Yellow Brick Road
a screenplay by
Lon Christopher Teter
This screenplay
probably best represents the maturation of Lon Christopher Teter as a screenwriter.
It follows an Irish Catholic family living on farm west of Wichita, Kansas
as they deal with the upcoming death of the family patriarch.
Official Logline:
Jake McNamara abandoned his family
ten years ago. Now, with his father dying, he's forced to revisit his family,
and their farm in Kansas. There he finds bickering siblings, his parents
turned against his gay brother, and a family farm that’s being forced down
his throat. Can he survive the trip, or will the McNamaras end up
destroying themselves?
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Yellow Brick Road was entered (although
failed to advance) in Ben Affleck and Matt Damon's Project Greenlight internet
screen writing contest.
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Yellow Brick Road was entered (although
failed to advance) in The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences
Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting.
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Yellow Brick Road is currently
entered in the Words From Here internet screen writing contest. Words
From Here was founded by a fellow contestant in Project Greenlight.
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Yellow Brick Road is currently
being read by Kelly Garrett of Stephanie Germain Productions, Sony Pictures
Studios in Culver City, California. Kelly, a friend of my dear friend
Kodi Wilson, is reading the screenplay to critique it for me. I haven't
actually submitted this screenplay to any production companies.
Yellow Brick Road
is
registered with the United States Copyright Office and with The Writer's
Guild of America West. It is available to read in Adobe Acrobat format.
From the writer:
I came up
with the idea for Yellow Brick Road during one of my father's visits
to Wichita in 1998. I sat listening with fascination as he, his older
brother, and their cousin sat around telling stories about their grandparents.
When I got home I began tinkering around with a story of an Irish Catholic
family living on a farm (based upon the farm we lived on when I was a child).
I expanded the family to include five children ranging in age from 35-16.
I began drawing
upon stories from my childhood as well as my father's, and weaved them
into a fictional story about a family that doesn't exactly get along very
well. The screenplay has been rewritten about five times before entering
the contests. Now that it has failed to advance in two of them, I
may look at another rewrite.
In all my
writings, I still consider Yellow Brick Road to me one of my biggest
achievements. Unlike my many short films, I refuse to shoot it on
video and release it locally. This story deserves to be shot on 16
or 35mm film and released everywhere.
If you would
like to read this screenplay please contact me.
-Lon Christopher Teter
30 July 2001
(c) 2001 Tornado
Films
No part of this
may be reproduced without permission from
Lon Christopher
Teter
yellowbrickroad.html