BEAUTIFUL LOSER is a compressed biopic about the creation of a single pivotal song in the decades-long career of a music legend.

Told almost entirely over the course of just two weeks, the intimate story follows Leonard Cohen (MICHAEL SHUMAN) while first recording his now-iconic track “Hallelujah” — but our film steps outside the perspective of it’s supposed subject and is seen through the eyes of Leonard’s young producer John Lissauer (JOE KEERY), the man whose career the infamous song would ultimately destroy.

Our film opens in 1974 at a dive bar in the Jazz Quarter of Montreal where Leonard Cohen watches proto-new-wave upstart Lewis Furey mesmerize Canadian crowds with his eclectic and theatrical new sound. After the show, Cohen compliments Lewis who gives all the credit to his inventive producer John Lissauer – Leonard looks over at the unassuming 22 year old wrapping cables and loading up gear.

Leonard: You wanna make a record?

John stares in disbelief at the legendary Godfather of Gloom.

John: With you?

Cut to John dilapidated downtown studio in New York City, packed tight with piles of instruments and filthy floor-to-ceiling warehouse windows. The space is exploding with ideas and creative energy. John has the answer to all of Leonard’s problems. In a quick montage we watch Leonard and John develop and cut some of Leonard’s most enduring tracks including _________ and Chelsea Hotel. Their chemistry between the two is obvious and John’s excitement about finally having a direction to unleash headful of ideas is written all over his face. Leonard and John almost immediately begin planning the follow up record and John feels that he’s finally found the creative partner he’s always needed. Leonard leaves the studio and tell John he’ll call him tomorrow.

Hard cut to SEVEN YEARS LATER and John still toiling away on the lower rungs of his professional career, making a living working on albums he doesn’t respect.

We see John sitting in the same cramped studio reading an article in Rolling Stone featuring Leonard’s new record with iconic record producer Phil Spector and through conversations with his engineer and best friend _______ we learn that Leonard disappeared as he often does. Living out his days between Los Angeles and the Greek island of Hydra lost in the chaos of women, drugs, and new records but John hasn’t gotten over it, still holding onto the dream that almost was after Leonard left without a goodbye, abandoning their plans and John shrank back into obscurity.

The manager of some shitty artists yells at Lissauer while he works recording a song for a cheesy band (telling him that it needs to be bigger or some other stupid note).

DIALOGUE ** We hear John make a compelling argument that you can make something that feels contemporary and big without losing it’s soul. The manager tells him to shut up and just turn it up**

CUT TO

The marbled floors and plaque covered walls of Columbia Records. Leonard sitting in the office with Walter Yetnicoff, the legendary but abrasive record executive as he blusters about the advent of MTV and Leonard's need to enter the new era or risk being left behind. 

Walter: We know you’re great Leonard, we just don’t know if you're any good.

Leonard walks the streets of New York City past an porn studios electronics shop – MTV playing in the window across five different hi-fi TV’s. Wedged below is a small display for a new 12 inch Casio keyboard. Leonard wanders in. Inspecting the tiny toy. He runs his fingers across the plastic keys. Dun da dun. It’s electronic notes shaking from the small speakers. He stares intently at the device. Face stoic but eyes twinkling. He has an idea.

That night, as while Lissauer cleans up his messy downtown loft covered in the pizza boxes of a sad single man (indicating some frustration from the day before) his phone rings. It’s Leonard and without so much as acknowledging the seven year gap in their communication he asks his old collaborator if he’d like to go back into the studio.

Leonard: I wanna do something new.

John has a choice, can he risk believing in Leonard again, to forget the betrayal and the disappearance, and to head back into the studio, or stay on the dead end path of his life.

A folk hero fighting for relevance.

A young artist searching for purpose.

And the struggle to be something greater than ourselves.

Our movie follows the roller coaster of recording anchored by the complicated friendship between these two men, a collaboration that will be strained by demanding record producers, Leonard’s addictions and allusiveness, RELATIONSHIP WITH BACKUP SINGER JENNIFER WARNES (LILY JAMES), and the evolving landscape of their time as John sacrifices everything (descrive how he pulls his favors or whatever he does to put it all on teh line and put himself out there for Leonard) as they head into the studio to try and conjur magic once again – an imperfect alchemy we will watch them almost create as together they manifest Leonard’s legendary track Hallujah, a song that perfectly combines sex and religion, hope and failure, and the frailties of modern men (this is wack but you get the idea).

Ultimately this whirlwind of a record will result in a record initially so despised that Columbia refuses to release it – Getting John exiled from the industry and setting Leonard on a path to retreat from music and live hidden away at a buddhist monastery for the next decade. Personal tragedies which are made all the more poignant by the fact that many years later the maligned song they created together would find new life through the voices of others and become one of the most beloved songs in music history – featured across a multitude if iconic films, at the opening ceremony of the olympic games, and covered by over 300 artists including Bob Dylan, John Cale, Paul McCartney, and of course Jeff Buckley.

On a practical level Beautiful Loser is about the mechanics of artistic collaboration – the highs and the hells – But on a thematic level it’s about the struggle to let go of control and release yourself into a process… not only the process of music but the process of life. It’s a movie about how the work we create is bigger than ourselves and the journey an artist must take to discover that.