Ruth Charny

Rick

"Rigoletto" retold at Christmas time in Manhattan's corporate world. Rick, an executive at Image, is a jerk to a woman applying for a job. That evening, he's out for drinks with his much younger boss, Duke, and the same women is their waitress. Rick's continued rudeness leads to her getting fired. She puts a curse on him. A potential rift with Duke quickly surfaces; Rick is approached by the hail-

Kill the Poor

When a marriage of convenience becomes the real thing, Joe moves his pregnant French wife to a tenement building on New York's Lower East Side. The street is like a war zone with none of the nostalgic appeal that Joe remembers from tales of his immigrant grandparents arriving in the same neighborhood with a new life. This is the urban frontier filled with comic mixture of gentrifies, homeboys, dealers and local residents simply bent on staying a float

Love Liza

Following the unexplained suicide of his wife Liza, website designer Wilson Joel turns to huffing gasoline fumes and remote control gaming while avoiding an inevitable conflict with his mother-in-law.

Searching for Paradise

A young woman, coping with the death of her father, embarks on a quest to meet a Hollywood star with whom she has become obsessed.

The Sleepy Time Gal

A young woman learns of her adoption and eventually quits her law firm job and goes on a journey to find her birth mother.

Other Voices

Phil and Anna are a young, married couple, who begin to suspect one other of an affair. When a shady private investigator gets involved in their relationship, things begin to spin out of control, in this turn-of-the-millennium thriller.

Drowning on Dry Land

A taxi driver (Naveen Andrews) picks up a fare (Barbara Hershey) in Manhattan. She offers the driver a large sum to drive her to the desert. While the pair drive across the country, the woman tries various strategies to lure the driver into conversation. Despite his reticence, the pair begins a tumultuous and steamy relationship.

Spark

Byron and Nina, a young African American couple, are driving from Chicago to Los Angeles, where Nina plans to start college, when they are forced to stop in a small, desert place just this side of a ghost town. Unaccustomed to confronting racism and bigotry on the scale preserved in this rural anachronism, Byron's confrontational response to slurs, epithets and threats quickly leads to a fight for survival -- and the Chicago couple is alone and outnumbered.

Grace of My Heart

Philadelphia teenager Edna Buxton wins a talent contest during the early rock 'n' roll era, changes her name to Denise Waverly and moves to New York City to make it big. Though she flops as a recording artist, fast-talking record producer Joel Millner recognizes her songwriting talent and teams her with struggling songsmith Howard Caszatt.

Search and Destroy

A self-help guru's televised teachings inspire a down-and-out businessman to pursue his dream of making a movie.

Grief

A campy chronicle of the lusts and loves of the men and women who work on a low-rent TV show called, "The Love Judge."

Mistress

A comedy about a screenwriter (Wuhl) whose old movie script is read by a producer (Landau) and the search for financial backers begins. But it seems that each money source (Aiello, DeNiro, Wallach) has his own mistress that he wants put into the film. Gradually, the screenwriter is forced to make changes to his script to accommodate these backers until he finally sees no semblance of his original ideas in the writing.