or, The Big Lebowski meets Clerks meets Swingers meets Fawlty Towers
Conceived and written by Craig Quackenbush and David O’Sullivan
Concept Summary
(Small World is an inventive and irreverent original comedy-drama revolving around the lives of small group of mid-to-late twenties young people working and living in and around a residential hotel in San Francisco’s seedy Tenderloin District - intended for network, standard cable, or premium cable.)
To many San Francisco residents it is known as the ‘Loin. To outsiders and tourists, it is usually known as a place to be avoided. For the average person, it is nowhere near the top of the list as a place to live. One thing that is certain, the Tenderloin attracts society’s fringe element. It is where the periphery congregates to fight, drink, drug, peddle their dubious wares… and survive. It can be difficult to grasp how there can be those with so little in San Francisco, a city that is renowned for having so much.
This is where the ensemble cast of Small World shuffle through their daily travails with the hint of a smirk on their lips and a sparkle of optimism in their hearts.
Mallory “Mal” Small, Chris Quantain, Manny Rodriguez, Dennis O’Brien, and Claire Brooks constitute the core element of their small world, centered at the Pacific Rim Inn, a residential hotel on the outskirts of the Tenderloin. Dennis is the conscientious, sensible, and pontificating front desk manager, prone to bouts of stress and frustration, but overall a thoughtful and evenhanded boss. Chris, broody and sarcastic, but also dependable and motivated, is the new hire at the hotel, a recent transplant from Buffalo, New York, who took the railroad across the country to redefine his life, as well as attend film school. Easy-going, artistic Manny has lived in San Francisco for several months, getting work and living space at the Pacific Rim Inn in exchange for duties with hotel chores and cleaning. The friendly, acerbic, and straightforward Claire has also freshly arrived in the city from Tucson, landing a server job at Lottie’s Café, the cozy and respected café connected to the Pacific Rim Inn’s lobby. And straight out of San Jose, indolent but affable Mallory has been kicking around the city for a few months, working odd jobs and doing the “couch trip” until scoring a room and a desk clerk position at the Inn.
The 80-room Pacific Rim Inn (“PRI”) exercises an “employees-living-on-site” option offered during hiring, a choice of which Mal, Manny, and Chris have taken advantage. As the manager, Dennis chooses to live off premises. Claire isn’t even employed by the hotel, so she lives off-site, too.
This disparate group comes together, sharing conflict, emotions, aspirations, troubles, and the occasional calamity. They deal with the often frustrating concerns of the wide-ranging variety of guests who stay on for weeks and even months at the hotel. Some of these visitors include trust fund hippies, cantankerous retirees, sedate burnouts, tweakers, strippers, exotic dancers, drag queens, and the occasional drug dealer, among many others. At the Pacific Rim Inn, as the saying goes, their plates are full.
This fraction of their lives in a most decrepit section of San Francisco proves a significant, and not altogether unpleasant, learning experience. There are many late nights with forty-ounce beers in hand and Tom Waits crooning on the boom box, hanging out in Manny’s room or in Mallory’s disorderly abode. The main characters are all around the same ages and at similar crossroads in their lives. The unpredictability of life brings them together and they become not only friends, but a semi-dysfunctional, hotel-dwelling extended family. The Pacific Rim Inn is a job, of course - income and a place to live - but it is much more than that. For this remarkable period in the lives of these characters, it is home.
Small World ©2004 Craig Quackenbush and David O’Sullivan