Screenplays
Here are screenplays I feel comfortable sharing, both in a casual "hey, look at this thing I wrote!" sense and a "here's a professional portfolio of screenwriting!" sense.
The Convoy
A mixture of Mad Max, body horror and science fiction based on a dream I had (yes, it was a messed-up dream). I like the tone, the writing style, the utilitarian dialogue, the interactions with the characters, the world-building, and the bleakness of the whole thing. The ending is super rushed and not great. The SUPER SUBTLE NAMES (Milton, Blake, Samuel [Coleridge]) (sarcasm) indicate that I'm thinking of some Romantic ideas on purgatory, emotional burdens, and so on. Sometimes I write lightly and sometimes I throw dark—this is me throwing dark, what can I say?
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The All-Paul
A silly comedy with a weirdly dark ending about a conspiracy theory of a friend of mine's that all Pauls are secretly the same entity, due to their similarly doofy looks and personalities.
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The Nightingale
A short, sweet, conflict-free romantic story set in Oxford and modeled in large part after the Before movies, as one long conversation with changing relationships. It's a charming and pleasant thing with low stakes written at a time when I really needed that. If I have a critique, it's that these characters are more interesting for what they are interested in, rather than who they are as characters, if that makes sense. Still, for what it is—a piece I wrote on a whim to hit a certain tone/sweetness and geek out over Romantic and Latin poetry—it's good.
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The Taming of the Shrewd
A modern-day screwball comedy written with black and white in mind, I wrote this as a subversion of and a love letter to the Katharine Hepburn's character in this classic genre. Pretty happy with this one, honestly, especially the pacing. The settings and these characters are, to me at least, just so fun to "screw" around with. (Sorry, had to.) Writing dialogue for these guys was the opposite of work. This one is still being drafted, but the one here is good. Definitely the best of my work.
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The Valley
A super short proof of concept as to what I think a Mirror's Edge (as in the game) story could be. Intentionally abrupt, abrasive, but very quickly paced, I really don't like how blunt the characterization, dialogue, and ideas turned out. Ugh. The dialogue is so bad and exposition-laden. That being said, the tone, the action, the dream/nightmare-like feel, the strong visual sense, the unsettling nature of the violence and how deliberately at odds the whole thing is with dystopian fiction and Mirror's Edge as we know it -- yeah, I'm pretty proud of those parts. Go into it knowing that you're looking at one night's work. Still, some intriguing ideas in here worth revisiting if I ever feel like writing 90 pages in this style.
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Natsukashii
Sort of a riff on Say Anything or romance in film in general, and my first feature length work. The title is a Japanese word meaning, roughly, bittersweet nostalgia for the present moment, and applies that concept to the senior year at high school setting. The point was to try to have a gentler, more understated movie with an interesting message in the high school genre. It is cringeworthy in several respects, but the overall idea and tone are solid. There are also a couple of moments, that, despite my best efforts at sabotage as a first-time writer, actually work. Lovely idea. Super hit or miss execution and pacing.