Jonathan LaPoma

Author / Screenwriter / Songwriter

Screenplays

A Noble Truth

Genre: Drama • 121 Pages • Budget Tier: Low

Two estranged best friends set off on a road trip to explore what truths unite people in a modern America dominated by apathy and discord. It is soon clear, however, that truth is the last thing either man seeks.

EASY RIDER meets GOOD WILL HUNTING

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Dellwood

Drama / Family / Sports • 145 Pages • Budget Tier: Low-to-Mid

A successful but unhappy novelist reluctantly returns to his childhood town to attend a friend's funeral and reminisces about his experiences playing basketball on a city court to escape his abusive home.

STAND BY ME meets THE SANDLOT

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The Way Back Home

Genre: Drama • 104 Pages • Budget Tier: Low

A young boy who loves animals must cope with his father's insistence that he will someday work in the slaughterhouse that has employed the men of his family for the past several generations.

BILLY ELLIOT meets KES

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Sofi’s Journey

Genre: Drama / Romance • 115 Pages • Budget Tier: Low

An obsessive-compulsive twenty-one-year-old Peruvian woman, hoping to find love and relief from her mental illness, travels from Lima to the USA on a work-abroad program and takes a job at a small ski resort in Montana.

MARIA FULL OF GRACE meets GIRL, INTERRUPTED

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La Tierra Que Yo Amo (Land That I Love)

Genre: Drama / romance • 106 Pages• Budget Tier: Low-to-Mid

After trying for seven years to successfully make it as a dancer in New York, a 30-year-old half-Mexican, half-American woman with dual citizenship reluctantly returns to her hometown of Oaxaca, Mexico and struggles to find her identity.

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS meets EVEN THE RAIN

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Sandley (Short Screenplay)

Genre: Short Drama / Dark Comedy • 14 Pages • Budget Tier: Low

A first-year teacher in an at-risk Los Angeles middle school finds the inspiration to confront his bullies through his interactions with a lovable, but equally teased student.

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A SACRIFICE TO THE GOD OF THE BLUES (Short Screenplay)

Genre: Short Drama / Road Story • 19 Pages • Budget Tier: Low

An impressionable young man struggles to make sense of the alternating good and bad advice he receives from a much older friend as they travel through the heart of Mexican drug territory on a cursed trip to a remote Pacific coast beach.

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Harm for the Holidays (Optioned)

Genre: Dark Comedy / Drama • 106 Pages • Budget Tier: Low-to-Mid

After his brother attempts suicide a few weeks before Christmas, an unrepentant asshole with a heart of gold moves back in with his comically dysfunctional family to help his brother, only to discover that his brother is the sanest of them all.

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK meets LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE

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Diplomatic Ammunity!

Genre: Comedy • 109 Pages • Budget Tier: mid-to-high

A struggling Hollywood screenwriter recruits his former best friends to help him write a script about a series of pranks they pulled in high school, and they discover why their friendship fell apart.

ADAPTATION meets IDIOCRACY

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The Kidnapped

Genre: Comedy / Action / Drama • 87 Pages • Budget Tier: Mid

In Mexico, a drug cartel boss kidnaps a washed-up Hollywood director, and the two are driven to insanity while shooting a documentary about the boss's once-powerful cartel--a project meant to help both men reclaim lost glory.

BREAKING BAD meets GET THE GRINGO

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The Return of the Bad Boys

Genre: Drama / Comedy • 111 Pages • Budget Tier: Low-to-Mid

A group of friends from a working-class Detroit neighborhood cheat their way through a summer three-on-three basketball tournament to prove to themselves that they’re not losers.

WHITE MEN CAN’T JUMP meets THE HANGOVER

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Only the Bad Guys

Genre: Action Thriller / Dark Comedy • 103 Pages • Budget Tier: high

In a dystopian world where killing a killer brings their victim(s) back to life, ex-soldier turned bounty hunter Daniela Dushane makes a killing killing killers as she walks the fine line between hero and villain.

THE NICE GUYS meets THE PUNISHER

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