THE REFLEX

MIKE has never been in love, even after years of trying to force himself to move beyond "deep like" for his sweet, adoring and newly ex-girlfriend ALICE. Then lightning struck.... and kept striking. After a session with a new ACUPUNCTURIST, Mike is introduced to KATY and is smitten harder than he's ever been, um, smote. While daydreaming of Katy, Mike runs his bike into another cyclist, VIRGINIA, and instantly falls in love with her too. When he sees Alice moving her stuff out of their apartment and instantly feels the kind of love for her that he could never find before, he knows something has gone terribly wrong... or is that terribly right?

"Love is involuntary."

THE GENEALOGIST

Prompted by the basement discovery of a crystal bauble with his name and the names of several of his ANCESTORS etched into it, REESE HAHN started digging into his family's past. Much to the chagrin of his WIFE and five-year-old SON, Reese's hobby becomes an obsession... to the point where he's certain he's seeing young versions of his deceased FATHER and GRANDFATHER on the streets of Seattle. When Reese catches a much older version of HIMSELF searching through the basement, he triggers a time paradox that finds him waking up back one generation in his family every morning... first seeing through the eyes of his father in 1971, then seeing through the eyes of his grandfather in 1945... and so on as he struggles to unlock his family's secret before he disappears into the mists of the past.

"Reese Hahn is a chip off a very unusual block."

WINE, WOMEN AND PONG

From the outside, VINCENT MULLANY is the definition of the unflappable buttoned-up banker. Inside... well, there's a lot of flapping. After a particularly devastating meeting, Vincent pays a visit to his sister KERRIE's house and is invited by his nephew JOHN to play a game of ping pong on their new table... and something snaps. All John wants to do... all he can think of... is play ping pong. He quits his job, sells his house, divorces his wife of 20 years ALLYSON and moves to the beach where he leads an uncharacteristically bacchanalian life playing ping pong with a group of CRISPY LOCALS. When John begins entering ping pong competitions, a familiar dread rises back inside of him and he must choose whether to reintegrate himself back into his old life or forge ahead and devote everything to defeating his pong nemesis IRVING "PING" LONG.

"Either you paddle life or life paddles you."

HATERS

ZAN HALSEY was living a low-grade life, replete with dead end job, questionable FRIENDS, self-destructive habits. The only pleasure he got was from ripping people and their successes on the comment boards, a habit that grew into more and more face-to-face confrontations with PEOPLE Zan didn't deem worthy of their happiness. After an explosive back-and-forth with notorious author and provocateur SYLVIA FOVER, Zan's reputation as a hater extraordinaire suddenly explodes and soon he's making the rounds on late night talk shows and interview blogs. When Sylvia takes him as her lover, the community of HATERS quickly turns on him... with ONE in particular eager, it seems, to teach him the ultimate lesson about turning your back on where you came from.

"It's easier to tear down than to build up."

THE HONEY TRAP

BOY meets GIRL. Boy falls in love with girl, only to discover that girl is involved in MASTERMIND's scheme to seduce and blackmail a MEMBER of the Board of Directors of a global energy concern. Boy decides if you can't beat 'em, join 'em and uses his own connections to facilitate the successful scheme. Boy becomes fall guy, but still can't shake love for girl, even from jail. Boy emerges years later and when he discovers that Girl and Mastermind have married, happily plots his own scheme to seduce and blackmail Girl.. and force her to love him the way he loves her.

"Boy meets girl. Girl destroys boy's life. Boy doesn't mind."

DREAM OR NIGHTMARE?

JACK PEELER has discovered something very interesting about himself- the unhappier he is in his waking life, the more wonderful his dream life becomes. During his happy childhood he was constantly plagued by nightmares, but now that he's reached adulthood... an unfulfilling, lonely drudgery-filled adulthood... his dreams have become more and more fantastic, unspooling a heroic pleasure-filled narrative that gets better and better every night. Jack is faced with a dilemma when he meets lovely LOTTI CAMERON and starts falling for her- should he risk ruining eight hours of heaven every night for a shot at waking life happiness?

"Can you really sleepwalk through life?"

BETA

Pale, workaholic software developer ROB JARAMILLO's small COMPANY has been working on a new program called "Journaling" that reaches into your computer's and handheld's memory and creates straightforward, old-fashioned journal entries about the user's day-to-day activity, so you can read about your past activities as if you'd been making journal entries all the way. When Rob releases the software to beta testing, USERS begin to see a strange, unplanned wrinkle in their journal entries: their COMPUTERS and DEVICES have developed feelings for their users over time- both positive and negative- and the Journaling software has somehow unlocked these emotions and allowed them to be communicated. Rob has to take action when the Journaling computers begin turning criminal users in to the police, breaking up marriages, and, in his case, encouraging him to get a life by setting him up with MINDY, another Journaling beta tester.

"Computers gone wild!"

CALLED TO HIGHER SERVICE

ROY SONDERMAN's love of math, love of people and love of statistical puzzles combined to make him one of the happiest accountants the world has ever known. After "crunching the numbers" on whether or not to propose to his longtime girlfriend ERIN KNAPP, he narrowly decides to go through with it... and within seconds dies of a massive stroke. Roy wakes up in Heaven, and is told by the Angel NINETTO that he has been called to serve in GOD's accounting office. Roy's job is to help God tally people's sins vs their good deeds when they are near to death and determine whether they're going to be sent to Heaven or Hell (there is no Limbo). When Roy is assigned Erin's case, he sees that Erin went to pieces after Roy died and attempts to correct his own destiny while saving Erin's life and eternal soul.

"In the course of a lifetime, one deed can tip the scales."

DEMOTE MAXIMALLY

EDWARD (formerly known as "E.Dee") MILLIOT escaped the violent world of gang-banging that dominated his youth in L.A. and completely scrubbed his life... and past... clean when he moved to Seattle to pursue a career as a writer. When he's hired by notoriously tough, Japanese-owned Interactive Marketing and Technology firm Alpha Agency, he struggles to stay afloat in their fast-paced jargon-heavy office atmosphere. Just as he finds some sort of comfort level Creative Director SVEN JONSSON whisks him and other RECENT HIRES away to a corporate RETREAT where he's given the assignment to "demote" FRED KWON, who stands accused of violating his NDA, "maximally." Edward has only a few hours to determine if this is a test of his mettle or an order to kill one more time... this time with major career perks attached.

"How much Kool-Aid can one man drink?"

RUNNING INTO A BULLET

Widowed and penniless RANDOLPH ADAMS is over it, but he's not quite able to pull the trigger when it comes to suicide. When Randolph decides to go for the next best thing- seeking out a fatal accident- he has enough consecutive and darkly humorous near misses that he enlists the help of goth ghostwriter MARIA X to blog about it anonymously before he tries again... and unwittingly becomes the pied piper of X-Games style assisted suicide.

"How to go out in a blaze of glory in three easy steps."

THAT SHIP HAS SAILED

Delicate and petite San Francisco graphic designer ANDI MOODY has an impetuous, out-of-character, and extremely hot weekend tryst with a Russian sailor she knows only as TUPO. When he breaks what was going to be their final date before he left port, Andi's FRIENDS tell her to let it go and enjoy it for what it was, but instead she spends everything she has to hire a YACHT piloted by slightly seedy RICH BARMING. The closer Andi comes to following Tupo's path based on the clues she remembers from their passionate conversations, the more she questions whether or not she's acting the fool by chasing a crush and whether or not she's developing feelings for Rich.

"Forget your heart, love is all in your head."

SEEING STARS

KRISTIN FITZPATRICK is just another Iowa teenager obsessed with celebrities and Hollywood, gulping as much PEREZ HILTON, TMZ and Star Magazine as she possibly can. On her way to school she's struck on the head by a bust of ZSA ZSA GABOR that's fallen out of a ten-story window, and when she regains consciousness the roles of everyone in her life are suddenly played by celebrities. MOM and DAD have become TIM ROBBINS and SUSAN SARANDON, boyfriend FREDDIE has become ZACH EFRON, and when she looks in the mirror she sees DEMI LOVATO. Kristin is in heaven... until she realizes that nothing substantial in her life has really changed, only the faces. When she begins to tire of seeing nothing but celebrities everywhere she looks (hey look, the SOUP NAZI is her PRINCIPAL!), Kristin does everything she can to return her life back to the way it was.

"Celebrity is, like, only skin deep."

SEXTING: THE MUSICAL!

Oh these techno-complicated and super-sex-saturated days we live in!

All the KIDS at Gibson High School are sexting like there was no tomorrow... and so are about half the TEACHERS and PARENTS. Virginal ROCHELLE PEARL is an honor student leading a double life as anonymous queen of the teasing cellphone snap, and swirling around her is a maelstrom of adolescent hormones, get rich quick schemes, hallway betrayals and impossible love affairs.... all expressed through the majesty of song and dance! Exclamation point!

"Sexy Sturm und Drang on Six Inch Screens!"

MY NECK OF THE WOODS

Since the death of his WIFE and TWO CHILDREN, Park Ranger and fire expert JIM GRAYSON has volunteered for long, solitary stretches manning the fire observation towers of Yosemite. When small fires continue to pop up and get mysteriously snuffed out in his quadrant, Jim searches for what he believes in a mischievous ARSONIST loose in the park. When telltale bits of ephemera from his son and daughter's life begin appearing in the woods, Jim is chilled to think that their accidental death may have been murder, and that the MURDERER is coming for him next.

"Where there's smoke, there's fire."

AMERICAN OTAKU

Otaku (おたく/オタク) is a Japanese term used to refer to people with obsessive interests, particularly anime, manga and video games.*

Joyless ROY LAYNE has been living a painfully unremarkable life, mechanically plodding through each day with zero meaningful connections to other people and contempt for himself. A chance encounter with KAZUHIRO, an otaku following the American publicity tour of manga writer VERA TSUJI turns Roy onto Vera's "Planet Wong" series, sparking intense and unprecedented feelings of passion in him about the animated heroine MISS WONG. When Roy's obsession evolves to the point of threatening his livelihood and, considering Miss Wong appears before him to chat, perhaps his sanity, he's faced with the prospect of rejecting the only thing he's ever loved.

"Don't tell me what's real."

*Wikipedia definition.

Special thanks to Lisa Katayama's excellent NYTimes article "Love in 2-D" for inspiring today's pitch.

TWO BIRDS, ONE STONED

It's time to have some fun with Pixar movies... and pitch an R-Rated one.

Aggressive BETTY the blue jay and mellow OLIVIA the owl grew up in the same forest in Humboldt County, CA, and despite the fact that some owls like to eat blue jays they became unlikely friends. Olivia is content to chew on the local marijuana crop, creep out the humans for kicks and pursue amorous interspecies liaisons, but Betty is obsessed with traveling to Toronto where she's heard that the blue jay is venerated above all species. Betty plants the get rich-quick-seed in Olivia's mind and makes plans for them to fly a shipment of weed to Canada as part of a pilgrimage she hopes will finally bring the fulfillment and love she's never found in California.

"Flight makes right."

PSEUDOLOGIA FANTASTICA

pseudologia fantastica n. A syndrome characterized by habitual telling of implausible lies and fantastic exaggerations, usually half believed by the teller but often transparently improbably to the recipients.*

DICK FLOYD is a born storyteller... or a born liar depending on your point of view. The same quality that makes him irresistible at first- his ability to spin the most fantastic stories off the top of his head- also makes him impossible to be close to, because you can't believe a word he says even when it counts. When Dick falls in love with New York Times fact-checker BEATRICE PENNY, a lovely woman driven mad by his outlandish claims, he's faced with the biggest decision of his life- does he risk trying to cure the condition that's brought him fantastic success in life but dismal failure in love?

"Dick Floyd only lies when he opens his mouth."

*Oxford Dictionary of Psychology

DUDE RANCH

SoCal stoners PRESS and JIM JIM are best buds, ahem, and both on their way to flunking out of high school. Hoping to straighten them out before senior year, their PARENTS send them to Cody, Wyoming to live and work on the Greenhorn Ranch where BIG BILL WHITNEY and his TEAM whip NOGOODNIKS like Press and Jim Jim into shape. Wackiness, sex romping, stampeding and experiments in cross-pollinating ensue.

"Forget 4:20. Think High Noon."

THE CONFERENCE CALL

Workplace comedy... workplace tragedy... it's hard to distinguish between the two when you're on a long conference call. DANIEL BORREGO is fresh out of college and eager to please his new WORKMATES at The John Prester Company. The learning curve is steep, and Daniel is loath to admit that he doesn't really know many details about what upcoming big "launch" is that everyone is so worked up about, or who they mean when they say "our competitor." Daniel decides to stealthily dial in to an upper level conference call to try and catch himself up and suddenly believes he's finally figured out who the big mystery client is... GOD.

"Press star if you are the leader."

GUT FEELINGS

Artwork submitted by Somsara.

A triptych of interwoven tales that focus on pivotal moments and repercussions of choices we make not with our heads but with our guts, where a bundle of 100 billion nerve cells form what can be called our "second brain." Junior copywriter ALEX MORNEAU follows his instinct and pushes hard for his idea in front of THE CLIENT despite all warning signs telling him to back down in the face of his powerful boss CLAUDIA MABRIE; teenager KATE MABRIE gets into a car with her secret older boyfriend FRANK JICKS despite her gut telling her to take a cab; GWEN MORNEAU is compelled to reveal a painful FAMILY secret she intellectually knows will have immediate negative impact on her husband Alex.

"Can you really trust your gut?"