Screenplays Available

By Michael Cortson

 Life’s Too Short

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Los Angeles attorney, Mike Martin, gets mixed up with a simple slander suit between competing art dealers.  The dealers are actually involved in money laundering for the Colombian drug lords.  The slander suit is a tangent scheme to bilk an insurance settlement.  They are found out when the laundering scheme falls apart when the artwork being sold to launder the money turn out to be forgeries.  The Colombians now seek revenge against everyone involved including Martin even to the extent of kidnapping his wife and trying to kill him.  Ultimately the art dealers have to kill Martin as well as the fraud has been found out as well.  The dealers are finally killed by the Colombians who then turn their attentions solely on Martin who is then shot while on vacation in Mexico.  It is a mystery/thriller filled with high speed chases and gory murders.  There is a novel as well.

 Married and Alone

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Ed and Mary Carter marry right out of college.  They appear to the rest of the world as the “perfect couple”.  Both are college educated, live in an upscale neighborhood, have 2 lovely girls they raise up to college.  Everything goes along smoothly.  There is no real bickering or substance abuse but somewhere along the way they drift ever so slowly apart until they are “Married and Alone”.  They endure many of life’s trials together.  They each lose a parent and then one daughter to a tragic accident.  The temptations of something or someone different ever so subtly, creep into both their lives ultimately leading them to face the reality that they never really understood what a marriage truly was.  Tragically, at the moment of truth when each has to decide whether to make the marriage work or go their separate ways, Ed is struck down with a massive heart attack and dies.  The two other people that they each had secretly been having affairs with ditch them both and Mary is emotionally crushed and left alone.  There is a novel as well and 5 sequel novels to the continuing trials of Mary and her remaining daughter, Colleen.

 Last Resort

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Ann and her younger sister, Amy, are teachers in a private school in the Midwest.  It is a small community based on a large manufacturer who is now closing its doors to seek cheaper labor overseas.  Ann’s husband, Tom, is charged with firing the workers day by day one by one.  The slow dissolution of the company has far reaching effects on the entire community.  Amy’s husband, Bill, is a carpenter building a new housing project.  Amy and Bill have 2 young boys, Adam (6) and Mickey (3).  The houses are not selling due to the lack of jobs as the community slowly dies from the death of the community’s largest employer.  The school enrollment drops as people are leaving the town to find jobs elsewhere.  Ann is forced to fire her sister Amy.  Some of Tom’s life-long friends that he has had to lay off have committed suicide.  Bill finally quits before he is laid off and opens his own cabinet building business.  Amy is forced to open her own in-home day care.  Tom and Amy try to ride it out.  Tom can’t take the stress any longer and has a massive stroke leaving him is a coma and he ultimately dies.  Mickey has a tragic shop accident cutting his arm off in a large band saw while trying to mimic his father Bill.  The reattachment is successful.  Ann finally meets another man with a son and they settle down together.  The story is a compelling and dramatic commentary on the economic effects being felt in America with the mass exodus of American jobs to foreign countries.  This story is also a novel.

 Santa and Barry, the Claus Brothers

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Can Santa's twin brother save Christmas?  This is a light heart-warming story of Barry and his twin brother Santa.  Barry has made a deal with Everett Nasty, CEO of ENC (Everett Nasty Corporation) for world-wide licensing rights for all of Christmas.  ENC controls ALL of the economics of the holiday.  Barry works as a department store “Santa”.  It must be in his blood.  One Christmas Eve Ann and her daughter Andrea (5) are doing some last minute shopping at Barry’s store.  Later that evening Barry is blinked to the North Pole to fill in for Santa who is once again too sick to deliver presents.  Barry substitutes and is caught by Andrea at her home later as she is up to get a drink of water.  Ann comes out and catches Barry too.  He gets spooked and up the chimney disappears.  Ann is now left trying to explain the situation to Andrea, who now more than ever, truly believes in Santa.  She now has proof.  All Andrea really wanted was a new baby brother or sister for Christmas. Barry is taken with Ann and Andrea and seeks them out after the holiday.  He has second thoughts about the meaning of Christmas and tries to renege on his deal with ENC.  Nasty finds out about Ann and Andrea and has his henchmen kidnap them until Barry comes to his senses.  Barry and Santa work out a plan to save Christmas and save Ann and Andrea.  Animated golden cocoa mugs, pitcher, a golden tray and a little cake are summoned by Mrs. Claus during the meeting.  They are disgusted with the commercialism and the lead mug, “Annoyance” lead them in an animated song and dance number, “Poopdiddly”.  Ann and Andrea are tied up in a small remote cabin.  Ann sings the theme ballad “You Have to Believe” (a la Celine Dion type) to Andrea.  Nasty is forced to bring the girls to the North Pole for negotiations and after surviving a near fatal plane crash Barry and Santa are able to wrestle control back of Christmas, Nasty learns his lesson, Barry marries Ann, Andrea gets her new baby and we leave with head elf, Freddie, leading a rock band singing “The Greatest Santas” to a sea of Santas and the cast.  We all live happily ever after.

 We all Gotta Go Sometime 

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Serial killer, Richard Ramos is on the loose in Los Angeles brutally killing women in their own homes during the hot LA summer.  LAPD Lieutenant, Jake Morris, a huge Dodger fan living with his cat, Jeeter, in Silverlake, and his partner, Marty, only have one clue, a red scarf always left by the killer.  The murders are graphic and many.  The step by step process of finding and capturing the menace is long and arduous.  Ramos is found to be living in Monrovia, an LA suburb and is nearly captured there.  In his apartment Jake finds a book on butchering techniques.  Apparently slashing his victims to death is no longer enough of a thrill for the beast.  Ramos is once again nearly captured in Hollywood where he is purchasing a new supply of French scarves. The killer even manages by chance to brutally murder Marty’s fiancée leaving no scarf and police in a total quandary as to just whether the killings are even related.  Jake takes Marty out on a high priced downtown LA hotel drunk to ease the pain.  Morris finally finds Ramos in a motel in Van Nuys.  A savage gun battle ensues.  Ramos is killed and Marty is shot nearly dying but as he is transported to Sherman Oaks Medical Center with Jake in the ambulance at his side, Marty will survive.  The killing spree ends.  This story is also a novel.

 The Christmas I Remember

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Mary Madison and her husband, Mike, have 2 children, Amanda (13) and Bobby (10), are an average family getting ready for the Easter holiday.  Mary notices a slight pain in her chest.  While taking the ham out of the oven for an entire (grandparents and all) family dinner, Mary nearly drops the ham.  Her mom and mother-in-law immediately detect there is something very wrong.  Mary puts it off as nothing.  The kids come home from school a few days later to find Mary passed out on the bathroom floor.  Mike rushes to the hospital to find out that Mary has colon cancer (polyps removed) and possibly breast cancer as well.  Mary refuses a full mastectomy and opts for the less intrusive surgery.  It fails.  As the holidays progress one by one she gets progressively worse.  Her hospice counselor has been working with a doctor using hypnosis for treatment. (Mind over matter).  He has had some successes in nursing homes.  As a last resort the doctor is brought in and treats Mary.  The progress is not promising.  Mary finally slips into a coma.  Mike desperately speaks to Mary while she remains in the coma trying to get her to come out of it.  He begs her to use her mind to fight the horrible disease.  Mary is about to die on Christmas Eve.  Her entire family is coming apart at the seams due to the pressure.  Mike and the hospice counselor are called in at the last second believing that Mary is about to die.  Mike is about to come apart at the nurse’s station totally distraught when the doctors wheel Mary out in a wheel chair conscious once again.  The family CELEBRATES Christmas as “THE” Christmas I remember.

 LARRY 

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Larry is a 50’s man who is working directing semi traffic at a shipping yard in Long Beach.  He is hit by a semi and suffers near fatal head injuries leaving him a 3 year old saying pretty much, “Can I go home now?”  His condition is irreversible.  He is looking at a Sports Illustrated one day with a big Dallas Cowboy cover.  Something sparks in him about Dallas perhaps being his home.  He manages to wander away from the nursing home and disappears in the vastness of Los Angeles.  He ends up at the bus depot where he is befriended by Bob who has a few mental problems of his own.  Bob is going to Dallas and offers to buy Larry a ticket too if Larry’s momma pays him back when they get there.  The 2 go off on their adventure.  Bob is confronted at a truck stop in Lubbock by 3 hoodlums.  Bob, a military vet, uses karate to escape the attack disrupting the truck stop.  They get to Dallas and Larry has no idea as to if he has relatives or not.  They wander into Neiman Marcus and cause a mess there.  An APB is out for Larry and his face is plastered on TV and in the newspapers.  A massive manhunt is underway.  The 2 meet up with an old lady in a park feeding the birds.  They finally learn Larry’s name is Larry Peters.  The old lady only knows of a 90 year old billionaire, Myra Peters so they just go to Myra’s.  Myra meets Larry and knows it is her son who had left on bad terms being disowned some 30 years before over a gold digging girl friend.  Myra does a massive amount of soul searching.  Larry and his friends are taken in by Myra.  Larry and his friends return to Neiman Marcus this time as real customers and Larry is apprehended.  Myra ultimately takes on the Dallas police and takes her boy home with the promise from his friends, Bob and the old lady (now Sarah), that they take care of him and live there for the rest of his life.

 Lexington

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Martha Powell, widow with 2 children, living in 1905 Kansas, places ads in Norwegian “Lonely Hearts Newspapers” and attracts men to help on her farm and possible matrimony.  The gentlemen mysteriously disappear and end up as the main course for Sunday dinner.  A horrifying time is in store for one and all.

 The "O" Connection

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Was there a connection between both Kennedy assassinations and the world's biggest shipping tycoon?  Perhaps it is true.  You be the judge.  An explosive story of greed and murder.

  They Can't Hear You Scream

Suspense/thriller author, Dana Montgomery, has given her stalker a road map to her own worst nightmare.  A work in progress.

Copyright  © 2011 Michael Cortson