When a Girl Meets a Boy

MetalHearts23film LLC

THE MEETING OF A GIRL AND A BOY 

Film-Synopsis

Written by DaMond Taylor

Two wounded hearts are forced to do battle with vulnerability, truth, and intimacy – as gender contends with gender in this bare bone’s romantic comedy/drama.

The Meeting of a Girl and a Boy is about the armor for two hearts that have known combat, the protection of which, manifests itself in the raising and lowering of mask, upon mask, and protective shapeshifting from one version of the self to another. JACK and BRIDGET confound not only each other, but also themselves, as they battle, in fits and starts - questioning who they “really” are and what they “really” want. Thematically, Bridget and Jack grapple with competing/conflicting versions of themselves and their many layers of reality-vs.-make-believe, that flows from two lives desperate for a real connection but are terrified to admit it, and even more terrified to have possibly found it.

Bridget is a small-town girl from Hartford City, Indiana, population 6,690 - with dreams of fresh start, and “I’ll show them back home,” spirit that quickly submitted to the harsh truth of survival as only New York City can dish out. After five years in the city that never sleeps, she now peddles in illusion as a part-time would-be sex worker, not wanting to sacrifice her physical body beyond the mirage she creates- she longs to be a Hollywood make-up artist - her aspiration alluding to her psychology, trauma, and need to create identities - the concept of the self as something one invents or makes up. On top of that, she’s got two names, which blurs the border between “real” and “made up” even further. She dreams of going to LA, to become part of the land of illusion.

Jack’s an assistant manager of video store that rents out movies - pieces of make believe on film. A Brooklyn native now living in a small, dank studio in Hell’s Kitchen, Jack’s screenwriting ambition is also linked to illusion, since he, too, is making up something - in his case, stories for film. Jack’s relationships with women are rooted in the tale of his mother’s lack of capacity to love him, by disregarding him. Jack has an insatiable curiosity to know what people are hiding, this partly helps him mask his own vulnerabilities. Jack dreams of a better life in the Hollywood, a place where he, like Bridget – can be part of creating identities, and not be a victim of one.

Significantly, Bridget and Jack share an affinity for movies that gives them a vocabulary to engage each other in their back-and-forth banter and battle underlining the role imagination can take in generating empathy. Taking place in a winter storm set in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen in 1994, Jack and Bridget find themselves trapped together, forced to confront who they are and who they are not.

Stylistically influenced by John Cassavetes films , and the other films that inspired it BEFORE SUNSET, MEDICINE FOR MELANCHOLY, LOST IN TRANSLATION, and Billy Wilder’s, THE APARTMENT, 

THE MEETING OF A GIRL AND A BOY is a character driven study of intimacy, vulnerability and longing.