Minimum Wage
The working title of the show is “Minimum Wage.” This show is a story of two awkward black men becoming friends from shared hopelessness as fast food workers who are both in college. The show occurs in Fayetteville, North Carolina in the late spring of 2011. One of the men (Donte) is a black male in an Asian fraternity who is living it up at Texas Tech University until he is forced to live with his father to pay back debts from partying. Donte is the son of an Air Force veteran, so he’s moved around a lot and in kind is adaptable to any if not all situations. The other black man(Josh) is an awkward, sarcastic (to a fault) fast food worker who is stuck at a job he hates who attends the local HBCU, Fayetteville State University. Josh is his parents’ “last chance” of having a college graduate as both of his siblings dropped out of school previously. The show will follow these two characters collision course with subjects of racism, social awkwardness, student loan debt, as well as stigmas around being black men with emotional intelligence.
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Grant SheffieldWriter
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Donovan BarnesWriter
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Project Type:Screenplay, Television Script
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Number of Pages:28
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Country of Origin:United States
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Language:English
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First-time Screenwriter:Yes
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Student Project:No
Grant Sheffield is a stand up comedian in New York City. He has wrote for the Raleigh based sketch comedy troupe Zero Headspace during its inception in 2017. Grant was born and raised in North Carolina, the son of two public school educators. He is youngest of three boys. Much of Grant's writing is based on his almost 30+ jobs in his adult life and all the resulting losses and successes.
I think this project speaks to how myself and one of my best friends Donovan met and became close in the most unfortunate of situations. This project is written for all the little black boys who have to fight the battles of being cool, hypermasculine, and intelligent that children of other races don't have to.