DONAVAN EMERY, THE ANDROID & HIMSELF
JESSE DORIAN
(a contemporary retelling of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde) A good-intentioned and brilliant scientist becomes infatuated with a naive, privileged young man, endangering his own ethics as he invents a custom, one-for-one, prototype humanoid android that can suspend the human aging process for those who reside on the highest levels of the social ladder in a grim, nihilistic, hyper-political society set in a not-too-distant dystopian future.
WRITER BIOGRAPHY – JESSE DORIAN
ADD/bipolar screenwriter/actor/editor/film director/songwriter/composer/musician, community college dropout, with dumb little gothpop music project on the side; also (as of 2022) newly a small e-commerce business owner, and apparel designer (LostScorpion/LostScorpion Apparel).
Had one full-on manic episode/nervous breakdown in 2012… years later, came out on the other end with an unfinished, 95% completed feature film/directorial effort that never saw the light of day– plus, 5 separate story ideas that in 2021, would be revised competently into 5 different, coherently-readable documents… er, better yet– 5 professionally-organized feature-length film screenplays.
Endgame is to station in Los Angeles and focus on acting and music. Would also excel as a writer/actor, and would ideally fit in writing/producing/directing independent projects for distributors A24, NEON… with long-time mainstream prospects including creation of/writing/producing/directing franchise and world-building feature film projects for Universal Studios.
Has 2 rescue cats named Fred and Caramels.
WRITER STATEMENT
Winner of 71 AWARDS, 7 Honorable Mentions, with an additional 72 Nominations, Finalist, and Official Selection accolades — and counting, the currently unproduced feature film screenplay “Donavan Emery, The Android & Himself” is a contemporary retelling of “The Picture Of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde (or better yet, “Oscar Wilde Goes Sci-Fi”), while at the same time, being far enough removed from the original source material to validate its own identity.
Set in the not-too-distant dystopian future — an enormous industrial landscape of deteriorating cities, where an unprecedented gap has formed between the poor and the super-rich, “Donavan Emery” is in and of itself, completely original.
Before revising “Donavan Emery” into the draft that it is today, I completed writing the story structure of the entire 3rd Act while at the beginning of a manic episode (at the time yet-to-be diagnosed Bipolar I), hence the purposely dramatic shift in spectacle 2/3rd’s through the story. To me, it made sense back then. And somehow, it makes even more sense now.
The frequent monologues and long conversations between characters (most notably in Act I) are intentional, and also a conscious effort to pay respects to — and capture the spirit of — Oscar Wilde’s original story. With the correct casting, it wouldn’t be considered “talky,” nor “excessive.”
It’s probably the closest we’ll ever get to Shakespearean Blade Runner — if the final act was unapologetically hijacked by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
“Donavan Emery, The Android & Himself”
Copyright Registration Number:
PAu 4-114-955
JESSE DORIAN