I want to make a movie where the first ten minutes is a hero chasing a villain on the streets of New York as they weave in and out of crowds of people in a cat and mouse game of espionage, and then the bad guy opens fire on the hero and an innocent bystander is hit, a woman who’s walking with her husband on a date to save their marriage. Suddenly the movie shifts focus to the hospital bed of this woman and her husband, and they’re told she probably can’t walk anymore due to the severity of the wound.

The husband gets like four jobs to pay the growing hospital bills and he learns to play some love songs on an old used cheap guitar but he can’t sing so well and he’s too broke to afford new strings, yet he sings to her every other evening between his day shift and night shift even when she’s sleeping. He cries a lot by himself and he looks at an alcohol bottle which is an old habit he used to have that was ruining his marriage, but right before he throws it out the window he ends up throwing a local fundraiser party with all his liquor and he raises just enough to pay for a few months of physical therapy. Laughter montage with no dialogue and a small cake with a single candle and the exhausted husband falls asleep holding his wife’s hand. A few months later the wife finally takes her first step by herself, but the husband is working and he misses it so he gets a call and rushes to the hospital to see his wife walking but he’s so sleepy from working so much that he gets in an accident and his car flips over.

Cut to the next scene where he wakes up in a hospital bed and across the curtain is his wife, and she reaches from her bed and holds his hand and says, “It’s my turn to take care of you now,” and by the end you realize not all heroes chase bad guys down street corners, but can also look like two ordinary people fighting for each other and finding strength in their weakness together. Fade to black on their enclosed fingers, wedding rings, and credits.

— J.S.