Changing Lanes
Updated: Dec 20, 2020
WGA West Registry # 1947024 / Copyright 2020
LOGLINE: A barber and entertainment lawyer, seeking true love become friends but are not allowed to be who they truly are because they don’t fit society stereotypes.
Created by: Alexander Devereux Genre: Drama Project Length: TV Original Episodic Series (12 Episodes / 45 Minutes per episode) Project Format: 16:9 HD
SYNOPSIS:
The Barber
Growing up the only boy with his mother and older sister, Joshua had to become the man of the house quickly. Image became everything for Joshua as he personified his inmate father’s machismo drug dealer role to bring money into the house. After earning the money selling drugs, he soon opened a barbershop with his best friend Patrick. Patrick is his ride or die partner in crime: a strong shoulder to cry on with a sound mind and sound body. Patrick is Joshua’s refuge away from his family. Joshua’s hid his love for Patrick as their barbershop business became gentrified through the years. Through this gentrification, the barber shop went from thugs shooting dice on the corner to openly gay men holding hands down the sidewalk which has caused Joshua’s mindset to change through over time. Joshua met his dead wife through Patrick. Joshua love for his wife was a way to love Patrick vicariously due to the fact Patrick introduced them. As not to disappoint, Joshua assumed the role of boyfriend, but he eventually fell in love with her and married her making his bond with Patrick that much stronger. Patrick and Joshua’s dead wife have always been his saving grace. Often Joshua will speak with her as he lies on the sofa in her office at their home. Her spirit still advises him from the grave whenever he is in the office thinking of her. Family first is Joshua’s life motto. Joshua is plagued with lifestyles that he wants nothing to do with at all. The stereotypical lifestyle of the gay community & the ratchet lifestyle of the straight community. His mother feels a man is not a man unless he has 3 women: his wife, his mistress and his whore. Joshua parents cheated on each other since before his birth and argued daily about with whom it was okay to cheat. His mother only stayed with his father because he blew her back out and she became addicted to his sex. His drug dealing father goes to jail and comes out only to be unable to get a job, so he joins a website called Str8Trade.com where he performs sexual acts for gay men on cam in private while also going back to his playa ways with women in public. His mother tries to go back to her high school sweetheart who now a court judge. The judge put Joshua’s father in jail and marries his mother under one condition that they have an open relationship and he be allowed to be with his mistress during the day and her at night. To cope, the mother starts up a sexual relationship with Jacob’s father again. His sister is currently dating a stripper who she pimps out by send her hair salon clients to him at his strips club while also taking his tips. His brother is a masculine metrosexual gay man who mission in life is to turn every straight man he meets gay. Joshua’s life is full of twist and turns that takes him to new ideologies.
The Lawyer
Dion Maddox is a sexy pretty boy with one major problem. He is to straight to be gay and to gay to be straight. His friends that fall into the same category have taken on different ways of coping with the same issue in a variety of “out of the norm” ways. Although they each desire true love only Dion makes it his mission to battle the societal conditioning and stereotypical demands of the community in which he finds himself unwanted and unwelcome. He was the star of all that he surveyor. Star Athlete, Star Scholar, Star Thespian, and Star School King until an older local clergyman took advantage of his innocence, left him traumatized and scared mentally and spiritually. His lifelong friend Norman Davis or as he goes by his rapper name Normus D has given up on any chance of finding love although in his heart of heart he envies Dion for his dedication to finding the love of his life. His trauma happened when his stepfather would force himself on him and when he confronted his mother about it not only did she know; She allowed it in order to keep her man. The two became fast friends in high school when they realized they both had desires they only they alone could understand about each other. Their college buddy, former gang banger and ex-marine Eli Burgess became their best confidant when they all pledged the same frat together and all fought off the advances of their “big brothers” in a private crossing of the burning sands. His life as a foster kid introduced him to a different side of the Thug Life when one of his mother’s men takes him under his wing and into his gang. The three have become great friends and helped each other heal from their issues building a solid foundation for their friendship when suddenly Dion world is rocked when the local minister now Pro-Afrocentric Mega Church pastor returns to the town to push his “Bring back Masculinity” agenda in their hometown by targeting young boys between the ages of 16 – 20 to attend his Leadership Academy for Black Males in order to create the future leaders of the black community. Dion was one of his “special boys” who received a full ride scholarship after he “groomed” him in the ways of being a “real man by real men” through mentorship. The friends join forces to expose and stop the mega pastor from continuing to push his ulterior motives through his very public and very controversial public agenda.