Biography
Ben Marcus is a 40-something-ish musician from Dublin. Growing up thinking he could maybe, possibly, potentially some day be good at writing, he scribbled away for years but never got past first chapters or opening scenes. Eventually he did the sensible thing and gave up, dropped out of college and became a musician. He lived the next fifteen years in Republic Of Loose. During that time he got interested in all the screenwriting guru books - you know the ones. He totally drank the Kool-Aid. When his kid was born, he became a boring Dad and had a chance to go back to some of those first scenes and work out why he couldn’t get past them. The result of that work became the project which got him in the Spotlight scheme. The projects he’s currently developing tend towards comedy with emphasis on plotting and hooks, cartoon-sized characters and as much uncomfortable truth as he can find.
Project Title: For Love Or Money
- Genre: Comedy
Target Audience
18-49
Synopsis
David Druker is a loser. Well kind of. More a disappointment than a loser, his Mother would say. In his mid-thirties already, David doesn’t really fit anywhere. Born in to the tiny Orthodox Dublin Jewish Community, David lives a completely secular life. While his older brother Michael has married within the Jewish community and has a successful career, David is still single, most of the time, and scrapes by pulling pints for a living, cocooned in mediocrity. An outsider everywhere, David is too secular for the Jewish community, and too self-consciously Jewish to feel fully Irish. Then his Mother dies and leaves him an unexpected fortune, and everything changes. But the inheritance, David discovers, comes with a catch… he will only inherit the money upon marrying a Jewish girl.
What will David do? He’ll mess it up of course. We follow David on this adventure as he tries to satisfy the terms of his Mother’s will. He’ll try online Jewish dating sites. He’ll try online non-Jewish dating sites. He will try to bribe a non-Jewish woman to marry him while trying to bribe a Liberal Rabbi to convert his non-Jewish bride. He’ll find help along the way from his best friend Theo, a twenty something Kenyan born Clondalkin raised law student and her fiancé Paul, and from his brother Michael and sister-in-law Sarah. But are their motives pure?
He’ll strike up an unlikely friendship with Miriam, an older Jewish singleton, but her father Malcolm, who is also Michael’s creditor, is hostile to him for some reason and Malcolm’s actions, taken in concert with Mrs. Druker’s unscrupulous lawyer, suggest they might have their eyes on David’s inheritance too.
Will David get what he wants? Will he discover what he needs? Unlikely. Why? Because David Druker is a loser. Well kind of.