Bottleneck (short film)

Bottleneck is a short film, which I wrote and directed as part of my thesis project in the University of Victoria MFA writing program. The film follows a young woman named Jess who is stuck in a cycle of drug and alcohol abuse. Jess’s life is far from what she imagined for herself. Her long-term relationship with her boyfriend Scott has begun to fizzle, but she can’t seem to move on. Jess feels trapped, not only in her relationship, but in her life in the island town where she grew up. In the face of these problems, Jess escapes into a slow burn of alcohol and party drugs.

When I first began work on the script for this project, I was coming off two hard years. Following my graduation from one of Canada’s top undergraduate writing programs, I found myself in a similar situation as the one Jess faces in Bottleneck. Drinking and drug use had become a crutch for my dissatisfaction with the direction my life was going in and led to a year-long gap in my work. Eventually it became apparent that I was never going to achieve my goals of being a filmmaker if I kept going down this road. Following this realization, I applied to the MFA program at the University of Victoria, with the plan of making my first feature film as my thesis project. It was in the weeks leading up to my first semester in this program that I began writing a script that would eventually become this short film.

Through countless drafts over the months that followed, I explored this character in varied scenarios that were driven by her addictions. I always knew that Jess’s relationship with Scott would be a major driving force in this story, however I also did not want to make a film where either of these characters was painted as a villain. I didn’t want this to be a love story or a break-up story, but rather a story about how addiction can keep us tethered to our circumstances by creating a temporary escape from them.

The story told in this short film, is a snapshot of what I want to explore in a feature. The relationship will remain central to this story, but the driving force will go much deeper into what perpetuates addiction in society. This film will focus on a group of millennials living on Vancouver Island who are struggling with various addictions from alcoholism, drug use, sex and love addiction, to struggles with social standing. Jess will be employed as a social worker at a homeless shelter. Through this lens the story will explore the effect of addictions on the privileged and underprivileged residents of a town that, while known primarily for its beauty, is teeming with social issues driven by high costs of living and a large homeless population.