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CHAMPAGNE AND OTHER PROBLEMS

CHAMPAGNE AND OTHER PROBLEMS
By Matthew Ruth

GENRE: Thriller / Suspense, Drama
LOGLINE:

A Wall Street trader with everything to lose drowns himself in a decadent weekend of excess at a Manhattan penthouse as the financial system collapses around him, only to discover that money can't buy redemption.

SYNOPSIS:

SPENCER SHAW (30) stands at the floor-to-ceiling windows of his Manhattan penthouse, watching buildings topple in his mind's eye; a vision of the collapse he knows is coming. It's Friday, September 12th, 2008. While his phone rings incessantly with calls he refuses to answer, Spencer methodically prepares for what he calls "a celebration": cases of Grey Goose, bottles of Moët on ice, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and a backpack full of every drug imaginable.

Spencer has taken the weekend off from work. He's ordered custom suits from his personal tailor. He's arranged for an escort service to send

VANESSA, a sharp, observant woman in her twenties who quickly realizes this isn't a typical booking. When Spencer offers her ten thousand dollars to simply "hang out" for the weekend, she accepts with growing unease. "What are we celebrating?" she asks. "The end," Spencer replies. "Or drinking to it."

What follows is a seventy-two-hour descent. Spencer's MBA friends

MIKE and BRIAN arrive for what they think is a casual reunion, only to find themselves pulled into Spencer's orbit of excess. A DJ sets up in the living room. Strangers filter in and out. A high-stakes poker game materializes, with Spencer hemorrhaging money as fast as he snorts cocaine. Through it all, Vanessa watches, first with professional detachment, then with something approaching concern.

The timestamps that punctuate the film—

September 12th, 3:00pm... September 13th, 8:00am... September 14th, 5:30pm, create a relentless countdown. We know what's coming even if the partygoers don't: on Monday morning, Lehman Brothers will file for bankruptcy, triggering the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

As the weekend spirals, Spencer's carefully constructed party dissolves into chaos. His friends grow disturbed and leave. A jealous boyfriend beats him bloody. The strangers who drifted in for free drugs drift out when Spencer screams at them to leave. By Sunday night, Spencer is alone; bruised, wasted, surrounded by the wreckage of his celebration.

But Vanessa returns. In the film's most intimate sequence, she finds Spencer in the bathroom and they share an unexpectedly tender conversation. Spencer, finally vulnerable, asks her to take the remaining cash in his safe, nearly $90,000, and use it to go back to school, to build something real. "My life is over," he tells her. "In a few hours, everything I have will be gone.

After she leaves, Spencer makes one final phone call to his estranged sister

RACHAEL. In a desperate, halting conversation, he begs her to sell all her investments before the markets open. "It's the end, Rach. It's all gonna come crashing down." She thinks he's drunk, thinks he's manipulating her, but something in his voice makes her listen.

The final image: Monday morning. The news blares headlines about Lehman's collapse. Water spills over the edge of a bathtub and floods across the marble floor. A champagne bottle floats on the surface, then crashes to the tiles. The safe in the bedroom stands open and empty—Vanessa took the money. In the other room, the television continues its broadcast about the end of an era.

Spencer got exactly what he wanted: one last party before the crash.

CHAMPAGNE AND OTHER PROBLEMS

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