A car chase is only exciting if you care who’s driving.
David Singer is an award-winning screenwriter and director whose stories of diamond heists, doomsday cults, and desperate teenage love are filled with characters and dialogue that make audiences laugh, and gasp, and actually care what happens.
"Imperfections marks an impressive debut effort from its tyro director." - Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter
“A diverting and skillfully made heist film.” - RogerEbert.com
NOW IN PRODUCTION: “Incoming”
Winner of the Austin Film Festival Screenwriting Competition.
My slate.
Incoming
In production now as a fiction podcast!!
(comedy/drama series for television)
In 2018, a Emergency Broadcast Alert rippled across Hawaii. Phones buzzed with an ominous, dissonant tone, and the message read:
EMERGENCY ALERT.
BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INCOMING.
SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER.
THIS IS NOT A DRILL.
People scrambled to find a place to hide, to contact loved ones, to make apologies, to confess, to grieve, to seek revenge or forgiveness. The message was a false alarm, a glitch during a drill by the Emergency Management Agency. But for 38 minutes, the people who received that terrifying warning had to confront the impossible. This could be it, the end of everything. What am I going to do?
INCOMING is an anthology series about what happens after the alert comes through, and what people do with what may be the last few minutes of their lives. Not tied to any one historical event - the threat of nuclear annihilation has been with us since 1945, and false alarms have been a relatively common occurrence over the decades - each episode takes place in a different year, a different location, and new characters. Some episodes are funny, some are scary, most are both. And not every episode ends the same way the event in Hawaii did.
INCOMING was the winner of the 2019 Austin Film Festival Script Competition and is now in production with Noisegloor as a narrative podcast.
Time Management
(half-hour sci-fi/comedy)
2026: The giant ORCA corporation sends an ambitious middle-manager back in time for a top secret mission. But it’s not to kill Hitler — they're sending Joe back a measly three years to complete “administrative” work. And while he’s in the past shredding documents and purchasing chicken farms, he sees his old life clearly for the first time — including the marriage his old self is about to ruin. Joe decides to grab the future he thinks he deserves, even if that means drugging, kidnapping, and taking the place of the other Joe to do it.
Heavy Machinery
(feature-film sci-fi)
In the not-too-distant future, an Artificial Superintelligence has all but eradicated humanity. As the robotic drills approach the earth’s core, the few remaining human slaves that maintain the equipment are suddenly informed that the team with the lowest productivity will be “reassigned”. The different teams go to war with each other, desperate to maintain their feeble hold on life, and what starts out as sabotage quickly turns into bloody combat. Will they be the ones who wipe out humanity once and for all with their vicious civil war, or can they band together to spit in the unseen eye of their oppressor?
NPR Radical
(feature length black comedy)
White “NPR radical” Ryan Carrow has joined the good fight. But when a rally demanding the removal of a Confederate statue descends into violence, he ends up zip-tied in the back of an unmarked van. Proto-fascism collides with bureaucratic incompetence as the authorities decide he’s a mysterious terrorist and shuttle him from black site to black site, until he’s unsure if he’s in Azerbaijan or Sacramento. Confronted by real radicals and real violence for the first time in his life, how will his big-PTA-energy stand up against waterboarding? And when push comes to shove, will he beg to be released back to the suburbs, or will he join the real freedom fighters?
The Other Brother
(YA comedy series)
Casey Quisenberry is the most popular 18-year-old in his hometown - he’s brilliant, an inventor, a playwright, he hosts a hit Twitch stream advice column, he’s genuinely loved and admired by kids and adults alike, and he’s headed to Stanford in a couple of months. The secret behind his success? He’s really the frontman for the once-in-a-generation brain of his brilliant but debilitatingly anxious 16-year-old brother, Conrad. Now it’s the summer before Casey’s leaving for college, and the brothers are reluctantly figuring out how they’re gonna live life without each other. But when they tangle with a local billionaire with world domination plans, they realize their Cyrano act isn’t over yet.
Written by David Singer, Paul Adelstein, and Eric Wasserman.
SueAnon
(feature length black comedy)
After years of listening to the absurd “truths” her parents have uncovered on Facebook, all while discrediting her work as part of the “fake news mainstream media”, Sue Metzger creates a conspiracy theory so ridiculous that her parents will have to change their ways once she reveals that she’s the author. Unfortunately, the conspiracy becomes more popular — and dangerous — than Pizzagate. She battles to redirect the energies of her new followers into something that resembles reality. But every move she makes pushes them in ever more absurd and unexpected directions, and she’s haunted by visions of the possible future she’s helped create — from the mass removal of all suburban trees, to mandatory “re-education” for anyone who doesn’t watch The Voice. Can she wrest back control of the narrative before Maryland descends into an authoritarian dystopia? Or will her nightmares become reality?
Previously.
Imperfections
Cassidy Harper (Virginia Kull) is a struggling actress sleeping on her mother’s couch (Marilu Henner) and grinding out auditions, fearing that any chance at stardom may have already passed her by. Desperate to save enough money to move to Hollywood, she takes a job working as a runner for her mother’s boyfriend (Ed Begley, Jr.), an importer in Chicago’s diamond district. When she realizes the money is trickling in too slowly for her to put a stake together, she conspires with the owner’s son (Ashton Holmes) to stage a robbery and keep the diamonds - using her former boyfriend (Zach McGowan) as the fall guy. Their hare-brained scheme only gets more complicated when she realizes she’s still in love with her volatile ex.
"A shaggy charm permeates David Singer’s comic thriller about an aspiring actress who gets more than she bargained for upon taking a job as a diamond courier...
"The dialogue is frequently fast and funny, such as when Cassidy’s mother solicitously asks her daughter, who’s been injured in a robbery and is in pain at the hospital, “Want me to go out there and do the Shirley MacLaine?”
"Imperfections marks an impressive debut effort from its tyro director." - Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter
“A diverting and skillfully made heist film.” - RogerEbert.com
Advantage: Weinberg
Sophomore Philip Weinberg orchestrates a series of unbelievable 'coincidences' to grab the attention of an older girl. Enlisting a ragtag group of accomplices, Philip goes to incredible lengths to create the perfect first impression. As his plans unfold, they become more grandiose and elaborate - but will his house of cards remain standing?
Emerging Filmmaker Showcase at the Cannes Film Festival. Best Film and Best Director at the Gold Coast Film Festival and screened at Austin Film Festival, Chicago Intl Film Festival, Starz/Denver Film Fest, Santa Fe Film Fest, Sidewalk Film Festival, and the Los Angeles Comedy Film Fest.
David Singer is a writer, filmmaker, musician and composer based in Chicago.
His debut short film Advantage: Weinberg was selected for the Emerging Filmmaker Showcase at the Cannes Film Festival and screened at many prestigious festivals around the US and a couple of janky ones.
After taking a bunch of pretty depressing meetings, David went back to Chicago and wrote and directed his first feature film, Imperfections, a diamond caper comedy set in Chicago’s Jeweler’s Row. The film stars Virginia Kull, Zach McGowan, Ed Begley, Jr., Marilu Henner, and Chelcie Ross. The movie screened at the Austin Film Festival and The Chicago International Film Festival (among others), and The Hollywood Reporter said, "“A shaggy charm permeates David Singer’s comic thriller about an aspiring actress who gets more than she bargained for upon taking a job as a diamond courier… The dialogue is frequently fast and funny... Imperfections marks an impressive debut effort from its tyro director.” These nice reviews made a big impression on people David went to high school with.
In 2019, David wrote anthology series called Incoming, loosely based on a false alarm missile alert that terrified millions of usually calm Hawaiians. Incoming won the 2019 Austin Film Festival Script Competition, and is now in production with Noise Floor/Next Mission as a narrative podcast. You can hear the pilot episode starring David Pasquesi HERE.
David is also a musician and composer who has released six albums and played hundreds of shows around the world to crowds ranging from 12 to 5000 people. He is also a composer whose work includes August: Osage County (winner of 5 Tony Awards, where he got to meet NBA legend Steve Nash), and the Broadway revival of Of Mice and Men, which still has what we call in the screenwriting business a “down ending”.
David is also one half of the transatlantic screenwriting power duo NOBODY MOVE, who write scripts that smash together Sci-Fi, Comedy, and Action to tell the kind of stories that keep audiences on the edge of their fucking seats.