"Greensleeves" post production

Indirect Cinema needs 2k to finish the pilot for "Greensleeves",  an hour long, narrative/doc hybrid comedy series.

When an erudite NYC filmmaker’s trust fund is stolen, he moves to his estranged teenaged son’s town, a remote pot growing community in Northern California, in order to decrease his child support payments. Once there his financial ruse reveals itself to be the first step in a comical journey of self discovery.

Funds will go to editing, shooting a few pick ups and doing a basic sound mix. After the pilot is completed we will use it to pitch the series to networks. (above video is a collection of clips. In-camera audio and unedited)

Greensleeves is a one hour, scripted episodic comedy centered around P.D. PARLOW, a trust fund dependent, under appreciated NYC art filmmaker. A traumatic event, I.E. the theft of inheritance by his once favorite uncle, sends him into an emotional and financial spiral. No apartment, no work history, no prospects (his movies have averaged a gross of ten dollars a year on Vimeo on Demand) P.D. is still saddled with an old child support order requiring him to pay $1,200 a month to his long estranged teenaged son COSMO. His family friend and Pro Bono attorney, KELSON advises him to move to take up residence in Cosmo’s town, PETROLIA, a tiny hamlet in Northern California and exercising visitation rights thereby reducing his support to fifty dollars a week.

P.D. expects his money to be recouped and relocation is viewed as a temporary measure, a place to go to and wait while his life renormalizes (According to his ex’s lawyer, "a ruse”). But once there, the daily struggle of rural existence, the specifics of fulfilling this new court order eclipse his thoughts of NYC. He is a resident of this town and subject, like everyone else to it’s social structure, climate and specific problems. While P.D.’s son is at first aloof to his father, P.D. finds solace in an quick formed friendship with Cosmo’s 23 year old friend, SKYE ANDERSON. A one time comfortable weed worker, Skye still lives at home with his parents, unable to venture out into the cities he sees pictures of and reads about on Instagram as a distinct breed of neurosis and lack of broader life skills restricts him to the place he was born.

Their bond is forged on a sense of alienation, struggle and naive belief in a larger purpose and the show focuses on their Quixotic journey towards redefining themselves and discovering what they consider to be their true potential. As the story progresses, this takes of the form of creating a small film studio and creating films which are acted by and about the citizens of Petrolia. Through this entire adventure P.D. discovers a kind of success which was hitherto unimaginable to him, one that could include his own son, true love, intuition and even poverty.

FORM and STYLE

Greensleeves is an amalgam of scripted and improvised drama. It is set and shot in a real place, of which specific characters and scenarios are incorporated. A lot of the actors play themselves, only in situations slightly skewed. It is truly a hybrid piece. P.D., as both an outsider, and a fictitious person (Peter Parlow is a nom de plum used by filmmaker Robin Schavoir and also a name used in general within the context of the Automatic Moving Co. - see “The Plagiarists”) in a sense acts as a catalyst for these stories to intertwine and grow. He both activates and is activated by the world he enters.

SETTING

Petrolia, California is a tiny town on the North Coast of California. Aside from the general store, the only place to buy a soda is an hours drive over a mountain road. While originally a ranching community, since the eighties the primary source of income has been marijuana. It is a community made up of a mix of homesteaders, ranchers, mega growers and environmentalists. With the cast and crew being comprised mainly of lifelong locals, Greensleeves will in some way be a non-sensationalized exploration of the emerald triangle, it’s idiosyncrasies, its beauty and its tribulations.

CHARACTERS

* These are limited to those appearing in the pilot.

PETER DANIEL PARLOW (P.D.) : P.D., 37 is a New York City based filmmaker who has been funding his artistic, hard to enjoy films with his healthy trust fund since his early twenties. He has absolutely no life skills yet his wit and lack of fiscal stress allows him to befriend people from all walks of life. His best friend and father figure is his family attorney, Kelson, to whom he confides his struggles on a regular basis. P.D.’s main desire in life is to be a great artist and the loss of his trust fund is most traumatic to him as it cripples his ability to make art. He has had, based on a mutual understanding with Cosmo’s mom, little to no emotional relationship with his own son. As far as he was concerned, this was always a minor, if embarrassing detail, yet nothing more than that. But this estrangement from his child becomes a crucial story engine for the series as a whole. The forfeiting of parenthood has come with it the forfeiting of a host of other responsibilities and experiences that P.D. is compelled to suffer to come out reborn in the end. In the series, Cosmo is an understandably aloof figure and P.D. quickly forms a relationship with Cosmo’s slightly older friend, former marijuana worker, SKYE. The friendship and later business relationship between P.D. and Skye is really the most important relationship as the pair seek to reinvent themselves in tandem.

https://www.instagram.com/p.d.parlow/?hl=en 

SKYE ANDERSON : Aside from a trip to LA once, Skye, 23 has never left the valley in which he was born. He lives with his kind hippy parents in a hand built house in an eden-esque plot of land. Up until this year, he has made comfortable living trimming weed, but with legalization he is suddenly faced with an uncertain future. Skye is not a country bumpkin, as he spends most of his time listening to Soundcloud rap, juul-ing and watching Netflix but a strain of neurosis has blocked him from actually venturing out and experiencing the world he consumes VIA the internet. P.D.’s arrival comes at a crisis point for Skye and he and P.D. quickly form a bond based on their shared alienation from the community, love of cosmopolitan culture and interest in Cosmo (Cosmo keeps an ironic distance from Skye as well). P.D., always the schemer, eventually sets out to create a small film studio in Petrolia and it is Skye who helps make it happen, transposing his marijuana farm management skills to film production.

JEN : Cosmo’s mom, Jen met P.D. when she acted in his first film. They had a brief relationship through which she became pregnant. She has always received financial assistance from P.D. yet never desired anything more. She later married a local pot grower, Becca, and Cosmo has been living with his mom and step-mom in pot grower luxury for a while. But the economy has changed things and it takes a while for P.D. to understand that Jen’s insistence that he keep supporting Cosmo is based on something much more than frivolity. She is trapped in a lopsided relationship, made more stressful by Becca’s failing marijuana business. While at first completely resistant to P.D.’s arrival, Jen finds herself appreciating him, as he himself begins to grow and offer her the support he never deigned to give. By this odd, new found friendship, Jen returns to her old way of being, before Cosmo’s birth and finds expression once again. As a type, Jen offers an insight into the hitherto undocumented plight of the grower’s wife.

COSMO: Cosmo, 16, is quiet and aloof. It would make sense to assume that some this is due to P.D.’s complete absence from his life. Also, his step-mother has a variety of issues with him and he’s learned to keep his thoughts inside - at least ones pertaining to emotion. That said, Cosmo is not a misfit and is in fact much more capable and stable than his friend Skye. His cool-ness beguiles both P.D. and Skye and he exists to some extent as an object of attention. For P.D. Cosmo is a silent, all powerful sphinx, capable of forgiving him for his negligent parenting. For Skye, Cosmo is gifted with the detachment necessary to succeed within contemporary youth culture - (a culture with which Skye experienced mixed results). In the end though, the source of this detachment are revealed as wounds from being sidelined by his mother in her effort to impress her partner and PD’s seeming total ignorance to his existence. Like PD, like Jen, Cosmo’s accidental quest becomes on of shedding the protective shell and learning how to access a place of vulnerability.

TONY AND JULIE: Skye’s parents live in a hand-built home made from their modest fortunes as 80’s guerrilla growers. Contrary to Skye’s neurotic, spastic nature, Tony and Julie are kind, humorous and even-keeled. This adds a mystery to his oddness and it’s a detail to their family unit which P.D. secretly wonders about- possibly uses against him from time to time. Because of Skye’s sudden adulation for the much older P.D., Skye’s parents become P.D.’s reluctant benefactors towards the beginning of his arrival in Petrolia. They let him stay in their refurbished bus, hire him to do odd jobs at which he fails and in short take him on as an older son.

KELSON: After his parents died at age eight, P.D. went to live with his grandmother. There, her lawyer, Kelson took on the role of P.D.’s adviser and surrogate father. P.D. and Kelson, who lives in NYC, are very close and P.D. rarely makes a decision without his advice, and so Kelson acts as a conduit into P.D.’s private thoughts. Kind of like Agent Cooper’s voice memos in Twin Peaks.

PILOT SYNOPSIS

ACT 1

After convincing a judge to lower his support, P.D. finds himself living in a trailer, awaiting his first visit from Cosmo. Kelson informs him that he has located the final vestige of P.D.’s wealth, a moped once used in the film Roman Holiday and he asks PD to sign a contract so that he can sell and get P.D. twenty-K. P.D. hesitantly agrees, then tries to shave for the visit. The power kicks out and Cosmo and his mom arrive while P.D.’s face is half shaved. Jen is protective of Cosmo and accuses P.D. of only being here as a ruse for court. P.D. denies this and tells her he’ll bring Cosmo home at nine.

P.D. returns and Cosmo asks about WIFI (he’s trying to check texts) and P.D. admits he hasn’t set it up yet. After some awkward small talk, P.D. offers Cosmo some water which is brown from the pump having been off. He assures Cosmo that this half shaved, no-WIFI life is a temporary bump. He asks Cosmo if there is a place around where he could use WIFI and print out a document. Cosmo says that after the pot market tank there is no cafe anymore (where such a thing could be done) but suggests they go to his friends house who has a printer. P.D.’s electric buzzer trips the circuit again and P.D. and Cosmo head to Skye’s, presumably for water, shaving and a printer.

ACT 2

PD and Cosmo find Skye’s parents, TONY and JULIE arguing about some tuna salad which Skye pilfered from the fridge. Cosmo and PD find him outside, digging out an old cow-pond as a favor to his dad and ask to use the printer.

He gives P.D. the wifi password and P.D. goes into the bathroom to shave and read his email. As his mom pesters him about the tuna, Skye finds out from Cosmo that P.D. is his father.
P.D. is in the bathroom, reading the email about the moped, obviously disturbed about having to let go of this heirloom. Tony barges in and finds P.D. watching a scene from roman holiday on his phone. Embarrassed, P.D. introduces himself as Cosmo’s dad (to Tony’s shock) and joins the rest of the family in the kitchen where they pepper him with questions about himself. P.D. explains that he came out here 16 years ago and made a movie in which Jen was the lead and that’s how Cosmo came into being. Cosmo - probably cringing - leaves to check a text. Julie and Tony begin reminiscing about Skye’s conception and this angers Skye. A small argument ensues and Skye is told to ride to the store and replace the tuna he stole from the fridge.

P.D. finds Cosmo talking to someone in Skye’s room/Tony’s painting studio. When Cosmo finds out that Skye has gone to the store he asks his dad if they could give him a ride.

They find Skye on his bike and drive him to the store. Once there Cosmo sees a girl - the one who he had been texting all day and asks P.D. if it would be OK if he went on a walk with her, as it is her last day in town before returning to her mom’s house in Santa Cruz. P.D. says Ok and

waits with Skye. After he notices people staring at him, P.D. realizes that he still hasn’t fully shaved.

ACT 3

P.D. shaves outside of the store while Skye asks him about New York City life. A church bell rings and P.D. realizes that Cosmo’s been gone for over an hour and realizes that it would look really bad if he was without his son on his first visit.

P.D. and Skye drive around looking for Cosmo. P.D. starts wondering if Jen has talked shit about him yet Skye says that he hasn’t heard anything. P.D. makes sure that Skye knows he’s been financially supporting them for years. They locate the girl’s car and wait.

Eventually they wander into the woods where Skye begins talking about his desire to get out of town and make something of himself. After some prodding, Skye admits that he has in fact heard that P.D. is an entitled trustafarian. P.D. in turn divulges his trauma pertaining to the loss of his trust fund and how he is, like Skye, completely stuck. Like the heart-to-heart P.D. should be having with Cosmo except with his 23 year old friend. The sun soon begins to set and they walk down the trail looking for Cosmo. Skye seems un-fazed by Cosmo’s absence while P.D. becomes hysterical.

After dropping off Skye at home, P.D. drives to Cosmo’s house to see if he’s shown up. Jen comes out and admits that Cosmo was picked up by his stepmom and tells P.D. to go home. P.D. almost consents yet at last minute shows her his custody order and insists he get the last 8 minutes before 9.

Cosmo sits in P.D.’s cold car and explains that he had gotten in an argument with his girlfriend and took the other way home. P.D. admits that he was really worried about him and makes plan to see him next week as scheduled.

Back in his trailer, P.D. talks to Kelson, confiding his sudden paternal feelings yet lamenting how difficult it is to survive out here. Doesn’t feel like Cosmo likes him. Jen hates him. The locals think he’s a weird city person. Still hasn’t managed to completely shave his face.
Kelson offers P.D. to return to the city and live on his couch. P.D. considers this before going to sleep.

Then checks his messages and discovers that Cosmo had called him upon returning to the store to explain. In the message he calls P.D. “dad”.

ACT 4

P.D. wakes up to a horrible rain and wind storm. After scurrying to his car to get some Starbucks fraps and trying to check his email he takes off.

P.D. arrives at Skye’s house and finds Tony. Gives him the two cans of tuna which Skye left in his car. While Skye sleeps, P.D. enjoys a nice breakfast and regales Tony with stories of NYC.

Skye wakes up and Tony chides him for skipping out on his pond mucking chore the day before. PD helps Skye with printing out the moped sales contract while PD complains about Jen and Becca’s attitude towards him. Skye divulges that Becca is having financial trouble due to legalization and that they’ve been going through some things. This is news to P.D. as he’s always assumed that Jen was rich and her insistence on support was a mere frivolity. The printer doesn’t respond and Skye goes finds his dad to ask him about and also to vent his frustration with being scolded in front of his new, older friend. Tony apologizes and admits some guilt. Skye notices that Tony has started their wood fired hot tub. Meanwhile P.D. has started the printer himself and is obviously having doubts about signing away the last bit of his family wealth. Then he notices on Skye’s computer that Skye had watched his film, “The Jag” the night before. This flatters P.D. and gives him hope about his prospects of staying in town, and he signs the document.

P.D. is naked in the tub, shaving the last tufts of beard from his face.

* * *

ROBIN SCHAVOIR is a writer, director and producer based in both New York and California. Often working under the name Peter Parlow, his past work includes “The Jag” 2015 (writer, director), “The Republic” (writer, producer) which premiered on MUBI in 2017 and “The Plagiarists” (co-writer, co-director, producer) which premiered at the 2019 Berlinale and New Directors New Films. 

SKYE ANDERSON is a director and producer based in Northern California.

COSMO FREE is a director of photography based out of Northern California.