"Our Father's Dairy" (a.k.a. "Plowing Up a Snake") Named a Top 20 Semi-Finalist in 2012 ShoreLine Screenwriting Competition

Log line:

When the village’s most successful dairyman is found murdered, his widow seduces his bumbling cousin into discovering the culprits, so she can clean up the mess.
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Graphics by Artist Adam Karolian.
Earlier this summer Green Chair Pictures announced the selection of Dana Biscotti Myskowski's feature-length screenplay, Our Father's Dairy, as a Top 20 Semi-Finalist in this year's ShoreLine Screenwriting Competition, a U.K.-based contest.

Our Father's Dairy, based on the novel Plowing Up A Snake by Concord, NH writer and professor Merle Drown, examines a small town murder and its cover up by the town's residents. Myskowski was drawn to the true crime aspect of the story that to this day remains officially unsolved.

The novelist’s father witnessed the dumping of the body into a section of the Connecticut River that divides Vermont from New Hampshire. But the story jumps off from there to explore the fictional account of the widow and of the dead man’s cousin as they painstakingly uncover the truth. What does that knowledge do to a person? What will they do armed with what they know? 

“The result may shock some,” Myskowski said of her screenplay that deviates somewhat from the novel’s ending. Myskowski had hoped to produce the film earlier this year, but an illness ground her plans to a halt. She entered the screenplay into the ShoreLine Competition because of the organization’s commitment to help pair screenplay projects with the most suited producers. “I’d just like to see this project come to fruition, even if I’m not the one to drive it to the finish line.”

While a gifted director and two talented members of the Screen Actors Guild have expressed enthusiastic interest in the script, financing and a producer capable of taking up the project fulltime remain the current obstacles. “The fact that the judges at ShoreLine have connected with the story this far tells me that I am on the right track,” Myskowski said. 

Though Our Father's Dairy did not advance to the Top Five Winners Round, ShoreLine Script is working to help pair the screenplay with an interested production house. Visit ShoreLine Screenwriting Competition to see the complete list of Winners, Semi-Finalists and Quarter-Finalists.