Thursday, April 18, 2024
Monday, April 15, 2024
Tuesday, October 24, 2023
Friday, August 12, 2022
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
Tuesday, May 3, 2022
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
Monday, May 2, 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