Short Term Solution
A suicidal young man is unintentionally saved by an amateur thief after trying to rob him.
Jonathan’s journey as a filmmaker began in El Paso Texas, when he realized nobody was going to write scripts for him to direct. Determined to get his stories made, Jonathan began enhancing his writing with his latest award winning film “In Your Arms Tonight.” The momentum launched Jonathan’s career to feature screenwriting heights, where he completed his first feature script, The Muscle. Jonathan is now developing several projects he had previously written in hopes of getting them funded.
Short Term Solution is essentially an exploration of a circumstance I thought would be fascinating to examine. “What if someone was about to kill themselves but they were unintentionally saved by someone trying to rob them?”
The concept was so bizarrely funny to me, I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it. Not because I find topics like suicide and mental health to be funny, but rather how unfortunate someone’s life must be if they’re trying to end it, and the universe still won’t let them go away on their own terms. The point of this script wasn’t to become a PSA on suicide prevention or mental health, but rather to show how even a selfish person can make all the difference in the world to someone’s life with just an ounce of compassion.
The key element for me with this story, was that we never find out Alex’s personal reasons for why he wants to end his own life. This was intentionally done for two reasons. The first being that I wanted Alex to be a surrogate character for anyone that is struggling with suicidal thoughts and depression, they can apply their own personal backstories to Alex’s character. The second reason being, If we knew his backstory like George Bailey in “It’s A Wonderful Life,” we’d feel like he’s worth saving. But in reality, we don’t need to know the reasoning behind why someone feels the need to end their own life, just for us to want to help them.