TITLE: Ride of Passage
AUTHOR: Cindy J. Weigand
GENRE: Coming-of-age

LOGLINE: A thirteen-year-old girl goes on a forbidden horseback riding adventure with two friends. If caught, there would be hell to pay, but sometimes you just have to break the rules.

Stand by Me meets The Secret Life of Bees

Excerpt from Flight Deck Film Festival Critique Analysis

★★★★★ Critique Analysis

“When I finished reading Ride of Passage, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Cindy J. Weigand had given me something more than a coming-of-age story. What she offered was a meditation on resilience, friendship, and the way innocence bends—but doesn’t fully break—when it collides with loss, danger, and the often unforgiving realities of rural life. From the very first pages, I was taken by Axelle’s voice, that clear and unflinching narration of a young girl standing at the threshold between childhood adventure and adult responsibility.”

WRITER NOTES:

This year marks the 40^th anniversary of the release of the movie Stand by Me, the classic coming of age story adapted from Stephen King’s novella, The Body. I waited for a similar story that featured adventurous girls. When none was produced that I thought fit the bill, I wrote my own and adapted the story into a screenplay.

Ride of Passage addresses themes of racial bias, malicious gossip and despicable intent. All of this Axelle must navigate without guidance from her parents because the family unit has been wounded by tragedy. Through grit and the strength of friendship, Axelle traverses all of this and takes her first steps into womanhood. She has some fun along the way.

The classic coming-of-age movie, Stand by Me, turns 40 this year. Movie goers like nostalgia as evidenced by the number of remakes produced. Those who have seen the movie remember it fondly, so the time for a coming-of-age story reimagined with girls riding horses seems right. Horses, cowgirls and the Western vibe are more popular than ever.

CindyWeigand.com
cjweigand0110@gmail.com
512.818.0472

TITLE: Sky Carnival: Flying with Big Jack & Mavis

GENRE: Drama, period piece with aviation theme

AUTHOR: Cindy J. Weigand

LOGLINE: In the Roaring Twenties, a young pilot from the country joins an elite flying group and becomes its star performer.

High Road to China (1983) meets The Great Waldo Pepper (1975)

SUMMARY:
Confident of his aerobatic skills, JACK ASHCRAFT joins the Gates Flying Circus in the Roaring Twenties. Soon, he becomes their star performer. MAVIS PERKINS is living a life that is the envy of her friends. She’s earned her pilot’s license, and the newspaper she started is doing well. Working during the week, she flies airplanes evenings and weekends. The two are worlds apart—a society girl from New York and a vagabond of the air from a small town. But that combination proves to be part of the intrigue, and their relationship makes for a wild and thrilling ride that touches both their lives in ways neither could have expected.

Excerpts from ★★★★★ Critique Analysis, Flight Deck Film Festival

“Reading Sky Carnival: Flying with Jack & Mavis feels like immersing myself in a living, breathing moment of American history that rarely gets this kind of emotional and narrative attention. What initially presents itself as a sweeping aviation epic gradually reveals something far more intimate: a meditation on risk, ambition, love, and the psychological cost of choosing a life lived in the air. This is not simply a historical adventure story. It’s a deeply human portrait of people who are addicted to motion because standing still would mean confronting loss, fear, and limitation. What struck me most is how the screenplay treats flight as both liberation and burden. Jack Ashcraft is introduced as a man defined by confidence, spectacle, and physical mastery, yet beneath the bravado there is a constant undercurrent of fragility. Flying is not just his livelihood or passion; it’s his coping mechanism.”

“Mavis Perkins is where the screenplay truly transcends familiar genre expectations. She is not positioned as a novelty or a symbolic “strong woman” dropped into a male-dominated world. She is intelligent, curious, disciplined, and quietly defiant. Her identity as both a pilot and a journalist gives her a dual lens on the world: she participates in danger while also documenting it. That combination makes her psychologically fascinating. She wants experience, but she also wants authorship. She refuses to simply be seen; she insists on seeing and recording. The script subtly frames her newspaper as an extension of her need for agency and permanence in a world that routinely erases women’s accomplishments. The relationship between Jack and Mavis unfolds with patience and restraint. Their bond isn’t rooted in instant romance but in mutual recognition.”

WRITER’S NOTES:

My screenplay is based on the life of my great uncle John W. Ashcraft, Jr. who flew with the Gates Flying Circus in the Roaring Twenties. He was born in Oklahoma Territory and raised in Kansas. The narrative is further inspired by real people and events in the aviation scene of the 1920s. Source material were numerous newspaper articles, letters and family histories. Not since High Road to China (1983) has there been a film that includes a female pilot in the Roaring Twenties. There hasn’t been a film about civil aviation in the era since The Great Waldo Pepper (1975).

GFC was arguably the biggest and best exhibition flying organization of its time. Air shows remain as popular as ever attracting millions of spectators each year. Gates was one of the first.

Aptly named, the Roaring Twenties were a raucous time—speakeasies, nightclubs, flappers, wild dancing, women pushing boundaries having recently been allowed to vote. And of course, romance. Aviation was a spectacle and pilots were the rockstars of the day. Add a little Gatsby to the mix. Sky Carnival: Flying with Jack & Mavis has it all.

I desire to sell the script and be a part of production as writer.

Cindy Weigand
www.CindyWeigand.com
cjweigand0110@gmail.com
512.818.0472