CAST LIST:

Narrator: Elizabeth Rose Morris
Martin: Geoff Mays
Abraham: Steve Rizzo

Get to know the writer:

1. What is your screenplay about?

My screenplay is about a teenager named Abraham and his best friend Martin who are both on the precipice of graduating high school. As Abraham grapples with the typical issues of the impending change from high school to adulthood, he must also contend with his unrequited feelings for Martin and his dysfunctional home life.

2. What genres does your screenplay fall under?

There are glimmers of humor here and there, but "Missing Persons" is pretty firmly grounded in the category of drama.

3. Why should this screenplay be made into a movie?

I would love to see this screenplay made into films for a lot of reasons. I think it touches upon issues that many films don't. For instance, while the dysfunctional family sub-genre of drama is not a new invention in and of itself (it possibly perfected in 1980 with "Ordinary People"), the specific issues particular to this dysfunctional family are not things I've seen before in other films, at least not touched upon this explicitly anyways. Similarly, I haven't seen many (if any) films that touch upon what it means to be gay and in love with someone who is out of reach for one reason or another. And, finally, I would love to see this screenplay made into a film because there are so few films that take teenagers seriously, and even fewer where at least one of those teenage characters is gay.

4. How would you describe this script in two words?

Unresolved trauma.

5. What movie have you seen the most times in your life?

When I filled this questionnaire out for my last screenplay that won - "Lost & Found" - I said films like "Troop Beverly Hills" (1989), "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" (1984), "Beetlejuice" (1988), "Pee Wee's Big Adventure" (1985), and "Back to the Beach" (1987), but here are a few more that I've seen countless times: "Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead" (1991), "Batman" (1989), "Jaws" (1975), and "Drop Dead Fred" (1991).

6. How long have you been working on this screenplay?

The short answer is it took me about a month and a half to write. The long answer is that this is a script that I'd been thinking about and grappling with for the better portion of 25 years.

7. How many stories have you written?

This was the first screenplay I've ever written, however, I wrote it at the same time I was writing its sequel, "Lost & Found" which meets up with the two central characters from this film seven years later. Beyond that, I just put the finishing touches on the first draft of my third full-length script titled "Roanoke", which is another LGBTQIA+-themed story, set in the present day but with ties to the mystery of the lost colony in North Carolina.

8. What motivated you to write this screenplay?

I couldn't not write it. It's a story that had been circling around in my head for the better portion of two and a half decades and the events and corresponding emotions that informed it were so immediate at the time I originally came up with the idea. After the better portion of two and a half decades when the memories attached to those feelings hadn't subsided, I knew I had to take the dive and, if for no other reason, use the writing of this story as a kind of therapeutic exorcism, so-to-speak.

9. What obstacles did you face to finish this screenplay?

The biggest obstacle was just the formatting. I'd never written a script before and so the physical layout of the type and ensuring that I was following proper script notation (i.e. the differences between how to write actions vs. characters vs. dialogue, vs. scene setting, etc...) was kind of this immediate, bitter hobgoblin that pestered me for awhile. I'm a bit of a perfectionist (which probably accounts for some of the length between story inception and story completion 25 years later), and so I fixated a lot of my energy on ensuring things just looked properly formatted. If I'm honest with myself, I think I also used that perfectionistic fear that I wasn't doing it According-to-Hoyle-properly as a way to participate in my favorite type of procrastination: approach-avoidance.

10. Apart from writing, what else are you passionate about?

Film. Always film. I can't remember a time in my life where film hasn't played the most integral part in shaping who I am and how I see the world. A day doesn't feel complete to me until I've seen at least one film, hopefully something I've never seen before.

11. What influenced you to enter the festival? What were your feelings on the initial feedback you received?

The thing that influenced me to enter this festival specifically was the fact that it was focused around LGBTQIA+ writers and stories. Today, more than ever, we need to champion the voices from the vast spectrum of our community. I have been sitting on this story for the better portion of 25 years and finally sitting down to write it after all that time, the emotions that it conjures for me are so strong and so urgent and I'm just one storyteller in a sea of LGBTQIA+ writers who all have their own urgent stories vying to be told. Spaces like this festival give our community a chance to share in that act of storytelling and ground us in all of our own urgencies.

The initial feedback I got was actually really surprising for me since this was my first script. I was not expecting to win, let alone receive any feedback beyond "this needs a lot of work." In my mind, anything I create will always need a lot of work. I also have to keep in mind as I'm writing that anyone who reads my work is going to bring their own subjective experience to bear on whatever material they're interacting with. Everyone will always have suggestions for improvement and, I think the goal is to find that sweet spot where people can put their quibbles aside and relate to the material at its core.

One of the great things about this festival is that it has given me a chance to work with various people in various settings that have shown me ways to improve my writing and enhance the work that I do. I did a script consultation with someone who offered me ways to look at my story that, in a million years, I never would have thought to do, but, whose perspective enriched my writing so thoroughly that, even though I'd been sitting with these characters in my head for so long, I was able to see them in an entirely different light than I'd ever seen them before. My favorite thing about that experience was that, with those suggestions, I was able to make some tweaks, resubmit, and my score eventually changed from a 7 out of 10 to a 9 out of 10. And, I still get a chuckle whenever I think of the feedback I received about that score change that it couldn't be raised to a 10 out of 10 because it's inherently too depressing. It is, and I agree, and that's why I go back to this idea that writing this story, for me, was an act of therapy.