Wish You Were Here by Mike Murphy

Always call back your grandmother.

Type:

Short

Status:

For sale

Page Count:

7pp

Genre:

Fantasy

Budget:

Shoestring

Age Rating:

13+

Based On:

My audio script.

Synopsis/Details:

Brent, 30-ish, is very busy at his computer start-up. Many nights, he returns home late to a phone message from his beloved grandma. Busy, he keeps forgetting to call her back. One day, she leaves a message in which she sounds very ill. The next day, she is gone before he can get to the hospital.

Feeling bad, he realizes, to his surprise, that he has more than a dozen of his grandmother's phone messages that he never deleted. Using his computer skills, he is able to create a program where - by splicing and dicing the words in the recordings into grammatically correct sentences - he can talk to his grandma.

He will never be too busy for her again.

Story & Logistics

Story Situation:

Loss of loved ones

Story Conclusion:

Bitter-sweet

Linear Structure:

Linear

Cast Size:

Few

Locations:

Few

Characters

Lead Role Ages:

Male Adult

Advanced

Equality & Diversity:

Elderly Focused

Life Topics:

The Elderly

Time Period:

Contemporary times

Country:

United States of America (USA)

Time of Year:

Summer

Illness Topics:

Physical

Relationship Topics:

Elderly

This Script Has Been Featured in Reviews

Click here to read the review by Caroline Rovello

Submitted: October 12, 2019

Last Updated: October 16, 2024

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This Script Is Loved By 1 Readers

The Writer: Mike Murphy

Mike, a four-time Parsec Awards finalist, has had over 150 audio plays produced in the U.S. and overseas. He’s won a dozen Moondance International Film Festival Awards (winner, finalist, and semi-finalist) in their TV pilot, audio play, short screenplay, and short story categories. A more complete list of awards is presented below by year. In 2025, his TV pilot script Milly Foster, Macabre Investigator was a quarter-finalist in the Filmmatic Horror Screenplay Awards (Season 9). In the same year, Mike's screenplay Die Laughing was a semi-finalist in the 2025 New York International Screenplay Awards. In 2020, his screenplay Die Laughing was a semi-finalist in the Unique Voices Screenplay... Go to bio