Chasing Time: Feature + One-Hour TV Pilot
CHASING TIME is a love story and a historical drama with supernatural elements that explores the nature of artistic passion.
Tone for the Feature: The Age of Adeline meets Benjamin Button
Tone for the TV Pilot + Pitch Deck: Medici meets Killing Eve
ACCOLADES/AWARDS:
Milan International Film Fest Best Un-produced Screenplay 2017 (Finalist),
ScreenCraft Screenwriting Fellowship, 2018 (semi-finalist),
ISA Fast Track 2015 (finalist)
Logline: A gifted American artist of Italian descent joins the exclusive Medici Artists colony in Tuscany, Italy where she discovers an immortality potion that the patron has been addicted to since the Renaissance. She must ultimately decide his fate and the fate of the potion, which in turn, will alter the fate of all humanity forever.
Overview: Chasing Time explores the questions, Where does artistic passion come from? And, why do we have that impulse to create art and life? During one of the script’s pivotal scenes, which takes place during the Renaissance, Michelangelo is given the opportunity to take the immortality elixir and continue to create his magnificent works of art indefinitely. He vehemently refuses and explains that if he stopped chasing time to the end of his own life, he’d lose all of his creative power and artistic passion. By understanding his own mortality, he was inspired to create art throughout his life. The human condition relies on death to empower each moment of life.
Another soul quest revolves around the original lovers (Bruno and Sofia) who have been together since the Renaissance and were the first to take the potion when it was invented. Their souls have been in limbo and stuck in the same bodies for centuries without the chance to evolve, rejuvenate, and hopefully, reincarnate. They go to great lengths to orchestrate one more moment when they can be alive together again and rekindle their passion, which can only be done when they’re convinced of their own deaths. They must instinctively know that they will die so they can feel truly alive once again in one another’s arms. Since they’re too addicted to the immortality elixir to quit or to orchestrate an end-of-life scenario for themselves, they wait until the reincarnation of their only daughter arrives in Florence because she’ll have the soul strength and the timeless love for them to give them the gift of one true and final moment together.
Synopsis: Isabella (35+) leaves her teaching position at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago and moves to Florence, Italy to study art. Something in her soul has been calling her there for her whole life. Alone in the world after the death of her mother, she arrives in the city of her ancestors and meets the stunning, LA SIGNORA (70+, aka Sofia Merlini) who’s the proprietor of a small pensione where she stays as the only guest. The two women quickly form a close bond as they explore the city and share an energetic bond. Bruno watches them via the security cameras he has rigged up at the Uffizi Gallery. As they’re admiring the Botticelli paintings, Bruno is in his private lair at the Medici Artists Colony in the outskirts of Tuscany. He has a look of awe for Isabella, and a deep longing for La Signora. At first glance, he’s extremely old, then transforms his body from a decrepit, ancient man into a younger (70+) version as he hooks up to an elaborate contraption that injects a silvery liquid into his veins. The legend of Basil Valentine, a Renaissance monk who allegedly invented an immortality potion is alive and well in the twenty-first century. The plot-driving questions are: Who’s taking it, and What’s Isabella’s role in its future?
Everything in Florence seems so familiar to Isabella in an unexpected, Deja Vu kind of way. She falls in love with a man (Michael Donati - 40) who appears to be the reincarnation of her great love from her Renaissance lifetime when she was also a gifted painter, a free spirit, and the love child of Bruno and Sofia. The Renaissance story unfolds simultaneously with the present-day story as Isabella moves from Florence to the prestigious Medici Artists Colony in nearby Tuscany. She meets Bruno, has an instant connection, and soon discovers his secret. Through the unexpected events of the second act, she learns about her ancestral ties to them and to some of the greatest artists and thinkers from the Renaissance. As her artistic talent grows, so does her curiosity about the immortality potion. At one of the darkest moments, she sneaks away and gets a small drop of the potion, nearly killing herself. That experience was the greatest ecstasy and worst terror of her life. She understands that the addiction to it (to life) is greater than anything.
As the story unravels and the two worlds collide, Isabella understands that they’ve been waiting for her for centuries. She’s faced with the decision to either join them in their prison of eternity and champion the world’s artists/scientists/intellectuals or destroy the potion, which means killing them both, but saving humanity from this fate. Act three brings a culmination of her romance with Michael and a confrontation between him and Bruno, which reveals the tragic ending to their first great love. As she’s almost finished with her masterpiece, Bruno announces that she must leave the Medici Colony the next day or she will never be free — but she’s not ready! She works tirelessly, passionately, but like life, she won’t have enough time. La Signora finally agrees to come to her farewell party and reunites after centuries with her great love, Bruno. After dinner, they dance in his villa in an embrace that brings them and their souls back to life. The room is filled with lit candles and all the drapes are doused with turpentine. Isabella comes in to say goodnight. The two lovers looks so happy and peaceful and eternally connected. They hug and kiss Isabella goodbye, then ask her to open the window, which will billow in the curtains and set the room aflame. She can hardly bring herself to do it, but she does, then leaves quickly. As the room goes up in flames, the lovers continue to dance.
