Screenplays
The Innocents (Synopsis from Writers Showcase, Spring 2001)
LOGLINE: When a 12-year-old boy accidentally shoots and kills his best friend, he attempts to cover it up by blaming it on a fictitious murdering madman.
SUMMARY: The crucible of World War II produced a generation of heroes who understood manhood as a stoic duty that demanded complete intolerance of weakness. Many returned from battle eager to raise sons who would be prepared to bear the responsibilities of a hard world. Drill instructors had forged warrior personas by replacing personal will with unquestioned obedience, the denial of which threatened pain and humiliation or worse. Many veterans returned from was believing their sons would benefit from the same discipline that had guided them in battle. Unfortunately, unyielding expectations communicated through clenched teeth or china-rattling shouts and reinforced with swats from calloused hands or worse, a father’s disdain applied to the soft underbelly a young boy’s ego, spawned a cadre of sons who were terrified of their fathers.
Based loosely upon an actual event, THE INNOCENTS takes place in the mid-Fifties and explores the startling journey of one such boy who covers up the accidental shooting of his best friend because he does not want his father to know he used a rifle without permission. 12-year-old Greg is so terrified of his father’s retribution that he slashes into his friend’s abdomen in search of the errant bullet, and then invents a mysterious, murdering madman as subterfuge. Circumstances force Greg to enlarge his web of deception until he is confronted with having to commit further mayhem to perpetuate the deceit.
THE INNOCENTS is painted with a Film Noir palette, complete with a brooding law enforcement officer, Chief Myers, who unwittingly joins a love/hate triangle that involves Greg’s mother and father. It is a development that triggers Myers memory of his lost family and distracts, but does not deter, his pursuit of the true murderer.
(A copy of the WGAw-registered screenplay is available upon request via the Contact Us function on the homepage of this website.)
The Helper (Synopsis from Writers Showcase, Winter 2003)
LOGLINE: When an unhappy woman believes she accidentally killed a man, she seeks refuge with an older Native American woman who helps her get in touch with suppressed childhood memories that may relate to a present-day serial killer.
SUMMARY: The cross-cultural paradigm of loyalty and obedience to one’s parents combined with a child’s need to be loved by them causes some children to repress traumatic abuse in ways that interfere with life as an adult. Kathryn Nausbaum, a well-to-do Upper West Side author, mother and wife is such a person.
The relationship between Nausbaum and her husband, William, a high-priced Manhattan attorney, is floundering, and being stood up for a night at the opera is the last straw for Kathryn. The incident touches anger from her childhood, and leaving 11-year-old Jenny in the care of the housekeeper, Kathryn heads for a night of debauchery that goes horribly awry. Believing she has killed a man, she ends up in the care of an old woman who is an Oglala Lakota shaman and the shaman’s grandson, Martin, who rescue Kathryn from a dangerous situation involving wealthy suburban teens come to town for a wilding.
William and Kathryn approach Kathryn’s father, Robert Lacey, a prominent Manhattan cleric, and together the three call upon Lacey’s brother, NYPD Commissioner, Albert Lacey, to press a search for Kathryn. Albert agrees despite his preoccupation with finding a predator: The Helper, who ritualistically rapes and murders street children. As the search for Kathryn progresses in the city, Kathryn—ensconced at Martin’s home near the Foxwood’s Casino in Connecticut, uncovers the trauma of her childhood through shamanic journeying in a world of non-ordinary reality under the guidance of the old woman.
Encouraged by the shaman and determined to deal with the evil of her past, Kathryn returns to Manhattan where she begins a reconciliation with William and has a violent and revealing confrontation with The Helper and her past, which ends with unexpected intervention of the old shaman.
(A copy of the WGAw-registered screenplay is available upon request via the Contact Us function on the homepage of this website.)