At a rural Kansas high school in 1996, a group of self-styled bohemian revolutionaries wage war against their conservative teachers and faculty – locked in a conflict mirroring the culture wars that have consumed America since the late 1960s. "MASH" meets "Animal House" in this dark teen comedy.

SYNOPSIS:

Screencraft Comedy Quarter-Finalist! Table Read My Screenplay Austin Top 100! Emerging Screenwriters Genre Quarter-Finalist!

Imagine if all the teachers in your High School were flesh-harvesting aliens. Now imagine something worse... they’re conservative Bible-Thumpers! It is 1995, and Simon Randling attends one of the thousands of horrible public schools in Middle America. As if Simon doesn't have enough trouble trying to get a girlfriend, he has the entire school administration on his back for his progressive-anarcho-radicalist beliefs.

“Morning in America” follows Simon through his Senior Year in this rural 1990s Kansas hellscape, fighting the oldest battle of the modern age: counter-culture freedom to be a bohemian freak, versus Nixonian ‘Law and Order’ suppression of the individual for the sake of the State. And this particular battle of the culture wars will be waged in a backwater town full of Jesus Freaks and inbred football fanatics.

The local School Administration is deadly serious about silencing Simon, and he's serious about being heard. But he fights with class and a sharp sense of humor. And of course, there are a half dozen or so weirdoes on his side, including: Bart Kornblum, adopted Mormon who suffers from alien-paranoia, and longs only for a bunker in Idaho; Burn Simmons, 89-year-old beat poet with a taste for morphine, taco sauce, and fine mescaline; Chippy Barnes, a Mancunian foreign exchange student prone to fruit-wine benders and cockney swearing. This rag-tag collective of friends is determined to fight the system and have a rippin' time doing it – so they declare war on the zealots and bigots of William Jennings Bryan High!

Against this courageous team of rebels is the archenemy of archenemies: Principal Tom Tucker, and his aide-de-camp Izzy “the Snitch” Beal (a school janitor with a dark history in Central American special military operations). These dictatorial fuckers will stop at nothing to preserve Principal Tucker’s strongman rule of the school – utilizing local police, military contacts, mysterious narcs, even the FBI and CIA.

These teen freedom fighters call in aid from the ACLU, and Simon even runs for Student Body President. His senior year quickly escalates into the classic American battle of the Pursuit of Happiness vs. the Prison of Uniformity.

Simon and his compatriots soon realize that their rebellion has brought them what they always wanted: to be kings of the school with full immunity granted by East Coast lawyers! Girls start to glance their way instead of fleeing in terror, while the teachers can do nothing to discipline these lanky reefer-smoking punks in MC5 & Weather Underground t-shirts.

But Simon soon discovers that while he is living the good life, Principal Tucker has formulated one final ruthless counter-offensive against these dynamic young radicals… And when faced with possible defeat, Simon realizes a decision must be made. Can he suck up his beliefs and graduate with a happily naïve mind, or should he risk everything to preserve his beloved ideals?