Submission Samples from the Teenage Genre

Title: Faculty Barred

Logline: Polarized High School cliques battle for acquisition of the indifferent new boy - to the death.

Synopsis: "Nothing bad can ever happen to you in Faculty Barred" is the view held by 15yr old Alison, dutiful member of the Anti-Clique. "It's the one place in the school teachers aren't allowed." An alluring ideal & the main factor influencing Coffman Highs newest detainee's alliance - the mercurial, Newport cigarette smoking Harper. Harper wise-cracks, rolls & smokes his way to a choice; the Anti-Clique & shy Alison or their antithesis, The Phonies - a punchy, Parliament Light smoking rabble ruled by impious Penny. Faculty Barred proves too much of a draw for Harper, despite peppery Penny's tricks. Penny becomes insufferably jealous. She turns on Harper, baffled & infuriated by his leanings for Alison. Alison's life goes from the mundane to the downright dangerous. But as Harper reassures her, "What's life for? It's not just to go plodding in the same places everyday, it's an adventure." Will Harper end up as most adventure characters do or will Alison save him from his pre-Sinai destiny?

Title: To Live For Love

Logline: What would you do if you have six months to Live?

Synopsis: Rebecca Collins, is a sixteen-year-old high school student who wants nothing more in life, and that's to graduate her final years of high school, and she also wants a boyfriend in life. She is worried that she might not get to Seventeen. She feels that something in her life is stopping her; Cancer is the only thing that is holding her back from pursing her dreams. She wants everything in life, and that's not to die at a young age?

Title: The Dude with the X-rated Eyes

Logline: A nerdy high school senior receives a pair of alien sunglasses that give him X-rated vision...A scifi "Porky's" with heart.

Synopsis: Stuart Hornaday was just five years old when his father Tom Hornaday (and his dachshund Sherlock) mysteriously disappeared near Area 51. Now, thirteen years later, Stuart is a nerdy high school senior with an inferiority complex, raging hormones and a crush on a girl (the school's reigning hottie) who doesn't even know he's alive. His dream? To become a photog for a lingerie catalog company. Then one day Tom Hornaday returns, the victim of an alien abduction. He gives his son a special gift: sunglasses that give the boy X-rated vision. Suddenly Stuart can see all the nude (and scantily clad) women his eyes can stand and his life changes for the better, until aliens (two sexy black divas) visit Earth to get the glasses back. Such is a quick look at our fanciful teen comedy scifi script "The Dude with X-rated Eyes." The story was written by me and my LA-based writing partner, Mike McCulloch.

Title: CALL OF KI-WOON

Logline: His Korean roots gave him powers. His American culture gave him chances. A contest will give him the journey of a lifetime.

Synopsis: An American teen adopted from Korea, develops into a charismatic youth with amazing talents. Earning a trip to a Korean video game contest, Ki-woon is drawn into a futuristic cyber-reality of gigantic proportions. The stressed teen runs away in search of his 'real' family, hoping to find answers to his past. But instead, he finds only heartache. And then, then unthinkable happens. *Named 2008 Semi-Finalist in The Screenplay Festival (www.screenplayfestival.com)

Title: Dave's Blues

Logline: A musically talented, 13-year-old suburban Chicago boy confronting the challenges of adolescence during the late 1960s must find a way to understand his mother's deepening depression.

Synopsis: 13-year-old Dave Levy, a talented young trumpet player, lives in suburban Chicago with his mildly dysfunctional family during the turbulent late '60s. As the story begins, Dave is entering eighth grade, though this year is destined to be unlike any other. We meet his close friends, Andy and Robert, and are amused by their witty commentaries on teachers, classmates, sex, and life, in general. But, adolescence is also a time of transformation: family life becomes more complicated, the need for independence assumes ever-greater significance, and commitment to an idea may prove as important as loyalty to a friend. And, sometimes without warning, life-altering events can shake even the most cherished beliefs about the existence of order in the universe. It is against this backdrop that Dave must confront the greatest challenge of his life: his mother's gradual descent into psychotic depression, the family upheaval that follows, and his efforts to find meaning through music and friendships.

Title: GO GREEN OR DIE

Logline: Our planet is dying and it will take one teen to save it. But she never thought saving the planet meant losing her self.

Synopsis: Corey Parker, a teen violin virtuoso with a popular blog, is abducted and held hostage by sophisticated eco-terrorists dead-set on saving the earth. But by the time she is found, she has become one of them. The struggle to rescue Corey from her self will involve mad science, lunar bases, extinct creatures, alternative fuel sources and the end of the world as we know it.

Title: ENDANGERED YOUNG LOVE

Logline: A screenplay of happier times, based on a true story with the spirit AMERICAN GRAFFITI. A nostalgic look back into the high octane action of the 50's.

Synopsis: Heartbreaking incest that comes back to shatter a young girls repution. High School romances warm and beautiful. Revoling with wild humor exploding sex crazed hormone affaires, with a typing teacher and her young male students to break their imaginary cherrys. Car drag races to inflate male and females self esteem egos. Car chases to remove unwanted sexual coronary seduction competition. Argumentatively, the best cars, the best of times and the best teen music ever recorded, energized through out this movie.

Title: Harvest Moon

Logline: Missy is an awkward teen who's life becomes everything she's ever wanted when a foreign exchange student moves in and teaches her how to become a witch.

Synopsis: MISSY BERG is an overweight, awkward high school girl who's spent her whole life not fitting in. Being a teen-ager sucks. Though when an exchange student, LAETITIA, arrives, she proves to be an unexpected ally. While she is everything Missy is not: thin, pretty, desired by the boys and envied by the girls. She takes an interest in Missy and the two quickly become like sisters. Then Laetitia reveals that she's a witch and here for a specific, nefarious reason. Missy has no one or anything but the knowledge that she helped start something evil. Oddly though, it's Laetitia's own motto that Missy starts to take to heart: You create your own power, that saves the day.

Title: When We Were Champions

Logline: Terri Taylor, the best female AAA high school basketball player in Washington State history, loses hope of a scholarship to Duke in her senior year, after transferring to a tiny school of 63 students.

Synopsis: Terri Taylor, the best female basketball player in Washington State history has just helped Seattle's AAA Stealth Warriors win the state championship. Terri's life changes when her family is transferred to tiny Apple Valley. Her dream of a Duke scholarship fades with her new school of just 63 students and only 7 on the girl's team. Terri meets Jennifer Jones. Jennifer wants only one thing, a winning season. Terri wants only one thing, to go back to Stealth. Terri & Jennifer become close and share the pain of Jennifer's little sister Betsy, being killed by a drunk driver. Terri is then cleared to go back to Stealth as she had wanted. Tragedy and now bitter disappointment face the Cougars. Terri relents & comes back from Stealth and helps Apple Valley win its first State B Championship. After the championship game, Terri receives a surprise visit from Duke's recruiter who flew in to see the game and offers Terri a scholarship. WWWC is inspired by two true stories.

Title: The Ugly Club

Logline: The Uglies take on the Pretties: "Ugly Betty" meets "Election."

Synopsis: To strike a blow against lookism, an ugly teen convinces the cheerleading coach to let him and two other ugly kids become cheerleaders. The pretty people, led by last year's gorgeous, brilliant, and ruthless star cheerleader, don't like that one bit. Lew Hunter, famed chair of UCLA's screenwriting dept wrote about The Ugly Club: "I have had the uniquely pleasurable experience of reading the latest of Marty Nemko's scripts. It will make a $$$derful teen or crossover feature film. It has characters you care about, a novel premise, high stakes, funny yet smart writing, rising drama, twists, and an audience-rooting 3rd act. Most important, we can all relate to its theme: feeling unattractive. I vigorously encourage you to give serious consideration to The Ugly Club and to Marty Nemko as a client." I have other scripts in inventory, my 5 books have sold 240,000 copies, I'm Contrib. Editor at U.S. News & World Report, and producer/host on NPR in San Fran.