An artistically-gifted pizza delivery boy, caught up in a criminal enterprise that funds his creative pursuits, confronts otherworldly and possibly dangerous forces when a mysterious girl sprung from his dreams appears at his next drop.
Get to know the writer:
1. What is your screenplay about?
The story centers around Jesse, a gifted artist, who delivers both pizzas and cash for the illicit gambling ring his boss Angelo runs. Shady turns spooky when a girl from Jesse’s drawings manifests in the flesh at one of his cash drops. Only the girl, mysterious and beautiful Taria, is very much real and powerfully psychic. Cryptically, she warns that working for Angelo, the father Jesse’s never had, will have dire consequences. That his true life path is to embrace his calling as an artist. If only Jesse believed Taria really can see the future.
Soon after Taria disappears, broken-hearted Jesse is haunted by a series of strange, even supernatural, encounters, forcing him to make harrowing choices if he ever wants his girl back. If he even wants to live. Only after Angelo is beaten inches from death, and the ring’s big boss is murdered, does Jesse take a life-altering mindf*ck of a journey to the nearly unfathomable truth.
2. What genres does your screenplay fall under?
Set in a south Florida teeming with high strangeness, lurking violence, and romance, the genre is best described as supernatural realism. A sexy, unsettling, and ultimately celebratory tale of selfactualization, DELIVERED will appeal to audiences fascinated with mysticism, the occult, and the romantic charm of a unique love story. Beyond the glitz and the scantily clad on Florida beaches, the story inhabits the dark and gritty underbelly teeming in the shadows of the sunshine, combined with an ominous sense that unseen forces are at work, impacting lives in mysterious ways.
3. Why should this screenplay be made into a movie?
More than ever, there is a cultural fascination with alternative spirituality, mysticism and the supernatural, along with a yearning to understand how these unseen realms affect our lives. With all of life’s uncertainties, all the fear of the unknown, so many of us have the desire to pull back the veil and understand our place in the Universe. Or as the ancient Greek maxim instructed: to “Know Thyself.” What our destiny is, and how to tap into forces that can shepherd us onto a path that manifests it. This universal and timeless human desire to make sense of the inexplicable, and our own particular place within its mystery, forms the thematic heart of DELIVERED and its place as an essential story for our time.
4. How would you describe this script in two words?
Sexy, thought-provoking.
5. What movie have you seen the most times in your life?
Probably the original Star Wars, mostly because my kids now watch it all the time and I’d already seen it countless times before they even discovered it. It certainly resonates more now than when I first saw it in the theater.
6. How long have you been working on this screenplay?
I originally published the novel, Delivered, from which the screenplay is adapted, in 2013. That took a few years to complete. The screenplay has gone through a few drafts over the course of three years.
7. How many stories have you written?
Too many to count.
8. What is your favorite song? (Or, what song have you listened to the most times in your life?)
It’s difficult to say what my favorite song it, but overall I’d have to say my favorite alltime band is Led Zeppelin. Three of my favorite Zeppelin songs are “The Rain Song”; “Ten Years Gone”; “What Is and What Should Never Be.”
9. What obstacles did you face to finish this screenplay?
The original challenge for the story, when I was first writing the novel, the opening chapters of which would become “Dream Girl,” the pilot script, was how to combine the story of the artistic delivery boy working for a bookmaking pizza maker with the part about the mysterious girl. A girl who literally disappears, breaking his heart in the process, but is actually operating in the shadows, so to speak, in order to protect him from the danger all around him. As it turned out, I needed to consult a bona fide witch (not kidding) in order to figure out how to weave those two main parts of the story together. She was amazing, and taught me all sorts of things about the occult, the supernatural, and especially what some practitioners can actually do.
10. Apart from writing, what else are you passionate about?
Fitness, health, literature, art, photography, film, not to mention the supernatural and the unknown, which is really at the top of the list.
11. You entered your screenplay via FilmFreeway. What has been your experiences working with the submission platform site?
Somehow when I submit via FilmFreeway, my work always either places or wins, while on other platforms I rarely have the same success. So FilmFreeway is now my go to.
12. What influenced you to enter the festival? What were your feelings on the initial feedback you received?
I call “Dream Girl” a supernatural thriller, but in actuality the story is somewhat genre-bending. So I’m always on the lookout for festivals and competitions that are looking for genres along these lines. While not a perfect fit, the script works within the Sci-Fi/Fantasy and horror worlds, though it doesn’t quite fall neatly into those genre boxes.
Festival Reviews 