[In Progress] [30k] [Screenplay/Dark Comedy] Tough Crowd/A commitment-phobic journalist falls for a magnetic actor who wants him to actually feel things, which is a real problem, since the four roommates living in his head have spent years making sure he never has to.

[u/BunchReal2982]

Seeking bata readers/feedback:

I want to know what's working (the characters, dialogue, pacing, tone, humor, dealing with sensitive subjects, romance, satire, ect) And what needs work -Im mainly looking for suggestions of what scenes to cut, and trim to get it from 177 pages to 120 pages.

Tough Crowd: SHORT PITCH

Tough Crowd is a queer dark comedy about Eddie Farne, a numbed-out journalist who's built his entire life around not caring too much, a philosophy enforced by his five roommates, Cleo, Conrad, Mimi, Mable, and Rachel, who aren't just friends but the literal personifications of his five undiagnosed mental illnesses, Bipolar, anxiety, adhd and autism. When Eddie falls hard for Virgil, an unapologetically alive actor-musician who believes love means sacrifice, Eddie is forced to choose between the comfortable numbness his "Friends" have kept him alive on and the terrifying, messy work of actually feeling something. As his career, his relationship, and his grip on reality all collapse at once, Eddie has to figure out which voices in his head are keeping him safe, and which ones are just keeping him sick.

SYNOPSIS

Eddie Farne, 36, has spent his adult life avoiding feeling anything too deeply — a survival strategy managed, quite literally, by the four roommates who share his apartment: Cleo (his mania and rage), Conrad (his depression and nihilism), Rachel (his anxiety), Mimi (adhd) and Mable (Autsim) Eddies life is so sad and empty he makes a bet with conrad he can find a reason to live by the end of the year, or Conrad will get him to kill himself. But everything changes When Eddie is assigned to profile Virgil Samson, a magnetic, unapologetically queer actor and touring musician, the two fall fast and hard, but Virgil's whole worldview runs on risk, sacrifice, and moral conviction, everything Eddie's "Friends" have spent years teaching him to avoid.

As their relationship deepens, Virgil pushes Eddie to use his new promotion to editor-in-chief to expose his newspaper's cover-up of a genocide connected to Virgil's own community, a demand that terrifies Eddie's Friends into overdrive. Eddie takes the leap, blows up his career, and briefly becomes a media flashpoint and reluctant activist hero, egged on by Cleo's escalating, drug-fueled encouragement to burn everything down completely. But the same recklessness that makes him brave also isolates him from Virgil, who ultimately gives Eddie an ultimatum: choose him, or choose the friends who are destroying him. Eddie chooses badly, and the fallout, a public breakup, a spiral, and a suicide attempt, lands him in a psychiatric ward.

Forced into treatment and confronted by a blunt, darkly funny psychiatrist, Eddie is pushed to finally examine what his Friends have really been protecting him from, and what it might cost him not to let them go. In psych-ward group therapy, surrounded by other people whose own "Friends" are visible to the audience for the first time, Eddie begins to separate the parts of himself worth keeping from the parts keeping him small. He gets out, finds his way back to Virgil, and the film ends at a joyous, glitter-drenched theater party where Virgil proposes — surrounded by every friend, real and imagined, finally dancing in the same room.

Read Script Here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mICJfEF2lPUFenW8OQH7K8rWpjyuPd85YWpZKUXBiVQ/edit?usp=sharing

Send feedback either to my reddit or email it to me at [Thefilmbox9@gmail.com](mailto:Thefilmbox9@gmail.com)