Show Notes
What if the deal that saved your life came back to collect — through your child? Due begins with a seventeen-year-old on the verge of death.
In her darkest moment, she whispers one word: deal. She survives.
Nine years later, the rent is due. Written by Kathryn Zizek — a new mother who drew from the disorientation of raising a newborn to fuel every scene — Due uses the terror of early motherhood as the canvas for something far darker.
The black eyes of a looming anesthesiologist. A best friend who isn't quite right.
The creeping feeling that nobody is listening, nobody believes you, and something is very, very wrong with your child. It's a horror story grounded in real fear.
And it has a twist you won't see coming. "Those are things that could happen in your head — am I going crazy, or is this real?"
"That vulnerability as a parent is so apparent here.
Your whole job is just to keep them alive."
"Write what you know. She used her real-life experiences to fuel every nuance — and you can feel it."
Kinolime is an indie production studio where the community decides what gets made.
You read the scripts, you vote, and the winner gets produced into a real film with up to a $15M production budget, a real director and a real release. THE WAIF (2024) is shooting this year with BAFTA-nominated director Stephen Fingleton.
MOB MENTALITY (2025) just attached director William Groebe. The winner of this vote is next.
Full Transcript
[00:00]
[♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪
[00:10]
Hello and welcome to the GuinoLine's script to screen competition.
[00:14]
Table read, I'm your host Julia Yorkes here with.
[00:18]
John Tra.
[00:19]
And.
[00:20]
Valence Giro.
[00:21]
Mariana Garciontoro.
[00:22]
And this is the script it's called Do.
[00:25]
And our log line is, years after making a mysterious deal
[00:29]
during a near fatal overdose, a new mother
[00:32]
must navigate the deceptions of a shape shifting entity
[00:36]
that has returned to claim it's due.
[00:39]
To set the scene when Nina, our protagonist,
[00:42]
is going into labor.
[00:44]
And it really kind of kicks off the second act of our story
[00:48]
here because this child that is being born, spoiler alert,
[00:53]
is going to be payment for a past due bill of sort.
[00:58]
Bring it back to the title.
[00:59]
What can I say?
[01:01]
So joining us today, we have Bella Spengro,
[01:04]
playing the role of Nina.
[01:06]
And we have Mariana Garciontoro as Casey.
[01:10]
Interior Nina's bedroom.
[01:12]
Nina moans, twisting in bed, racked with labor pain.
[01:15]
She reaches out and grabs her cell phone from the nightstand.
[01:18]
The glow of the screen illuminates her features
[01:21]
as she makes a call, placing it on speakerphone.
[01:23]
Yo, still at next.
[01:25]
Sure am.
[01:26]
I'm having contractions.
[01:27]
Are you serious?
[01:28]
Every few minutes.
[01:29]
Holy hell, all right, I'm coming down.
[01:31]
Nina ends the call and slides herself off the bed,
[01:33]
hunching over and pain.
[01:34]
Nina lets out a loud grinning from a distant room.
[01:38]
Oh.
[01:40]
Nina lifts her head, listening.
[01:41]
She continues to endure the contraction.
[01:44]
Casey.
[01:45]
A distant light turns on in the apartment,
[01:47]
creating a dim glow in the hallway.
[01:50]
Casey, yep, yep, I'm here.
[01:52]
Casey flies into the room.
[01:53]
She's flustered and in a hurry to collect Nina's overnight back.
[01:56]
Is that you?
[01:57]
Hospital, now.
[01:57]
Are you mocking me?
[01:58]
Nina, you're about to push out a baby.
[02:00]
Where's your phone?
[02:01]
In the back.
[02:02]
All right, let's do it.
[02:03]
Casey, something's not right.
[02:04]
Nina, you got this.
[02:06]
Nina stares into the ominous, barely let hallway
[02:08]
as Casey's supportively guides her towards it.
[02:11]
Pre-lap, hospital monitors beeping.
[02:13]
Interior operating room, night.
[02:15]
The operating room comes in and out of view
[02:18]
as Nina struggles to open her eyes.
[02:20]
From Nina's perspective, as she wigs on the operating table,
[02:23]
a surgical team reties their instruments,
[02:26]
preparing for an emergency C-section.
[02:28]
A male anesthetist looms directly overhead, oxygen mask in hand.
[02:32]
He lowers his gaze and locks eyes with Nina.
[02:35]
His eyes are completely black.
[02:37]
No whites.
[02:38]
Nina lets out a sound of distress, but it's barely a whimper.
[02:41]
The anesthetist places the mask over her face and the room
[02:45]
whites out.
[02:46]
Interior maternity ward day.
[02:48]
The white light fades to reveal a perfectly round golden sun
[02:52]
seen through the hospital room window.
[02:54]
A partially filled catheter bag hangs from the bed frame.
[02:57]
The urinate holds as the same bright yellow
[03:00]
as the generous bouquet of tulips that's
[03:02]
been left at her bedside.
[03:04]
Her eyelids twitch gently opening.
[03:06]
In the middle of the room, a nurse stands with her back
[03:09]
to Nina, leaning over a transparent bassinet
[03:11]
containing a sleeping baby.
[03:13]
How is he?
[03:16]
Is he OK?
[03:18]
Nurse?
[03:19]
The nurse with her shoulders up by her ears,
[03:21]
arms bent, wrists limp, scurries out of the room,
[03:24]
leaving the bassinet and baby behind.
[03:27]
Nina's eyes widen as she tightens her grip on the bedsheet.
[03:30]
She barely has time to react for Kasty bursts into the room,
[03:34]
her voice brimming with energy.
[03:36]
And she's awake.
[03:37]
Kasty, what the fuck?
[03:38]
I know, right?
[03:39]
What a wild night.
[03:39]
I'm still shaking from the adrenaline.
[03:41]
Put that woman.
[03:42]
What was wrong with her?
[03:43]
Shh.
[03:46]
There was a nursing here.
[03:47]
And she's weird.
[03:49]
A nurse in a hospital.
[03:51]
Someone called the cops.
[03:53]
Do you think she did something to him?
[03:56]
How cute you're one of those paranoid mothers.
[04:00]
It's probably all the drugs they've got you on.
[04:03]
The baby starts fusing.
[04:04]
Nina attempts to sit up but can't.
[04:06]
She winces.
[04:07]
Here.
[04:08]
It says Shang, they had to cut you up.
[04:11]
Can I?
[04:12]
Of course.
[04:14]
Look how perfect he is.
[04:15]
Nina gazes down at her baby.
[04:17]
His face is soft and new.
[04:19]
With delicate features, the world hasn't touched him yet.
[04:22]
She smiles softly with the warmth of a mother.
[04:25]
But it doesn't last.
[04:26]
A sadness takes over.
[04:27]
As if her love for him brings her pain.
[04:30]
Who got in the flowers?
[04:32]
I thought they were from here.
[04:34]
The logo on the flower wrapping reads Mr. Tinkels tulips.
[04:38]
The baby finally lapses and settles.
[04:41]
She, you're natural.
[04:44]
And seeing.
[04:46]
Love it.
[04:47]
Great work, guys.
[04:48]
Hi, good job.
[04:50]
I love that.
[04:51]
That was so fun.
[04:52]
So as the actors and the scene, how did you guys
[04:57]
feel about this?
[04:58]
Did it bring up anything?
[04:59]
Was there anything that particularly resonated with you?
[05:02]
Geez.
[05:03]
I mean, childbirth and being a mother of such,
[05:06]
I have an experience in myself, but it's
[05:07]
such a terrifying experience as it is.
[05:13]
But adding in those tiny elements of just things
[05:17]
being not quite right, whether it was the black eyes
[05:20]
of the anesthesiologist is just like, oh god.
[05:27]
Those are things that could happen in your head.
[05:29]
Those are things that moments of like, am I going crazy?
[05:32]
Or is this real?
[05:34]
Especially during a moment of deep intensity.
[05:38]
But I mean, seeing it and feeling it through this script
[05:44]
was like just was so off-putting.
[05:47]
It's even more off-putting knowing what KC has actually
[05:52]
done in this story.
[05:57]
Yeah.
[05:58]
So you know, a spoiler alert, not the best friend.
[06:02]
But yeah, it's just she has this mask on right now
[06:06]
in the scene that kind of like knowing that makes it even
[06:10]
more unsettling for you.
[06:12]
And you can't quite put your finger on it.
[06:14]
Yeah, yeah.
[06:15]
I feel like, wait, that's not the right thing to say.
[06:18]
Or to eat.
[06:18]
Yeah.
[06:18]
And it's that feeling as a woman where nobody is listening
[06:22]
to me right now.
[06:23]
Like nobody's understanding me.
[06:24]
Even my best friend, you know, they
[06:27]
have that little spiel where you are obviously
[06:30]
in distress.
[06:31]
But it's like, why isn't your best friend like listening to?
[06:36]
Yeah.
[06:36]
So yeah, there's just this undertone of something.
[06:40]
Something is wrong.
[06:41]
Something is really.
[06:42]
No, I left that because I think that's
[06:44]
what's so great about horror.
[06:45]
And you know, for those of you who have read this script
[06:49]
and spoiler for those of you who have it,
[06:51]
the movie opens on Nina having an overdose.
[06:54]
And basically, in order to save herself,
[06:57]
she makes a deal with not the devil, but close.
[07:01]
Similar.
[07:02]
And so, and that is now what's haunting her
[07:06]
through her child, the deal that she made ultimately
[07:08]
was to sacrifice her firstborn child.
[07:11]
And now the rent is due.
[07:13]
And so, and there's a really fun twist to, I think,
[07:17]
at the end where she's able to fulfill on that deal
[07:22]
and outsmart.
[07:23]
But then, as you mentioned, Casey has also
[07:25]
made a deal of her own.
[07:26]
And so it's just very fun.
[07:28]
And what I was saying before, I love in horror
[07:32]
how you can take something like childbirth,
[07:34]
which is already scary and such an experience for so many people
[07:38]
who shared experience and then turn it even more in a fairies.
[07:42]
Yeah.
[07:43]
And so that's really fun.
[07:44]
And I think, as a screenwriter, it
[07:46]
is really difficult to maintain terror on the page,
[07:51]
particularly jump scares, such as, you know,
[07:55]
we're seeing the black eyes of the anesthetist
[08:00]
and all of these things.
[08:01]
And so I think that this script was able to really convey
[08:05]
those scares on the page in a fun way.
[08:08]
And I think, as someone who has, and not personally gone
[08:11]
through childbirth, but I have a daughter
[08:13]
and to be so precious over your kid when they're so small,
[08:19]
and knowing that like, your job is to have them live.
[08:24]
Like, your whole job is apparent.
[08:25]
Like, it's just to like not have your kid die.
[08:27]
Like, keep them alive.
[08:28]
I always say we joke with our friends.
[08:30]
But, you know, that vulnerability as a parent,
[08:32]
I think, is very apparent here in the story.
[08:35]
And I can only imagine it's probably like a thousand times
[08:37]
more magnified as a woman giving birth
[08:40]
and then having the nurture.
[08:41]
So it's just, it's such a great story
[08:44]
and like the prompt for the writer, because I asked,
[08:46]
I was like, well, you know, what was like the reason
[08:48]
you, you know, wanted to write this story.
[08:50]
And she's like, well, I was breastfeeding my child.
[08:53]
And I was like, how weird that be if there was like a small,
[08:55]
weird, like, small manatee.
[08:57]
Like, you know, and like, isn't that such a weird story?
[09:00]
Like, like, like, prompt for us an idea.
[09:03]
Like, so that prompt created an entire script.
[09:06]
Also, I think just goes to show the state of your head
[09:08]
when you are in the newborn phase.
[09:11]
Yeah, yeah.
[09:12]
You can tell this was written by a weird stuff.
[09:15]
At the time, it was great.
[09:17]
I mean, I think, so I love when a, as a writer,
[09:20]
when a nugget of an idea comes from an image,
[09:23]
like a visual image, I think it's so cool in it.
[09:26]
And it makes the script so visual, and that's what this does.
[09:28]
And it's common to hear this.
[09:29]
But right what you know, right?
[09:31]
By this writer, she, Catherine,
[09:33]
wanted to write a screenplay, and she
[09:37]
used her real life experiences to then motivate
[09:40]
and give the fuel to write a screenplay.
[09:43]
And it's the little nuances that you only get if you lived it.
[09:48]
And I think, now that doesn't mean you have to write exactly
[09:50]
what you know.
[09:51]
In the sense, like, we're being like,
[09:52]
Tarantino writes what he knows, but he'll make
[09:54]
an unethical world and different.
[09:55]
But you're using real life experiences people
[09:58]
to feel and motivate you.
[10:00]
Well, that's that grounded element that we were talking about.
[10:03]
I think, as long as the story, particularly a horror
[10:06]
is grounded in real emotions, real ones, real fears,
[10:10]
that is what is so terrifying.
[10:12]
And then the monsters are representative
[10:14]
of so many other things.
[10:17]
But yeah, you could tell with the pacing
[10:20]
at which we were reading.
[10:22]
I felt like it was really able to achieve
[10:25]
that kind of terror feeling.
[10:27]
Yeah.
[10:27]
Amazing, because we're like, I wouldn't call it
[10:29]
the golden age of horror at the moment in the theaters,
[10:31]
but like all the movies are right now, you know, obsession.
[10:34]
There's some phenomenal films that are being made
[10:36]
in the space, because you get to explore more like you mentioned.
[10:39]
Yeah.
[10:40]
Do could be one of them.
[10:41]
You know, this is my favorite.
[10:42]
Great transition.
[10:43]
I was very good.
[10:44]
Horror has a great ROI.
[10:45]
There you go.
[10:46]
Exactly.
[10:47]
But if you want to vote for do, if you want to see this movie
[10:50]
get made, we're in the final voting stage right now.
[10:52]
Go to keenolime.com, create an account,
[10:55]
or if you have an account, get in there, read, vote.
[10:58]
We have the audio version.
[10:59]
We have the script version.
[11:00]
We have the treatment.
[11:00]
You have the table read.
[11:01]
Like go immerse yourself in the story.
[11:03]
It's a really fantastic read.
[11:05]
You love horror like nothing better than it
[11:08]
out there at the moment.
[11:09]
So go to keenolime, check out do.
[11:11]
If this is the movie you want to see get made,
[11:13]
this is your chance to make it happen,
[11:14]
and create the opportunity for Catherine to get her movie,
[11:19]
Vision Realize, and like us make a movie.
[11:21]
It's worth so dope.
[11:23]
Let's make a movie.
[11:24]
I know.
[11:25]
I love it.
[11:25]
Absolutely.
[11:26]
Well, thank you very much for joining us today.
[11:28]
And thank you at home for reading these scripts
[11:30]
and for voting.
[11:31]
Be sure to vote for the winner.
[11:32]
Yeah, deadline June 15th.
[11:34]
Get out there and vote.
[11:36]
Re-scripts made it through.
[11:37]
One gets produced into a real film and you decide which one.
[11:41]
The WAPE is shooting this year
[11:42]
with Fathom Nominated Director Steven Fingleton,
[11:45]
Mob and Talonies in development.
[11:47]
The winner of this vote is next.
[11:49]
Join the community, read the script,
[11:51]
or listen to the audio version and vote.
[11:53]
Help the side with ends up on screen.
[11:55]
The winning script gets up to $15 million
[11:57]
production budget.
[11:58]
It's a real film.
[11:59]
It's going to be with the real director with a real release.
[12:02]
The industry has always decided what gets made
[12:04]
but we're changing that.
[12:06]
Vote closes June 14th, winner it out June 15th.
[12:09]
Go to canelam.com, sign up, read, vote,
[12:13]
be part of the movement.
