Great news! We are proud to announce that "The Mercy List" screenplay made the top 10% of the 2015 Nicholl Fellowship. This is the screenwriting competition run by the Academy (the Oscars) and is the most prestigious writing contest in the world.
Story
Logline: A Peeping Tom unwisely befriends a mercy killer in order to learn the fate of his sister.
Tagline: Is someone you love on the list?
Drama / psychological thriller
Synopsis:
Tanner Zelinski (Terrance Zdunich) is a pharmacist in a mid-size drug store with a morbid interest in serial killers, cults and poisons. He’s friends with the ex-hippie store manager, Brenda (Beth Grant), but the other employees think he’s a bit odd and keep their distance. After being forced to work with Tanner and seeing his charming and smart side, a skittish young cashier, Lydia, develops a crush on him. Little does she know about Tanner’s voyeuristic tendencies. He’s a textbook-case Peeping Tom.
One day Tanner recognizes a customer, Marty (Michael Chieffo), as a 'mercy killer' recently released from prison. Marty had boasted that by 'humanely' killing mentally ill homeless people he was doing God's work. Tanner awkwardly tries to befriend him. Aside from his gruesome fascination, Tanner has another reason for wanting to get close to Marty: Tanner’s sister disappeared years ago and he wants to find out if Marty was responsible. Since Marty has narcissistic personality disorder he loves the attention and eagerly takes Tanner as a friend and potential protégé.
But Marty starts to get inside Tanner’s head. Tanner craves answers in order to better understand his own shameful voyeuristic secrets, but doesn’t necessarily like what he hears. Without realizing the full implications, Tanner allows both Lydia and Brenda to be sucked into Marty’s dangerous vortex of narcissism along with him.
Premise: Too much self-examination can be self-defeating.
Central questions: Can one change their true nature? Is it okay to do something bad if it's for "the greater good?"
Themes: Shame, inability to curb morbid curiosity, toxic narcissism, teenage crushes, patterns of denial.
Script written by Jan Wilson
Trivia: The story was spurred by screenwriter Jan Wilson reading about mercy killer Efren Saldivar who killed patients while working as a respiratory therapist at Glendale Adventist Hospital in Los Angeles. Even after going to the police station and confessing to the police of the murders they initially had to let him walk away because there was no evidence of a crime since the patients had been thought to have died of complications from their illnesses and by this time had been buried or cremated for years.
Tagline: Is someone you love on the list?
Drama / psychological thriller
Synopsis:
Tanner Zelinski (Terrance Zdunich) is a pharmacist in a mid-size drug store with a morbid interest in serial killers, cults and poisons. He’s friends with the ex-hippie store manager, Brenda (Beth Grant), but the other employees think he’s a bit odd and keep their distance. After being forced to work with Tanner and seeing his charming and smart side, a skittish young cashier, Lydia, develops a crush on him. Little does she know about Tanner’s voyeuristic tendencies. He’s a textbook-case Peeping Tom.
One day Tanner recognizes a customer, Marty (Michael Chieffo), as a 'mercy killer' recently released from prison. Marty had boasted that by 'humanely' killing mentally ill homeless people he was doing God's work. Tanner awkwardly tries to befriend him. Aside from his gruesome fascination, Tanner has another reason for wanting to get close to Marty: Tanner’s sister disappeared years ago and he wants to find out if Marty was responsible. Since Marty has narcissistic personality disorder he loves the attention and eagerly takes Tanner as a friend and potential protégé.
But Marty starts to get inside Tanner’s head. Tanner craves answers in order to better understand his own shameful voyeuristic secrets, but doesn’t necessarily like what he hears. Without realizing the full implications, Tanner allows both Lydia and Brenda to be sucked into Marty’s dangerous vortex of narcissism along with him.
Premise: Too much self-examination can be self-defeating.
Central questions: Can one change their true nature? Is it okay to do something bad if it's for "the greater good?"
Themes: Shame, inability to curb morbid curiosity, toxic narcissism, teenage crushes, patterns of denial.
Script written by Jan Wilson
Trivia: The story was spurred by screenwriter Jan Wilson reading about mercy killer Efren Saldivar who killed patients while working as a respiratory therapist at Glendale Adventist Hospital in Los Angeles. Even after going to the police station and confessing to the police of the murders they initially had to let him walk away because there was no evidence of a crime since the patients had been thought to have died of complications from their illnesses and by this time had been buried or cremated for years.
Characters
Tanner
Tanner is a
pharmacist in his 30s who works in a mid-size drug store. He’s very good at his job. He’s intelligent and has an unrelenting
curiosity of all things. But due
to his long hair, morbid interest in serial killers and poisons, and the fact
that he keeps to himself, the younger employees at the store think of Tanner as
a bit creepy. Unbeknownst to them,
a childhood incident has left Tanner with a lifelong struggle with voyeurism,
which shames him.
Marty
Marty's in his 50s, a friendly guy who enjoys bowling. And he's fresh out of prison. Fifteen years ago Marty went to prison for one murder. Just one. He has Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), so Marty bragged about being a ‘mercy killer’ for a dozen or more people. But he’s smart, he knows how to get away with it. He killed mentally ill homeless people. No one reported them missing or even noticed. Everyone assumed they wandered off to another neighborhood. Marty bragged to the police about his ‘work’ as a mercy killer, but they had to let him walk. No body, no proof of a crime, no arrest. Ultimately they could only pin one murder on him. He plea bargained, did 15 years, and now he’s out of prison. He’s not exactly as infamous as Dahmer, Manson or Bundy -- and due to his NPD, this fact actually bothers him.
Brenda
She is the ex-hippie den mother of the store. She started working at the store years ago for “fun money” but has since gotten a divorce and now she ‘needs’ the job, has worked her way up to manager and feels trapped there. She gets along with everyone, smoothes out any problems, and tries to make everyone happy. She’s good friends with Tanner by now. She’s lonely and looking for a nice man, but she doubts at her age – mid 50s - she’ll be able to find anyone.
Lydia
She’s a 19 year-old college kid working part time. She’s not sure what she wants to do with her life, hasn’t even picked her major. She’s afraid she isn’t smart enough to find something she’s good at or interested in. Since she works up at the front registers, it’s usually easy for her to give Tanner a wide berth. But one night one of the pharmacy techs quits and Brenda makes her work back in the pharmacy section with Tanner. She is very uncomfortable around him at first, but as each night goes by, she ends up thinking he’s pretty cool. And then this turns into a crush – of which Tanner is initially oblivious. Her friends would be horrified if they knew about her crush, but at least Lydia is finally thinking for herself.
A PDF of this information can be downloaded on the "Downloads" page.
Keyhole photo of Terrance Zdunich by Suthi Picotte.
