TITLE of Script: Lives of the Saints
Author NAME: Corie Schweitzer
Type of screenplay: feature
LOGLINE: A recovering alcoholic taking care of his deceased sister’s daughter struggles to maintain a devastating secret when he starts a relationship with a woman who was the victim of a hit-and-run the same night his sister committed suicide.
LIVES OF THE SAINTS is written along the broad lines of films such as MANCHESTER BY THE SEA, SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK, and GARDEN STATE and such television series as THIS IS US and A MILLION LITTLE THINGS. The story concerns Daniel McConnell, a Long Island contractor who becomes the guardian to his anxiety-ridden teenage niece Izzy after the suicide of her mother / his sister. When he accidentally and unadvisedly falls in love with Kate, a disabled woman in his neighborhood with whom he shares a catastrophic past secret only he knows about, Daniel must come to terms with his own problems with mental illness as well as his family’s. Daniel’s relentless efforts to ignore his past sins and step up to be an ideal guardian come under increasing pressure when he attempts to weigh his own warped sense of a greater good against his desires for his own and his family’s happiness.