Shannon Ryun, Screenwriter

Faultless

2008-09-16T03:50:00.000-07:00

My very first screenplay and it's never been completely finished....someday, someday...

Sci-fi feature length screenplay about a small town discovery, the lengths they will go to hide their secret and one woman's obsession to find the truth.

hmmm...on re-reading that I realise it says absolutely nothing...

Read first 10 pages.

Dreams & White Horses

2008-09-15T20:38:00.000-07:00

Lesbian Sci-fi fantasy novel.

Someone ask me the other day – ‘If you are a writer and a lesbian…Shannon, how come you’ve never written a love story?” I had to laugh, because this was obviously from someone who’s never read any of my scripts, as all of these ‘stories’ are ultimately a love story in one way or another. Billy ends up with the ‘french fry girl’ in MEN IN THE PILLOW. In SHOOT THE MOON, Jeff ultimately falls in love with his family. Even Sarah, in MODEL FAMILY is in love - she’s in love with her family and her world and doesn’t want to lose it.

But, okay…I got the point - how come I’ve never written a Lesbian Love Story and I thought about it and decided – okay, why not a lesbian love story….but not just any lesbian love story. It has to be the best lesbian love story…thus Dreams and White Horses was born.

Three things I love are: anything mystical and magical (i.e. psychic phenomenon, paranormal, spiritism), women, and sci-fi (not necessarily in that order). The thought that I might combine them all into a great lesbian love story seemed rather challenging but I thought I might be up to the task.

Seeing as I’ve always loved Jean Auel’s ‘Clan of the Cave Bear’ and that whole entire series, which although considered historical fiction one can draw out a whole lot of conclusions from her main character, the first ‘white person’, the first Anglo Saxon – what about the first lesbian Jean! She was stronger, athletic, smarter and well, let’s face it she was a lesbian. 

Also, fascinated by Jane Roberts ‘The Seth Material’ and all of that series including Jane’s books she wrote (minus Seth) such as ‘The Education of Oversoul 7’ I thought what better way to incorporate all of these things into a love story than combine all these elements of historical time and places, up to and including now and then include such things as the future and parallel universes as in an ‘Overlord 7’ type fashion, where the main characters meet up with each other as different recarnational lives throughout time and beyond….

Our characters are SoulMates destined to meet throughout time – a world away and sometimes only 2 doors down. Sometimes they meet up and sometimes they don’t and sometimes they get it just right. Mind you throughout time sometimes they are male/female, sometimes they are female/female, so it doesn’t make for a total lesbian love story, but it’s close.

It also enable me to incorporate several small short stories that I had, into a complete narrative but combining them all into a theme – that these 2 soul mates, live many lives and yet still seem to be drawn to each other in each life.

More later on Dreams…

Model Family

2008-09-15T19:37:00.000-07:00

This is my newest brainstorm from my insanely non stop, madly working mind.

I got this idea from an episode of ‘Dr Who,’ which is absolutely the best television series ever made. The new stuff is even better than the old. I am not one to pinch ideas and though the episode of which I speak, did indeed have a character much like the one in Model Family the episode was not centred entirely around this theme. If you watch ‘Dr. Who’ you know that there are many stories within stories – thus, I think making for much better viewing, than your typical tv series. However, I do like to give credit where credit is due and this was the direct inspiration for ‘Sarah Smiles.’

Sarah, is your typical 8 year old girl. She lives with her mother and her father and her brother in a beautiful suburban home. She goes to school, plays with her friends, plays video games, does her homework, sometimes gets in trouble, has more fun getting her brother in trouble and has just discovered that her life isn’t real.

Sarah is a character in her real human mother’s virtual reality game called ‘Model Family.’ When Pam Darby exits the game, Sarah, her family, and her world cease to exist. Armed with this discovery Sarah, will do anything in her power to convince her mother never to exit the game…even if it means murder! Pray this little girl never make it out into reality…. or we could all be ‘deleted.’

Feature Screenplay

Currently in development.

ABOVE the LAW

2008-09-15T18:30:00.000-07:00

(Tentative name until I can think of a better one)

In the tradition of Angelheart, this story is about Nick, a no nonsense cop. When his partner K.C. is violently murdered he’ll stop and nothing to find her killer. When he is arrested for her murder, he escapes. Now wanted my the mob, police and FBI, and the killer he begins to question his own sanity: Is K.C. sending him messages from the ‘otherside’ or is she possibly still alive? Will he be able to find the truth and if so will he be able to accept it, even if it means facing the truth about himself?

Feature screenplay.

First draft near completion.

Read first 10 pages.

Because, we are best friends…

2008-09-15T18:22:00.000-07:00

(previously titled ‘Jess & Kit’)
Comedy/drama

Two best friends, who grew up together in the same small town meet up 15 years later. Jessica (Jess) Whitaker, is now a rising star in the country music scene, Kit has stayed and turned her family home into a bed and breakfast. When Jess and her band play the hometown, the popular band find the hotel has overbooked its fans – Jess has a perfect idea…they’ll stay at Kit’s – only thing is, Kit’s Bed and Breakfast, is a Bed and Breakfast for lesbians….

This is an insight into straight women versus gay women and the hilarious differences between them. It is also a heart warming story about two best friends’ who become estranged, meet up years later, they fight, they bicker, they remember why they became estranged in the first place. Then they discover hidden truths and find the true meaning of friendship.

This feature screenplay is currently in development.

Niko

2008-09-02T08:10:00.001-07:00

GENRE: Post-Apocalyptic Fiction - Short Animation

LOGLINE: In a post-apocalyptic world where man has been wiped off the face of the earth, NIKO, a crash dummy ponders the questions of his existence; after the horrifying discovery of what man created him for.

ShOOt the mOOn

2008-09-02T08:06:00.000-07:00

GENRE: Mockumentary - Feature Screenplay 120 pages

LOGLINE: A mockumentary about a filmmaker down on his luck who decides to make an adult film and the obstacles he must overcome to finish the film.

The Thing I Wrote Yesterday...

2008-08-31T18:12:00.000-07:00

I Need Something...

(another random writing - not sure what it means...)

I need something. A need, unexplained. A longing, but for what I am unsure. I’d like to backtrack but looking back never accomplishes anything. But, somehow I feel the answer is there, in the past, a small detail I overlooked. It’s in the shadows, waiting. What is it?

A small girl appears out of the shadows of an overgrown elm. She looks and smiles. A knowing smile.

Do you know what it is I want?

She giggles, a girlish giggle like 20 thousand bubbles bursting.

The wind blows and I face it, close my eyes and let it drift over me. There is singing In the wind. What are they singing, who is singing and what are they saying? Dear wind tell me.

I open my eyes and look at the shadow of the tree, the young girl is gone. Leaves blow and branches rustle in the breeze.

The hunger grows. I know not what I hunger for. Like a ship aiming for a beacon of light up ahead. I see the light but know not where I am going or why. There is no beacon of light in my case, I am wandering aimless through this ocean of thirst, and quenched I can not become as I know not what it is I desire.

The little girl knew. She knew what it was I wanted. But where did she go?

I run into the shade of the old tree. Blackness surrounds me. My eyes quickly adjust and I am in an old house with solid walls and furniture. I know this house. I grew up here. The dust is thick with age. This house can not be here, nor would it look the same if it was, dust or not, the edges are too clean and too exact. Many lives would have been lived within these walls if it were the real house. And the furniture would not be the ones I grew up with and yet….here it is. Aged only with time, not change.

Is what I am looking for here? I wasn’t going to look backwards and whatever I am longing for is something, I am sure, that will push me forward but here I am. I search the room of my past but see nothing I can sink my teeth into. Yes, it’s familiar and nostalgic and though odd, I am comforted somehow. But these are things, only things – what I am looking for is not touchable, of this I am sure.

I walk across the carpet of my past and out the door.

I find myself in a large city surrounded my busy people who don’t see me. They only see there own longing. I am overwhelmed by the storm of business and rush and their desire to get to wherever it is they must get to. I feel dizzy and the large building sways above me like palm trees in the wind. A man bumps into me and makes no excuses. What excuse could he give? I am stationary in a moving world that only flows well if it keeps moving or if chaos abounds. I suppose I should get in the river and flow – I turn and fall into soldier like steps in a rush to get nowhere.

As I walk, the world begins to blur and my feet no longer stomp a military beat of the business man but they glide effortlessly, carrying my body with them. I am on an escalator, everywhere around me people carry luggage. I carry none. This is an airport, final destinations, confusion and lay overs are painted thick here. Apparently I am going somewhere, destination unknown. I fold my arms across my chest and allow the metal treadmill to carry me. I go through a carwash, a hospital nursery ripe with overflowing newborns in incubators and hospital equipment. I move through a night club where some black guys sing the blues with banjos and harmonicas, I wave as I pass them. On through a jungle, a large cat in a tree eyes me, then yawns. The escalator runs out at a library.

I sit at a table with a few studious sorts. They don’t move an inch in my direction, they are totally absorbed in their books and study. I pick up a hard cover book in front of me on the table. It has no title. I open it up and there is only one small word type across one page as I open it. “WORD”. That’s all it says. I say it out loud.

“Word”

I repeat it louder. “Word’. A few eyeball me and turn away as if to avoid the crazy person at their table.

I look around me and all words, ever sign, every single place that a letter might dwell – on covers of books, on the fire instructions on the wall – all have been replaced by the word, ‘Word’.

Is what I am looking for a word? No, not a word but like a word, words are symbols, yes, I am looking for something that is only a symbol, a representation, something that has no real meaning, yet means everything. What is it?

I stand up and walk down an isle lined with shelves of books and I yell at the top of my lungs in the quiet sanctuary…………"WORD!" And As I yell the word, my head leans back and I see the stain glass window of a large cathedral, religious icons etched in glass and color, saints and monks and men in robes posed in peaceful gracefulness. When I lower my head to its normal resting spot I am in an ancient church, abandoned and left to ruin. I search the tattered pews until I make my way to the alter where a decaying jesus has been left to crumple and fall apart, there will be no resurrection for this statue. It’s eyes raised to signify its resignation at a world that tortured it’s only god. The walls begin to crack and fall away. The stain glass window above me shatters into millions of little glass snowflakes that sparkle as they fall like dust rainbows.

When the church has totally disintegrated I am standing on a sand dune in the desert. Only sand and a glaring sun for miles and miles. I sit down, for where am I going to go from here? I pick up a handful of sand and let if fall through my fingers. TIME. Time is like sand through your hand, words are just symbols. I write the word, 'WORD' in the sand with my finger. The sand only caves in and erases the words as soon as I write each letter. Time erases words and words are timeless. Voiced words. What it is? What is this? Sand begins to fall from the sky like rain, it is falling heavy and fast, I try to get up but the weight brings me back down…I look up and the sand begins to fill my mouth and nose and ears, I am being buried alive. I can’t breath except for the sand, it feels like sandpaper in my throat. Paper…you write words on paper, sand is like time…my time is surely running out. I start to claw my way to the surface, I gasp for air. I spit out the sand that is consuming me…the sand falling turns to rain, the sand below me turns to water and I am cleansed. Treading water in the middle of the ocean. I swirl around but see no land anywhere. I squirt the water between my teeth to rinse the sand out. I dunk my head under and wet my hair, then come up and swirl the hair out of my eyes in one fellow swoop.

I lay on my back and stare at the blue cloudless sky.

Hanging By a Thread

2008-08-31T18:08:00.001-07:00

This was my very first completed screenplay optioned by a Hollywood production Company in 1998.

Genre: Sci-Fi Feature Screenplay.

Short Synopsis:

Beneath

2008-08-31T18:07:00.003-07:00

Lemonade & Tequila

2008-08-31T18:07:00.001-07:00

GENRE: Short Animation

LOGLINE: About a quirky girl, lost love, living with housemates and an unlikely hero. Based on the poem of the same name by Sean M. Whelan.

L&T has its own blog here.

Men In the Pillow

2008-08-31T18:06:00.000-07:00

GENRE: Children's Drama - Feature Screeplay

LOGLINE: Meet Billy Hayden, a boy with an illness who escapes the confines of his bedroom - without ever even leaving it.

Read first 22 pages.

Droolings of a Madwoman

2008-08-31T17:43:00.001-07:00

by Shannon Ryun

This is not a screenplay - just random writing...or rambling droolings...

READ first 4 chapters here

2008-08-31T17:10:00.000-07:00

BENEATH by 28 Bunches of Rhubarb written, produced and directed by Shannon Ryun

The Vanquished by Shannon Ryun

2008-08-31T16:21:00.000-07:00

It's not a Revolution - It's an Evolution."
Are you ready for it?

This is Shannon's Newest Feature Screenplay 120 pages.

In the very near future, war and global warming is destroying earth. Nine Psychics unite upon a mission of peace. They don’t go inward to seek metaphysical alliance and peace – they go outward into space. What they find and bring back is much worse than any war.

Nine uniquely different Psychics, one with a gambling problem, one is a mountain recluse, an average housewife, a child genius, a lunatic, a man on a suicide mission, a voice without a face, a college student, and a murderer. Make up this coalition of soothsayers to try an experiment that has never been tried, instead of seeking inner knowledge and intuition to bring aid to the world crisis – they embark on an outward journey. They leave their bodies behind and project themselves out into the great unknown. Their aim to gain knowledge, perhaps encounter a new race. What they find on their journey and what they absorb through their unique abilities will change everything.

“It’s not a Revolution – It’s an Evolution.” Are you ready for it?

This is a high concept film with a mid thirties lead female role and ensemble cast. It’s a futuristic, suspense, paranormal, supernatural, character driven, dramatic thriller. THE USUAL SUSPECTS meets THE X-FILES type mystery with a twist at the end.

WGAe 155271

READ 3 page synopsis here

READ first 10 pages of screenplay here.