"Mary Miller, once a hardworking and joyful woman, is desperate to confront her past trauma as she returns to the Highrise Jazz Lounge. There, she begins to question her morals, and soon her reality, as she confronts the man who ruined her life."
Born from a feeling evoked by Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks", Highrise aims to portray feelings of alienation, solitude and intimacy within the confines of a Jazz Lounge in 1960's LA.
The story itself draws from Milton's Paradise Lost and Dante's Divina Comedia: Inferno, taking from these masterful works their threads of moral and mythological punishment, while also interweaving the psychological aspects of Sigmund Freud's Id, Ego and Superego. Refracting these ideas through a modern lens, I found myself looking at films like The Outfit, Bad Times at El Royale and The Devil's Advocate.
Highrise, like these films, uses the genre to its advantage, utilizing it as a vessel for deep psychological enquiry. Twisting its characters into a web woven out of violence and revenge, nothing is as it seems behind the warm glow of the Highrise's lights.
Gallery
Script Sample
HIGHRISE — Selected Pages