Welcome to the Lucky Strike Hotel 😜
In 2022, the screenplay of ‘Sammy and Dave Unlucky in Love’ won the New York Script Award. Since then it’s won the King Film Award, Brisbane International Film Union, LA’s Redwood Script Award, and the 2024 Berlin Script Festival.
About the Film
Sammy and Dave is a one night stand story about two bisexual men, unhappy with their married lives, who rendezvous at the Lucky Strike Hotel on a cold winter’s night. In bed, they laugh, tell stories and have sex. Together they recall moments, good and bad, that led them both to the hotel bed.
The Original Play
Sammy and Dave (Unlucky in Love) is based on a real-life incident. It started life as an adults-only play, which was performed upstairs at the rough and ready Sandringham Hotel in Sydney in 1990’s. “I remember the actors struggling to be heard over AC/DC tracks and heavy metal bands downstairs,” writer/director Noel Anderson recalls. “The crowd got into the intimate story set in a the dodgy old pub. Rough-nuts were throwing back beers downstairs, while upstairs, Sammy and Dave had the queer community, liberal-minded straights and bi-curious sipping champagne.”
Sammy and Dave’s one-night fling proved very popular with the theatre crowd and gay community who lapped up the sexual innuendo while questioning the meaning of love. The play was eventually picked up by Griffin Theatre Company. It transferred to the Stables Theatre in Kings Cross where it played to full houses.
The Film Adaption of Sammy and Dave
The screenplay of Sammy and Dave is firmly grounded in the year 1994, a time when it wasn’t accepted to be openly gay or bisexual. Gay venues were often raided by the police (see photo Melbourne’s Tasty Nightclub Raid 1994) and bisexual men were mostly closeted. The news headlines of the day, films, and TV commercials featured stories about the AIDS pandemic. Everyone in the queer community knew someone who had died of AIDS during the 1990’s.
‘I’ve opened the story up for the screenplay, moving it from sunny Sydney to the rainy laneways of Melbourne, expanding the landscape around the men but keeping the comedy and the enhancing the one-night-stand-romance. In many ways, it’s stronger than the play, film allows you to show much more, do more. Times has also allowed me to reflect. I came to the screenplay adaption as an older man, experienced with hindsight. Age and wisdom is perhaps the greatest aphrodisiac’ – Writer/director Noel Anderson
The Inspiration behind the film version of Sammy and Dave?
“I was inspired by Francis Ford Coppola’s film One From The Heart,” Anderson said. “And two Alfred Hitchcock movies based on stage plays, Rope and Dial M For Murder. I love Hitchcock, but no one dies in Sammy and Dave, instead the suspense comes from one question only…will they or won’t they have great sex?”
“Well, maybe I sound pessimistic, but let’s face the facts, falling in love can be a bitch.” – Dave Aussie married businessman.
The film script of Sammy and Dave (Unlucky in Love) rolls back the clock to Australia 1994, at the time of the Tasty Nightclub raid. A time of rebellion and AIDS. A different time in history. I’m sure audiences will fall in love with Sammy and Dave.
You can follow the film on Facebook or contact Noel Anderson on this website,
Sammy and Dave are currently looking for a producer! Is that you?
Checkout Sammy and Dave Trailer
More Info:https://linktr.ee/noelanderson
Harlequin ink 