2002 Virginia Screenwriting Competition Winners

• Laura Scott

  Brigid’s Wake

  Brigid Conway, a healthy 49-year-old woman adrift in the year after her beloved husband’s death, decides to plan her own funeral.

• Rex Bowman

  Otis Mooney’s Resurrection

  Otis Mooney’s Resurrection is a bluegrass comedy set in Virginia’s Appalachian region. It tells the story of an aging and dying convict who returns to his hometown from prison, vowing to rise from the dead if the townsfolk will place his coffin in the middle of Main Street. What folks don’t know is that Otis Mooney has something more interesting in mind than mere resurrection.

• Rebecca Rogers

  Chincoteague Run

  Francis Foster is a feisty NYC social worker who doesn’t play by the rules. If you don’t play by the rules in the Bronx, people get hurt. Frannie and her charge, Travis Cooper, a big mouth, inner-city kid, too smart for his own good, witness a drug deal gone wrong. Now, they must escape the drug lord and the cops, as they flee to Chincoteague Island, a place known for nothing but its beautiful rugged landscapes and a bunch of wild ponies. Here Frannie finds it’s not too hard to come “back home” after all.

Finalists

• Felicia Ansty

  Meredith’s Wish

  Career woman Meredith Montgomery was on her way to the top. Only one more account to secure and the vice-presidency and all her career goals were within her grasp. There was only one problem: her prospective client would only deal with married women and Meredith was decidedly single. She needed a man, and fast. Enter Jim, a genie who lives in her cell phone with a career agenda of his own and his life at stake. As both human and mystical forces conspire against them, Meredith and Jim discover that when true love and magic collide, anything can happen.

• Baron Blakley

  What Are Friends For?

  Rick leads a double life as a violent criminal whose closest companions are his lifelong, law-abiding friends. When a tragic chain of events slam his two worlds together and friends on both sides of the law cut down around him, Rick must decide where his true loyalties lie.

• Christopher Delli Carpini

  Distinguished Service

  Once he was a decorated veteran, but now he’s just a bum on the street. When he stumbles upon a murdered bicycle courier, he’s inspired to make some quick cash by impersonating the courier and making his deliveries. The money doesn’t come easy, though, especially with an organized-crime thug out to intercept a certain package in the courier’s bag. But in making his rounds our new courier does aquire the dignity that comes from doing a good job well — something he didn’t know how much he missed. By the end of the day, he’s ready to give his life for the job that gave him a reason to live.

• Anne McLaughlin

  Out Of Focus

  Public Defender Charlie Dormont witnesses a murder that never happened, then escapes a bullet from his girlfriend’s kidnapper. Tying the two events together, he must change his perception of the most important people he knows in order to save his own life. But can a man who sees only the good in people really understand the evil that comes so easily to others?

• David Rachels & Kurt Ayau

  Bowzer

  Phillip Jenkins, an affable 30-something psychiatrist, is a man on a mission. Holding out against the encroachment of the rapacious Tender Loving Care, Inc., the largest HMO in Virginia, he treats the angry children of Richmond with his specialty: counting therapy. Faced with bankruptcy as the HMO takes increasingly more patients from him, Phillip believes he has been saved when his rich Uncle Cedric dies, but Cedric has left Phillip only one thing: an English Bulldog named Bowzer. Thinking that Uncle Cedric is playing a joke from beyond the grave and that the dog must be some kind of movie-esque test, Phillip accepts Bowzer and finds he has gotten much more he bargained for. The soccer-loving, beer-guzzling bulldog can talk, and when he opens his sometimes foul mouth, he turns Phillip’s life upside down, with implications for his love life, his career, and the treatment of Richmond’s angry children.

• D. Kirk Richardson

  Bite The Hand

  A fast food restaurant crew hijacks their restaurant and sells everything for themselves.

• Douglas Smith

  Once To Every Man

  Two foreigners arrive at a train station in the Shenandoah Valley, 1920: the Reverend Peter Denby, a man bearing news of a paradise beyond the stars; and George Preston, a man bent on selling his paradise under the stars. Each claims his own from the “Daughter of the Stars” until the government seizes her by eminent domain.