Synopsis/Details
The 1970s. Mort hasn’t left his dim, roach-riddled bachelor pad since Nixon resigned. He survives on TV dinners, beer, and endless reruns of I Dream of Jeannie and Gilligan’s Island, cackling at the canned laughs. His constant companion? Roach Buddy — a man who looks, talks, and dresses exactly like Mort, right down to the stained T-shirt and three-day stubble. Only difference: he’s a roach. No one outside the apartment knows. Inside, they’re inseparable.
Then Hope enters: a Manhattan socialite in a Halston wrap dress, slumming it at the corner bar. She spots Mort’s unpolished “authenticity” and decides to rescue him — new wardrobe, therapy, a life beyond the couch. One non-negotiable: the roach must die. She hires New York’s top exterminators, armed with foggers and no mercy.
But Roach Buddy refuses to vanish. He’s not a pest; he’s Mort’s double, his brother, his mirror. Mort is torn — evict his doppelgänger or lose the first woman who’s ever looked twice.
Hope’s hatred isn’t just about hygiene. It’s personal, tied to a buried 70s trauma. When her secret finally scuttles into the open, the satire sprays both ways — politically incorrect tropes, class warfare, the absurdity of “fixing” people, and the horror of trying to kill what’s already inside you.
A grimy, laugh-out-loud 70s period piece, Roach Buddy is The Odd Couple meets The Fly, with All in the Family’s bite. It delivers gross-out gags, era-perfect nods to political incorrectness, and a finale that’ll make you question everything.
Genre: Horror, Dark Comedy, Psychological Thriller
All Accolades & Coverage
Black List: 7/8
Well, this is a very original piece of work from beginning to end, shrugging off most narrative norms for the sake of a laser specific vision, and it is pulled off well. The writer should be proud. It plays like some adult version of DR SEUSS, but in the vein of modern absurdist films such as SORRY TO BOTHER YOU and BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, only much smaller, while simultaneously bringing to mind a variety of bizarre, mostly forgotten 90s film curios, such as JOE'S APARTMENT, THE DARK BACKWARD; and weird latter-day television shows like WILFRED, somehow mixed with David Lynch's RABBITS. The premise is wholly bizarre and pulls no punches, but the film itself has an obvious method and depth to it which shines through the thick surrealism, making the film as a whole resonate beyond just bits of random subversive comedy, and creating characters that will actually matter to an audience - which can be a tough feat for films of this sort. Mort and Roach Buddy are infectiously likable, especially when they're together, and Hope is an endlessly entertaining force of nature. It all works well. And finally, the TOUGH GUYS DON'T DANCE reference on page 59 is a nice touch.
Era: Contemporary
Locations: Various Apartments, Bar, Office
Budgets: Low
Genre: Comedy, Dark Comedy, Horror, Horror Comedy
Logline: A man's relationship with his roach friend is threatened when he forms an unexpected romance with an enigmatic woman.
Strengths: ROACH BUDDY is destined to be a thoroughly divisive script, but those readers who are willing to get on the project's level will find a captivating, bizarre, and oddly poignant character study within the narrative's twisted surreality. ROACH BUDDY offers a striking central concept, and the implications and minutiae of the titular character have been thoroughly well-explored by this author. The script's grotesquerie is deeply disturbing as the storyline veers ever closer to outright body horror, and the thematic focus on masculinity, identity, sexuality, intimacy, and - ultimately - sanity will doubtlessly disturb and resonate with an open-minded audience. The project's less-pointed ideas such as the use of antiquated pop culture and the battle between old and new technology still prove quite fecund, and when the final act offers its one-two punch of "no Hope" and the "Mort means death" realization, the anti-narrative, subtext-laden approach crystallizes into a truly powerful portrait of a deeply troubled individual. Again, ROACH BUDDY is almost guaranteed to be a "love it or hate it" affair, but once the script is refined, those in the former camp will love it quite deeply indeed.
Mort and Roach’s bickering comes off like a modernist play; like a seedy-apartment-version of “Waiting for Godot.” There’s a fascinating mystery laid out in the first scenes of who exactly is Roach Buddy. His relationship with Mort is endlessly interesting. Their mundane arguments have some great rapid-fire dialogue that makes them quite the comedic pair. Mort is built up well from his crippling anxiety/agoraphobia. Hope is a bizarre, eccentric, dark character who feels like a Bukowski-meets-John Waters nightmare. The entire screenplay takes on a surrealist quality that isn’t typically seen in most scripts. The comedy elements that come with the surrealist humor land very well, such as Gibby’s demonstration of using a newspaper on pg.48. The nightmare/dream sequences are both insane but hilarious in their surrealistic execution. The bartender even gets his own moment and monologue that is one of the best parts of the script. Twists aside, the last five pages picks things back up well to end on a thought-provoking final shot.
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