Screenwriting

“Straight Laced” short film

Logline:When a conscientious honors student buckles under the academic pressure in her town of overachievers and overearnest parents, she makes a choice that leaves everyone in her life rethinking whether getting into the “right” college matters at all. 

Synonpsis: Lucia is an honors student, star rower, and good kid. Her dad didn’t grow up with the privileges she and her sisters enjoy, so there is no excuse for her not following his path to Princeton. Even as an unlikely friendship develops with the school’s drug dealer, Eddy, Lucia is not planning to play her peers’ risky game of experimenting with fake prescription pills as study aids. But when she begins to buckle under the academic pressure in her town of overachievers, she makes a choice that leaves everyone in her life rethinking whether getting into the “right” college matters at all. 

“Presumed Incompetent” short film

Logline:A non-speaking autistic teen has been trapped inside his head for 15 years with no way to communicate, until his family realizes he can spell—and that the doctors who said he was severely cognitively impaired were dead wrong. With a “voice” at last, Chance struggles with skeptical educators to blaze a path for inclusion. 

Synopsis: Chance, a nonspeaking autistic teen, has spent 15 years trapped inside his mind, unable to communicate or even convey the emotions he is feeling. His apraxia scatters the messages going from his brain to his body, so his erratic movements fail to give accurate cues of what he wants, needs, and feels. Chance is part of a boisterous family of seven, yet he is painfully alone—left out of family trips, excluded from social activities, taunted by peers, and relegated to remedial classes. All the “experts” say Chance is severely cognitively impaired. But then his mother discovers a new spelling method and the family realizes all of the assumptions about this brilliant, sensitive teen have been dead wrong. Now if they can only convince Chance’s peers and teachers to see the bright human being stretching to overcome his disabilities and blaze a path for inclusion. “Presumed Incompetent” is inspired by the real life story of Wynston Browne, who plays the lead role of Chance in the film.

“Lux Freer” Short Film

Logline: A middle-class, non-binary teen feels like an outcast in their new town of rich jocks and beauty queens, until a wishing well and the most popular guy in town offer a view from the top of the social ladder.

Synopsis:
Lux Freer, a middle-class, non-binary teen (played by non-binary teen Echo Bodell) has recently moved to ritzy Westport, where they have the humiliating after-school job of delivering pizzas. Nothing could be worse than arriving at aspiring prom queen Arabella Astor’s mansion driving a beat-up woodie wagon and wearing a cap emblazoned with pepperonis. Lux’s encounter there with the bully Arabella and her kind-hearted beau Drew sets in motion a plot to upend the social stratosphere at Westport Academy. A mysterious wishing well adds to Lux’s world opening up into a place of possibility rather than a place they never fit in. At the school’s talent show, Lux’s fantasy comes true and even the most macho jock in town learns something about tolerance.