WELCOME
TRAILER
STILLS
KEY ART
ONE
SHEET
MUSIC
PRESS:
PRESS RELEASE
SHORT SYNOPSIS
THE MAKING OF PEEPS
BEHIND-THE-SCENES PHOTOS
CAST & CREW
ADVENTURE WITH A FRIEND...
DISTRIBUTION:
SALES SHEET
TIP SHEET
SYNOPSIS
DEMAR ENTERTAINMENT
COMPLETE CREDITS
STREET TALK
CONTACT:
310.288.3659 contact@thaPeeps.com
Peeps is a look at urban teens facing everyday struggles. Through
the use of hip hop dance and street rhymes, a Los Angeles group of high
school friends express their frustrations about a world that does not
understand them. Suspicious of authority in a society of contradictions,
they express words and movement as their modern poetry, rich in double-meanings,
and live in the moment. The film opens with them rapping while a newcomer,
Dan, watches, and then jumps in to happily join them.
Dan was brought to Los Angeles by his single-parent mother, Martha, from San Diego after a failed marriage with a military contractor husband. Dan has a hard time fitting in at his new school until he is accepted by these new friends he calls his "peeps." He tries the new language of the streets of Los Angeles and learns to love it. A naturally bright student, Dan is an awkward and angry young man. He is big enough to play sports but is more into making the grade in school to climb out of the low-income life his mom provides. He has plans to attend college to invest in a future that he is not particularly passionate about. To him, education is merely a means for security in a world he feels he cannot influence for the better.
Meanwhile at school, on the last day of class before graduation and summer vacation, a frustrated teacher, Olsen, fails his entire class for not making the effort to value their education. Teaching is a career Olsen once cherished. He feels education holds the key for his students' happiness and will help the world become a better place for those less fortunate. All he has known are students who are unresponsive, dispassionate and disaffected. When Dan tries to pull one over on Olsen with a term paper about The Grapes of Wrath, a great book he hasn't taken the time to read, Olsen decides it's the last straw.
Flunking out of class deeply affects Dan and his friends. Because of Olsen's disciplinary tactics, Dan hatches a plot for his new friends to "teach" the teacher a valuable lesson in respect: they will "tag" his car. His peeps are enamored to the idea and consider a newfound respect for Dan the newbie.
Martha is surprised to hear that Dan would be a part of a stupid move of retaliation, and urges him to try to communicate with his teacher. Dan cannot possibly see how he could (or why he should) influence his teacher's decision. When it comes time to execute the plan, however, Dan gets second thoughts, but cannot find the words to stop his friends. He resists their peer pressure to join them.
When his peeps are caught red-handed by Olsen, Dan is faced with a crisis: he must stand up and confront an authority he never trusted. Dan's recourse is to draw upon the positive influences in his life: his mother's words, and even those of his teacher. Through Dan's coming-of-age to break the barriers to communicate, he gets his peeps a second chance.
Dan experiments and seeks great books to introduce the words of great thinkers to his friends. Together, Dan and his peeps dispel notions of teen apathy to come up with a new plan to connect with their teacher in the way they know best, through the art of hip hop dance, music, and rhyme in a heartfelt original song to express a newly learned lesson.
Peeps is a social
satire about what youth face today, or rather, what we don't want to face.
What if our acts were the world's acts? Here is a palpable look at street
violence and a war that has a face. The film features an original music
soundtrack, hip hop choreography, and a cast of tomorrow's bright young
triple-threat stars. Peeps received recent inquiries for worldwide
distribution.
Peeps Scene-By-Scene
SCENE 1: Dan joins a new group of Los Angeles high school friends he calls his peeps, with el cholo Pedro working the streets and looking out for them, as they street-rhyme about frustration, futility, and the world.
SCENE 2: Mr. Olsen's Literature 101 course classroom. Olsen flunks everyone.
SCENE 3: Dan's house that evening, at the dining table with Martha, his mom.
SCENE 4: Peeps in the streets the next morning on the way to school.
SCENE 5: Horatio, a veteran street poet, counsels Dan.
SCENE 6: School parking lot, Peeps tagging Olsen's car. Dan confronts Olsen.
SCENE 7: The 'hood, that night. Peeps encounter the words of great thinkers, and come up with a new plan.
SCENE 8: Olsen's class, one week later. Peeps sing and dance "So Feelings Don't Subside."
SCENE 9: Outside the school after the performance, frolicking ensues.
SCENE 10: Closing credits over Peeps theme beat. Horatio bumming in the streets.
