Film

BURIED LIES

Romantic thriller feature script

A New York art dealer dies in a multimillion-dollar robbery. The killers are never found; the stolen goods never recovered. The widow tries to pick up the pieces of her life but the past won’t stay buried. She falls in love with an enigmatic younger man, against the warning of her jealous, younger sister. But her new life and new husband are not what they seem, and she soon begins to suspect that he may be spinning the same deadly web of lies that ensnared her first husband.

• Optioned by Here Media in L.A. / Ryan’s Productions in Vancouver

• Optioned by Front Street Pictures in Vancouver; was in pre-production, with TF1 on board

• Optioned by Gross-Weston Productions in L.A.

SHADOW CHILD

Suspense thriller feature script

A self-destructive artist, whose world is straining under the regular excesses of liquor, men and nightmares, learns her estranged twin has died. She reluctantly travels to L.A. to settle her sister’s estate, where she intends to do her duty then get the hell out. But old wounds reopen, and a dangerous curiosity overtakes her to know the sister in death whom she didn’t know in life. She meets the players in her sister’s life, and as her nightmares intensify, so do her suspicions that one of them caused her sister’s death.

• Optioned by Davis Entertainment in L.A.

• Optioned by A Wink and A Nod Productions in L.A.

GOLDILOCKED

Comedy feature script

A repressed young woman catches her hound-dog husband cheating, and embarks on a road trip that lands her on the doorstep of an aunt she hasn’t seen in years. The aunt not only takes her buttoned-up niece into her home but introduces her to a whole new world – including a house full of young male boarders and a booming sex toy business. But, while her aunt tries to move her niece beyond her Midwestern ways, her religious father and her husband conspire to bring her home and to her senses.

• Optioned by Zeitgeist Film in Denmark; was in pre-production

BIRD AT THE WINDOW

Film adaptation of play: character drama feature script

A novelist smashes up her car on the anniversary of a tragic event. Rattled but not hurt, she opts to spend the weekend at the cottage she still shares with her long-separated husband – alone with her memories and a well-stocked bar. But her latest lover in a string of masochistic affairs drops by to check up on her, and then her husband and his young girlfriend arrive, believing the cottage to be empty. Too late to go elsewhere and hampered by an approaching major storm, this prickly foursome must stay the night together. But the notion of being safer in the cottage is quickly eroded and they soon discover there are some storms you can’t outride.

• Earlier iteration of script, then entitled CARNIVORES, was selected by the Canadian Film Fest’s Harold Greenberg Screenplay Competition for its Top Ten List of unproduced feature scripts in Canada

TABULA RASA (Blank Slate)

Action comedy feature script

A former British MI6 agent, now a gun for hire, gets broadsided in a small Texas town. When he awakens, he discovers he’s got a broken arm and no memory, and he’s convalescing in a household of three generations of women with lethal charms – unaware he’s been hired to kill one of them. But just ‘cause the hit man has no memory doesn’t mean that he’s a faint memory – and his employer sends one hit man after another to finish him and the job!

KNIGHTS IN NEW YORK

Romantic comedy feature script

The two worlds of a children’s book author – the medieval playground of her novels and dreams and the real world in which she lives – are beginning to collide. Weaned on romantic lore by her story-telling father who, although deceased, is still very much a presence, she begins to feel the crushing weight of her out-of-date beliefs. So when her faithful boyfriend asks her to marry him again, she finally says yes – unaware her old love/“dark prince” has moved to New York and into her apartment building to win her back.

THE FLAMING SOMBREROS

Sports comedy feature: treatment

When a running back is fired because of substance abuse and no other team will touch him, he’s forced to not only clean up his act but pretend to come out of the closet to play for the only team that will give him one last chance – a new, all gay NFL team nicknamed the Flaming Sombreros.

BACK TO BEULAH

Film adaptation of W.O. Mitchell play: treatment

A young woman replaces the supervisor of a halfway house in the 1960s, but her care is met with mistrust by three female psychiatric patients. The women don’t realize that she suspects they’re being over-medicated. All they know is it feels like the beginning of the end of their orderly life. So when they hear the rumour that their precious house may be sold out from under them and they’ll be sent to a hospital, their paranoia kicks into full gear – and the patients kidnap their new supervisor and go on the run.