What is even more Inconceivable!

Now there is a spin-out from Inconceivable! titled The Pregnant Adventures of Helene Talos.  Will this action-packed screenplay about the transformation of a 30s NYC woman from hipster to momster find some traction on the path to a producer?  It is written as a classic 3-act script, 15 beats totaling 49 scenes, 67 pages, 51% dialogue.  All locations in NYC, strong female lead with diverse female supporting roles.  Feel good ending with a feel-good twist.  Perfectly packaged for a professional, prodigious producer.

Poster copy:  "Is it better to love or to be loved?"

There is a producer with rights of first look...truly, even more inconceivable!  What shall the next project be? Maybe a witch, a crime series, a dog movie  or something else equally and totally unthought of...

registered WGA 8/11/22

Inconceivable! once again way ahead of the news...

 The Las Vegas man accused of holding his girlfriend hostage, murdering her 4-year-old son and keeping his remains in the garage freezer now claims the boy’s mother aided in the cover-up.

Brandon Toseland, 35, has been charged with the murder of Mason Dominguez, child abuse, kidnapping and domestic violence after Mason’s mother, Dahsia Maldonado, snuck a note pleading for help to her 7-year-old daughter’s teachers in February.

From the NY Daily News, May 3, 2022

Contemporary drama with comedic and historic elements. Strong female lead and supporting roles

 

Book to Screen Submission

Title: Inconceivable!

Logline:  Inconceivable! is a contemporary drama with historic and comedic elements about Helene Talos, a young, married, soon-to-be mom in NYC who wants nothing more than to deliver a healthy baby and keep her athlete’s body at the same time. When she is assaulted by a new mother and the end of her first trimester, only a rare and dangerous medical procedure saves the baby. Helene is forced in her second trimester to keep still and “wrestle in bed” with visitors who have secrets, conflicts and opinions of their own.  Society’s expectations about the size, shape, and purpose of everyone’s breasts is subtly and cleverly layered throughout her encounters.

Inconceivable! is driven to its surprise hysterical conclusion by unforgettable female characters of all ages who want to help Helene, but they all have secrets, motivations, and breasts of their own…

…Not to mention her dazed and confused husband, Greco, who cannot wait to make cheese from her breast milk.

Genre: Contemporary drama with historical and comedic elements, featuring strong female lead and supporting roles.
A-list talent, big budget, international locations, no sex or violence.

Agent’s feedback:

“The strongest thing about Inconceivable! is that it takes a very singular issue, i.e. Helene and Greco’s anxiety about their pregnancy, and branches out from that into a detailed journey through their pasts and heritage. The method of using short chapters to juggle viewpoints from multiple characters works well and kept me interested throughout. I was impressed by the overall scope of the story and more specifically, by the skill with which the author has developed a dozen (or so!) key characters. By the epilogue, everything came together nicely and I wasn’t left wondering about loose ends. It’s an interesting story and fun to read!”

Bio: Steve Marshall Cohen began his writing career as a journalist, covering corporate finance, venture capital and entrepreneurship - where everything is researched, factual and technical, and where everything he wrote was published within a week.  He thought it would be fun to write fiction, where he could choose the topic, what to research and where he could take creative liberties with the facts.  Steve chose a common topic - pregnancy - and treated it in a uncommon way, seeking to fuse a journalist's training with a novelist's creativity.  The result is  Inconceivable!

Steve lives and writes in Hunter, NY in the literal shadow of Hunter Mountain, where sunset in the winter is about 3:30pm.  That means lots of long, cold winter nights in front of the fireplace and the keyboard.

Plot:  Helene learns she is pregnant and is at once over-joyed and over-whelmed.  Her loving husband Greco is over-joyed and under-prepared for the coming 40 weeks.  Their doctor requires that they complete a pre-natal questionnaire known as “The Family Pedigree Questionnaire” [“FPQ”].  Each question takes them on a different journey into the past, with its tear-jerking secrets, and soul changing conflicts.

Helene thinks she is Irish – she’s not, we find out when Greco returns from a sudden European trip.  Greco thinks he is Greek – he’s not, we find out when Shaina (Greco’s client) uncovers her own past in a world-war II orphanage in Ireland.

Characters:

·       Helene Talos, young, athletic mom-to-be, wife of
Greco.  Competitive amateur road-runner with flourishing career as a wig-designer for women with hair loss from chemo-therapy and other medical conditions. Also, glamour wig designer for theatrical productions, Broadway, fashion shoots.

·       Alais, her Irish, widowed, mother

·       Dr. Arnez, her also pregnant gynecologist

·       Dr. Portnoy, her indecipherable genetic specialist

·       Dr. CC, her high school friend and drug dealer

·       Shaina, a world leading fashion model, with Ph.d. in European history and a deep desire to be more than a clothes hanger.

·       Greco, Helen’s husband, a location scout for a large ad agency

·       Plexi, Greco’s uncle, manager of “Protector of Crete” diner in Queens, NY, holocaust survivor

·       Althea, Greco’s mother, a waitress at the diner, sister of Plexi

·       Little Flower, Greco’s colleague at the agency

·       Supporting roles of many ethnicities and races, including Rastafarian, Northern Irish, Eastern European, Southern Italian, Japanese, Transgender.

Note: This novel/script extremely timely now with its layers of breast-feeding, the role of breasts in self-esteem and racial disparities in NYC.

Status: Self-published novel with Amazon sales; uncirculated adapted screenplay.  Part II (“Born an Orphan”) & III (“Truth and Ruth”) of trilogy in progress.  Author also has TV series pitch deck ("Soon To Parent”) based on characters in the novel.

Contact:  Steve Marshall Cohen
smarshallcohen@usa.net
917 589 8862

 

Alternate Log lines:

Inconceivable! by Steve Marshall Cohen

(A)

Inconceivable! is a contemporary drama with historic and comedic elements about Helene Talos, a young mother to be in NYC who faces the challenges of her pregnancy – assault, genetic risks, generational secrets, and conflicted doctors and  friends – while her husband’s job sends him around the world with a gorgeous super-model who knows beauty is only skin deep.  As her due date approaches, her prenatal classmate threatens to destroy everything she did to protect her baby. 

(B)

Wanting to know the gender of their baby, Helene and Greco Talos, a 30something NYC couple, go the gyn for a test.  Giving “informed consent” for the procedure provokes a chain of events that reveals no one in either family is who they think they are. Over 10 full moons, Helene struggles with family, drugs, and self-esteem as her body changes.  Greco loves her new body, especially her bigger breasts, even though he works with super-models all day.

After 40 weeks, all exhibit high anxiety when the baby refuses to be born on schedule.

Contemporary drama with comedic and historic elements. Strong female leads and supporting characters for women aged 20 to 70. 

Inconceivable!  by Steve Marshall Cohen

(C)

The simple desire of a conflicted young mother in NYC, Helene Talos, to know the gender of her unborn, sets off an inconceivable chain of events, involving genetic research, super-models, medical miracles and a celebration of a little-known chapter in Irish history.  Her dazed and dizzy husband Greco does his best to keep up, but Helene’s adventures lead to dangerous circumstances for both, especially in the last days before the due date.

Inconceivable! is a contemporary drama that covers on trend issues including pregnancy, genetic science, homelessness, orphans, and the aftermath of WWII.  And throughout, Inconceivable! has a keen focus on women’s breasts – their size, shape, and function in contemporary culture.

 

Contact Steve Marshall Cohen
smarshallcohen@usa.net
917 589 8862

Inconceivable! has it all

 Like the long cool woman in a black dress, Inconceivable! has it all.  Ukraine history, birth, death, female lead with female supporting roles - an androgynous genetic counselor, a Barbra Streisand impersonator, a mother who breastfeeds in public - while smoking and drinking! - and a breast cancer survivor.  All woven together so subtly that you hardly know you've just seen all that! Plus, karaoke and comic relief.  Current and timeless at the same time.  When Inconceivable! comes to the screen, viewers will agree Inconceivable! has it all. 

Flashback to Eastern Ukraine:

integral scene in Inconceivable!

Producers, if you want a movie with a relevant Ukraine component, read Inconceivable!

Authentic flashback scenes to the annihilated village of Lubomyl in 1941.  

Written long before the currrent war...

Inconceivable! You can read the script here:

 https://www.inktip.com/script/1h6im3u_inconceivable-by-steve-marshall-cohen

Inconceivable! Perfect for Untitled Entertainment to executive produce!

 

• Hard to tell from the logline, but Inconceivable! features a leading character who is a super-model played against type -- Shaina Jaantee is drop-dead gorgeous, but at the same time. a student of World War II history, brilliantly entrepreneurial, interested in the history of fashion, and produces a show in Ireland focused-on the lost fashions and culture of Eastern Europe before World War I.  (How timely!)
• 
  
• Untitled Entertainment, founded by Weinberg and Stephanie Simon, has offices in New York, Los Angeles and London, representing top talent including Madonna, Britney Spears, Kylie Minogue and Jared Leto; fashion figures Christie Brinkley, Naomi Campbell and Joan Smalls, and actors Jane Fonda, Naomi Watts, Uma Thurman and Penélope Cruz.

There are numerous roles for females of all ages -- all the leading characters are female and all are feel-good roles -- except for the villain, Dr. CC, who lives to prescribe!

C'mon UE -- option it!

Synopsis of Inconceivable! Available to Big Budget Film Producers. Completed script available via Ink Tip platform.

 Synopsis of Inconceivable! by Steve Marshall Cohen

Time and Place: 1999, New York City
Genre: Contemporary Drama with historic and comedic elements
Leading role: Helene Talos, early 30s, athletic, wig designer by trade, married, pregnant

Helene Talos is frantic, buying pregnancy and childcare books at Barnes & Noble on 5^th Ave in Manhattan.  When she gets outside, she is overcome with emotion, spins the bags around her and the books fly out, hitting pedestrians, taxicabs and a baby in a stroller.  She is arrested for assault and her husband Greco must bolt from a business meeting to bail her out at Midtown South.  That’s when she tells him she’s pregnant. No one presses charges and she is released.

The next morning, they go to her gyn, Dr. Edie Arnez who asks them to give “informed consent” for a medical procedure.  But neither can answer the required questions about their ancestry.  Helene’s father committed suicide, and her mother refuses to say why.  Greco confronts his mother at the Greek diner where she is waitress, but she refuses to reveal the truth about his father, who he has never known. Her uncle backs her up.

Greco Talos is a location scout for an ad agency. He is assigned to accompany Shaina Jaantje, a world-famous super model, on a location shoot in Ireland. Due to volcanic ash in the atmosphere, the flight is diverted from Dublin to Berlin. Greco seizes the chance to follow-up on clues to his background, leaving Shaina stranded in Dublin and Helene in NYC, pregnant, conflicted and pregorexic (anorexia while pregnant). In an annihilated village (shtetl) in the Pale region of Ukraine, Greco meets Hershl Chosid, the local historian, who tells him the story of Herman Peltze, via flashback.

FLASHBACK TO EASTERN UKRAINE, 1944

How Helene’s father escaped the massacre of his shtetl. Betrayal…

FLASHBACK TO DUBLIN, IRELAND, 1945

How Helene’s father and mother met and married.  Irish love story…

Shaina uses her time in Ireland to research local history. [Shaina is played against type: the is drop-dead super-model, and deeper, highly intelligent and entrepreneurial, with a keen interest in World War II history and culture].  She brings her entourage to Clonyn Castle, which had a past as an orphanage after WWII.  Her boytoy Irish lad is so in love with her, he visits a synagogue in Cork to find out more about the orphans.   [Script note: for the role, import an unknown, young, red head, Irish Catholic actor and make him a break-out international star!] After attending a sabbath service at a Jewish synagogue in Cork, he learns how 100 Jewish orphans lived at the castle in his village.  One resident orphan was Shaina’s father – others  were Greco’s uncle and his mother.

When Greco finally gets to Ireland, he makes a radical proposal to Shaina – that they both abandon the Irish tourist campaign and instead, charter trips following the path of the orphans from the battlefields and concentration camps of Poland and Ukraine to the castle in Westmeath and then to NYC.  In a quintessential Irish pub in Westmeath, Ireland, she agrees and carries the plan back to her client in Dallas.

Meanwhile, back in NYC, Helene goes for a morning bike ride and CRASHES! Nearly killing an infant and killing a puppy.  She is assaulted by the enraged new mom, triaged at the scene, and undergoes emergency surgery to save the fetus and her own life.  [This is played for tears, as classic operating room drama, with beeping monitors, dripping IVs, sweaty brows – all women. [Female surgeon is hero!]

Complete bed rest is prescribed, so Helene pretends to stay in but, but has a series of visitors at her too-small lower east side Manhattan doorman apartment.  Dr Coeyman brings drugs, her mother brings organic tea but refuses to tell the truth, Madama Bernardaud, a high-society wig client who reveals her double-mastectomy when asked about breast-feeding. Dr. Portnoy, the androgynous genetic counselor confronts Helene with her tox screen – it’s filled with “unknowns” from Dr. CC. Helene must get clean now! or the baby might have birth defects.

Her high school best friend who is now a “pain doctor” who lives to prescribe.  Dr. CC is the villain, always lurking, ready to supply Helene with any and every drug throughout her pregnancy.  [She appears while Helene is in labor, offering an injection to ease her pain.]

Starting the third trimester, they go to a pre-natal seminar and meet Shayla Willians, who desperately needs scalp medication and a wig. She turns out to be another threat to Helene’s pregnancy, with just ten weeks to go.  Helene and Greco visit Shayla’s’ slum apt in Harlem to give her a new “do” when, EXPLOSION!  Greco is the hero, running into the burning building to pull Helene and Shayla downstairs before the roof collapses on them. No time to grab the cocaine Shayla left in the apartment. [Foreshadow – cocaine addicted baby.]

They are still in search of the reason for Helene’s father’s suicide – they search her childhood home and find the answer!  In a closet in a sealed box marked Casa Susanna are pictures of her father cross-dressed as Connie Francis.  Daddy was a tranny in the 50’s – unbearable embarrassment for Helene’s mother.  Helene knows exactly how to confront her mother now – she calls a client and sets up a date for a night at Lucky Chengs, a world-famous NYC drag bar and cabaret.  Her mother FAINTS! when Barbra Streisand turns out to be a man, but now she is willing to admit the truth.

Helene feels no contractions as the pregnancy matures to 40 weeks.  On the tenth full moon she convinces Greco to go for a MOONDANCE!, where she will dance naked in the moonlight, hoping the lunar pull at full moon-high tide will act on her own water.  Homeless men gather ‘round her in the dark – in a FLASH! they have Greco’s face in the frozen mud and are threatening Helene.  One of the homeless men looks vaguely familiar – have they met before? The threat dissolves into help the couple get home safely.  But – still, after all that stress, no symptoms of imminent birth.

They are still in search of the reason for Greco’s mother’s secrecy about her husband, Greco’s father. With the photos he got from Shaina’s trip to Clonyn Castle, he confronts his mother and uncle in the basement of their diner.  She confesses: Talos is an adopted name; the family is Ashkenazi from the Pale and her husband was a crown heights orthodox jew killed in Viet Nam, never knowing he was a father-to-be.  His mother dated just this once and never again.

DECEPTION! Dr CC sneaks into Helene’s labor room to give her an powerful injection to ease the delivery.  Dr Arnez enters just in time to prevent the injection – a tense confrontation over who’s drugs are better! 

EMERGENCY! Shayla goes into labor when she learns her boyfriend Cedric has been killed in a tragic traffic accident. She’s gurneyed into the delivery room just before Dr. Arnez’s water breaks – and Helene is still getting nowhere.  After hours of pitocin drip, she feels deepening contractions and now all three women are in the delivery room at the same time: Dr. Arnez delivering the drug-addicted baby, Dr. Arnez having her own contractions and Helene on the bed, but still not dilating! Tragically, Shayla lives only long enough to glimpse her baby for a moment and to hear it scream the pain of withdrawal.

KARAOKE to the rescue! Greco enters the delivery room in scrubs and performs “Dizzy”.  [Tommy Roe, 1969] The laughter causes convulsions and – finally -- baby Truth crowns! Moments later, Dr. Arnez lies down, and her baby comes!  That is one busy delivery room! Exhausted nurses congratulate themselves – 3 babies delivered in 10 minutes!

The next morning, Helene’s reluctance to breastfeed has vanished and she leaves the hospital with Greco, and an infant at each breast – her white baby Truth and black baby Ruth, whose parents Shayla and Cedric are dead.  To all friends and relatives gathered in the hospital lobby, Helene shouts “Twins!”   Her neighbors on the Lower East Side, led by her tipsy doorman, meet them at the sidewalk and sing Handel’s Hallelujah! Chorus, KARAOKE style. She exits the NYPD squad car driven by the same cop who arrested her in Scene 1.

THE END

EPILOGUE

INSERT SERIES OF SCENES THAT WRAP-UP ALL THE SUPPORTING ROLES IN A PRETTY BOW AS THE CREDITS ROLL.  THESE ARE POIGNANT AND FUNNY.

 

Contact: Steve Marshall Cohen, 917 589 8862, smarshallcohen@usa.net

 

 

LA Feature Film Producer seeking high concept, dramatic A-list finished scripts, consider Inconceivable!

 

Inconceivable!

Central Crisis: Helene Talos, a married young mother to be, wants her baby but doesn’t want to gain weight, eat better, get off drugs, breast-feed or slow down her competitive business or amateur running career.  In nine months, Helene deals with pregorexia (fear of gaining weight during pregnancy), assault, high risk pre-natal surgery, the secrets her mother kept from her, lice, explosions and her karaoke-prone husband, Greco.

Main Character: Helene Talos, 30s successful wig designer to the stars and upper elites of society. Married to Greco, a location scout for a large NY advertising agency.  The typical double-income, no kids couple go the gyn for a first trimester check-up and the secrets of their ancestors begin to emerge.  Genetic counseling from an androgynous therapist helps Helene develop into a proud mother of inter-racial twins.

General Setting and tone: Inconceivable! is set in 1999 in New York City.  It has the tone of Moonstruck mixed with As Good as it Gets and a little When Harry Met Sally.  There are also historic elements and diverse female supporting roles. (Sequels take place in 2001, when the towers fall on the new parents and the last of the trilogy in 2005, when the twins start school.)

Status: completed screenplay Inconceivable! based on self-published novel with the same title. Can share script instantaneously via Ink Tip platform.