Screenwriting : 2nd Annual Period Piece contest -- who submitted? by James Timothy Lagrimas

Welcome James!

Hello, Mr. Lagrimas!

My name’s Matt, and I submitted “Stop Looking”. I’ve had a vampire script in my pocket for years, and when I saw this comp, I thought “Hey, my script’s set in the last 4 days of 1999, this should fit.” Not quite the same as the comp’s comparables, but I’m hoping against hope that having a point of difference works in my favour. Plus, the period really enhances the film. I love the climax.

Who else submitted? I wanna yabber.

Hey, James. 3 DARING NOBODIES - Inspired by the True Story: 1974. Twin Falls, Idaho.

Three aimless high-schoolers share the wildest summer of their lives working behind-the-scenes of Evel Knievel's death-defying Skycycle Jump across the Snake River Canyon. On the night before the big jump these nobodies become the only ones who can prevent a Hell's Angels gang from destroying Knievel’s Skycycle.

Hey all,

I submitted a WW1 drama called WOMEN IN WAR. When two young Englishwomen leave their privileged lives to “do their bit” during World War One, they find English male chauvinism to be as great an adversary as the German Army. It is comparable to “1917,” except the battlefield camaraderie, courage under fire, and combat sequences are experienced by women. It’s a war movie for and about women.

Hi James,

I submitted my Georgia O’Keeffe biopic / historical drama, “Blackness of Space, Whiteness of Bones.”

It is a period piece as she lived from 1887 until 1986. She was 98 years old when she passed. She was a ground breaking modernist painter. The first woman to exhibit in the MoMA in New York and the first woman to exhibit in the Chicago Art Museum.

But the screenplay mainly focuses on the love story between Georgia and her husband, Alfred Stieglitz. And later her relationship with Juan Hamilton whom she met in 1973 when he worked for her as a plumber and handyman. He then became her assistant, and later her business manager and agent. She depended on Juan in her later years and treasured his friendship.

Georgia came to believe that Juan was actually the reincarnation of her late husband, Alfred Stieglitz, who died in July of 1946. The screenplay focuses of Georgia’s relationships with these two men and her struggle for independence and autonomy as an artist.

Moderator James Lagrimas,

My fantasy romance script, Beyond the Rain, has a few time periods as a time travel story. The mystical plot device used for transporting back to yesteryear is a section of a surviving fragment of the yellow brick road from The Wizard of Oz. This was inspired by my job marketing the film on video when I worked at MGM and my lifelong love of the beloved story reimagined many times proving it's market value most notably by the musical Wicked. Retiring film professor Tom Summers is gifted a 6 foot section of the original yellow brick road by his adoring African-American student Jazmine. We learn Tom never married and still laments the woman, Jean, he loved in college in 1962 at a southern university when interracial relationships were frowned upon (she was black). He reunites with her in the past as he was at the age of 23, then discovers his time travel is limited where one minute in current time equals an hour in the past so he uses a kitchen timer to guage his 'trips'. Jazmine enlists her mentor Tom, reeling in lonliness post retirement, to help her with her dream to become a filmmaker. They develop a strong connection as she reminds him of his lost love Jean. Clip licenses required throughout script interspersing relating clips from The Wizard of Oz that parallel poignant moments, both tragic and sublime, leading up to a jolting tear-jerker climax that will leave the audience shaken in the most bittersweet way.

Hello screenwriting companions.

I’m excited to share that I have submitted ‘SHADOW IN HAWTHORN BAY’ in the Stage32 2nd annual “Period Piece” Screenplay Contest.

Shadow is a historical romance with a supernatural element. It is an adaptation of the multi-award-winning novel of the same name by Janet Lunn. I discovered this novel after having adopted a young daughter and looking for a way to connect with her through sharing my own Canadian/Celtic heritage.

Shadow takes place in the early 1800s. A young Scottish woman named Mary Urquhart, who is burdened with the strange gift of “an da shelladh" (visions into the future), embarks on a perilous journey to find her missing sweetheart in the wilderness of Upper Canada. Confronted by a dark truth upon her arrival, Mary must choose between a second chance at life and love in a community wary of her gifts - or succumb to the dark shadows of her past, which threaten her life.

I wish all submissions the best of luck and eagerly await the quarter-finalists announcement.

All my best,

Steven

My historical action drama, "The Monk Who Would Be Spy", is set in 1930s Romania before World War Two as the democratic nations prepared for war with Nazi Germany. Romania was a divided nation then and Bucharest, the Paris of the East, was a hotbed of spies and political unrest. This is a tale of revenge versus forgiveness and a tale of a small nation trapped between powerful rivals like Soviet Russia to the east, Nazi Germany to the north, and democratic allies concerned with the oil in the oilfields of Romania that were crucial to Hitler's military. I've woven the story tones of an actioner in the vein of Indiana Jones with a spy procedural and a high stakes political thriller. (I have military intelligence training and a degree in history as well as having lived in Romania.) The monk in the story is fictional but the king of Romania and most of the other characters are historically accurate to the best of my ability. Get ready for a fun ride but enjoy the second read as well as you experience a part of the world and a time that still resonates today.

Hello James and Fellow Writers!

I'm pleased to be able to share my project and to read your synopses as well! I'm glad there's still room for period films in our crazy business.

I submitted a screenplay that I wrote many years ago while preparing a place for my reality TV project. My submission is entitled "The Storm Warriors" from the eponymous book written by Elisa Carbone.

The story is taken from the true life accounts of The Pea Island Surfmen; an all-black team of rescue swimmers, themselves the forerunner of the United States Coast Guard. This team of 8 men were tasked with rescuing victims of trapped and sinking ships off the Outer Banks, North Carolina, known as "The Graveyard of the Atlantic".

The story takes place as Nathan comes of age watching the surfmen over several years, balancing his time between volunteering with them and helping his widowed father life out their lives in a shack on the beach. Keenly aware of the post-Civil War climate, Nathan is enthralled at the possibility of saving lives and changing said climate, one rescue event at a time.

I explored themes of Coming of Age, Racism, Heroism and Overcoming in the project, and I hope this will be my first ever screenplay sell!

Hello fellow period piecers,

Hope everyone is doing well. My entry is the pilot script for a multi-season episodic. We follow the hero's life from adolescence in the 1930s to old age across the decades and international locations of Mexico, Paris, UK/Ireland to a Caribbean Island. Inspired by some early Jimmy Buffett ballads, it should resonate with the Parrot head nation as well as anyone intrigued by a simpler time. There's a creative look book available as well.

Good morning James, and my esteemed colleagues!

My 30-minute, single-camera ensemble comedy is called "Stillwater Mall." The series has a 5-year arc from 1985 to 1990 - and I'm going to gloss right over the fact that a period of time from my youth is now considered "historical."

It’s 1985 and worlds collide in a small Midwestern mining town where the MTV Generation culture clashes with the Boomers. The epicenter is the local mall, where family, romance, pushing back against authority, self-discovery, and a healthy dose of shenanigans are all in a day’s work for the denizens at STILLWATER MALL.

Hello James and fellow writers,

I am bloody thrilled about this contest that finally gives a voice and platform with such a specific focus. My story, part thriller and party detective story, is Disposable Assets, set in 1952 in and around Washington, D.C. It is a one-hour episode drama. Although grounded in real-time events and historical villains like Senator Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn, it slips into alt-history territory when seeds are planted for the Second Revolutionary War at the end of the pilot. Eschewing the inheritance of his corrupt family empire and its exploitation and dehumanizing treatment of factory workers, he sets out to be his own man and give a massive go fuck yourself to his father who disowned him. The main character Cain is an idealist and brilliant mathematician who applies for a cryptographer job at the fledgling NSA. He naively believes that his work there will help stave the threats to democracy and the American way of life propagated by the government's propaganda mill. His slow realization of how ordinary citizen's lives were targeted and often destroyed had nothing to do with reality but a fictionalized narrative of those in power held against those it deemed subversive. The tragedy of this slow awareness sucker punches him in the face when his sister finds herself in the cross-hairs of one of his first missions that ends in a brutal raid. In future episodes these missions also aim at his brother putting most of his family, including himself in mortal danger. Everyone except his father.

I was led to the story idea from a long career as an IT security analyst at the DOJ and DOD so I am familiar with top-secret environments and subterfuge. But here, the mission turns more sinister although not more amplified than what happened in the witch hunts of the 50s, 60s, and into the present.

We follow the roller-coaster ride of the story's hero Cain from elation to despair and ultimately redemption. This growth takes a toll on him and all those he loves. I hope that viewers come to know and love the characters as much as I do, with all their flaws and vanities. And like all of us in our own lives, earnestly try to do better.

Evening fellow writers, I submitted the pilot episode A WIDOW'S SON for a dramatic historical series titled AMERICAN KING. Based on the true story of an American adventurer who became a king in nineteenth-century Afghanistan while serving as a spy for the British East India company.

The series spans Josiah Harlan's extraordinary eighteen-year journey from a young wide-eyed American supercargo who abandons ship in 1824 in British colonial India to when he is forced to flee his kingdom with the disastrous British retreat of Afghanistan through the snow-bound Khyber Pass in 1842.

Incredibly, throughout these turbulent exploits, Harlan serves as a spy for the British East India Company. He also manages to have a passionate love affair with a British socialite, a woman very much his equal in spirit and temperament.

I stumbled across this story while doing research for another series I was writing and was immediately hooked. While working on other projects, I spent the past 5 years doing a lot of research (over 200 reference materials) as there are scant details on Harlan's personal life. This is especially true of his time in India and his experiences in the First Anglo-Burmese War. Because of this, I've had to "enhance" the narrative while keeping true to the spirit of the story and Harlan's journey.

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The first season of ten episodes follows Harlan from his arrival in Calcutta where he becomes a surgeon (doctor) and spy for the British East India Company, serves in the Burmese War and once back in India, heads to to the northwestern outpost of Ludhiana where he proposes to raise an army to reinstate the exiled king of Afghanistan back to the throne in Kabul..

Wishing all applicants much luck!

Pierre, your project “Widow’s Son,” sounds fantastic! Congratulations on creating such an incredibly interesting story and finding such an amazing character as Harlan. Good luck in the competition!

Take care,

Melissa

Melissa, thank you for the kind words.

Hello James and fellow writers!

I've submitted my Family-Adventure-Drama, BOB DOOLEY. Inspired by true events, this comedic yet dramatic story is about my Great-Grandfather and his Capuchin Monkey pal, Bob Dooley.

In the late 1890s in a small town in Ohio, my great grandfather, George, was a young charismatic entrepreneur who always dreamed of having his own fairground with food, rides and livestock. In 1920, within these script pages, he tells the story of how he started his "famous" fairground two decades earlier but in the beginning it was challenging and his rocky start almost crashed his dream until one fateful day when he discovered a capuchin monkey he calls, Bob Dooley. Fame and success came quickly after that because Bob Dooley is a crowd favorite and now George’s popular fairground is a train-traveled destination. Get ready for a fun ride as Bob Dooley is somewhat of an entrepreneur himself. But when tragedy strikes, George is asked to do something he never thought he'd do.

Hello James and fellow writers!

On behalf of my collaboration with first-time writer Stephen Jones I've submitted the pilot for a limited series titled PLANTNATION. The series presents an alternate view of a dark era in American history and is written with irony and grit.

It’s 1860 and there’s talk of emancipation in America amid rumors of war. Our protagonist, Jefferson Jones isn’t waiting for political change. He provides sanctuary for runaway slaves under the protective cover of nature deep in the woods of Eastern Kentucky. His unique homestead cultivates a potent aromatic plant used for textiles and medicine. The PlantNation community is diverse, industrious and peaceful, a utopia. All of it hard-won after Jefferson's cruel exile from his family’s Tennessee cotton plantation ten years earlier by his older brother, Eric. Seems that Jefferson’s compassion for humanity was a shameful realization that Eric was happy to bring to an end. Now Jefferson has a new family. Their life and community is safely hidden from the dark side of the pre-war Antebellum South. Invisible to Eric's dangerous obsession with runaway slaves. Until it isn't. Can Jefferson keep his past buried forever or will the sudden appearance of a young slave, Augustus, unravel a decade of secrets among all of them?

We had "Er ist wieder da," Jojo Rabbit," and "My Neighbor Adolf" -- controversy covert by comedy.

Jerel Damon/Sallie Olson/RutgerOosterhoff

Present the WO2 drama "The Final Solution."

Inspired by an eyewitness event:

"After an SS officer's family is accidentally sent to Treblinka, he must save them before the commandant dismantles the camp and kills all inmates."

Beside the SS-Totenkopf-Division, who run the death camp,

No winesses, NON!