"Back in the Game"

Tagline – “Sometimes What You’re Looking For Is Right In Front Of You”

“25 words or less” – A recently dumped guy scours the internet for a new girlfriend but finds his true love is the girl in the next cubicle

One page summary:
Danny Leonard, a handsome man in his late twenties, comes home one day to see his live-in girlfriend in the midst of packing up her things and moving out. She breaks the news to him that she’s decided to move in with her hair stylist who she has been seeing while living with Danny.

Six months later, during brunch with his two best friends – Stephanie and Jimmy – Danny’s confronted about the perpetual funk that he’s been in ever since his girlfriend left and they urge him to get back into the dating world. Although originally reluctant, he decides to join his friends at a club on Friday night to go looking for women. After being pressured by his friends at the club, Danny approaches several girls to make small talk but manages to strike out with all of them which only damages his self-esteem even more.

Danny’s friend, Stephanie, then sets him up with a friend of hers but that turns out to be a disaster when she shows up to dinner and proceeds to give him a powerpoint presentation right at the table on why she would make a good girlfriend.

Frustrated, Danny tells her that he might just be better off being alone, but she ends up convincing him to try online dating. In support, Stephanie and Jimmy decide to join an online dating website with him and they gather on a Friday night to create their profiles together.

Danny winks at and emails several girls online but he quickly becomes depressed when he doesn’t get any responses after a week. He decides the whole online dating scene isn’t for him and that he’s just going to let his subscription run out.

However, once Spring rolls around girls start reaching out to him in droves which makes Danny re-think online dating. Unfortunately though all of his dates turn out to be disasters – there’s the girl that claims she’s a great conversationalist but answers all questions with one word, a girl who already has a boyfriend but was interested in testing the waters and the girl that falls asleep in the bathroom of a dive bar.

While Danny looks for love in all the wrong places, he becomes very good friends with a recently hired girl at work, Courtney. They spend a lot of time talking to each other at work and also hanging out at local bars after work. He even begins to introduce her to his friends outside of work. Naturally he starts developing feelings for her but doesn’t realize it for a while. Finally, after a night at the movies and drinks afterwards, it dawns on him that he has a crush on her.

He hangs out with her a few more times before he finally musters up the strength to ask her out on a date. He gives her an impassioned plea in the middle of Central Park one night and she says yes. After all this time, he finally finds what he’s been looking for and she was sitting only a few feet away from him at work all along.Back in the Game Screenplay