Date: 10/31/10
Title: "The Touch"
Author: Naomi Lamont
Format: SP
Pages: 114
Time: Present
Locale: Any rural, farming community
Genre: Drama
Analyst: Hollywoodscript.com

PREMISE: LUCAS DANIEL has a gift that is a personal curse: He can instantly heal with the touch of his hands, but only at the expense of his own life. Hence his mother keeps him locked away from all people and he grows into a reclusive town “freak”, untouched by anyone, until the one childhood friend he secretly made decades past renters his life, offering Lucas a chance at love, but also, the choice he’s been protected from since birth.

Concept VERY GOOD
Characterization EXCELLENT
Dialogue EXCELLENT
Story Line VERY GOOD
Setting/Prod. Values VERY GOOD
Freshness of Story EXCELLENT

SYNOPSIS: LUCAS DANIEL was born with the power to heal – anyone he touches, including himself, is instantly cured. He has no control over this power – the second his bare hands touch another person, whatever ailment they are suffering from is immediately erased.

It would seem like a gift, but it is not.

For if a person is suffering from a severe problem or fatal disease, the process of healing them will kill Lucas. Thus Lucas’ mother keeps him tucked away from the world, home schooling him and forbidding him from having contact with any other human beings. She even insists he wear gloves all the time, so that if she comes down with some terrible sickness that she is not even aware of, he will be safe from her.

Lucas obliges all his mother’s conditions, until the age of ten, when – desperate for company – he befriends DARCY WELLS (10), a vibrant and precocious girl who moves in next door.

Darcy soon discovers Lucas’ secret when she spies on him one afternoon and sees him bare-handedly healing an animal suffering a very minor injury. She promises to tell no one and they quickly become best buddies. Lucas abandons his gloves and gets closer and closer to her in his heart.

But then Lucas’ mother discovers the bond and puts an end to their relationship.

“You have to trust me on this,” she tells Lucas, “If you get close to someone, and something should occur, you won’t be able to help but be yourself . And being who you are... it’ll kill you.”

Devastated, Lucas returns to his desolate, “safe” isolation.

Thirty years later, Lucas has become a reclusive country veterinarian in a small town far from where he grew up. As in childhood, Lucas is never seen without gloves – which he claims is due to a medical disorder – and is considered the town freak, living alone on his farm with a collection of animals. He has hardened his heart against the world and exists in a void, numbed out and utterly unreachable.

But then his life takes a significant turn.

First, Lucas discovers that his neighbor, local cattle farmer, BRYCE HARGRAVES, has been hiding an outbreak of foot and mouth disease. Lucas tries to deal with Bryce quietly, but the farmer is violent and single-minded. Lucas exposes the spreading disease to the local authorities, saving the cattle industry from major disaster, while ruining an already struggling Bryce. Now Lucas lands in the crosshairs of Bryce’s instability and rage. When Bryce makes a first attempt on Lucas’ life, Bryce is horrified and spooked to discover he can’t kill Lucas – every wound Bryce exacts magically disappears.

At the same time, Lucas’ long lost friend, Darcy, moves into town. We soon discover through fragments of flashback that Lucas was present when Darcy experienced a childhood tragedy shortly after their friendship was ended, which has left her severely disfigured. Decades have passed since they have seen each other, but when Lucas hears her name, he instantly recognizes her beneath all the scar tissue. However, Darcy is so consumed by her loneliness, rage and the shame of feeling like “a hideous freak” herself, she doesn’t see the boy she once knew in the very different man Lucas has become.

Lucas is instantly drawn to Darcy, but fears that if Darcy becomes aware of his identity, she will assume that he can heal her scars. It’s the one thing he can’t do whatsoever - heal a wound that has already been healed.

Tormented by the thought of raising Darcy’s hopes, only to shatter them, Lucas decides to keep his identity a secret, while, at the same time, allowing a new friendship – and then a passionate romance – to brew between them.

With each day he grows increasingly guilty for deceiving her and pained as he blames himself for all her scars, even though they are not his fault.
Meanwhile, Lucas’s unstable, ruined neighbor, Bryce has not been deterred from his sense of having nothing left to live for except somehow exacting revenge on Lucas. Believing he can’t hurt Lucas physically, he decides to hunt down Darcy. Lucas is now forced to make the choice he’s been taught to avoid – at all cost – his entire life.

COMMENTS: This is a deeply moving, original screenplay. The characters are beautifully rendered, the themes of what constitutes real love and personal sacrifice, delicately woven within the individual evolutions of both heroes – especially Lucas. The underlying, script long meditation on the human condition, on the fierce lengths human beings will go to in order to self preserve and same time express passionate love, is powerfully explored throughout the pages. Lamont has a very pulsing, moody style. Her scenes are rife with feeling, with humor and gravity all at once. Her dialogue is crisp, her imagery vivid. “The Touch” is both gripping and emotionally charged from the second one begins to the very final moment. It is a gem of a script, well worth a read.

TO CONTACT WRITER DIRECTLY: naomi.lamont@gmail.com