Brief

White Jewish ex-basketball star Ca$h and best friend Life grew up in a tough neighborhood in South Side Chicago. Years later, in order to save Life's daughter's life, they become embroiled in a plot to steal from LA's most notorious gangster.

What We Liked

There is both a need for and market for films featuring diverse casts. CA$H LIFE features African American leads, a white Jewish protagonist, an Asian character, and this diversity is the story's greatest strength. The story in part explores life on the tough streets of Chicago's South Side for a white Jewish basketball player -- somewhat of an outcast because of it -- and his Black best friend as they navigate the dangers of the streets. The film hops around locations and times in an interesting manner and is sure to please the modern diverse audience hungry for gritty depictions of urban life.

CA$H LIFE is a feature-film script and this format works excellently for the material it contains. Although it could easily work as a gripping TV series such as THE WIRE or SNOWFALL, it is best suited to the feature-film format as a buddy-comedy crime film and would be perfect as a summer blockbuster sure to excite a mass audience across most sections of society. In many ways CA$H LIFE is a retooling of the buddy-comedy template which has been popular ever since LETHAL WEAPON; CA$H LIFE reinvigorates this genre by featuring an exceptionally diverse cast and setting the script on the tough streets of Chicago's South Side and the racial tensions found there, as well as Los Angeles. A white Jewish basketball player and his Black best friend, both of them marijuana-smoking, hip hop-loving schemers, is a comedy duo we have not yet seen, and audiences will love it.

Key points:
1) Very funny
2) Reinvigorates the buddy-comedy subgenre
3) Diverse cast
4) Themes of racial tensions and tough urban life will resonate with audiences
5) Unpredictable and twisty

Synopsis

SOUTH SIDE, CHICAGO, NOVEMBER, 2002: Snow falls in the freezing air as two young male teens play basketball: CA$H, Jewish, bushy black hair, beat-up shoes, gold chain around neck; and LIFE (Black). Two early-20s Black men approach: KUSH and ONE STOP. Kush points a pistol at Ca$h, demanding his chain, from which hangs a Star of David, but Ca$h refuses. Kush makes Ca$h play ball against him. If Kush wins, he gets the chain; if Kush loses, Ca$h gets Kush’s expensive sneakers. Ca$h is frequently referred to as “white boy.”

After a close game, Ca$h wins. Kush refuses to give up his sneakers and points his gun at Ca$h instead. One Stop tries to talk Kush out of it. Ca$h tosses the ball at Kush’s face. Instantly, Life grabs the gun out of Kush’s hand and points it at Kush. He shoots Kush, killing him. Life tells One Stop that he has no beef with him. One Stop is thrilled Kush is dead as One Stop is now the “new king of the jungle.” He tells Ca$h and Life to come to him for anything they need, then tosses them a roll of cash. Ca$h grabs the sneakers from Kush’s dead feet and cleans out the man’s pockets. Ca$h and Life run a few blocks as sirens wail in the distance. They stop in an alleyway. Out of breath, Ca$h says, “I can’t believe you took his LIFE.” To which Life replies, “I can’t believe you took his CASH.”

2006: Ca$h and Life walk through the high-school hallway as they talk about Ca$h’s last ever high-school basketball game tonight. Ca$h believes basketball will get him out of the hood. Life says bye to Ca$h, then breaks into the principal’s office where he hacks the computer and changes his and Ca$h’s grades to much better scores.

Life and One Stop watch Ca$h’s game, which Ca$h wins for the team and is named consensus player of the year. One Stop is going to California to meet with a drug dealer for a potential partnership. Life tells him to be careful.

LOS ANGELES: One Stop enters a warehouse and finds a two mid-20s Mexicans (one male, one female) tied to chairs, gagged. A late-30s Black man, named JUICE, dressed in an expensive suit, gestures to One Stop to come over. One Stop realizes that the Mexicans are soaking wet, smelling of gas. Juice lights his cigar, then flicks the match at the woman, who goes up in flames, screaming. He tells One Stop that the woman didn’t do anything to him, but the man did. Then he tells One Stop that he’s going to make One Stop the biggest gangster in Chicago and leads One Stop out of there, passing burned corpses in every room.

MONTHS LATER: Life is in a dorm room smoking from a bong. He has dreads and wears flip flops and shorts, wearing a Bob Marley shirt. KEYZ enters. He’s white and nerdy and shocked to see Life. Ca$h enters. Intimidated, Keyz says this is his room. Ca$h says it’s nice to meet the roommate but Keyz, quoting the rule book, says only two roommates are allowed per room. Ca$h and Life tells Keyz that he can sleep on the floor as they have taken the beds, and he is to leave the officials out of this.

When Ca$h and Life return to the room, they find that Keyz has moved them to a new room: a four-bedroom suite with a flatscreen TV and bar. This room is usually for foreign dignitaries or important guests, but Keyz hacked the computer system and assigned this new room to the three of them. Instantly, they are great friends.

2010: Ca$h scores the winning points in a tense semi-final game. At a press conference, Ca$h, with Life and Keyz, is about to announce something when FBI AGENT DRAKE bursts in and arrests Ca$h for point shaving. Later, in court, the judge is a fan of Ca$h and allows him to avoid jail time, but there is no hope Ca$h will ever play in the NBA.

LOS ANGELES, 2021: Ca$h is mid-30s and super famous. In his apartment Ca$h turns on the TV to a show called Cashin In in which Ca$h describes how he joined a basketball team in Israel and Life accompanied him. They both got mega rich. After six years, Ca$h and Life returned to LA and built a sneaker store.

LACE (early-20s, Asian) works in the store. She runs it while Ca$h is coaching a youth basketball team. One of Ca$h’s players shows him an acceptance letter into college due to his basketball abilities. He thanks Ca$h.

LIFE’S daughter SOPHIE (7) is in Life’s car when it crashes. Life is okay but Sophie is induced into a coma, suffering potentially fatal injuries. A nurse secretly offers Life the chance to skip the year-long transplant waiting list and get Sophie a new lung within a week...but it will cost him $250,000. Life and Ca$h beside him don’t hesitate to agree. They have three days to raise the cash.

Later, FIDEL, running a food truck, tells Ca$h and Life about a gangster called Juice and Juice’s backstory and his murderous quest for revenge in which he burned dozens of people to death. He says that if he, Ca$h and Life robbed one of Juice’s betting trucks at half-time during a basketball game, they could net half a million. The truck is guarded by the SUMO TWINS—two sumo wrestlers. They won’t need guns to rob it because they will come from the sewers beneath the truck. Lace and Keyz will do it with Ca$h and Life.

The robbery: Lace distracts one of the sumo twins by flirting with him while Ca$h distracts the other by offering him weed. Beneath the truck Life emerges from the sewer and begins cutting the hole into the truck. Life empties out the safe, pulling the cash into the manhole. Ca$h distracts one of Juice’s men who comes by, about to step onto the truck.

Ca$h, Life and Keyz are in Sophie’s hospital room, happy, thinking they got away with it, when Juice and SMOKE enter. Juice knows they took the money. Juice demands $1 million or they all die, Sophie included. Then he says, instead, Ca$h must fix the basketball game soon to be played by the team Ca$h coaches. Ca$h doesn’t want to as it could destroy the futures of every one of the kids he coaches, but Juice does not waver. Later, Ca$h makes a call, then tells Life “it’s done.”

Game day. After a close match, the opposing team scores to tie at half-time. Smoke intercepts Ca$h in the tunnel to remind Ca$h that if his team doesn’t lose, Sophia dies. The threat angers Ca$h and the conversation soon escalates to Smoke pointing a gun at Ca$h. Life enters the tunnel; Smoke pulls out another gun and points it at Life. He threatens them and leaves.

The game resumes. It’s nail-biting stuff. At 88-86 to the opposing team, it goes to free throws for Ca$h’s team to end the game. A fat kid eating popcorn will do the throws. He hits all three, winning the game. Furious, Juice pulls out a pistol and aims it at Ca$h. Meanwhile, Juice’s men enter Sophie’s hospital room and the sneakers store where Lace is working.

As Juice goes to shoot Ca$h, two shots ring out and Juice collapses. In the hospital room, a man approaches Sophia with a needle when the heavily bandaged man in the bed beside jumps out and injects the man with the needle. The heavily bandaged man is Fidel. In the sneaker store, Lace’s massive dog saves her life by attacking the man about to kill her. In the basketball arena, it is revealed that Agent Drake shot Juice.

Some time later, the whole gang including Fidel is hanging out together, happy, like a family. Cash and Life have tattoos on their knuckles: “CA$H LIFE.”

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