How to Disappear Completely

Tired of having her future dictated by the small-minded expectations of her hometown, a rebellious teenage girl hatches a plan to rob the pet store where she works.

A feature film by Joe Thayer

The Film

A darkly funny coming-of-age crime story with festival ambition and commercial appeal.

Project Details

Format: Female-driven feature
Genre: Coming-of-Age Dark Dramedy
Budget: Approximately $1M
Tone: Irreverent, touching, funny, and slightly criminal
Comparable Films: Juno, Lady Bird, Emily the Criminal
Status: Script complete • Award-recognized • Financing / Packaging
Recognition: Austin Film Festival, Shore Scripts, Art of Brooklyn Film Festival

Request Script & Deck Why Join This Film

A coming-of-age film with criminal momentum.

Ally is 19, directionless, and quietly unraveling.

A year out of high school and working at a pet superstore—cleaning cages. College is her only escape… except she can’t afford it. At night, she hangs with the boy she used to babysit, and by day, she drifts through work alongside India, her sharp-tongued, pregnant coworker. When India half-jokingly suggests robbing the store, a plan is hatched... finally, a way out… Except India decides to bring in her volatile boyfriend and his crew. Ally is cut out, leaving her exactly where she started: stuck, powerless, and alone.

Until she decides not to be.

As the night of the robbery collides with a high school dance and a ticking clock, Ally sets a chaotic plan in motion to claim her piece of the money. With everything threatening to fall apart, she improvises her way through a situation that’s spinning wildly out of control.

Blending dark humor with grounded emotion, How to Disappear Completely is a coming-of-age story about rejecting the life you’re handed.

Character Showcase

Performance-forward roles with volatility, humor, and real emotional risk.

The cast appeal here is character-first: young people improvising their way toward adulthood, each chasing a version of escape that says as much about who they are as where they want to go.

Ally riding through her suburban neighborhood

Lead Role

Ally (19)

Ally is irreverent, restless, and quietly unraveling. Just out of high school, working at a pet store, and navigating a life that is not her own.

Character Arc

Ally moves from passive observer to active participant in her own life. What begins as a half-formed fantasy of escape becomes a reckless act of self-definition, forcing her to confront who she is when control gives way to chaos.

Supporting Role

India (24)

India is pregnant, funny, and in desperate need of an exit strategy.

Character Arc

Desperate for a better life, India jokes about robbing the pet store where she and Ally work on Cash is King Weekend. A joke turns into a plan, until India brings in her boyfriend and his crew and things slip quickly out of her control.

Supporting Role

Mark (29)

Mark thinks he’s cooler than he is.

Character Arc

He manages the pet store better than he manages the line between appropriate and inappropriate. When his “friendliness” is not returned, his affections turn to petty revenge.

Supporting Role

Dante (22)

Dante is a small-time scammer and former junior Mensa member.

Character Arc

Dante is wasting his talents scamming people for their credit card info. When he connects with Ally during a failed scam call, they click and move onto bigger things...

Lookbook

Suburban space. Emotional containment. Quiet danger.

The visual language balances recognizable suburban realism with heightened emotional composition — controlled frames with themes of confinement and the recurring sense that every path is a dead end.

“Fuck this place.”

Comps

Creative lane with proven upside.

These films define the tonal and market space: writer-driven, performance-led indies with a mix of theatrical identity and post-theatrical value.

Juno

Budget: $6.5M

Domestic: $143.5M

International: $88.9M

VOD / Ancillary: $50M+

Emily the Criminal

Budget: $2M

Domestic: $2.1M

International: Minimal

VOD / Streaming: Est. $4M–$8M

Lady Bird

Budget: $10M

Domestic: $49M

International: $30M

VOD / Ancillary: Est. $15M–$25M

VOD / ancillary figures are presented as reasonable industry estimates for comparison framing, not audited public revenue statements.

Why Join This Film

For Cast

A performance-driven feature with strong lead and supporting roles, tonal range, and characters who live in the collision between bravado, immaturity, desperation, and self-invention.

Actor-forward material with humor and bite
Young roles with clear arcs and memorable turns
Festival-facing indie with real character showcase value

For Investors & Partners

A contained, character-driven feature designed for a disciplined $1M indie model — with a clear festival strategy, digital upside, and a manageable production footprint.

Contained locations and efficient schedule logic
Strong packaging potential for emerging / notable indie talent
Built for festival discovery, TVOD, and streamer licensing conversations

Distribution Strategy

Festival-first. Audience-driven. Flexible by design.

Discovery

Targeting top-tier and discovery-driven festivals aligned with writer-driven, youth-skewing independent cinema.

Acquisition Path

Boutique distributor, TVOD platform performance, and streamer licensing conversations supported by critical response and cast packageability.

Fallback Strength

A viable hybrid path remains possible through targeted theatrical, event screenings, and digital-first audience rollout.

$1M Fit

Contained locations, performance-driven production value, and genre-adjacent momentum make the budget level strategically appropriate.

Director's Note

I’m drawn to stories that push against the traditional coming-of-age narrative—this idea that growing up follows a clear path, or that there’s a “right” way to become yourself.

Ally is at the age where she can either move with the current and become who she’s expected to be, or resist it entirely. How to Disappear Completely is rooted in that feeling: the intoxicating belief that one bold, irreversible act can sever you from your circumstances and deliver you into a new version of yourself.

The film takes that impulse seriously, but not reverently. It understands how funny, painful, and contradictory that moment in life can be—especially for someone whose ambitions have nowhere appropriate to go.

I want the film to feel grounded in a recognizable suburban reality, while still carrying the heightened energy of a character quietly narrating her own transformation in real time. The tension lives in that space—between control and unraveling, between who Ally presents herself to be and who she’s becoming underneath.

Contact

Now Packaging — Script & Deck Available Upon Request

For screenplay requests, pitch deck inquiries, cast conversations, financing discussions, or representation-related outreach, please reach out directly by email.

joethayer1211@gmail.com

Email Request Script & Deck

“Fuck this place.”