THE MAN TOY screenplay and manuscript
PRIVATE FOR AGENT ONLY. Please REFRESH page for updated drafts.
DRAMA / ROMANCE / COMEDY.
SHOW-OFF ROLES LOW LOW BUDGET and rated “TOP 1% IN OVERALL IMPRESSION. TOP 2% IN DIALOGUE. TOP 3% IN CHARACTERS. “Virtually perfect. A highly effective, dialogue-driven script… breezy read…” “A successful backwoods melodrama. Family grandiosity and dysfunction arranged around a deep, dark secret.”
A twisted comedy / anti-rom-com about a sexy young male escaped convict, Cody, who finds temporary refuge in a remote wilderness cabin inhabited by middle-aged Doris, a deranged, emotionally unstable woman living in fantasy and isolation. As Cody exploits Doris’s loneliness and innocence for food, shelter, and money to escape town, he unwittingly attracts the attention of Doris’s older sister Lilith – a seductive, damaged woman trapped in a loveless, abusive marriage to a powerful cop. As older Lilith and younger Cody fall in love, she uses his past guilt to manipulate a psychological prison to contain, control, and possess him as the one lover unable to ever leave her, meanwhile providing lonely Doris the household companion she desperately needs.
SYNOPSIS:
PRESENT DAY. SUNBAR, NORTH CAROLINA.
Naked muscular Cody (29?) shivers in his prison cell, begging for his clothes and blanket. Guard SAL (50, mean) scoffs out the central question, “Do you think prisoners deserve to be comfortable??!”
At an ocean manor, gorgeous LILITH (60+) takes a package of forks from mailman PETE (25).
Inside, she realizes the forks do not match her treasured antique set. She shakes, worrying about disappointing the Society Ladies coming to lunch the next day. Her cop husband JON (60) hits her and demands she get the real antique forks back from her “retard” younger sister, Doris.
Across the forest in a garden by a leaning shack, crazy DORIS (48, a Baby Jane Hudson type) believes she is Miss Universe hounded by paparazzi on planet Venus. Spying on her, from his mail truck, amused Pete calls his wife who warns, “Be careful, I hear witches live in this town.”
Pete delivers mail to the prison – as prisoners escape!! Pete drives away unaware Cody and MIKE (40, muscular) hide in the back of his truck. Cody stops Mike from killing Pete. Cody and Mike flee. Cody steals clothes from a clothesline.
Cody, wearing the ill-fitting stolen clothes, sneaks to Doris’s cabin and finding her crazy and alone, stays to hide out. Her looks are not appealing but her cooking, warmth, innocence, naivety and location are. Avoiding her come-ons, he sleeps on the porch bench, unaware she undresses him that night and reads a secret letter in his knapsack saying he’s missing a blonde woman named Marie.
In the oceanfront manor bed, Jon rejects Lilith’s kiss. Lilith asks Jon if she can get a job to be more self-sufficient. He slaps her. In the bathroom, hurt Lilith wonders if the witch’s tale is true that all women in Sunbar get one wish, so she ritualizes a wish that he never hit her again.
In the morning, Lilith tries to seduce mailman Pete, who is offended – which infuriates her.
On the porch bench, Cody wakes in his underwear and sees Doris wearing a paper towel dress on a ladder painting swirls on her crooked shack “to make it straight.” She has sewn his clothes to fit him better, makes him breakfast as he tries to con her out of money, but the only thing she has of value are the antique forks worth $1,000 each. She asks if he slept with “fat Betsy Webber who has done evil things with truckers for Doritos.” He assures her that he has not. Recalling his secret letter info, Doris mentions Cody likes blondes – so Cody believes she is “one of the fortune tellers or psychics this town is famous for.” The phone keeps ringing, worrying Cody. Doris ignores it.
Cody hides on the basement couch when he sees a cop car. The cop stops questioning Doris about escaped cons when he realizes she’s out of her mind.
Sweet Betsy Webber and pompous Society Ladies lunch with Lilith and Jon, who’s having an affair with Mary-Ellen, Lilith’s best friend.
At the shack: Doris cooks, and sews a dress out of old sheer pantyhose, and hires Cody to paint swirls on the siding. On top of the ladder he is suicidal, missing Marie. Escaped con Mike creeps to Cody, asking to be part of whatever con he has going, but Cody begs him to leave. Mike punches Cody and says he’ll be back.
For the money Cody needs to get out of state on a train, Doris pays him to strip completely. He does – provocatively – but not allowing her to touch. Doris has never seen a naked man and is such an innocent that Cody, naked and guilt-ridden, confesses he stole the antique forks. He removes them from his bag, hating himself, even crying.
Lilith arrives unannounced with groceries, furious to see a naked trespasser at Doris’ shack. Lilith orders him away. Cody doesn’t go. Lilith doesn’t really want him to. They fight their intense chemistry and attraction.
The next day, Doris wears a dress taped together of aluminum foil and uses Lilith’s car to try to get her job back at Target, to no avail.
At the shack, Lilith begins a secret affair with Cody.
The next morning, Cody tiptoes to Mike who is about to steal Lilith’s car and begs him to leave. Mike demands Cody phone him within two days with info on where to get money or he’ll kill Lilith and Doris.
Dubiously psychic, Doris hoodwinks Cody into a kiss insisting that is the only way that dead Marie, momentarily in Doris’s body, will forgive him and move on. Cody’s furious he was conned, grabs an axe — but he’s not violent. (He accidentally killed Marie in a motorcycle accident and simply cannot forgive himself.)
In the shack kitchen, Lilith packs her suitcase to leave when Doris flies in, screaming. Lilith protects Doris from furious Cody and Cody realizes Lilith is really Doris’s mother, but only after Lilith pushes Doris into another room so she won’t hear. Lilith confesses she was raped at 11 and dumped baby Doris in the forest to die, and can never tell her the truth because if Doris ends their relationship, pitiful Doris will have nobody in her life.
Doris is angry to be excluded from their conversation and swings the axe, destroying her beloved garden. Cody drives away. Lilith tries to stop Doris but Doris swings the axe at Lilith – missing her. The superstitious ladies (comically) force smiles between tree shadows, believing, “Don’t let the full moon catch you frowning or you face death in three days!” After the garden is destroyed and Doris pleads with Lilith that they share Cody, like they shared their childhood Man Toy doll, Lilith finally understands the depth of Doris’s loneliness and neglect. Lilith vows to find Doris a man – and a job – and asks for the treasured forks in exchange. Doris refuses to give up the forks.
Cody returns. Lilith sneaks to the basement. They make love.
The next day, Lilith sends Doris to apply as a chef at Neiman Marcus restaurant since it’s run by Mary-Ellen and Betsy Webber. Doris is initially hostile toward Betsy – but Betsy wins Doris over when she good-humorly mimics Doris’s runway walks and her poses for pretend paparazzi.
At the shack, Cody tries to get Lilith to run away with him – but she can’t leave Jon who pays for Doris’s shack and food. Cody and Lilith carry on their passionate affair despite Jon phoning and threatening to kill her if she ever sleeps with another man.
Cody secretly calls Mike and tells him to steal from Jon.
At her therapist’s office, Lilith reveals Cody had many chances to steal the car and escape but didn’t. Lilith realizes wherever he goes, his guilt will attract prison dynamics, so keeping him at the shack will serve everyone’s needs. Lilith plans to imprison Cody and make him their “man toy” – her love/sex slave at times – and the full-time companion that Doris needs.
Lilith returns to Jon’s ocean manor, lying that she has been working at the charity bakery. She and Jon have dinner with Mary-Ellen and her husband, Sal (the mean guard).
In the morning at her desk computer, Lilith finds out Cody is an escaped prisoner. The night before, she stashed Doris’s forks in Cody’s knapsack, knowing Cody would try to run to her, and Jon would pull him over in his police car, and find the forks, and interrogate him.
Everything goes exactly as Lilith planned, including her getting a moment alone with Cody handcuffed to the shack porch as Doris is inside cooking for Jon. Though Cody resists Lilith’s sting, he pretends he doesn’t know her when Jon has a gun to his head. When Jon insults Doris, Lilith secretly points the gun at Jon, but cannot kill him. Jon happily takes off with the forks (with the excuse that they must be out of the shack so Cody, Doris’s handyman, can’t steal them again).
Cody threatens to strangle Doris if Lilith doesn’t take the ankle monitor off him, but Lilith calls his bluff and leaves. Cody releases choking Doris, assuring her that he never meant to harm her.
Later at the ocean manor, Lilith, Jon, Mary-Ellen and Sal’s dinner is interrupted by a masked man (Cody? Pete? Mike?) who threatens them with Jon’s gun and steals from them. Sal shoots him from under the table. He shoots back paralyzing Jon. The robber dies. Lilith pulls off the mask grateful it is not Cody, but Mike.
The emergency room doctor explains Jon is paralyzed. Lilith realizes her wish that he never hit her again has been granted.
Lilith delivers building supplies to the shack, and over the next year, Cody renovates the shack, as well as his self-esteem. The three characters have become a loving family.
Lilith sneaks in the shack basement to make love with Cody but finds him asleep on the couch with Doris watching the TV news – which shows escaped Cody’s face – and his weeping relatives.
Guilt-ridden Lilith breaks down and sobs, asking her therapist if she should release Cody. The wounded, limping therapist pours them whiskey and says, “We are all prisoners. The trick is to make ourselves as comfortable as we can.”
The central question therefore is answered: “Yes, prisoners deserve comfort.” This is evident as Cody gardens alongside Doris, his body enjoying the warmth of the sun.
(PLEASE CLICK AND READ THE SCRIPT: GREAT DIALOGUE AND CHARACTERS.)