Heavy Duty

Creator: Lisa Scullard
Genres: Comedy, Drama
Age rating: 13 and older
A whodunnit set in the pre-licensing world of nightclub security. A female bouncer's car is taken from outside the club, used in a shooting and returned before anyone is the wiser - until the next morning.
Project collaboration: By Permission
Full synopsis
Synopsis: Four bouncers are working for an agency, Heavy Duty Security Ltd. One woman and three men, they are outwardly very straightforward and down-to-Earth, arguing over crossword solutions as they share a car to work, but each has a reason not to draw major attention to themselves in the eyes of the law.

Jade is a single mother not declaring her earnings, Steve is now a family man but also a known organised soccer hooligan, Zak is an ex-pro karate competitor with a recreational coke habit, and Kurt, in a former job as nightclub doorman, killed a punter by allegedly pushing him down the stairs.

The agency they now all work for turns a blind eye to their backgrounds, and has them contracted out to a nightclub three nights a week.

On the night in question, the owner of the club and his security manager make it clear they don't want any trouble or upsets as they've got a top guest DJ doing a set with a view to doing a regular monthly slot. During the evening, Jade's drink is spiked and she suffers a psychotic attack. The other three agency bouncers knock her out and lock her in the boot of her own car, waking her up after work and giving her time to recover before driving them home.

The next morning an inefficient hitman turns up on her doorstep and tries to kill her. She overcomes him and ties him up in her bedroom, where through a process of torture involving threatening to insert the cast of Sesame Street into various orifices, she finds out that at some point the previous night, while she was locked unconscious in her car boot, it was used in a shooting.

The car was traced back to the nightclub afterwards and later to her house by employers of the revenge hitman, who has little else to divulge, and she leaves him handcuffed to a lamp-post outside the local police station with a note taped to his back. The police think they have got the perpetrator of the original shooting, and do little more to continue their own investigation.

In the meantime, Jade has her car towed to the MOT garage where Zak works, to avoid attracting further trouble, while she tries to investigate what happened. At first she suspects Steve, who took her car keys, but it turns out he left his jacket on the DJ stand after locking her in the boot, so anyone could have taken it. She follows up a suspicion that the guest DJ might have spiked her as the only time she put her drink down was on the DJ stand. The DJ reveals that he was offered cocaine by the club security manager, possibly on behalf of the owner, but did nothing as he doesn't take it himself.

Then Jade finds out the murdered man was a regular to the club - he had even paid a brief visit the same night. This man was delivering cocaine from a supplier to the club's owner, who used it as incentive to attract certain DJs and other acts to perform at the club. He had attempted to make a bit of extra cash by blackmailing the nightclub owner as well, who arranged to have him despatched. Jade thinks the shooter was probably Nik, the club security manager, who is the only one in close confidence to the owner.

She later finds another connection, however, which has more to do with her own past than anyone she currently works with.

But after finding a clue in her car, it leads to who had spiked Jade's drink and used her car to carry out the shooting - on the instructions of not only the nightclub owner, but the owner of the security agency as well, who the victim was trying to blackmail over the fact the club owner paid the agency a percentage in drugs. There was no intention to endanger Jade in the process as a revenge hit had not been anticipated, and Jade confronts him as he is in the process of having to explain to both of his employers that perhaps it wasn't as clean a job as they thought. In the meantime, the hitman has escaped from police custody and is looking for revenge…

In a showdown at work, the hitman turns up and attempts to finish the job. But Jade has come prepared and has something up her sleeve in store for him.

(This storyline later became the basis of a background story for the female MC in my novel "Death & The City")

Latest Work

  • Script 1 - Lisa's Original Draft
    11/15/11
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    Creative Notes:
    Originally written in 1999, this was pitched at Raindance's "Live!Ammunition!!" pitchfest that year and won in London. Had a lot of interest, especially musical collaboration interest for a soundtrack, but no business or finance manager to put the pieces together at the time. I ended up going to uni and working as a bouncer myself instead :)

    25 Nov '11 - Added new cover images by Brenton Lonkey
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