The Story
When Zo is tricked into paying rent for an apartment in an abandoned building, she meets Mo, a musician who’s squatting the building across the street in a crusade to save the derelict housing stock of the East Village in 1980s New York City. Each one works to preserve their own building, but when a teenage girl is ensnared in a sinister cult that’s trying to take over the block, they'll have to work together to save her.
THE CHARACTERS
the squatters
After the community board issues a plea to local activists to preserve the crumbling tenements of the neighborhood, a group of pioneers take over an abandoned building and work to repair it. They look down on the renters who were tricked into paying rent to a grifter.
the renters
Naïve newcomers pay rent to a con man who takes off, leaving them to look after the building themselves. They look down on the squatters who broke into the building across the street, but will come to realize that they have much in common.
THE VILLAINS
A menacing duo arrive on the block, approaching the rental first, then taking over the top floor of the squat, where they start recruiting punks and runaways to a cult with sinister ambitions.
the locals
Musicians, performers, young drug runners, drag queens, Nuyoricans, and elderly Ukrainian Americans inhabit this desolate landscape.
THE LANDSCAPE
Alphabet City, 1981. A burned-out wasteland of crumbling buildings and fields of rubble in a forgotten corner of the East Village in Manhattan, New York City, a landscape of cheap rent and space to create for young musicians, artists, and performers. Preserving and rehabilitating this landscape will take the efforts of many residents and community groups.
THE MUSIC
From Blondie and Fab Five Freddy to RuPaul and Pattie Smith, from Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club to Madonna and the Ramones, many notable musicians of the '80s lived, played, or found inspiration in the East Village. Along with these better-known names, a host of other performers made their homes in the neighborhood. Bands such as the Bush Tetras, False Prophets, Pulsallama, and Dean and the Weenies entertained the neighborhood from the bandshell of Tompkins Square Park, in the hole-in-the-wall clubs that dotted the landscape, or at CBGB, a few blocks away on the Bowery. Appearing alongside them were often-controversial performance artists such as Karen Finley, Ann Magnuson, John Kelly, the Lady Bunny, Penny Arcade, and many others.
accolades
Quarterfinalist,
The Writers Lab International 2025
The Writers Lab Int’l is produced by co-founders Elizabeth Kaiden and Nitza Wilon and is presented in collaboration with the Writers Guild of America East, with in-kind support from The Black List, Falco Ink, Film Fatales, New York Women in Film & Television and Roadmap Writers.
The Writers Lab, Inc. is a 501(c)3 non-profit institution supported by Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, Natalie Portman, the Cornelia T. Bailey Foundation, the Lynch Hall Charitable Fund and the Lisa Cleff Kurtz & Michael Kurtz Foundation.
