An Original, Feature-Length Screenplay adapted from “The Bachelor Party” stage play by Mark Barkawitz

Genre: Drama

Budget: Ultra-Low

Logline: An Original, Feature-Length Screenplay adapted from "The Bachelor Party".

WGA Registered #1247022

Synopsis:

by Mark Barkawitz 

    Two men lie sleeping behind bars in a small-town jail.  The snoring, middle-aged man in the top bunk, HARVEY KETCHUM, is a petty career criminal.  In the lower bunk, BILLY BAKER, a young man in street clothes with a bloodied bandage wrapped around his head, stirs, wakes, unable to recall how or why he was arrested. He flashes back to the previous night—drinking heavily at his Bachelor Party at Best Man ROBBIE’s apartment.  Calling for the jailor, he raises the ire of PRISONERS sleeping in other cells.  His own cellmate Harvey throws Billy to the concrete floor, pinning his arm behind his back, warning: “Shut your goddamn mouth, kid!”

    As the two cellmates become acquainted, we learn that Billy is a former high school All-American quarterback, who passed-up numerous scholarship offers to tend to his mom and the family-run garage after his dad died suddenly.  Fearing he’ll miss his own wedding, Billy again yells for the jailor, who informs Billy of his pending arraignment for killing a young woman when he crashed his Mustang the previous night.

    Billy’s lawyer SUSAN LINDEN is a young, over-worked, rookie Public Defender, who doesn’t offer much hope of saving Billy at trial.  JUDGE STONE sets an impossibly-high bail, keeping Billy behind bars with threatening new cellmates BENO and LOVER.  Billy’s fiancé MARY wants to know what CANDY—the stripper from his Bachelor Party—was doing in his car when he crashed.  But Billy doesn’t know that either.  His friends and former teammates—DAN, PETE, Robbie and his little brother SQUIRT—testify but shed little light on the circumstances of the crash. Flashbacks of that night continue to haunt Billy in bits and pieces.  The best of Hitchcock’s thrillers put the good man in the worst place.  Such is the hellish nightmare of All-American Billy Baker.  But just when things look their bleakest—contemplating suicide—Billy decides instead to quarterback his own destiny.

First 10 pages.