenient to the other students, and tells her that he will be sitting in on her class for the rest of the year.

Marilyn goes missing one day. Ryan rushes to the cliff to look for her, but is shocked to find her lifeless body sprawled in a tree.

Ryan, nearly losing all hope, finishes his memoirs for the essay contest and Ozer seeks Ryan's forgiveness in tears. Ryan wins the contest, and he's able to articulate in his acceptance speech how Marilyn and Miss Austin have influenced his life in school to the point that he can live with a better sense of peace and hope. On the lawn outside, he is told by Miss Austin that she will not be returning next year.

The story ends on graduation day and with Ryan’s proudly introducing his parents to Miss Austin, who has tears in her eyes...and Ozer waves to Ryan from the distance.

Accomplishments

1. 2009 Finalist: The Movie Deal
2. 2008 Official Selection: Landlocked Film Festival, Iowa
3. 2008 First Place Winner: Dead Center Film Festival Screenplay Competition
4. 2008 Semifinalist: WriteMovies.com Scriptwriting Contest
5. 2008 Top 10 Finalist: Creative Screenwriting Magazine's AAA Screenwriting Competition
6. 2007 First Place Winner: The Writers Place, Full-length Screenplay Writing Competition
7. 2007 Semifinalist: Screenwriting Expo 6 (Los Angeles): top 20 of 3,000 script entries
8. 2007 Semifinalist: Script Shark Insider Screenwriting Competition
9. 2007 Official Selection: Bare Bones Film Festival
10. 2007 Finalist: 21st Century Screenplays (working title: “Edge of the Ocean”)
11. 2007 Semifinalist: WriteMovies.com Screenplay Competition (“Edge of the Ocean”)
12. 2007 First Round Qualifier: Filmmakers International Screenwriting Awards
13. 2006 Official Selection: Gloria International Film Festival, Screenwriting Competition (working title: “Angst”)
14. 2006 Winner: Best Screenplay, New York International Independent Film and Video Festival (Los Angeles)
15. 2006 Finalist: The Writers Place Screenwritin mpetition
16. 2006 Second Round Finalist: Slamdance Film Festival, Screenwriting Competition
17. 2006 Quarterfinalist: Screenwriting Expo 5 (Los Angeles)
18. 2006 Quarterfinalist: American Gem, Filmmakers International Screenplay Competition
19. 2006 “Best Screenplay” Selection: Queens (NY) International Film Festival & Screenwriting Competition
20. 2001 Golden Star Halo Award (top honor): Southern California Motion Picture Council - for civic-minded motion picture screenplays & writers (sponsored by the City of Hope National Medical Center, Duarte, Calif.)
21. 1998 Official Selection: Telluride Independent Film Festival

.

OF CRIME AND PASSION:

OF CRIME AND PASSION: SCREENPLAY

OF CRIME & PASSION: NOVELLA

Plot

M. Romain, the mayor of a small provincial town, Boulenne, France, hires Jacques Marcel to be his children's tutor. Jacques, only a carpenter's son, dreams of following in the footsteps of his hero, Napoleon – gaining a distinguished life of admiration and success. However, in the present time, the army has lost its grandeur, and the best way to attain power and glory is in the Church. Though he is training to become a priest, Jacques decides to seduce the mayor's wife, Mme. Romain, as he feels it’s his duty to…

The two become lovers, but as the mayor's political adversary learns of the affair and begins to spread rumors, M. Romain becomes profoundly embarrassed.  However, his wife convinces him that the rumors are false. Father Xavier, the town priest and Jacques's mentor, sends him to a distant seminary to avoid any further scandal.

The director of the seminary, M. Pirard, likes Jacques and encourages him to become a great priest. Jacques does very well at the seminary, but only because he wants to make a fortune and succeed in French society. The other priests at the seminary are not aware of Jacques's hypocrisy, but are jealous of his intelligence. M. Pirard is disgusted with the political involvement of the Church and resigns. His aristocratic benefactor, the Marquis de Sylvestre, wants M. Pirard to be his personal secretary in Paris, but M. Pirard tells him to hire Jacques instead, as he feels that this move would be a greater opportunity for Jacques than life serving the Church.

The Marquis and his family live amidst the erudite and classist aristocracy of the city.  Jacques is both enthralled and repulsed by these aspects of Parisian society. He attempts to fit in among the nobles but his meager origins lead them to ever view him as a social inferior. However, the Marquis's daughter, Claudette, falls in love with Jacques and they become lovers, despite her numerous aristocratic suitors. When Claudette becomes pregnant with Jacques’s child and tells the Marquis about her affair, he is furious, but soon ennobles Jacques as a way to justify their marrying. Just as Jacques finally has the aristocratic title he always wanted, Mme. Romain sends the Marquis a letter denouncing Jacques as a man only concerned with making his fortune through his use of women in power. The Marquis then refuses to let Claudette marry Jacques, who furiously returns to Boulenne and shoots Mme. Romain while she attends mass. Although she survives, Jacques is nonetheless sentenced to death. Mme. Romain somehow forgives Jacques for his actions, and dies of the effects of her love for him three days after his execution.

.

HISTORY OF SEX:

HISTORY OF SEX: SCREENPLAY

LOGLINE:

Mentally ill Gen-X drifter is forced into court-appointed therapy for attempted robbery at a non-cash bank. As his story of obsession, transgression and fantasy unfold, so does life-changing discovery.

IN BRIEF:

The manic-toned script details the consciousness of Benjamin J. Schreiber, a trust fund baby with an addiction problem, a constellation of lurid sexual fetishes that shrink into petrified silence in the presence of actual women, and a half-dozen psychiatric disorders ranging from Tourette’s syndrome to schizoaffective disorder. When the drifting, thirty-something writer is taken into police custody for trying to rob a non-cash bank with a threateningly brandished cell phone, his father pulls some strings that land him in court-appointed therapy. Ben’s therapy brings to light the alter ego of Georgie Gust, for whom Ben’s conceptualized a parallel life that both mirrors and channels his own turmoil. With the help of his therapist, Dr. C, Ben navigates the layers of Georgie’s existence, peeling away pieces of his own history, which begins to emerge with a disturbing clarity.

EXPANDED:

While the element of time is intentionally “warped,” at the opening of History of Sex, the audience is presented with two protagonists:  Ben relates the story of his awful sex education classes in middle school, and of his subsequent discovery of his father’s pornography collection.  Georgie is a sexual submissive with a foot fetish who is obsessed with his beautiful and manipulative next-door neighbor Claudia.  As the story progresses, it becomes apparent that Georgie and Ben share a single three-dimensional body; Georgie is a character in Ben’s novel.

Throughout his life, Ben received a number of psychiatric diagnoses.  The one thing that seems to have slipped under the radar thus far is his tendency towards emotional dissociation, which has led him to create Georgie, a safe repository for the emotions and desires – primarily sexual – that he is unable to process.  Initially, the union between Ben and Georgie is well ordered. Ben has issues relating to women: his romantic life has been a string of broken relationships and missed opportunities, and though he needs love desperately, he finds himself overcome with fear around women.  Therefore, he retreats into Georgie’s relationship with Claudia, a compelling, manipulative, emotionally abusive, and tremendously sensual woman.  She controls Georgie completely, yet Georgie is inextricably drawn to her, accepting all of the emotional pain that comes with the relationship.  Similarly, Ben claims that Georgie’s relationship with Claudia is based on his own relationship with Heidi – a lesbian whom he met once some months prior, and that he’d never heard from again.  It is clear that his interest is not in Heidi but rather in his image of her, which he can mold into whatever he needs her to be.

The root of these obsessive tendencies lies somewhere else entirely, and becomes clearer as Ben begins therapy.  Although his participation in treatment was court-mandated after he’d attempted to rob a bank, Ben adapts quickly, and begins an honest attempt to learn the reasons for the addictions, disorders, and obsessions that are slowly killing him.  However, he quickly finds himself so conflicted that he goes off his medications, deliberately, if subconsciously, inducing psychosis to avoid facing the terrifying question: what it is that makes me act this way?

When Ben recovers from the psychosis, he realizes he can no longer avoid confronting the true issue:  his relationship with his mother has long been a taboo subject for him.  With the help of his therapist, he begins to process her physical and emotional abuse of him, but he is still strangely detached.  On the brink of again slipping into madness, he is able to remember the sexual abuse he suffered at her hands, which melded the concepts of arousal and repulsion in his brain, and left him yearning desperately for the love of a woman but unable to understand what healthy love might look like.  With this knowledge, Ben can at last begin to confront his symptoms head-on and hold out hope for a less troubled life.