Untitled Jason Priestley Project
Romantic Comedy
(120 mins)
In Development
The quest for love, survival and a really good Bordeaux.
Owen Chancy believes life is for the lucky and survival is for the fittest so there’s no sense in trying to hold on to things you’re bound to lose – like youthful ideals, true love, or an inferior species. Besides, he’s too busy pursuing fine wine and beautiful women. As a wine-taster for Creston Wine Merchants, Owen finds plenty of both, but one of those women is the boss’s wife and Owen gets caught in the act.
Sporting a broken nose and a bruised ego, Owen escapes to wine country, where his grandfather Buck holds on to his decrepit winery and a rare species of grape he brought back from France during the War. Buck’s Mud Puppy Winery is one of the last holdouts against Creston’s winery-swallowing conglomerate. But with Buck’s failing health, time is running out for the man and the grape that survived against all odds.
“Old vines. Nothing like ‘em.” Buck’s Bordeaux is Creston’s holy grail and Owen’s ticket out of trouble. Owen makes a deal with Creston: Owen gets his grandfather to sell out, and Creston doesn’t mount Owen’s head on the wall next to the bushbuck he bagged in Zimbabwe.
“I’m a dead man”, Owen says, when he sees the state of Buck’s vineyard.
Despite the scorching heat of the tinderbox valley, the vineyard has turned into a swamp where a species of frog, thought to be extinct, has found its final refuge amongst the last of Buck’s vines. Here Owen meets his match in Edna (Eddie)
Teasdale, the feisty biologist who is as determined to save the frogs as Owen is to save the vineyard, and his own neck.
“No wonder they’re going extinct”, Owen says when Eddie tells him these frogs select a single, lifelong mate. As the world gets hotter and drier, amphibians everywhere are dying off. Like the dinosaurs, says Owen, dismissing Eddie as a romantic grasping at foolish notions of preservation and monogamy. “Everybody’s always losing something” Eddie returns, “Even you, Mr. Chancy”.
The vines are drowning, the frogs are mating, and only one will survive. As Owen fights for control of the vineyard, he discovers Eddie is right. He is losing something, something more precious than an extraordinary vintage, and in the battle for survival Owen realizes that some things are worth holding on to, even when you know you’re going to lose them.
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