1st T Script Writing Contest

Winners

2016 CONTEST | ENTER NOW

Winners | Biography | Logline | Interview | Script Excerpt

Backwater Burning

American Gem Short Script Contest

5TH PLACE WINNERS


Kate Young		Michael Young

of Toronto, ON, Canada

TV Pilot Drama

Biography

Kate Young and Michael Young

M/K Young is a writing team comprised of siblings Michael & Kate Young. Michael is a writer/actor based in Toronto. A graduate of the Acting Conservatory at The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), Michael has acted on Showcase, Bravo, The Global Network and in professional theatre, including a lead role in the world premiere production of With Bated Breath, a play by Bryden MacDonald, presented at Montreal’s Centaur Theatre. As a writer, Michael has published two graphic novels with Oxford University Press, articles in A/J Magazine, GUTS Magazine, Undercurrents Journal and with Demeter Press. He holds a Masters degree from York University. He is currently developing an original web series, We Three Queens.

Kate Young is a writer and yoga instructor based in Toronto, with a background in musical theatre performance and sketch comedy. Having trained at Toronto’s Randolph Academy, Kate has performed in a variety of Canadian theatre, film and dance projects. She is also an operations manager at KOPS records in Toronto. Growing up, Michael and Kate spent many summers in northern Ontario. Backwater Burning is a culmination of their real lived experiences and slightly unhinged imaginations.

Logline

A troubled young woman flees NYC for a cabin in rural Canada, hoping to get a handle on her self-destructive lifestyle, only to find that corruption and decay aren’t unique to big city America.

Synopsis: ELEANOR MONROE (28), a brilliant, quick-witted but deeply troubled ethnographer, dreams she’s drowning in a nightclub; swallowed by the Hudson River as it floods NYC.

She comes to in a boardroom at Rutgers University, where she’s issued a leave of absence from her teaching post for ongoing substance abuse. Spiraling, she leaves campus and hooks up with a drug dealer she meets on the NYC subway. Then back at her apartment, the radio warns of apocalyptic flooding. Eleanor finds her deadbeat roommate hanging from a pipe in his bedroom and in a moment of total desperation, steals the keys to a cabin he inherited in the woods of rural Ontario and skips town.

Meanwhile, sun shines over the backwater Canadian town of Whippoorwill, where OMAR WOLFE (20), a rugged and closeted camp counselor, leads two campers on a sailing excursion. They pass a shirtless cottager, DUKE HOTSON (22). Distracted by his ripped torso, Omar flips the boat and a camper gets stuck underneath it. Omar rescues the kid, who angrily calls him a “fag.” Omar snaps at the boy, grabbing his shoulders to silence him. The boy screams at Omar to “stop trying to touch” him.

Meanwhile, the HOTSONS are unpacking their new cottage. MARGOT (52 yrs), a glamorous if aging political advisor, anxiously tries to find the family cat. When her husband, BRUCE (48 yrs), a charismatic energy executive, tells her to relax, she becomes irate. She hates the woods. They’re only in Whippoorwill to hide-out from a PR nightmare back home in Alberta; Bruce’s energy firm has had a major oil spill and Margot’s legally implicated. Then suddenly the cat turns up in the jaws of a coyote.

Omar and his best bud SAM BELLMONT (22) take in the evening by drinking on the stoop of Sam’s family’s motel. BEAU SIMMONS (50s), a towering, broad shouldered man, turns up and scolds the boys for public drinking; it’s bad for the town’s image. Beau is a powerful property developer, responsible for revitalizing Whippoor will with a new cottage development. He’s also the father of the camper who Omar snapped at on the lake. Beau questions Omar about his past, particularly about the death of his father, whom Omar inadvertently killed four years earlier in an act of self-defense. He accuses Omar of assaulting his son and threatens to press charges.

Omar and Sam head to a bush rave but split-up. Using a gay cruising app, Omar meets LUCAS ST. JOHN (25), a handsome and mysterious man from out of town. They have sex in the woods and go cliff jumping. But when Omar asks Lucas to stay with him for a fire, Lucas rejects him coldly. Impulsively, Omar pushes Lucas off the cliff into the water below and it’s unclear if Lucas resurfaces. Panicked, Omar goes home, where his mother intuits that something terrible has happened. Meanwhile, Margot gets drunk and the Hotson family has a blowout argument over a candlelit dinner.

Late that night, Eleanor arrives at a truck stop on a remote highway outside of Whippoorwill and meets Lucas; the man Omar pushed off the cliff. Lucas hitches a ride with Eleanor back into town and it becomes clear that he’s mentally unstable. Eleanor runs out of gas and Lucas takes her to a camp in the woods where the two drink, dance and fall asleep together. Then Eleanor awakes to find Lucas gone without a trace.

The next morning, Omar and Sam lead a group of campers on a hike and discover Eleanor lost in the woods. They drive her to her dead roommate’s cabin; a truly decrepit shack. Sam asks Eleanor out for a beer and Omar goes to secretly search for Lucas. Then that evening, while drinking alone by the lake, Margot Hotson sees a man’s body floating lifeless in the water beyond her dock. It’s Lucas.

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