The Beard

His ears bleeding and mind melting from his creative writing professor Mandie Gelder’s latest ideological tirade on race and gender, mature student and aspiring screenwriter Matt Welch walks out on her class for good. Encountering fanatical campus protesters on the way to his car, Matt decides he’s had enough of university altogether, and dumps all his textbooks in the trash. A part-time driving instructor, Matt asks his young boss Tayreyza Phelps for more hours, determined to teach driving by day and write screenplays he hopes to sell to Hollywood by night. A business school graduate with dreams of owning her own driving school, Tayreyza encourages Matt to pursue a more stable career than screenwriting. But tell Matt Welch what to do and he’ll put his shoulder to the wheel in doing the opposite. While he works relentlessly on a screenplay at home (and grows a fantastic beard), at work Matt teaches a loner named Cooks how to drive. A student from Matt’s creative writing class, Cooks enjoys Gelder’s lectures and has even befriended the campus protesters. Is the wallflower Cooks simply coming out of his shell, or is he falling under the spell of a radical ideology? And what’s the deal with his increasingly feminine attire? Finally finishing his script, Matt uploads it to the networking website Scriptacular and submits it to several entities online. He lands an interview with Randy Nickers at JFC Talent Agency, failing to read the fine print stating that JFC is seeking diverse writers at this time. During the interview, Randy (who clearly hasn’t even read Matt’s screenplay) awkwardly informs Matt that because of his race and gender (and lack of obvious mental or physical disabilities) he cannot be taken on as a client; JFC wouldn’t have even contacted Matt if he’d bothered to upload a profile picture of himself or put down his rather pedestrian sexual preferences. Recounting his woes to Tayreyza, Matt discovers that race and gender may have played a role in her being hired at the driving school. This gives Matt an idea, and he secretly sets to work creating another Scriptacular profile. This one features Tayreyza’s name and likeness instead of his own, and he uses it to resubmit his screenplay to JFC under a new title. When Randy responds eager to meet with Matt’s diverse new persona, Matt convinces Tayreyza to attend the interview by playing up the financial possibilities of splitting a screenplay sale 50/50 and playing down the future prospects of driving schools in a world of artificial intelligence and self-driving cars. Money-hungry yet prudent, Tayreyza cannot resist, and she reluctantly agrees to literally become Matt’s literary beard. Literally. To ensure Tayreyza leapfrogs over any other diverse candidates on the intersectional grievance hierarchy, Matt convinces her to wear a fat body suit and roll into Randy’s office in a battered second-hand wheelchair. The interview goes swimmingly, but to Matt’s horror Tayreyza agrees to some race and gender-related changes to Matt’s screenplay in exchange for the opportunity to receive credit for polishing a superhero script for a major studio. While the pair argue over these details, Randy secretly witnesses Tayreyza rising from her wheelchair and walking out on Matt, discovering she’s a fraud. Driving away alone, Matt gets held up in traffic by protesters marching in the street, among them Cooks and Professor Gelder. There’s no doubt about it: Cooks has drunk the ideological Kool-Aid and fully transitioned into becoming an extremist. With Matt stubbornly refusing to allow Tayreyza to make any changes to his screenplay and Randy Nickers about to expose these two “numbskulls” as grifters to his boss, Matt and Tayreyza’s Hollywood dreams look to lie in smithereens. But what if Matt has a chance encounter with a legendary screenwriter who knows a thing or two about the pitfalls of refusing to compromise in Tinseltown? And how about if Randy’s boss is more concerned with diversity quotas, JFC’s ESG score and his bizarre hobbies than with who is the real author of Tayreyza’s screenplay? Provided Matt can survive the driving lesson from hell with a deranged and radicalized Cooks and patch things up with Tayreyza, the stars might yet align professionally and even romantically for this diverse duo come awards season.