Based on the real life story of the writer/director.

A teenage boy wakes up on the side of the road with no clothes on. He walks along the beach and returns to the Divine Tropical House hotel at sunrise. The following evening, at the hotel’s luau party, the disassociating teen searches for solace and happiness in a superficial, shallow environment. He’s harassed by his father’s hyper-masculine buddies, his mother’s invasive girlfriends and his own drug-abusive teenage friends. He wins a lifetime of free cover and drinks to the very bar his was roofied at. After embarrassing himself on stage at the luau, he escapes the party, strips his clothes and enters the ocean.

Club Souvenir Sizzle Reel Trailer

Who is the lead character Harry?

From the Writer/Director

Well... it's me.

I started writing the early origins of this script when I was sixteen. I tried to process everything that I was going through by typing out a script, but it wasn't going well. I struggled to represent how I was feeling, and how to tell this interior struggle as a convincing and engaging film. I went back to the drawing board over and over again and kept coming up empty handed. It wasn't until my senior thesis writing class at Chapman University (where I met my incredible producer Ryan Flaherty) that I was able to translate my experience into a story I felt would convey everything that had been bottled up for over six years. This story represents the dissociative feeling that I had following the incident. It was important to me that the audience feels the lack of control that I felt I had on my own life - as if life was happening to me rather than me making life happen. The protagonist Harry gets shoved, pushed around, made uncomfortable, demanded to tell stories and forced to apologize, all as he is attempting to figure out how he feels about what happened to him.

Not a Whodunnit.

It was essential to me that this film was not a mystery about who might have spiked my drink or what events took place while I was unconscious. I was told time and time again that I needed to know what had happened in order to move past it, but I've found that it's not true. This story isn't about what happened that night, it's about everything else that came after. 

Set the Stage: The Hotel Luau

A 1950s Take on The White Lotus

Our story opens with a teen boy (Harry, playing the character of Will) waking up naked on the side of the road in Hawaii. We follow him back to his hotel where we see the hotel staff preparing for a luau, where he will later spend his night surrounded by his network of family and friends. At this luau, we represent Harry’s increasing detachment through the aesthetic artifice of our set build. To visually represent Harry’s dissociative state with the world, our set must also adopt this point of view. To achieve this, we’ve developed an aesthetic that mirrors the films of the golden age of Hollywood studios paired with a contemporary narrative. A style that asks: what if the 1950s MGM Studio was to make an episode of The White Lotus?

Chapman Soundstages

We are grateful to be granted use of Chapman's largest soundstage (Stage B) to build the tropical luau for our film. It allows us to achieve our goal of having a singular space for the entirety of the Divine Tropical Hotel Luau sequence. The tiki bar, the stage, and the dinner tables all coexist in one space. We want the location of the Hotel Luau to be a main character alongside the protagonist. In this instance, the soundstage goes beyond a location’s conventional use as a vessel for the story to take place, and rather serves as a reflection of the main character himself.

Your Help

Building the Set

We are building a near 70 foot long hotel luau over the course of the next month leading up to production. The tiki bar, the stage, the tables, even the fake grass takes an incredible amount of time, money, and hard work to make happen. Your support goes helps us get the materials we need to create the production design plans seen above.

Shooting & Lighting Our Film

We're lucky that we have access to Chapman's resources to rent equipment for our cinematography team, but their plans for this unique story surpass what's available to us. We hope to source outside equipment to support our departments in renting a camera package as well as grip & electric equipment.

Feeding Our Crew

We have a production of over 30 Chapman students and recent grads helping us put our production together for free, working hours a day in pre-production across all of the various departments. We'll be providing catered meals and craft service on set for our cast and crew for our six days of production, which we need the help to fund.

How You Can Support

Seed & Spark Campaign

You can follow and donate to our Seed & Spark campaign. Check out our incentives page for what you can get from our production along with your donation.

Share Our Campaign

Even if you can't donate, sharing our campaign with your friends, family or followers on social media is beneficial. Spread the word however you can!

Thanks so much,

The Club Souvenir Team