BEST SCENE SCREENPLAY READINGS
The "best scene" take from features and TV pilots of winning screenplays.
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Toronto Comedy Festival Script Reading: SUPERLATIVE PICKLEBALLS!, by Dan Beeman
When disgraced former tennis champion loses his job, home, and mother on the same day, he must reinvent himself by reuniting with his former rival to compete in Pickleball tournaments for money as teammates to pay off debts. Living in an old RV while traveling across the country, they discover th...
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THRILLER/SUSPENSE Festival Script Reading: MAKWA, by Johnny Cole
A free-spirited indigenous bounty hunter teams up with her ‘by the book’ detective father and their robot sidekick to catch a killer and heal: themselves, each other, and the planet.
In a near-dystopian future, Alaska Rainmaker, a Native American bounty hunter still troubled by her mother's murd...
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Female Festival Script Reading: TEN TO MIDNIGHT, by M Mantero De las Casas
Dead set on her environmental mission, a quixotic civil servant assembles a ragtag team of multinational oddballs to fight the system from within
CAST LIST:
Narrator: Elizabeth Rose Morriss
Luiza: Hannah Ehman
Mara: Kyana Teresa -
POLITICAL Festival Best Scene Reading: HAMMER AND NAILS, by Lowell Williams
What if someone when into the seminary to bury his own anger? Jonathan Daniels stumbles into the Civil Rights movement and finds himself face to face with moments that viciously try and pierce his peaceful personality. Based on a true story, he joins Stokely Carmichael and other Black activists d...
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LGBTQ+ Best Scene Reading: OFFSIDERS, by Kate Holland, Marlowe Mitchell
Get to know the writers:
1. What is your screenplay about?
Playing with the old-as-time concept of the genderbending sports romcom (She's The Man, Ladybugs), Offsiders sees Max dressing up as a boy in order to take her gay best friend's place on the boys' soccer team. The story then takes a dis...
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FANTASY/SCI-FI Festival BEST Scene Reading: Condolexia, by Allison Hanna
In the eternally twilit city of Condolexia, 18 year old human Brian Marlowe befriends 18 year old vampire Jeremy Liu. But their new friendship is threatened by Brian's family legacy of vampire hunting, a series of vampire attacks in the city, and Brian's own budding conflicted feelings about Jere...
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CRIME/MYSTERY Festival BEST Scene Reading: A Death In The Family, by Alex Surowitz
Former detective August Cavett and his new wife Elizabeth return from their honeymoon to learn that Elizabeth's father has died. Now the family matriarch is threatening to cut ties with the rest of the family and keep the inheritance. When she ends up dead, the Cavetts are reluctantly drawn into ...
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HORROR Festival BEST Scene Reading: Cannibal Mukbang, by Aimee Mayumi Kuge
Mark, a nerdy introvert, falls into the dark and twisted world of a mysterious mukbanger named Ash after she accidentally hits him with her car.
CAST LIST:
Narrator: Steve RIzzo
Ash: Julie Sheppard
Mark: Allan Michael Brunet
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DRAMA Festival BEST Scene Reading: Chaos In Paradise, by Jay Paul Smith
Tim and Becky Smith, a salt-of-the-earth, blue-collar couple, become foster parents in their opioid ravaged, rust-belt town, battling dysfunction, poverty, and addiction in order to save foster children, who, but for the grace of God, could have been their own. "Our family's chaos could be some c...
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LGBT Festival 1st Scene Reading: I'm A Bad Person, by Chance Fuerstinger, Brandon Freeman
After an engagement announcement, the best man of the groom-to-be tries to express his love for him, but he cannot bring himself to do it. In an attempt to forget about it, he and the other groomsman drink themselves into oblivion, and the rest of the night goes awry.
CAST LIST:
Narrator: Val ...
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FAN FICTION Best Scene Reading: ROBIN (Batman Series), by Kaley Chandler
When Dick Grayson is taken in by billionaire Bruce Wayne, he begins to uncover a secret side to Gotham - and to his new guardian.
CAST LIST:
Narration: Elizabeth Rose Morriss
Ringmaster: Geoff Mays
Dick: Sean Ballantyne
Alfred: Bill Poulin
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FAN FICTION Best Scene Reading: BARRY: Spark Joy, Jessica Montanez Prince
No-Ho Hank manipulates Barry into another job, Barry accidentally lands a big acting role, Sally has trouble on her new job and Fuchs has a close call with the Chechens.
CAST LIST:
Narration: Elizabeth Rose Morriss
Fuches/Noho Hank: Bill Poulin
Barry: Geoff May
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FAN FICTION TV Best Scene Reading: WOOSUNG 2020, by Janet Oh
This script is a greatly structured story about the challenges of someone who isn’t familiar with her culture and is trying to integrate herself into it. Dealing with that while also being appointed CEO makes for a story with high stakes. Mixing the chaebol culture with an Americanized protagonis...
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BEST Scene Script Reading: BLACK MO, by Peter Noel
In the early 1800s a young girl and her family from Africa are abduct, taken to the United States and tortured as they try to salvage their humanity. Escaping from her captors, the young girl evolves from battered slave to successful businesswoman. (Based on a true events.)
CAST LIST:
Narrat...
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BEST SCENE TV Pilot Screenplay: Jewels Of Light, by Tessie Herrasti
In the world of Upprunkna, a guilt-ridden elven warrior is tasked with the care of a powerful and untrusting royal. Together, they begin a journey that will unite the most adventurous beings of the different realms and force them to work together in order to restore the vital energies of a darken...
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COMEDY Festival BEST Scene Reading: That's Our Show, by Judd Cherry, Aaron Krebs
A hopeful group of comedy upstarts travel the country performing and grinding out a name for themselves, all while surfing the bonds of friendship and facing the trials and tribulations of that touring road life.
CAST LIST:
Narration: Hannah Ehman
Otis: Sean Ballantyne
Margot: Kyana Teresa ... -
CRIME Festival BEST Scene Reading: SERIAL, by Robert Benjamin
The peaceful life of a kind, old retiree is thrust into anguish and peril when it is disrupted by a present day serial killer. Following the connections, this otherwise trusting father can only suspect that the brutal killings have been at the hands of his own flesh and blood. His eldest son.
CA...
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FEMALE Festival BEST Scene: WINDS OF TRANSITION, by Sil Brook
Suffragettes cross ideological and class lines in their pursuit of both liberation and love.
CAST LIST:
Narration: Steve Rizzo
Emily: Hannah Ehman
Thomas: Bill Poulin
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ACTION Festival BEST Scene Reading: Sergeant Freeman, by Gloria J Browne-Marshall
African-American Army Sergeant Stella Freeman's college-bound daughter Keisha goes missing on the day Freeman becomes the first woman to train the Army’s new Urban Terrorism platoon. A single mom and widow, Freeman is fighting to find her daughter while the Army pressures her to represent women i...
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POLITICAL Festival BEST SCENE Reading: Tags, by Stephen Glickman
A young woman abandons her dying mother to free laboratory animals; capturing the world’s attention and forever changing the vivisection industry (based on real events)...
CAST LIST:
Narration: Steve Rizzo
Sarah: Hannah Ehman
Marcu: Bill Poulin
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LGBTQ+ Festival BEST Scene Reading: NZR, by Leon Masters
In a bleak futuristic world were zombies exist and are outliers in society, a man who is part of the elite civil service, hides a major secret about his identity that could result in a grim fate.
CAST LIST:
Narration: Steve Rizzo
Board Barista: Andy Camp
Hector: Bill Poulin
Steven: Sean Ball... -
COMEDY Festival TV SPEC Screenplay: Ted Lasso "The Tryout", by Geoffrey Prather
A best scene reading of an original screenplay from the hit TV series TED LASSO.
CAST LIST:
Ted: Bill Poulin
Brent: Sean Ballantyne
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LGBTQ+ Festival BEST Scene Reading: Lafayette Square, by Katherine Martinez DeLeon
In 1885, a lesbian First Lady moves into the White House to support her brother, a conservative president, and finds herself caught between two worlds, both of the ‘old’ and the ‘new’: the old society of white politicians and army heroes, and the new society of feminists, black aristocrats, and t...
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COMEDY Festival BEST Scene Reading: The Epigones Club, by John McCloskey
What is an epigone? The word epigone means: “undistinguished descendant of the great.” My characters are the adult sons and daughters of celebrities. They are frustrated, bitter, because they have failed to achieve success on their own. They resent the celebrity world that has left them behind.
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