2008 Slamdance Screenplay Award Winner
WANT AND CURIOSITY is a quiet, outstandingly fresh and emotionally compelling drama about three ordinary people trying to find their places in the sun. It’s a character driven piece that succeeds in maintaining interest because of its emotional vitality, despite a lack of special effects, complex location work, bizarre action plot twists, etc.
The script completely succeeds as a story because of the quiet, sober emotional depth and novelty of characterizations in the piece. There are no conventional and/or contrived shouting matches between characters, no Sturm und Drang. What a breath of fresh air this all is. ...One way or another every principal character wants OUT of something—to be FREE. The novel and refreshing fact we learn from the script is that each of them is already free. The script demonstrates in a very convincing way that true happiness is possible. ”
– 2008 Slamdance Screenplay Competition
Synopsis
Max, 30's, is slumped in a corner of a bar, covering his bloody face with his hands. Minutes earlier he had been sitting at the bar, drinking heavily, watching a shitty guy manhandle his girlfriend. Seconds after that, he decided to throw a glass at this shitty guy, missing by a foot or so, but winning the guy's attention, inspiring the guy to beat him up in all of ten seconds. Immediately after this happened, Max fell down in the corner of the bar and covered his bloody face with his hands. At this time Max's friend Adam arrives and helps him off the floor, only to get pushed aside while Max leaves to drive to the liquor store for more booze. We watch as Max limps inside the store, comes back with his pint, drinks some, drives away and is followed out of the lot by a police car.
Marilyn is Adam's new girlfriend. She is beautiful and has lived her whole life in a run down, farming town off Interstate 5. Marilyn met Adam after a judge ordered him to do some community service washing dishes in the diner she works in after he ran his car off the Interstate while high on way too many brightly colored pills to have been prescribed to him by a doctor. When Adam was finished serving his time in the diner, Marilyn decided her time was up too, and, having fallen for Adam, was quick to go with him back to Hollywood, where he runs a music club and bar that his mother owns.
We catch up with the two guys around this time in a driver education course, a year or so after Max took his beating in the bar. His previous struggles have left him trying very to keep things simple, keeping a good distance between himself and his desires. The safety of this new lifestyle is threatened when Max meets Marilyn.
The night Max meets Marilyn is the same night Adam informs Max that, per his mother's orders, he will have to close the Los Angeles club where Max, a musician, plays his music. He will be opening a new club, again per his mother's orders, in San Francisco, where, unbeknown to Max, he and Marilyn have loose plans to marry. Adam attempts to persuade Max to move with he and Marilyn to help them run the new club, as well play music. Max at first exhibits a rather strong resistance to the idea, however changes his mind soon after Adam and Marilyn move, likely due a big job opportunity falling thru, as well his desire to play music and not having any other prospects in Los Angeles.
In San Francisco, we find that the club isn't at all what Adam expected, and learn that he is rather unfulfilled working for his mother. Meanwhile, we begin to suspect that perhaps Marilyn isn't as content simply by her change of surroundings as we once thought. We learn that she herself is a talented singer with desires to be on stage. We also begin to see that she has an understated sexual confidence and self awareness we might not have expected from a small town girl.
As the story unfolds in San Francisco, we don't see Max pursuing his music career any more than he did in Los Angeles, and we begin to wonder about his real motivations for moving. It seems the only one who feels she understands these motivations, even perhaps better than Max himself, is Marilyn. She has been spending a lot of time with Max after Adam has suddenly disappeared, likely due to his agitation both with the club, and with Marilyn's lack of enthusiasm regarding the idea of getting married . Armed with a piece of evidence to back up her suspicions, Marilyn confronts Max.
It is the mix of Marilyn's deep, unceasing curiosity about Max, and Max's one undeniable and sincere want, which destine the two of them together. It is his want and her curiosity that lead them into the film's dangerous climax, leaving Marilyn's confidence shattered, however perhaps not beyond repair, and forcing Max out of his world of black and white, and right and wrong.
Storyboard
04.22.2009