The PlayFinder™

THE STORY: The parking lot of a mini-mall convenience store is the private domain of three men in their very early twenties: Jeff, Buff and Tim. Jeff is a sometime student, Buff an easy-going party animal and Tim a virtual alcoholic Air Force vet. They talk trash, harass Nazeer, the Pakistani owner of the store and revel in their high-school glory days. They drink beer, get high, eat Oreos. Jeff ponders his problematic relationship with his artist girlfriend, Sooze, and Buff fantasizes a relationship with Sooze’s best friend, Bee-Bee, a nurses’ aide on the critical ward of the local hospital. The focal point of this evening is the arrival of an old high-school chum, Pony, and his female associate, Erica. Since Pony left Burnfield (the name of this fictional suburban town), he has gone on to become semi-famous fronting for a band that has an album on the charts and a video on MTV. In the course of the evening, all of the friends congregate in the parking lot. Once Pony arrives in his black limo, fascination with his success metamorphosizes into jealousy, then flowers into bitter anger. New liaisons evolve as Buff succeeds in wooing Bee-Bee; Tim discovers his splenetic misanthropy is a turn-on for Erica; and Pony turns Sooze’s restlessness to his advantage. The building tension between the friends is accentuated with absurd physical moments and sheer violence: Sooze performs her piece for the group; Tim beats up Nazeer; and Buff gives new definition to the term “wrecked.” As the next day dawns, some of the group have found their way out of Burnfield while the rest are left to deal with a tragedy that could have been any of them.