Writing Home

Institute History

  • 1995 January Screenwriters Lab

Description

Daisy Kendrick seems to be living a typical sophomore life on the fringe of the upper middle class at University High school in West Los Angeles. Bored with her friends, but still wanting very much to be like them, she communicates with them only through short notes passed between students during class. This is her social life. The rest of her time is spent neglecting her studies to record her feelings, thoughts, and material hopes in a notebook she carries everywhere.

After an average school day she's told that her family has been evicted from their Benedict Canyon home. Her dull world has suddenly become a place of uncertainty and hopelessness. As a result of this sudden change her mother is on the verge of a nervous breakdown and Daisy can't stand her stepfather . . . it's up to Daisy to fend for herself.

Having drifted from her group of friends over the past couple years, Daisy turns to her class note-writing to con Abby, one of her pen pals, into taking her home to her family's seemingly warm Westwood home. This is where Daisy's painful journey from home to home and her reluctant awakening begin.

Based on true events in the writer's life, Writing Home, is an authentic account of both high school angst and urban survival-struggle combined; a disturbing look at the lives of so-called well-off families and Daisy's discovery of how unwell-off they really are.

Credits

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