Dinner with André made such an impression on me that I thought I could do one too. Dinner with Enzyme is the result. I wrote it when I was still living in my loft in NYC, working with technology companies on market research projects. Anya Tepper, the main woman character, also appears in my novel, Another Road. It’s obvious why this is so.
Here’s a synopsis of the screenplay. Although some of the technology effects could do with updating, the shape of the economic crisis is pleasingly prescient. If you want to see the whole thing, do get in touch.
DINNER WITH ENZYMEby Hazel Kahan DINNER WITH ENZYME is a feature film script by HAZEL KAHAN. It is My Dinner With André for the dot.com world where the two people each bring a laptop to the table and the technology becomes in effect a third party through the dinner. DINNER WITH ENZYME showcases A. TEPPER, a mysterious 50-ish white woman who has turned her back on Penticon, a major Silicon Valley software company she started with her former husband. Deeply disturbed by the powerful and dangerous nanotechnology software developed by the company, she rejects technology and the business world to follow a more spiritual path by working with children in a Vietnamese village. Briefly back in San Francisco, she has a dinner meeting with ELIOT STONE, a hip, aggressive, ambitious 30ish Black software executive who has avoided the fate of his former ghetto pals by achieving wealth and position in Silicon Valley. ELIOT is the second in command at Penticon. He wants TEPPER to give him the code she used to develop Enzyme, the molecular electronics software that she believes is too dangerous and that he desperately wants his company to release and ship. Without her cooperation however, the project is stymied. Unlike My Dinner with André, ENZYME develops, in real time, a relationship between two strangers who at first are antagonistic, with radically different ideologies and agendas. During the course of the meal this relationship transforms and unfolds as it explores technology, music, food, love, sex, video games, success and being Black. The conversation is highly topical, intelligent and imaginative, ranging from intimacy to hostility and from sexual attraction to understanding. It is interwoven with computer-generated images that play on the screens of the laptop computers brought by TEPPER and STONE to the dinner table. The audience is deeply engaged by the interplay between the conversation and these images. Tension builds as TEPPER and ELIOT each challenge the other’s deepest beliefs, including technology, business and personal relationships . The real world ethical pressures and dilemmas that these new technologies are bringing to bear on the scientific and business communities are crystallized in this dinner conversation. DINNER WITH ENZYME is a one-location film that can be produced economically and quickly. A completed full-length script is available on request. |
