American Roulette: Feature Film Script
American Roulette was written decades ago, but holds even more significance now because it’s got a subtext and commentary on our gun culture and the terrifying normalization of senseless shootings.
Logline: A charismatic and intelligent high school dropout (18) searches for the mother he never knew after his father leaves and he’s left with only his friends as his family. Together they spent an unforgettable senior year, which culminates in a pseudo game of Russian Roulette on graduation night that forever changes all of their lives.
Tone: The Perks of Being a Wallflower meets American History X
The Soul of the Story revolves around getting the love that you need during your lifetime, even if it’s from unexpected places. Set in a small town, American Roulette traverses the landscape between childhood and adulthood, between innocence and experience. Against a backdrop of a culture that’s entrenched in white privilege and racism, the five best friends are the misfits in town and comprise a diverse group, which includes an African American track star, a Jewish girl, an Eastern European immigrant, a white girl whose mother dates the abusive police chief, and the hero of the story, a brilliant teenager who must fend for himself when is father goes into the witness protection program. The hear of the script is about love and friendship and finding a way to fill the empty places in your heart, even up to the last moment of life. This script was originally written in the 1990s, which is a time in history that mimics this teenage journey as the world became infused with technology and went from a relative state of innocence to uncharted experience.
Synopsis: REX (18) is a born leader, brilliant, and resourceful. He has had to drop out of high school to support himself because his father has left him to fend for himself. He never knew his mother who intended to give him up for adoption, but his dad never signed the papers and raised him on his own instead. Rex is in love with ALLIE (17) a sexy, feisty girl whose mother dates the Chief of Police, an abusive drunk who has some dark history that involves Rex’s father. Allie’s best friend is DAISY (17), a well-meaning but entitled, Jewish girl whose father, DR. SINGER serves as a mentor and role model to all of them. Rex’s best friend is HUGO (19), an immigrant and not-so-smart wise guy. GRETA (18) is a big track star, an African American beauty, and one of Daisy’s best friends. The story opens on graduation night with an almost game of Russian Roulette and the underlying tensions that have cropped up between them. The two males struggle for the gun, which goes off inadvertently. Before the outcome is revealed, the script flashes back to the beginning of their senior year and ‘bookends’ at the end with the outcome.
The next scene after the gun goes off is a male buck staring at his own reflection in Daisy’s mirrored patio windows. The Buck charges through them, ready to battle with himself, but creates a bloody mess instead. This vision catapults a series of events: Daisy gets arrested for growing marijuana in the prairie behind her house. Rex and Hugo are haunted by some skin heads who want to buy their crop of pot, which has been destroyed, but they don’t believe them. Allie comes home one night from a romp with Rex and finds her mother beat up, naked, and handcuffed to the sink by the Police Chief. Hugo solicits Rex’s tutoring help so he can graduate, then Daisy gets Rex to help her improve her college entrance scores. Greta wins all the state track meets, a national competition, and gets a full scholarship with Olympic training. Meanwhile, Rex and Allie have lusty, teenage sex in some of the most inventive places.
As their senior year winds down, Rex tracks down his birth mother in a small town not too far away. She doesn’t know that his father disrupted the adoption proceedings at the last moment and raised Rex on his own. Rex drives the ninety miles to the small town and spies on his mother, witnessing her from afar with her five-year-old daughter. His longing breaks his heart as he watches someone else having the childhood he had always wished for. He confides in Daisy who accompanies him to the small town and tries to orchestrate a way for him to finally meets his biological mother. His mother is married to a super-religious man who doesn’t know about her previous pregnancy and the alleged adoption. They wait for her to come meet them, but she never shows up. Rex realizes that they both want the same thing, which they cannot have, not to have missed his childhood that they could have spent together. They both long to reunite, but still don’t connect. Instead, Rex connects with his friends.
The five of them have a love for each other that endures other hardships such as Greta losing her track scholarship to an injury, Allie’s jealously and infidelity, and Daisy’s disappointment over her parents’ impending divorce. Allie gets pregnant, but can’t say for certain who the father is. Rex believes it’s his and wants to marry her. He wants them to keep the baby because it’s his dream to have a family of his own. The disappointment of the past becomes his hopes and dreams for the future.
In the final moments, they meet on graduation night, even though two of them didn’t graduate. With underlying tensions threaded through their friendships, they jokingly start a game of Russian Roulette, which they saw in the movie, The Deer Hunter, a history assignment they watched together. The opening scene of the Russian Roulette game plays out in its entirety. They struggle for the gun, it discharges, and the bullet lands and kills Rex. In the final moments of his life, he rewinds his life and gives himself a glimpse into the childhood he was meant to have as she ‘flies’ from the swings and runs into his mother’s arms, just like he witnessed during one of the times he went to see her and tried to meet her. Even though he never experienced this moment in his ‘real’ life, it was a gift he gave his soul to take that last, warm, loving embrace with him.