Biography
Róisín Jones is a writer based in Dublin. Whilst originally working as a freelance videographer and editor, after a six-month trip around the world, she turned her focus onto writing TV and Film when back in Ireland. Her first feature length screenplay ‘The Kraken, The Convict and Me’ placed in the top 10% of the Academy Nicholl Fellowship in 2019 and the semi-finals of the Austin Film Festival, which she subsequently read for in subsequent competition years. Her debut no-budget short ‘A Sense of Joy’ premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh in 2019 and saw her collect the Indie Cork ‘Best Emerging Female Director’ Award in 2020.
When at the Galway Film Fleadh 2019, she won the pitching competition with her next feature script What Would Rocky Do? and has been developing it since as part of the Screen Ireland Spotlight scheme 2020/21.
Though her initial writing was geared towards TV and film, she is keen to bend to other media once the heart of the story isn’t sacrificed. To that end, in winter 2020, she released the eight-part true crime / history podcast ‘The Invincibles: Park Assassins’ which she wrote and produced. This podcast follows the rise and fall of a Victorian Dublin assassination squad and the Detective responsible for tracking them down. It placed in the top 10 Irish True crime charts in December 2020 and is also the basis of a TV pilot she is in the process of developing as a limited returnable drama series.
Róisín’s interest lies in writing stories with heart, and characters the audience can root for, no matter the genre or medium. She is currently researching and outlining TV and feature projects with the goal of finding a production company to build a relationship with and potentially go into development with in the future.
Project Title: What would Rocky Do?
- Genre: Comedy
- Target Audience: 15 – 45 year olds
Synopsis
Windgarden, a small 80's Ireland border town, is where a tight-knit population of religious busybodies, sexually repressed teenagers and boxing fanatics, call home. Though it doesn’t feel like home to film-obsessed teen Luke Coburn. Despite his family running the local boxing gym, Luke detests being in the ring since a childhood tooth-losing punch from his brother Conor. His interest in boxing now extends only to watching Rocky in the cinema, the one place he feels he belongs, and where best friend, proud atheist, Amy lives and works. Together, the pair struggle to raise funds for a camera to shoot their own film over summer. This is particularly important to Luke after an ultimatum issued by his father. If he’s not working on his film, he’ll be helping in the gym.
Luke feels more distant from his family when he discovers Conor is secretly doing jobs for Belfast’s first ever sex-shop. This supplies Luke with an opportunity, if he takes it, to make some extra money and prove the naysayers of his filmmaking dreams wrong. Overcoming initial inhibitions, Luke smuggles ‘dirty’ magazines (not fully nude at that time) from the North, blackmailing Conor into compliance and gaining assistance from money-minded Amy. Covertly selling magazine pages at school, Luke and Amy become the Republic’s unlikeliest first porn distributors.
Both feel a sense of popularity never experienced before. With camera money pouring in, Luke auditions the new girl in school, his crush, Jess Brady. Her involvement draws other students to their film and the chance of shooting over summer increases. They’re now forced to juggle their filmmaking plans with the very unpopular way they’re funding it. A crucial juggling act as Jess’s grandmother, religious busybody Mrs. Brady, leads the hunt for the magazine sellers with her prayer group, the Brady’s ladies.
When supply dwindles, Luke undertakes a drastic means of earning the remaining money. He photographs his own ‘dirty images’. In doing so, he inadvertently provokes the paramilitary group that, unbeknownst to him, have been running the sex-shop as a cover for weapons smuggling and blackmailing Conor. Luke is now targeted, and his family threatened unless he can fix the mess he’s made. Following an argument with Amy that exposes them as the magazine sellers, Luke must overcome the threat against his family alone, though under the watchful eyes of local police, the Brady’s ladies, and judgmental townspeople.
He formulates a plan involving the thing he hates most. He must step into the ring and fight. Literally. Like his hero Rocky, he doesn’t need to win, just persevere. If he can last to the final round, he’ll buy time until help arrives, hoping not everyone in town has permanently turned their backs on him. If he pulls it off, he can save his family both physically and in the eyes of the community. In doing so, he discovers how to harness his own strengths to fit in, find a sense of belonging, and finally feel at home. Where he will very much…be grounded.