Screenplays I've Written

A young guy is implciated for the bombing of downtown Pittsburgh. He must evade the police and pursue the terrorists if he's to save not only his own life—but the city itself. "24" meets "The Fugitive."

I wrote a lot of drafts for this story. Very different drafts. My first inspiration, after finishing "EMULATION," was to make an even bigger thriller movie. This one filled with conspiracies and political intrigue. I wanted to do something like "North By Northwest" where an average guy becomes caught up in an international event.

I was really into "24" at the time, so there's a lot of that. But there's also a general sentiment of events slipping out of control. Of paranoia setting in. A mood. A "rising fear."

Truth be told, the main inspiration for the story came from three places. First, a song by The Four Tops called "Shake Me, Wake Me When It's Over." I'd heard the song and then dreamed about it playing over the credits of a movie. Whatever that feeling captures. Paranoia wrapped in a pop song. Paranoia and fear no one quite takes seriously. The other two places of inspriation were from real life. One night, at the gym, a girl accidently left behind her lifting gloves. I wanted an excuse to talk to her, so I turned the gloves into the front office. Perhaps in my nervousness, it suddenly occured me: what if I wasn't the one meant to pick up the gloves? I'd been reading about how spies during the cold war used what are called "dead drops" where one spy would leave something in plain sight for another spy to find. What if I were being set up?

The final inspiration was a call I'd received from someone in my past. I did want to chat with this person and catch up, but we were getting into a game of phone-tag. After much apprehension about calling this person back, after contemplating the personal consequences of returning the phone call, I had the idea for the story's inciting incident: the character would be lured into calling a pretty girl—the call triggering a bomb.

This was the story I was searching for all along.

Students stranded in a snow storm are visited by a strange creature. Mayhem ensues. Like "The Ring" meets "The Thing." I'm a huge fan of snow, and I've always wanted to do a horror film in it. Probably because I've always been really inspired by "The Shining."

Inspiration for this particular story goes back to one night in college when I was sitting around with friends on a quiet Saturday night during a snow storm. Someone suggested telling ghost stories. Looking out the window, I became entranced with what I saw: the dorm hall lawn, snow blowing past, the naked tree branches waving, a single lampost glowing organge in the night. I couldn't stop imaging some figure appearing by it, looking at me. This mood made me not only want to write the story, but to someday turn it into a film.

A demon menaces a small town. During my junior year of college, I had a dream of a figure named the "Everyman" forcing a trapped person to type endlessly on a keyboard. The image didn't make any sense to me, still doesn't. It just made me want to write a creature feature. Couple that with "The Exorcist," a lot of John Carpenter movies, and "Saw," and you kinda have "The Collecting."

I don't know. I'm not including the draft as I can't remember everything that's in it, and I'm sure there's something embarrasing lurking around in there. The story is more or less simple—a demon, monster—this tall figure that looks like the Michael Myers character from the Rob Zombie remakes of "Halloween" comes to town and starts collecting the souls of teenagers who just want to fit in. Or, something like that.

There's horror elements, but it mainly turns into an action story near the end.

I'd love to include the screenplay, but I'm slightly embarrased by it. Slightly. It's the story of nanobiotechnology that, when injected, elimiantes a person's their needs, bringing them to a state of Nirvana. Only, through some really confusing series of events, the nanotechs realize that people are incapable of such "happiness." It makes sense in the story. Kind of. Truth be told, I was never able to make the story work. And it only got worse in later drafts when I tried hiding the source of the trouble, trying for a twist ending. Didn't work.

The story is like "War of the Worlds" and "Night of the Living Dead." It's got nice imagery in it, but I just couldn't make it work.

Company provides you with the experience of living through your favorite movie. Young man gets involved, ends up framed for murder, goes on the run. Struggled very much with this one after coming up with the idea for the company itself. Which I had early in my sophomore year and I saw this strange building next to my college—strange because it was so large and professional and yet placed in a rural area. Soon after, I was watching the movie "Death Sentence" in the theater, a movie I had really anticipated (and enjoyed), and during the trailers there was a preview for "Michael Clayton." All the chaos in the trailer made me wonder what it would be like to live through a movie.

But that was only part of the idea, and I couldn't figure out what to do with it. Until I moved to Pittsburgh the following year, attending Pitt as a junior, stressed out from being in the city for the first time, cultrue shocked. In truth, I was really inspired. And that inspiration gave me the idea: the character is framed for a murder—that happens "in the movie."

This clicked everything for me and made it exactly what I wanted it to be. Looking back, it's obvious to have made it a murder-mystery, but for the longest time I couldn't figure out how the murder happened.

Anyways. This was the basis for my first feature film. I enjoy the script very much. I wrote it during the fall of 2008 in the Hillman library at Pitt.

Was very much into the Grateful Dead song, "Touch of Gray" during the summer going into my sophomore year of college. So much so that I used the name for my survival horror screenplay about a zombie apocalypse. It sounds very cliche now—especially in 2023—but this was 2007, before "The Walking Dead," and it was only a little bit of a cliche. OK—it was a cliche then. Which is why I made the "zombies" quasi vampires who couldn't go out in the day becuase the sun blinded them. It works in the story.

Anyways, the story centers around a group of college kids who take over their dorm hall a la the shopping mall in "Dawn of the Dead." I still think this was a good idea, as I'd never seen the setting used as a fortress in a survival horror film.

What inspired me was wanting to see an epic zombie film that was treated without irony, and with the seriousness of an episode of "The Sopranos." I envisoned a three hour epic, widescreen, filled with heavy overtones of despair, action, and the changing seasons.

Not so much a story (which is part of the problem) as it was a mood I wanted to explore. Searching. Slightly ironic. Disillusioning. A tad bitter. The best way I can articulate it is to point you toward the music of Harold Budd and Brian Eno. This was the first time I was probably more so inspired by music than I was other movies (although, other movies were at play, as always). The "story" is about a young man who wants to write (make) a movie about dreaming. And so, the movie itself is supposed to feel like a dream, and drift along like a dream. Which was the challenge in writing it.

I've written numerous drafts of this story and have never been able to make it work. I could include all the drafts, but they were written over too large a span of time—and perhaps betray too much immaturity. Maybe even a lack of talent?

Perhaps I shared a similiar fate to the character in the story—try as he might, he just couldn't write a movie about dreams.

A director obsessed with his past tries out a procedure that enables a person to re-live their memories. Full disclosure—I'd seen "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and was very much interested in making a movie that took place mostly in the mind. Whereas that movie was about erasing memories, my story was about doing one's best to keep them. Indeed, spending too much time looking back.

The movie went through a lot of re-writes during shooting and I enjoy the final product very much. It's my most personal story and deals with a theme I've never really come to peace with: the passing of time.

Inspired by my own experiences, I wanted to tell the story of a high school hockey team. I wanted it to be a portrait, really. Not so much a story. I also wanted it to feel like the movie "Goodfellas." Where a large span of time takes place.

I don't know. I was never able to make the story work. I have drafts, thousands of pages. Even tried turning it into a novel. But I could never find... I'm not sure. I'd hate to think the difficulty was from a lack of courage. The film got more difficult to write as I got older. Perhaps that's telling.

With each draft, I assured myself that I'd be able to write it when I was older—when I had more perspective. Something tells me I understood the subject better then than I do now.

The plot outline and voice over script for my F. Scott Fitzgerald movie.

Vampires invade a small town. A doctor tries to stop them.

Short screenplay for my first short film.

My first full length screenplay. A young boy falls into a time-dimension warp and discovers a world where... well... it makes sense in the story. Think "Terminator 2" meets... well... I can't honestly remember. I just knew I wanted it to be a huge sci-fi adventure.

Maybe not the best title for a movie, but that's what I picked. This is not only the first script I ever wrote, it's the first time I wrote something long. I was 13 years old, had no clue how to format a script, and had even less idea how to write a feature length film. It's the story of a guy who can see how people will look after they've died. Again—take that for what you will. I was very inspired by M. Night Shyamalan's "Unbreakable" and "The Sixth Sense." Reminder: I was 13. Be kind!