The Vanisher

(Writer's Guild of America Registration Number: I208345)

Attention Filmmakers!

I am looking for a filmmaker to produce my latest screenplay, The Vanisher. It is the story of John Vander, a resident of Manhattan who tires of being constantly harassed by homeless people and develops the ability to make them disappear. John begins a personal crusade to clean up the streets of New York City by "vanishing" people, until he is vanished himself and is exiled with all the people he made disappear, whom he must now help escape before they kill him.  

The script is a bit short and not mainstream enough for a major studio, but it is very high quality and would be the kind of project that receives high acclaim at film festivals. This is the perfect script for an independent filmmaker looking to get noticed, and it is my goal to find the one ambitious enough to turn this script into a work of art.

If you are interested in reading the treatment and the script, click here to visit The Vanisher main page. For any additional information, please feel free to contact me at rdaub82@gmail.com.

Click here to download PDF of "The Vanisher" treatment and full screenplay (96 kb)

Treatment:

John Vander is the editor of a pharmaceutical trade journal. He lives in Greenwich Village with his wife, who is attending NYU Law School, and their three year old son J.J.

   John walks J.J. to pre-school every morning through the streets of Greenwich Village, and every morning they encounter the same homeless man ("Jim") sitting in the same doorway. Every day Jim asks John for money, and every day John tries to ignore him. Eventually John gets fed up with this ritual and gives Jim five dollars to go somewhere else. Jim agrees and gets up and goes. The next morning, however, Jim is right back in the same spot. John becomes very annoyed and tells him that if he's there again the next morning, he is going to find a cop and have him removed for good.

   That afternoon after work, John steps out of the subway station and is confronted by a man who demands money from him. This man is relentless and follows John and yells at him for stepping on his turf and starts demanding five dollars. John tries to ignore him but says to himself, "Go away, you piece of shit" while walking away. When John no longer hears the guy yelling after him, he turns around to see that the guy is no longer there. No one is behind him, and he looks around a little bit in the doorways and around the corner, but the guy is nowhere to be found.

   That evening, John and Rebecca are in bed and John says he thinks he made a man disappear and tells her about the walk home from the subway. Rebecca doesn't believe him and says that the guy probably just ducked into a building or an alley. John realizes that he sounds foolish and tells her that she's probably right, but he still inwardly believes that he was responsible for making the man disappear.

   The next morning, Jim the homeless guy is there again. John confronts him and tells him he is going to find a cop, but Jim refuses to leave and tells John to do what he has to do. John walks away with J.J. to find a cop, but after taking a few steps, J.J. looks back and sees that the man has disappeared. John turns around to see that he is no longer there. They go back to the doorway and see the guy's stained coffee cup that still has change in it and some other miscellaneous possessions, but the man is nowhere to be found.

   That evening in bed, Rebecca sarcastically asks John if he made anyone disappear today. This annoys John and he says "No". He doesn't say another word about it, but he has trouble falling asleep. He eventually goes out to the living room and turns on the TV and starts watching Death Wish. He sees Charles Bronson shooting a mugger and then the scene where the cops are talking about how the crime rate in the city has dropped and how it is safer than it has been in a long time with the vigilante still on the loose.

   The next day when John is walking J.J. to school, Jim the homeless guy is no longer there. The coffee cup is still there, but it is tipped over and the change that was in it is gone.

   Later that day, John calls Rebecca before leaving work and tells her that he has to stay late at the office. However, he leaves the office at the usual time, and instead of taking his regular train home, he takes the downtown 4 train to the end of the line at Utica Avenue in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. He starts wandering around near the projects looking for signs of trouble, and he eventually encounters a man yelling at a woman pushing a stroller about how she doesn't show him any respect. The woman tells him that she would respect him more if he got a job and used what little money they had to buy food and pay the rent instead of buying jewelry and hanging out on the street. The man gets even angrier and yells at her some more about how he commands respect on the street but can't even get respect from his own "bitch." John is watching and is disgusted by this display and makes the guy disappear. The woman was walking away when it happened and she didn't seem to notice.

   John walks around Crown Heights some more, now emboldened to the point where he makes eye contact with every guy who is dressed like a gangsta rapper. Eventually some guy dressed in gang colors ("Nass") takes offense to his stare and pulls a knife on John, and John makes him disappear.

   The following Saturday John is taking J.J. to the playground. On the way they see a homeless man urinating in a doorway. John confronts the man, who in turn curses John out, prompting John to make him disappear. John then asks J.J. if he saw the man disappear, and J.J. says he did and asks where the man went. John says he doesn't know, but tells J.J. not to mention it to Mommy. When they get home, however, J.J. blurts out that he and Daddy saw a man disappear. Rebecca looks at John suspiciously and asks what J.J. is talking about, but John says he doesn't know and downplays the incident. However, John is clearly affected by what he has done and goes into the bathroom to avoid any further questions from Rebecca.

   Summer eventually turns to fall, and John continues to make people he sees on the streets who are doing bad things disappear: drug pushers, muggers, a man he sees slap a woman, someone running from the police, etc. This goes on until the winter holidays.

   One day on his way home from work, John encounters a strung out woman panhandling on the subway claiming that her building burned down and that she needs money so her kids won't have to sleep out in the cold that night. John is disgusted by this and makes her disappear. The other passengers in the car are ignoring her and don't notice that she has disappeared. However, a man standing near John leans over and says in his ear, "I saw what you just did." John pretends not to know what the man is talking about and hurriedly gets off the train at the next stop, but the man follows him. John finally stops and asks the man what he wants, and the man explains that he can't just vanish people whenever he wants. This man also has the ability to make people disappear, and he explains to John his own struggles of how he has come to terms with this ability that he now sees as a curse. John is not impressed and tries to walk away, but the man says that John must answer for what he has done to the woman and anyone else he made disappear.

   The man vanishes John, who suddenly finds himself in an abandoned subway tunnel trapped with all the people he made disappear. After a few of them recognize him as the man who made them disappear, they assume a mob mentality and want to kill him. But Jim the homeless guy is there and calms them down by explaining that because John is the one who sent them there, he is the only one who can get them out.

   Jim and John then talk privately, and Jim tells John the story about how he became homeless. John realizes that Jim is not a bad person, but someone who has made some mistakes that led him to homelessness. They figure out that in order to send everyone back, John has to understand the people and what led them to the behavior that John witnessed and made him angry. It was John's anger that enabled him to send them here, and it is his compassion that will enable him to send them back.

   John's newfound compassion reverses the process and sends Jim back. The others notice that Jim is gone and demand that John send them back to. Nass in particular is ready to kill him if he doesn't send him back, but the others convince Nass to give John a chance. John offers to talk to Nass first. Nass tells John that his father left before he was born, his mother was a crackhead, and that he was raised on the street by gang members, who were the only people who cared about him. That is enough for John to feel the compassion necessary to send him back.

   After everyone is sent back, John is left alone in the tunnel. He's not sure how to send himself back, but then a train appears at the end of the tunnel. John tries to run in order to avoid being struck, but he is not fast enough to get away. Just before being struck, John sees that the train is being driven by the man in the subway who had sent him there. At the moment the train is about to strike, everything whites out.

   An alarm clock goes off. John is back home in bed and lets the alarm go off until Rebecca finally asks if he is going to get up and take J.J. to school. John gets out of bed, gets dressed, and gets J.J. ready for school.

   On the way to school, they encounter Jim the homeless guy back in his old spot. Jim does not ask for money, but John takes out all the money in his wallet and hands it to J.J., instructing him to put it in Jim's change cup. John tells Jim that he hopes he uses the money to get back on his feet, and Jim says that he will.

   John and J.J. continue on their way, and J.J. looks back and sees that the man is still there. He then turns to John and asks him if he is going to make the man disappear again, and John says he isn't going to make anyone disappear anymore.