Submission Samples from the Drama Genre

Title: The Other F Word

Logline: A father commits the ultimate sin against his gay son.

Synopsis: Mathieu has become the caretaker of his manic-depressive father, but after being sexually abused his distant brother returns to help pick up the pieces.

Title: Scorche

Logline: A talented young boy in the ghetto, working hard to make a name for him-self is betrayed by the love of his life, bringing tragedy not only to himself but to those closest to him.

Synopsis: By age 17, Jaheen has been throwing house parties in his mother's project apartment for profit and is notorious in the neighborhood for his skills. His name travels all the way up to the owner of the local teen nightclub, Olympus. Thanks to his friend Yosef,a quick witted womanizer, Jaheen is offered a job DJ'ing big parties to make big money. Finally, his life is going the way Jaheen wants it. On the night of his final house party before he goes big-time, a fight breaks out between his friends and local gangsters. When Jaheen defends his friends he is drawn into the world he tried so hard to avoid. Nyema, the love of his life, convinces him that his only option is to join the rival gang to keep himself safe. What was once a promising future for Jaheen is slowly turning into a path of destruction. Before he knows it life spirals out of control. Filled with action and humor, this story, inspired by true events, delves into the life choices of many young black boys today.

Title: The Hit

Logline: When his brother is killed by the mob, a successful businessman devises a unique strategy for revenge: he places a contract on himself with the mob boss, stipulating that the same hit man be used.

Synopsis: Longtime loser Lenny Cartney is on the verge of finally turning things around. He's just opened his own restaurant and business is good. Unfortunately, the local mob who loaned him the money are making free and easy use of his establishment for various illegal purposes. When Lenny tries to blackmail them for a bigger piece of the action, the mob sends a local enforcer to cancel the debt, and Lenny with it. Lenny's brother Michael, a lifelong over-achiever and former Army ranger, now runs his own highly successful consulting firm. When Michael learns the circumstances of Lenny's death, Michael goes to the mob boss and offer's Lenny's life insurance money to place a contract on himself, specifying that the same hit man be used. Relying on his commando training but more on his business skills, Michael manages to stay one step ahead of the hit man while confronting his own guilt over Lenny's death and pursuing a more elaborate crusade against the mafia chief who ordered the hit.

Title: BEYOND EDEN

Logline: Adam and Eve struggle to adapt to a world where evil has been unleashed.

Synopsis: Adam and his helpmate are pushed past the limits of human endurance with no experience for the sufferings that they have brought upon themselves. Satan launches an unmerciful physical, emotional and sexual attack on them until they seek death to escape the torture. Unwilling that His creation be destroyed, the Word of God promises to return them to their intended place with Him in paradise but they must wait until the time has been fulfilled and fight the continued onslaught by the adversary. Once their children are born, Satan turns his attention to corrupting their offspring. He eventually convinces Cain to murder his brother and start a nation of unrighteous people. Adam must persuade his offspring to remain seperate from the children of Cain until God fulfills His promise and returns them to the garden.

Title: slamming doors

Logline: Mental misfits, hardened gamblers and fractured family relationships propel slamming doors into a funny and disturbing look at a bi-polar man's search for redemption.

Synopsis: slamming doors is One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest meets Winter's Bone. It is a story of a fifty-five year old college theatre professor's road to redemption. Bill Samuels begins a normal day but ends up meeting a cast of colorful characters in a hospital mental ward. One patient does a several minute ritualistic salute when its time to go to bed, another growls at her imaginary card playing friend while a third walks up and down the hall talking to a picture of her high school graduating class. On his way to the mental ward, Bill encounters hardened gamblers at a racetrack, a delusional meeting with his boss, and memories of a fractured family life. With support of his hospital friends and the love of his children and grandchildren, Bill comes to terms with his relationship with his violent father and finds the true meaning of love and home.

Title: OFF THE ISLAND

Logline: A father-and-son tale of two generations of Cuban baseball players who struggle to escape their communist homeland.

Synopsis: "Ritmo" Torriente never wanted to be a baseball player -- until the Cuban boy was abandoned by a father who fled their communist homeland in pursuit of his big-league ambitions. The vengeful young man found himself consumed by a desire to outdo his father and follow his own dreams to America. Off The Island is the tale of a father and son whose antipathy towards each other masks the reality that they are consumed by identical passions and inner demons. From post-revolutionary 1960s Cuba to the modern-day U.S., this chronicle of harrowing escape, of family and freedom is unlike any other baseball story ever told. It is America's national pastime seen through a global lens. By way of my own introduction, I am the senior political correspondent for The Canadian Press making my first foray outside journalism and into fiction-writing. The storyline came to me earlier in my career when I covered the Montreal Expos.

Title: Seduction of Lily

Logline: A young college student turns to a married man for support when a series of tragic events befall everyone she cares about. As their relationship heats up, so does the police investigation.

Synopsis: Seduction of Lily is an intriguing Drama/Mystery centered around Lily, an 18 year old college student who returns home from college to find her mother being taken away by ambulance due to a failed suicide attempt. Overhwhelmed by her new responsibilities of raising her two younger brothers, she turns to her secret crush, Dr. Ed Simms. Dr. Simms is the handsome married doctor next door who has a mysterious past. As their relationship turns more intimate, a series of tragic events befall almost everyone she cares about. The police investigation eventually lead them to the Simms household. Lily finds inner strength to face reality and the man she adores to get justice for those she cares about.

Title: The Red Book

Logline: A novelist is given one last chance after discovering an old journal about two lovers whom disappear and he must find.

Synopsis: It is 1951 and a once popular novelist, Jordan Anderson, is about to lose everything he owns. Traveling to his cabin hideaway, he comes to the crossroad of his life. Through intervention, he discovers a thirty year old journal in an abandoned house. Desperate for material to rejuvenate his career, he uses the journal and its writing from a twenty year old woman, Olivia. She tells her story of romance and her affair with an older married man, Ben. The entries into the journal suddenly stop and in order to finish his masterpiece, Jordan must find out what happened to the two lovers only to be shocked by the outcome.

Title: Centenarian War Hero

Logline: This true story is a family drama about a centenarian war hero suffering from dementia and PTSD, his two caregiving sons, and the VA's agenda to exploit his 100th birthday as a media circus event.

Synopsis: For 20 years my father served on submarines in the Pacific during WWII and Korean War. Per American war policy in the Pacific theater, he was forced to kill innocent women and children whose only crime was they were Asian. For 70 years he has suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and is now afflicted with advancing stages of dementia. Placing my career as a Marriage Family Therapist on hold to write my father's story, as the West Point graduate son, I move in still wanting to please my father, only to find myself the odd man out in a house of three. My father has no memory of the past. He only knows all his day-to-day needs have been met since his wife died 5 years earlier by his one devoted caregiver son. The story unfolds 2 months prior to the father's 100th birthday opening with his failed suicide attempt. Shifting family dynamics collide with the local VA Hospital's agenda to turn his 100th birthday into a big media circus by making the centenarian war hero a VA poster boy.

Title: Grapevine

Logline: May's internalized homophobia results in the loss of her daughter. When her son comes out as gay and her husband dies, she gets a second chance to be honest with herself.

Synopsis: May's dream for a "normal life" is torn apart when daughter Lee comes out as a lesbian and is thrown out of the home by May's alcoholic husband Bert. Middle child Fiona is barren and suicidal. Years later, youngest son Gary comes out as gay giving May one more chance to confront her internalized homophobia. May redefines "normal" when Bert dies and her life-long friend Etta, who has been in love with her since childhood, invites May to return to the intimate relationship they began in college.