Synopsis:

Marc Clebanoff presents
The Crab Theory
a film by Brian Scott Miller

The Crab Theory tells the story of four individuals’ experience trying to climb out of their disparaging lives and find love within the chaos of the everyday world. They are four people on the fringe of normality...or abnormality…and the ways in which their personal duality shapes and creates their daily reality. For some, their existence is focused on pulling others down, while others are being pulled down themselves.

Liz Tower is a once-stunning businesswoman in her late thirties. She’s achieved everything a power-hungry shark can. Her next goal; love on her terms. She elicits the help of a bouncer at a dance club. She tries, but finds that she is too old to meet people in this flip youthful setting. Next, she tries a video dating service. She quickly realizes that the camera sees all, including her attempt to be natural, unrehearsed, and honest. Last, she follows the advice of her L.A. metaphysical guru, Ping, and takes a swing dancing class, where she meets Alan. But when she meets this “right man”, she is at a complete loss on how to close the most important deal of her life – honest, unselfish love. As years of loneliness overcome her sense of emotional honesty, she fights to keep this “catch” amidst her controlling personality and her conflicting emotions. (Deena Martin (Swingers, Dazed & Confused) is attached.)

Coach Kovin is a muscular, gorgeous thirty-year old boy. Although he’s every student’s favorite teacher, he’s been put on suspension from his job pending the outcome of an investigation that brings to light the core of his major, overwhelming personality flaw – his attraction to his female students and his earnest desire to be understood and loved by them. Problem is he’s also up for a promotion and this secret that he’s kept for years could turn his world, the world of his adoring children, and the tenuous connection with his virulent ex-wife upside down. As he constantly fights the compulsion, this genuinely nice person must eventually face the reality of growing up and becoming an honorable man, or succumbing to the prurient interests that may be his complete undoing.

Dani is a gorgeous collegiate art student who is so self-absorbed, she alienates everyone who is genuinely her friend. Then she meets Joshua, a charismatic Poet, and instead gravitates towards yet another potentially destructive relationship. She finds herself seduced by two men who veil their attempts to bed her with romantic suggestion and promises. Meanwhile, Dani’s longs to win a scholarship to Europe and moreover, a meaningful relationship, which ultimately forces her to cross paths and confront both of these suitors as well as her old friends and try to mend her ways with them.

And then there's Doyle; A pale, hairy, four hundred plus pound man. He may be everything physically vile and ugly about the human race personified in a single human being. This is not, however, the image he portrays of himself online, where he coaxes, lures, and seduces unsuspecting young woman into believing him to be fit, educated, and friendly. He is rude and crass and obsessed with pornography. Doyle’s mother tries desperately to help her son and motivate him to rejoin the human race. But maybe his heart really is as big as the stars. He’s hoping Karin, an internet chat room love interest, will get close enough to find out. When he tries to meet his online friend in person, he chickens out and returns home and attempts to kill himself. If Doyle survives, is there hope that he can reconcile within himself and truly change his behavior, his attitude, and find forgiveness and the compassion of his friends. (World renowned comedian Ralphie May is attached.)

These stories intertwine and overlap – like in life - by chance and by design. Their struggles, successes, and failures are ours – painful, heartfelt, sometimes shameful, sometimes exuberant.

The ending is real – each character growing and evolving, with not all the characters getting a traditional "happy ending" but a logical and unexpected chance of redemption. For in life, it truly is the journey as well as the destination...

Four people. Two sexes. One Theory.