THE UPSIDE-DOWN MAN
The Upside-Down Man has won several awards in screenplay competitions, including ScreenCraft, Austin Film Festival, Los Angeles Screenwriting Expo.
The screenplay has received strong independent coverage, earning two separate 8/10 scores, with feedback describing it as “extremely strong in originality and ability to evoke emotion” and “an intriguing premise brought to life through multi-dimensional leads.”
SETTING
Dayton, Ohio. 1956. Dayton stands as the “Invention Capital of the World”— home to pioneering aviation, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and one of the nation’s most advanced centers for aeronautics and classified research.
Here, the race to the stars rises from factory floors and modest homes, where the ideas that shape the future are born in the most unexpected places.
SYNOPSIS
In 1956, as the Space Race intensifies, a brilliant Harvard engineer hides in plain sight as a janitor, until a tragic accident leaves him with a rare condition that inverts his vision—forcing him to see the world literally upside-down.
As he struggles to navigate this disorienting reality, his unique perspective allows him to visualize physical “ripples” in radiation waves— finally solving a technology he has spent years developing in secret.
This discovery catapults him from the shadows onto an elite LASER team tasked with building a satellite-tracking system for the Pentagon.
What begins as a “disability” becomes the improbable key to a breakthrough that could determine who wins the race to space.