Swipe: A Screenplay

A high-achiever printmaking professor loses his faculty position - a victim of university politics and a series of disastrous incidents. He takes it hard; he’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown, then has an accident that sends him off to recuperate on a remote island. His wife can’t take it and goes to the aid of her Brazilian half-sister. On the island he slowly recovers, struggling to restore his speech, his art, and reawaken his ambitious dream of winning a great award, the Elmer Gates Prize for Meritorious Teaching. When an old enemy shows up and beats him, he decides to leave the US for Brazil, hoping for a new life in the resort city, Floripa. In Brazil, with his now-successful hotelier wife, he finds a new outlet for his creativity and teaching. With his muse and adopted daughter, he follows a spritely fantasy to a back street antique shop in Floripa. In a dusty, dark back room he makes an amazing discovery, validating his dreams and redeeming his career.