The Disability List, an annual collection of the best unproduced scripts featuring at least one lead character with a disability, has selected eight screenplays for its second edition. The 2020 list was unveiled at the Media Access Awards on November 19, Deadline confirms.
A collaboration between The Black List, Easterseals Disability Services, and the Writers Guild of America Writers with Disabilities Committee, The Disability List considers feature film and episodic scripts from writers of any experience level.
Among the selections this year are Anna Thorup’s “Looking Up,” the story of a 20-something wheelchair user making her way in New York City, and Lily Gwyer-Miller and Janna Taylor’s “Good Vibes Only,” which sees a TV director joining a support group after a cancer diagnosis. Sarah Granger’s “The Pain Free Day,” following a woman with severe pelvic pain trying to reconnect with her teen daughter, and Jennifer Noonan’s “Phantom,” a portrait of a double amputee war vet, also made the list.
“Our goal is to highlight authentic storytelling by, and about, people with disabilities,” said Mark Whitley, CEO of Easterseals Southern California. “Through realistic and entertaining stories that don’t rely on stereotypes of what it means to have a disability we can change dated perceptions and create a more inclusive society. Hollywood has an important role to play in making that happen.”
“Having a disability is not a death sentence. As these winning scripts show, people with disabilities have lives as funny, complex, and utterly human as anyone else. In a year with so much discord, we believe the list and these writers bring a positive note to the world,” Media Access Awards CEOs Deborah Calla and Allen Rucker commented.
According to research from the Inclusion Initiative, only 2.3 percent of the speaking characters across 2019’s top 100 films were depicted with a disability. “Run,” Hulu’s new pic tracing the destructive relationship between an overzealous mom and her wheelchair-using daughter, stars Kiera Allen, a wheelchair user in real life. The film is “the first major thriller to star a wheelchair user since 1948’s ‘The Sign of the Ram,’” per Variety.
The 2020 Disability List is below, along with the projects’ synopses, courtesy of Deadline.
CENTS by Sam Davis
Frankie––a high school senior with an intellectual disability––sets a penny on the railroad tracks the morning of a freak train derailment. Assuming responsibility, he goes into hiding amidst a citywide evacuation and must survive on his own––a “fugitive” in a ghost town, with the police who “hunt” him, and a pile of combustible train cars looming.
GOOD VIBES ONLY by Lily Gwyer-Miller and Janna Taylor
Afraid to tell her bubbly best friend about her recent cancer diagnosis, a cranky TV director turns to a cancer support group. There she meets a diverse group of women who help each other through real-life problems that can’t be solved with good vibes.
LOOKING UP by Anna Thorup
A wheelchair-using twenty-something messes around and messes up in New York City.
NO ONE IS LOOKING by Michael J. Dougherty
Sam, a physically-challenged highschooler, kills a bully and thinks he got away with it because no one would believe a kid in a wheelchair would be capable of that, but he must find the bully’s missing severed head before anyone finds out about the murder.
THE PAIN FREE DAY by Sarah Granger
After struggling for years housebound with severe pelvic pain, a dejected mother takes a risk and pulls her teenage daughter out of school for one day in an attempt to mend their strained relationship.
PHANTOM by Jennifer Noonan
A double amputee combat veteran returns from Afghanistan and faces a new battle she must wage to regain herself.
POSSUM by Bob Ingraham
When a band of thieves targets a charity for the disabled, the father of one of the disabled residents must find a way to thwart their plans.
THE SMELL OF GOLD by Jared Turner
After her husband is murdered in cold blood, a tenacious, young Scotswoman, with the help of an English tracker and his Māori son, sets out across the wild New Zealand landscape in pursuit of the accused, a reclusive Chinese gold-miner. All the while, they must fight to stay ahead of a vicious gang who are desperate to claim the bounty.
