Pearls: Feature Film and Short Story
Pearls This Family Drama has a supernatural twist, a young and fierce female protagonist, and is also a short story and part of the LOVE IS LOUDER collection.
Tone: The Florida Project meets Dreamer
Logline: A courageous and precocious Pearl (9) discovers that she can see fifteen minutes into the future after her father is taken into custody, but refuses to testify at a mobster’s trial. She uses this gift to help him reclaim his life and to reunite her family, while a recurring dream of a dying old woman reveals how far her gift stretches into her own future.
ACCOLADES/AWARDS:
Semi-finalist Zoetrope Screenplay Awards (2021)
Quarterfinalist, Emerging Screenwriters - Genre Screenplay Competition 2021,
Finalist in ScreenCraft’s Cinematic Book Contest (2019)
Overview: This script/short story illuminates the power of love and imagination. As Pearl discovers that she can skip forward in time and communicate with future versions of herself, she learns the power of collaboration and compassion for herself and for others. This story is about love that never dies and shows how one brave young girl can create timeless connections. Pearl learns to live her life in a nonlinear fashion and finds her own soul in those moments when she’s able to stretch her consciousness and wrap her emotional arms around every moment of her life at the same time. Pearls is a story about living in the moment and finding a lifetime of power in the ever-elusive, eternally impactful, Now. It also has a subtext and social commentary around poverty and presents an opportunity for a younger audience to question and communicate about it
Synopsis: The story opens at the racetrack where Pearl and her unemployed father, THEO’s (45) bet on the horses and meet the mob boss, Myron Marcucci (60) who convinces him to participate in a high stakes poker game. Theo is desperate to provide for his family, takes the bait, and eventually loses big so he has to work for Myron, which leads to his arrest by the Feds who want him to testify at Myron's upcoming trial. Theo refuses to snitch on him to protect his family and because he really doesn’t know anything, so he remains in jail indefinitely. During this traumatic time, Pearl conjures Future Self, a kind of apparition of herself in the future, which she literally sees (part imaginary friend/part prophetic messenger). At the same time, she begins having a recurring dream about a dying old woman who insists on seeing 'the little one,’ though Pearl only wants to see her father and tries to escape the other women in the room.
Future Self reappears randomly at first, then saves Pearl’s life by making her stop before crossing the street in anticipation of a car that runs a red light. Pearl begins to understand what’s happening and conjures Future Self to get answers to a math quiz and outsmarts the school bully. Future Self accompanies Pearl and her best friend, Marta during their after school adventures in Marta’s sketchy neighborhood. They take the El to the Animal shelter in downtown Chicago to play with the puppies, but Pearl’s mother, SADIE tracks them on her new cell phone and puts an end to their roaming. Pearl and Marta take one last trip (without the cell phone) to the racetrack where Pearl confronts Myron about her father and learns that she can predict the winners of each horse race. She gains some insight there, which later helps her father get released.
Pearl gets into an altercation with the class bully and gets expelled from school. To her great surprise and delight, both of her parents are waiting for her in the Principal's office. Since her mother has to work, she has to spend three days with adult supervision, meaning she has three days to spend alone with her dad. Pearl convinces him to take her to the racetrack where she shows him how Future Self can help them get the money to buy his freedom. Sadie discovers the money and threatens to throw Theo out, but Pearl convinces her to let her prove the existence of Future Self. They go back to the race track together. They win big. Future Self shows her a frightening scenario regarding the money, so Pearl sneaks away from her parents and confronts Myron one last time to pay off her father’s debt. They’re finally free and reunited as a family.
Back in the car, Pearl falls asleep and finished the dream of the dying old woman who’s the ninety-nine-year old woman of Future Self and all the other women in the room are versions of her that she has yet to live. This higher consciousness moment at her own death connects the young Pearl to her entire life in one instant and provides a unique cinematic experience as her nine-year-old self flashes forward in time and her ninety-nine-year-old self flashes backward in time. This moment where she embraces her whole life and tells the story simultaneously as her young self and her dying self empowers the nine-year-old Pearl to move forward and create the life she dreams about.