CHRISTINA SARTORI'S "MY HITMAN'

Last night, before a smal but attentive audience, I viewed a staged reading of a new screenplay by first time writer Christina Sartori, directed by local actor Bob Pemberton. Although I had read the script in earlier form, I was surprised at how deft and funny it was. It certainly had some of the best one-liners I've heard lately, but was also the best reading, both in substance and in execution, of a script I've attended in the last few years.

MY HITMAN is a dark comedy about a gay hit man, who, in the course of killing the sexual partners of a rich man's trophy wife, becomes attracted to one of the men he is supposed to kill, a man who himself is sexually conflicted.
The hit man's name is Dylan, who is British, and he is one of the best invented characters I've encountered lately. While some of the plot is similar to COLLATORAL, the tone, feel and crisp dialogue are from another genre. It's like Michael Mann meets Noel Coward.

The script still needs some work, but that's the purpose of a first staged reading. It's for the writer, not for possible investors. But in the hands of a good director, say an early Stephen Soderberg, and a good editor, the film could go somewhere. For someone under 25 to have written a script with such an interesting set of characters, is quite an accomplishment. This is a project I woud like to see go somewhere.