The Uninvited (Film)
Mischa, a prostitute newly graduated from Yale, must wait in a hotel for her boss to come. As she finds ways to escape, she seeks comfort and companionship in the hotel employees, but is in greater danger than she realizes when an uninvited guest appears.
I became aware of the millions of women who are kidnapped and/or sold into sex work all over the world around the same time I learned of "empowered" sex workers, mostly white women, many of whom are still in college. I wanted to put these two women in a room together: the woman who sees sex work as an empowered choice and the woman who has absolutely no choice in the matter.
After working this idea as a play for awhile, I started to see ways in which film might serve the story in a different, equally satisfying way, so I decided to adapt it. Some aspects of the story were lost but even more were gained as the location expanded from the hotel room to the entire hotel, introducing a larger character wheel and more opportunities for Mischa to attempt escape, both literal and metaphorical.
“So we standing out in the yard waving like a bunch of fucking assholes, go on back in the house to do the dishes, and the placemats are gone. Like - GONE! Plates all sitting there. Forks, knives, all that shit. Placemats? Vamoosed. And I’m like - THIS bitch. First it’s my flamingoes. Now it’s my fucking placemats. Not only is she a fucking asshole, she’s got some kind of like, psychological defect. Like, I need to restraining order. Cause what next? She gonna sneak in my bathroom and steal my toothpaste? Take my dog’s water bowl? I mean, fucking what next?”