Wrenched
Ambitious young Wall Street wannabe travels to take an internship with a hot crypto firm. But the company turns out to be a floundering home repair business whose owner faked a requisition to get a financial whiz aboard. About to leave in disgust, the wannabe falls for the receptionist, a runaway who dreams of becoming a cabaret singer. He joins the rough team of under-rated outcasts and learns how to repair things, including his mercenary sense of values.
COREY BRAVERMAN is an underachieving perennial business student, a doctor's son who nurses conquering hero fantasies of making it big in Wall Street. As his friends land hot summer internships, Corey has had no offers. But at last his college's employment counselor comes up with a summer job at a hotshot "boutique" crypto startup in San Francisco, "Landau & Associates."
At last Corey can become a billionaire and prove to his family and friends that he is as smart as his brother, an insufferable gastroenterologist. But when Corey arrives i(story is set in San Francisco), waiting to pick him up is a redneck named HAP McCLOUD, driving a decrepit plumbing van. Corey realizes that he has been had: "JP Landau Associates" is not a unicorn but a floundering plumbing company in the Tenderloin whose owner, Jimmie Landau, thinks getting a business whiz on board will turn his company around.
About to leave the ramshackle office in in disgust, Corey catches the eye of the office receptionist, SKYE, a hard luck former runaway who dreams of being a cabaret singer.
Corey decides that, rather than confess his humiliation to his family and friends, he will stick it out here in SF for a while. Corey soon reveals that he doesn't know much about running a business. Jimmie sends him out to train the colorful crew of ex-cons and unhoused eccentrics. To Corey's surprise, they have a lot to teach him.
He begins to learn how to mend things with his hands --- and also to discover a different set of values than his avaricious goals. A romance also blossoms between Corey and Skye, who has a way of calling him on his self-deceptions.
But Corey's gorgeous, greedy crush, AIMEE (who believes that "there is no worse place on earth than middle management.") arrives with a few of her snobby buddies, Corey reverts to his old self. To avoid being outed as a handyman apprentice, Corey decides to pass off the plumbers as investment bankers, startup entrepreneurs and hedge fund managers. He invites Aimee and her friends to a party in the high-rise luxury apartment of a customer who is on vacation.
Corey schools the team on how to pose as millionaire venture capitalists, angel investors and other financial whizzes. The hoax appears to be working. Aimee and her friends are impressed by the ex-team, who rise to the occasion and are amazingly smart.
But when a drunken scuffle results in a broken pipe, the "financiers" have to drop their poses and dash for their wrenches. Corey's plan falls apart quickly, and Skye is through with him for being a two-timing phony.
Told to pack his bags, Corey makes one last try to win Skye by participating in a charity "Plumbathon." in which teams from all over town compete to put in new fixtures in poor homes. Corey’s ongoing feud with one of the team triggers a fistfight, but in the end, they install a high-tech bidet in record time and save Jimmie with a new contract from the City. Corey gains a whole new set of values and skills, and a girl who really loves him.
Young Pretty Girl
Robin Williams type
Liar Liar
The Wedding Crashers
Nominated for a Pushcart Prize in fiction in 2021 and 2016
I wrote the feature film, Murder in Fashion, about the shooting of designer Gianni Versace by serial killer Andrew Cunanan. The film played at theatres and festivals and was reviewed in the NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/movies/22murder.html?_r=0
"Low budget but accurate and well constructed insight into a modern mystery" review by Richard von Lust L.
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