SYNOPSIS:

"Turning Two" Grand Prize Winner - 2012 Shoot in Philadelphia Screenwriting Competition We’ve all known someone like Jesse Finch, a two-bit hustler who likes to think of himself as ‘self-reliant’ – always willing to believe that his next idea is his best one yet – even though it looks just like all the others. Fresh out of county lockup, he finds out his girlfriend has sold his stuff, and his sister has cut him off from her usual charity. In his mind this justifies stealing a few items from his sister’s garage and selling them to a local fence/drug dealer, a man with an eye for resale value and the soul of a jackal. And Jesse finds himself back in the same old ruts... Until an orphaned toddler runs into the street and Jesse has to slam on the brakes of the (stolen) car he’s driving. Minutes later he finds himself on the run from the cops, kid in his arms. It’s obvious that Jesse’s not the best vehicle for getting this kid into Happily-Ever-After land, especially when he starts off by using the kid to boost his panhandling skills. But Jesse soon notices that the kid is like a living compass – each time they run into another dead end, the kid does something to draw Jesse’s attention in a particular direction, and Jesse sees his next step. Run-ins with indifferent social service workers and vigilante store-owners reveal to Jesse – and to us – that there may be a bit of good even in this loser. Throughout it all, Jesse is haunted by an elusive memory of his teen years when, as a baseball player, he would sometimes have to turn a double-play, serving a pivotal role in a process that began and ended elsewhere, but required him to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. As he says at a critical moment, “I haven’t felt that way since I was fourteen. That’s a long time to not know where the hell you belong, or what you’re supposed to be doing.” Jesse comes to realize that slamming on the brakes of the stolen car also brought his own downward spiral to a stop. When the ex-girlfriend reappears and snatches the kid, and Jesse realizes where she’s taken him – into the heavily-fortified lair of the local fence, who will sell anything to anyone if the price is right – he has to decide between following his usual course of self-preservation, or preserving something he’s rediscovered about the world…and himself.