Your American Cousin

The main character, Raj, is an exaggerated version of a typical American upper-middle-class youth, obsessed with himself, his phone, and those aspects of pop-culture that he thinks will make him appealing to the opposite sex.

As the only child of prosperous parents Raj has been indulged all of his life and has come to expect that the indulgence will never end. Oblivious to both his own shortcomings and society’s negative view of him, Will lives a happy existence unaware of any pressure to ever grow up.

Without doing any research into the feasibility of it, Raj announces to his parents that he’s planning for a career in the movie business. As usual, his parents humor him.

Fearing that Raj has over-assimilated to American culture, his parents trick him into going to India where they hope that exposure to Indian values will accelerate his stalled maturation process.

Raj’s Indian cousin Balwant is a conscientious hard worker who earns his success. He reluctantly submits to his mother’s wish that he be a model host to Raj during his visit.

The conflict between the two cousins is comedic because Raj has no idea that there’s anyone in the world who doesn’t think that he’s the living end.

At his mother’s insistence, Balwant gets Raj a meeting with one of Balwant’s friends who is a movie producer. The producer humors Raj by listening to a pitch for a movie called “Robot Lover”.

Through Balwant's girlfriend Amrusha, Raj meets Chandra who is immediately attracted to Raj’s exotic foreign quality.

Balwant, Amrusha, Raj and Chandra all visit a Karaoke bar where Raj slays the crowd with his performance of the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe”. Chandra falls under Raj’s spell but he doesn’t notice it.

Concern for Chandra prompts Balwant and Amrusha to try to subvert any possible relationship with Raj, but they do so surreptitiously.

Raj puts on a basketball dunking display that Balwant thinks is ridiculous. Unfortunately it only enhances Raj in Chandra’s eyes.

In an attempt to undermine Chandra’s infatuation, Balwant manipulates a woman into kissing Raj in view of Chandra. The ploy doesn’t work because Chandra thinks that Will is playing a jealousy game, and she responds in kind.

Eventually Raj clues in to what he has with Chandra and he apologizes for not having appreciated her.

Connecting with Chandra turns Raj’s luck around and he ends up with a job offer to write a script for his “Robot Lover” proposal. Balwant breaks down and cries over the injustice of Raj’s good fortune. Balwant’s Mom thinks that Balwant is crying tears of joy over his cousin’s success, and she’s delighted to have such a generous-spirited son.

The genre of the script is comedy with a romance angle.

The script is squeaky clean with no sex or violence.

There is a two-internal-location, four-actor, nine-scene version of this script that is intended to serve as a showcase for the full script, in order to facilitate obtaining financing for the feature.