Northern Lights

Read the 'Northern Lights' Script Here


Screenplay Summary: Northern Lights (1998 - 120 pages) - PATTY GREEN is an attractive young waitress at a small lakeshore diner in northern Minnesota called The Landing. She is about to experience the worst weekend of her life. For starters, while working the Friday night shift, she gets fired for allegedly assaulting three members of her college football team (BROWNIE MARINO, RAY BRAUER, DEVO BRYCE) who want nothing better than to sleep with her before the football season’s over. Second, she discovers her boyfriend BILLY has been cheating on her with PATTY’S identical twin sister WINTER. And third, she is forced to move out of her apartment and move in with some friends. To top this off, PATTY still has cheerleading duty at Saturday night’s football game, where the three football jocks will no doubt try to get her into the backseat of the COACH’S car to take a trip up to Inspiration Point where they can make love until the sun comes up. What PATTY really needs this weekend is a friend to help cheer her up.

PATTY finds that friend in ZEKE PEHRSON, a young resort maintenance man also having the worst weekend of his life.

Besides working as a maintenance man, ZEKE also runs his own small plumbing business on the side. While throwing a party at his parents’ lakeshore resort, ZEKE receives a call from an old woman (MAMA FRAN) to come fix her clogged basement drain. He accepts the offer as a regular plumbing job. However, as it turns out, there’s nothing "regular" about this plumbing job. Trouble ensues when ZEKE’S reputation as a Casanova plumber lands him in bed with a young call girl (DOMINIQUE DIAMOND) in exchange for a free plumbing job. Unfortunately, the girl’s pimp, GUIDO PALLADINO - a Chicago crime boss - arrives home earlier than expected and finds the two in bed together. Nothing’s "free" in GUIDO’S house. GUIDO and his two henchmen ("DRIPPY BIBS", JOHNNY MACK) feed the call girl to the fishies in a straight jacket, and leave ZEKE bloodied and unconscious on a dark roadside.

GUIDO and family are in town looking for a couple of fugitive brothers (GRIMLEY and NORTON MINNOW) who’ve embezzled $7,000 of the mob’s money.

GRIMLEY MINNOW used to serve as GUIDO’S accountant. Unfortunately, GRIMLEY got a little greedy at the horse track and lost. He and his younger brother NORTON are now hiding out in the backwater town of Cook. Posing as a couple of local police officers, the MINNOWS pull off a series of ingenius robberies in an attempt to recoup the $7,000 to pay off GUIDO. Too bad for them, they weren’t counting on GUIDO hiring a bounty hunter (BOB FETUS) to track them down.

While returning from a local bar, the MINNOWS stumble upon the unconscious body of ZEKE PEHRSON on the side of a road. As a result of this, the MINNOWS are aided by ZEKE’S "crew" of strange friends in helping them with the GUIDO problem.

ZEKE’S friends are: MARLEY REDMOND - a Vietnam veteran with more than a few screws loose; LAZLO NIBBLE - proprietor of Nibble’s Bait Shack on northern Minnesota’s Lake Vermilion; RILEY WELLS - a clerk at Moosebirds Bed-N-Breakfast; ELLIOT GOLDENTHAL - Moosebirds’ stock boy; CRICKET DeSILVA - MARLEY’S hot young trophy wife and RILEY’S mistress; and DWAYNE and STEVE ROGERS - a pair of auto shop grease monkeys obsessed with ‘Scooby-Doo’.

Okay, so ZEKE’S friends aren’t ‘The A-Team’, but they come awfully close.

In the end, PATTY GREEN gets even with the football jocks and her ex-boyfriend; ZEKE finds love with the girl of his dreams; GUIDO and his goons become barbecue meat and fish bait in a fishing tournament; and the MINNOWS return to the good life.


If I was directing this movie myself, I would cast the following: Marley Redmond - Jeff Daniels
Lazlo Nibble - Crispin Glover
Zeke Pehrson - Jason Lee
Riley Wells - Sean Patrick Flannery
Elliot Goldenthal - Jack Black
Patty Green/Winter Green - Laura Harris
Samantha Christian - Bijou Phillips
Christine "Cricket" DeSilva - Carmen Llewellyn
Dwayne Rogers - Danny Masterson
Steve Rogers - Christopher Masterson
Grimley Minnow - Sam Raimi
Norton Minnow - Ted Raimi
Brownie Marino - Jerry O'Connell
Ray Brauer - Wil Wheaton
Devo Bryce - Corey Feldman
Marlo Lucas - Jaime Pressly
Billy Winger - Jason London
Big Gary LaVigne - Michael Rooker
Buddy LaVigne - Himself (cameo by the screenwriter)
Axl Redmond - John Mahoney
Andy Redmond - Bruce Dern
Guido Palladino - Joe Pantoliano
Bob Fetus - Denis Leary
Drippy Bibs - Mickey Jones
Johnny Mack - Robert Davi
Mama Fran - Diane Wiest
Dominique Diamond - Fairuza Balk