The Weather Just Got Sexy
When Adam’s poetry is ripped to shreds by his mentor, he is crushed. To assuage his depression, he throws himself into retail therapy. Boxes of Gucci pile up in the family’s living room and Adam’s incensed parents order him to get a summer job.
McMansion Adam knows nothing about work. But best pal Keanu, ever the schemer, has already devised a plan: The De Sads are looking for summer help at their seaside boutique hotel. How hard could it be to work for a grungy, alt rock band?
Adam and Keanu arrive in a run-down, British coastal town where they are greeted by the hotel’s manager. She whisks the boys away to the hotel where they are greeted by The De Sad’s magnetic frontman, Jimi Constantine.
Jimi delights in teasing the boys and heaps tasks upon them.
He also makes them personally responsible for every whim of a capricious young rockstar, Noel, who has been reclusively holed up in the penthouse for the past year.
Life at the hotel takes a sharp twist when a pom-pom wielding, rock ‘n roll drummer asks Jimi to lend him the boys for his brand new men’s synchronized swimming team.
Neither the drummer, nor our heroes, nor the other two rock ‘n roll, non-swimmer team members, know anything about synchronized swimming. The boys imagine that the whole thing is a joke until Reece informs them that they will be doing a nostalgia showcase the following week.
Tensions and antagonisms build between the boys on the “team,” and Adam ends up taking refuge in the penthouse where he shares some of his own lyrics with its eccentric occupant, Noel. As it turns out, Noel’s got something Adam needs: he’s a former synchronized swimming champion.
Noel agrees to coach the team. The day of the showcase arrives and the boys are raring to go. The de Sads are playing a kick-ass gig. It’s the boys turn to swim and they crush it. Overjoyed, Adam grabs Noel and they run together onto the beach and towards the music.
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Zoë GreenbaumWriterHanging Gardens of the Sea & Sky, The Weather Just Got Sexy, My World at Night
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Zoë GreenbaumDirectorWe Are Bleach, Inevitability
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Project Type:Screenplay
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Genres:Comedy, Coming of Age
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Number of Pages:87
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Language:English
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First-time Screenwriter:No
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Student Project:No
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Blue Cat Screenplay Competition
May 16, 2023
Semi-Finalist -
New Renaissance International Film FestivalAmsterdam
March 6, 2023
Best International Feature Screenplay -
Flickers Rhode Island International Film FestivalProvidence, RI
October 9, 2023
Finalist -
Berlin Independent Film FestivalBerlin
February 18, 2024
Best Comedy Screenplay -
Visionfest Screenwriting Compeition
December 16, 2023
2nd Place Winner: Best Feature
Filmmaker Zoë Greenbaum is a writer/director, visual artist and singer/songwriter. After receiving a BFA in gag manga from Kyoto Seika University, the distinguished center for manga and anime in Japan, Zoë, a tremendous fan of British film, decided she would follow in the footsteps of Stanley Kubrick and she set off to make movies in the UK. In 2022, after a Covid-infused year at London Film School, she made her second not-so-short film, We Are Bleach, starring Zachary Goldman and Sonnei Garces . At the suggestion of French director, Arthur Joffé, Zoë took on the third lead in Bleach, and the film went on to quickly win awards in both Europe and the US: Best Indie Short, Emerging Talent , Best LGBTQ+, as well an Audience Choice Award in New York. Bleach was also an official selection at several festivals including the Montauk Film Festival, Orlando Film Festival, the Berlin TV Series Festival and the Queenshead Mini-Fringe Film Festival, among others.
A quirky and beguiling writer, Zoë’s unproduced, feature-length screenplay, Hanging Gardens of the Sea and Sky (2021) - a musical romantic comedy with magical realist touches - was a top 10 finalist in the TWENTIETH ANNUAL AMERICAN ZOETROPE SCREENPLAY COMPETITION (Francis Ford Coppola, guest judge). Hanging Gardens was also Top 10 at the Nantucket Film Festival’s Tony Cox Awards. It was a finalist at Cordillera, as well as at Flickers and the Maverick Movie Awards. Other nominations include The Beverly Hills Film Festival, The International Film Festival of Wales, the UK Film Festival, Evolution! Mallorca, Beyond the Curve, Sedona, and at Art of Brooklyn where her 2021 short, Inevitability won the award for Outstanding Editing. Zoe’s feature screenplay, My World At Night, was among the Top 100 Dramas in 2020’s International Screenwriters’ Association Table Read My Screenplay Contest. And the script for We Are Bleach (2022) was a finalist at Beyond the Curve and a semifinalist in Hollywood Just 4 Shorts.
Zoë is currently in development for The Weather Just Got Sexy, a madcap, 90 minute coming-of-age, rock ’n roll comedy about a young poetry major who bumbles ass-backwards into a journey of self-discovery. Among its awards are Best International Feature Screenplay in Amsterdam, Most Innovative Screenplay at City of Angels in Los Angeles, Best Comedy in the Berlin International Screenplay Competition (where Zoe has been invited to be on the Jury), semi-finalist at Blue Cat, where it was called “a lighter Mamet,” as well a finalist in Oxford and at Flickers Rhode Island, and the second place winner at VisionFest.
When she is not making films, Zoë has a myriad of delightful occupations. She and the multi-awarded songwriter Ian Dench of EMF collaborated on 15 songs for a forthcoming album in 2026, Lost In London and a graphic novel, Low Fidelity, on the foibles of dating in London is currently in the works. Zoë was the opening guest lecturer for the incoming class at London Screen Academy in September 2024, and she looks forward to a solo show of her paintings at IFAC in NYC in September 2026..
THE WEATHER JUST GOT SEXY
A 95 minute coming-of-age, rock ’n roll summer comedy
An insecure poetry major bumbles ass-backwards into a journey of self-discovery when he takes a summer job at a rock band's seaside hotel and is then forced to compete in synchronized swimming.
Raised in a time of apocalyptic anxiety – the post 9/11 world - the overarching concept was “let us hide our children from the danger.” And so our filmic lives were built by the grown-ups around us on their carefully coded superheros and trauma . . . as if speaking to us directly would unleash the instability that their need to control had boxed and hidden away.
But now I am a “grown-up.” And the time has come for me as an up-and-coming, award-winning writer-director - to speak differently and joyfully. Biculturally located somewhere between Japan and the West after five years getting a degree in Japanese Gag Manga – that’s comedy with a capital C – I make films to speak to my generation with a voice that is uniquely ours, but which resonates across generations. It is time to let us out of the box. The Weather Just Got Sexy is a film of liberation. In the new Trumpian world order, Sexy is a film of empowerment, of now. It says, “Yes, we can go outside and play and it will all be okay because we’re not afraid: We’ve got this.”
The Weather Just Got Sexy will be the first (and possibly last) indie sleaze, men’s water ballet, song of Summer-tinged seaside rock-n-roll whimsy to be committed to film. Adam and Keanu are on a picaresque journey of innocence and stupidity as they leave the world of privilege for long - and strange - days of work under the command of a sadistic rockstar hotelier/wannabe actor. As they are drafted onto an all men’s synchronized swim team comprised of band dudes who are barely buoyant, their world and their friendship are turned upside down. With a puff of sparkly Esther Williams smoke from England’s largest tidal pool and a blow-out rock concert happening simultaneously on the beach, The Weather Just Got Sexy embraces multitudes: the ironic mockery of Curb Your Enthusiasm, the charm of Parks and Recreation, the cock-eyed optimism of Eddie the Eagle, the eclectic self-discovery of The Darjeeling Limited, the joie de vivre of Itami’s Tampopo, the haplessness of Help! and the unadulterated chaos of Ranma 1/2. In The Weather Just Got Sexy, we get it: we are all heroes just running in our own directions, even though we have no clue where we’ll end up.
Sexy pulls together a mid-2000s alt rock aesthetic and fuses it with something reminiscent of a Japanese City Pop Summer movie from the 1980s. It’s the Beach Boys meet The Libertines, it’s a year-round, summer cult comedy: fun, warm and empowering. One of those films like School of Rock that you just watch again and again because it allows you to be free of the past and to feel cozy in the present.
The way I work on set is imbued with love, laughter and respect. I love working with young actors and taking on unexpected challenges with them. At 31, with an emerging talent award, four award winning short films, three award winning feature screenplays recognized by some of the world’s most important voices in the industry, the time has come for me to use my voice to make movies that no one, including me, has ever seen. In The Weather Just Got Sexy, I look forward to sharing my unique voice in a film that engages its audience with beauty, joy and laughter as it lifts us beyond the quotidian.
