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Pickleballs! – The Movie

Writers Guild of America Registration # 1979358. Expiration: 12/07/2023

Copyright Registration # Pau-0080219

Background/History

According to USAPA, Pickleball (a sport combining many aspects of tennis and Ping Pong) is among the fastest growing sports in America with a 650% membership increase in the past 6 years alone.  It has over 3 million active players in the United States.  According to IFP, it is also played in 26 different countries.

Pickleball also has a very silly name and lots of interesting, quirky personalities, making it ripe for comedy.  

Logline: When a toupee-wearing former tennis champ loses his job and his mother on the same day, he must travel the country in an old RV with his former rival hustling for enough cash to pay off gambling debts by playing in pickleball tournaments.

Genre:  Buddy Comedy

This adventure/comedic buddy movie was inspired by Blades of Glory, Talladega Nights, Wedding Crashers, Step- Brothers and Dodgeball. The story is about transformation of two men who, based on ignorant assumptions, despised each other for their passionate adherence to opposing ideologies: capitalism vs communism. 

Synopsis:

The comedic plot comes from obvious, contrasting differences in the main characters decades after they first met.  These two are now in their 60’s.  One is a cocky, jingoistic, arrogant American capitalist from California named Chip Cox. The other is an introspective, philosophical, brooding Russian communist named Boris Baryshnikov.  

Chip is a blend of a youthful John McEnroe and Andre Agassi.  He was deeply tanned, heavily muscled, and a chick-magnet. Now, he is pale, flabby, single, and a sex-craved gambling-addict. He is largely ignorant and his maturity level and sense of humor remains adolescent. He talks a lot of trash to opponents,

Chip has tried to ignore but has seen the rise of Pickleball on the courts next to where he taught tennis at his country club.  His once flowing blond hair is now replaced by a massively receding hairline that he desperately attempts to hide with hats and wigs. He lives in Van Nuys, CA in an old, run-down RV in his mothers’ driveway.  He has just been fired as a teaching pro at his local club and his mom just died and willed her house to her church. 

With no job, no money and no living family, Chip needs to reinvent himself.  He needs to create a buzz to sell his, soon to be released, self-published, autobiography that he “wrote” using a portable, digital tape recorder.

He has an idea: recruit Boris, his old, singles nemesis and doubles partner, to travel with him across the country competing in Pickleball tournaments, while promoting his autobiography. One problem - they still hate each other.

Chip uses his Amazon Alexa device to find Boris living in a commune in New York. He says he wants to reconnect. He hopes they can recreate their magical tennis chemistry through pickleball as partners while redeeming their reputations and wiping out their debt, even though they have not spoken to each other in close to 40 years.

Boris is a skinny, old school communist-loving Russian who loves to quote Karl Marx.  He came from nowhere to “win” the 1978 French Open singles due to a drug test failure by Chip (the reigning, six-time champion). Boris vanished after the French Open and has been living in a failing commune for 30+ years. He is learning the marijuana-growing business while trying to manage and motivate a lazy staff. He struggles with the hypocrisy of his need to make a profit despite his antipathy for capitalism.  He owes a lot of money in back taxes.

They will live together in the RV, learning from each other, traveling to compete in tournaments across the country. In the end, they find the happiness they were seeking was the opposite of what they thought it would be.

Contact: Dan Beeman 818.983.5700 www.danbman.com 

debeeman@gmail.com