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Cat Dancing

Madeline Murphy (late 20s) is Murphy’s Law Incarnate. She’s a fashion emergency. An infomercial “Before.” She has made Glamour’s blacked-out-face “Fashion Don’t’s” list more times than anyone’s pride could ever bear. But she uses her quick wit and charming resilience to rebuff being the butt of so many of life’s jokes. With her soul slowly dying working at a Super X store, she suppresses her dreams of following in her late mother’s bold and brazen stand-up comic footsteps.

Jake Manning (early 30s) is a gorgeous guy who is humored by her off-the-cuff sales spiel riff on the mic at Super X and tells her she should be a comedienne.  Enamored but flustered, she fails to catch his flirtatious lob pass so he resorts to inviting her to a dance class he teaches. That is…he teaches cats to dance…with their owners.  This can’t possibly turn out well.

But Madeline is intrigued. She does have a cat that she loves: Alex. Right now, her cat’s just about all she has, except for her parrot, who she taught to welcome her home with “Have you lost weight?” and her best friend Gabe, a very gay, mensch stylist who you’d think could straighten her out a bit.  She hasn’t spoken to her father since her mother passed. The thought of find a man who was into her for her personality? Who might actually love her cat, too? Too good to be true. But certainly worth a little embarrassment, right?

Turns out Jake is a real dancer. A really good real dancer. Who knew? And he owns a successful dance studio. Problem is, his partner is the perfect ballerina Bellamy, Madeline’s nemesis from high school. It figures.

Worse yet, unbeknownst to Madeline, Bellamy is not just Jake’s business partner, she’s more importantly, his soon-to-be-ex-wife.  They’ve been separated for over a year but Bellamy’s been delaying the divorce every which way she could in an effort to save face and get Jake back. Their business is entangled in their personal life and it breaks Jake’s heart to know that when they are finally divorced, he will inevitably lose the dance studio.

Madeline is clueless that they are married but discovers Bellamy is his partner when she gets to the cat dancing class and overhears the tail end of the revealing fight we’ve just witnessed. When Bellamy encounters her unwelcome flash from the past, she demands that Madeline leave the premises.  No fool, Madeline is the hell outta there. She turns on her heels but Jake insists, ever-so-sweetly, that she stay.  After class, he asks her out but she says no, unable to endure the unwelcome reunion with Bellamy’s dagger stares.

Madeline tires Internet dating to rebound.  After several blind date disasters, Jake witnesses her worst humiliation at a bar, when a cute guy saving time rejects her right in the handshake.

Madeline commits to change.  She wants a boyfriend. She wants to look good and fit in for once. And she’s finally willing to take a risk to perform. She joins a gym, gets some books and tapes and starts haunting all the local comedy clubs.

Jake visits her Super X and asks her out again. This time she says yes.  The date, of course, starts out disastrously. Alex catches on fire in his efforts to attack the parrot and her efforts to douse and rescue him ruin the hours of effort spent trying to finally look halfway decent for a date. But Jake finds her endearing. He thinks she’s funny and convinces her to start the date all over again.

At the end of a near perfect date, he brings her to the Laugh Factory where he is friends with the boss.  He’s made special arrangements for her to get up on stage but Madeline is mortified and runs away.  He catches her, apologizes, having thought she was ready and just needed a final push. They make up and talk through the night.

Their dates start to go a little smoother – but not really. Madeline gets a makeover with a little help from Gabe (but more from his friends) and is gorgeous and ready for a black tie event. Miscommunication. He’s taking her to a Monster Truck rally. They have a ball. She’s still a total klutz but Jake doesn’t care, he can be himself with her.

He teaches her – and their Fellini-esque co-horts – how to dance with their cats. Madeline uses Cheese Doodles as treat to teach Alex to leap. Jake introduces Madeline and Alex to his cat and they have a romantic cat painting dinner date in his apartment, which is right above the dance studio. At an amusement park, she can’t handle stilettos so he buys her Tweetie Bird Slippers to traipse about in. Its all going swell ‘til he tries to take a picture of her on the log ride and well…one thing leads to another and Madeline inadvertently swan dives the flume – without the log boat – and ends up in the emergency room.

Corralling the support of all the nurses, Madeline and Jake finally sneak in sex for the first time. It’s all too perfect ‘til Madeline wakes up the next morning – alone – only to have Bellamy charge in accusing her of being a home wrecker.

Madeline is livid to discover that Jake is not only married – but married to her arch enemy of all people?!  Madeline refuses to talk to Jake.  Her heart broken, she falls apart and finally, completely unfunctional, gets herself fired.  Picking herself up and dusting herself off as she always does, she gets another job. But this time, she takes a few steps closer to her dream by hitting up Jake’s friend for a waitressing job at the Laugh Factory. She endures his incessant pressure to get up on that stage, claiming she’s the funniest person in the place – and she shouldn’t be serving drinks. Finally, she finally agrees to perform on Ladies Open Mic Night.

Wanting to share her pending mini-break through, Madeline goes to share her good news with Jake at the Dance Studio but she freaks out when she sees him dancing with Bellamy. In a dip, Bellamy sees Madeline through the glass and kisses an unwilling Jake for Madeline’s benefit but Madeline races off, missing the aftermath:  Jake has had it with Bellamy and demands their divorce once and for all – immediately.

Lost and hopeless, Madeline breaks down and goes to see her father.  He is the only one she can talk to.  She’s still furious with him since he broke her mother’s heart when he cheated on her. This affair, it turns out, is the back story as to why she and the precocious Bellamy hate each other so. Bellamy was the “other woman” that broke up her family. Now Madeline feels like it’s a sick twisted joke of fate that she’s sunk to both of their levels and is no better. But her father explains that the situations are very different indeed and encourages her to follow her heart – and to stick to her guns – and not make the same mistakes he did.

Madeline goes to Jake’s loft and finds Bellamy, naked and airbrushed like a cat, waiting in his bed.  But this time, Madeline realizes that Jake has nothing to do with Bellamy’s manipulations.

Madeline and Bellamy get into a catfight. Jake walks in on it and has to suppress his desire to enjoy it for just a minute before breaking it up.

As Madeline races home, she finds that her apartment has been ransacked. No it hasn’t, her cat, Alex, has finally gotten in to the parrot’s cage – and they’ve both escaped!  The parrot comes home safely and has a few fine words to say about his feline adversary. But it’s Ladies Night and Madeline has committed to do her new act – but finding her cat is more important. Or is it just another excuse?

Madeline looks and looks for her cat.  Jake finds her and suggests that Alex might be back at the dance studio since that’s the only place she’s ever taken him on a leash.  They head over there and see that Jake’s loft right above it is on fire – and Alex is on the roof of the building.

Against everyone’s better advice, Madeline climbs up a burning building to save her cat.  “She must be single,” says an onlooker. Madeline uses a Cheese Doodle, one of Alex’s favorite treats she found in her jacket pocket, to get him to leap from the burning build to the safety of her arms. She leaps with him to the trampoline held by the firemen below.

Alex safely at home – and Madeline looking a wreck, she gets up on stage and keeps her commitment to her boss – and to herself. She does her act for the first time – and she skills.  She’s such a big hit, she goes on to play all the big clubs in Los Angeles ‘til she gets invited to the coveted couch on The Tonight Show.

Jake’s dance studio is closed.

But next door? Jake’s Cat Dancing studio has its ribbon cutting and all his Fellini cat Dancing fans cheer him on as he does his Cirque du Soliel-style audition for America’s Got Talent.