While this movie has yet to be made, one screenplay coverage reviewer asked the obvious question. "Why hasn't this been on a screen somewhere, yet?"
In 1974, a 17-year-old girl was running from the Carbone crime family in Tacoma, Washington. She had witnessed something she refused to admit even to herself. Everyone around her who knew too much was turning up dead, overdosed, or face-down in Spanaway Lake. She needed one week, a place to sleep, and someone who wouldn't sell her out.
She chose a 17-year-old kid she had known for less than an hour.
That kid is still alive. Most of the other major players in this story are not.
As for the screenplay with over a dozen international awards, new coverage (that is a professional level review of a screenplay) from The Black List indicates it could easily be a $30-50 million prestige studio production.
I'd long thought maybe a $3-5 million indie production. Though UK producer/director Danny Baker told me this past winter it could easily be an FX type prestige series. So, I drew up a treatment for that and...he loved it. But he's busy on other projects at this time and as usual, getting the money or studio on board is the issue at hand.
The Black List coverage from May 2026:
There is a compelling 1970s coming-of-age action thriller here, and it's clear the writer has strong instincts for period detail, character-forward storytelling, and cinematically rich set piece design that compete with many professionals working today. Their ability to ground larger-than-life action within a relatable, empathetic teenage POV is especially exciting, and they should feel proud of the work thus far. Even so, there are notable areas that may benefit from significant rewrites.
As they consider this development, they may find inspiration in similar voices such as Elijah Bynum or Scott Frank. In terms of selling this, the period setting and ambitious set pieces likely push the budget into the $30-50M range, putting it best with traditional studios or streamers like Netflix or Apple, both of which have appetite for prestige action drama. As these buyers are highly talent-driven, a strong next step may be to refine the draft and tee up a producer who can help bring in a marketable filmmaker and cast.
It's a story and screenplay that has had the interest of a UK producer some years ago, a well-known Hollywood producer, 3 directors and now a new UK working film industry professional. And yet, it's still unproduced. Such is the filmmaking business. But I'm not giving up. What is stopping it from being produced? It takes the right people, the right vision. And to date, everyone seems to love it but has their own vision.
I have mine. The right vision for it. And mine will win out. Or it won't.
That vision is that this is not a coming-of-age story, though there are elements of that. It is not a "teen romp". This is not your average teen. His motivations were not a normal teen's. He was also no super teen, either. He simply had an unusual degree of training in all the right things required for this kind of a situation.
The fact that he came together with this woman, at that time in that situation, is truly remarkable. Story worthy. Movie worthy. Series worthy. And it really happened.
I just hope I can get it produced before the protagonist, who is likely the only remaining participant from this story still alive, gets to see it on screen.
Before he's no longer here.
What's important here is, we still have someone who was there, who saw it all, who was central to the entire bizarre story in a situation that eventually went viral as it involved the city, county, and state levels of government, and so acquired national attention. It was in the newspapers for months on end. That would be the trial of the crime family, that had to be moved from Tacoma to California to protect the trail from being corrupted.
Yet now, no one knows about all this.
The Enterprise
Pierce County in the early 1970s was, in the words of former Tacoma Mayor Bill Barma, wide open. Joint Base Lewis-McChord, then split between Fort Lewis and McCord Field, filled the county with young military men and the kind of cash economy that organized crime has always known how to exploit. John Joseph Carbone knew exactly what he had.
His operation ran topless bars, card rooms, prostitution, and heroin across a network of tavern fronts throughout the county. When competition appeared, it was firebombed, sometimes with employees still inside. When witnesses emerged, they disappeared. A dancer subpoenaed before a grand jury was found dead of an apparent overdose. A bouncer who had been called to testify told his family he needed to get out. He reappeared face-down in Spanaway Lake.
When liquor control agent Mel Journey started making connections that other investigators weren't making, two gunmen approached him in his driveway and shot him four times in the chest while his family watched from the window. He survived on multiple blood transfusions, contracting Hepatitis C in the process. The enterprise kept operating.
The reason it kept operating was Pierce County Sheriff George Janovic, who accepted payments from Carbone's intermediaries, tipped off Carbone's operations before raids, and directed deputies to harass competing nightclub owners. Mayor Barma recalled Janovic being consumed not with the crime wave rocking his county but with building a campaign war chest large enough to discourage a rival from running against him. Barma attended one of Janovic's fundraisers. Carbone was there.
By November 1978, after a 13-month FBI and ATF undercover operation, 15 people were arrested including the sheriff. Carbone was convicted on 14 counts including racketeering and sentenced to a hundred years. He served 15. Janovic got 12 years, served 6. The trial had to be moved to San Francisco because there was no impartial jury to be found in Pierce County.
This is documented history. Court records. Sentences. Federal convictions.
And sitting in the middle of it, for one week in 1974, was a girl named Sara.
The Witness
In June 2020, the true crime podcast Scene of the Crime, hosted by former KIRO Radio reporters Carolyn Ossorio and Kim Shepard, devoted an episode to the Carbone enterprise. The episode, titled "Enterprise," featured Bill Barma and drew on documented records of the FBI investigation and the Janovic conviction.
It also featured an interview with the man who protected Sara that week in 1974.
He described a frenzied call from a friend, a nervous woman in her late twenties who climbed into his car and handed him a News Tribune article about the murder of a bouncer named Danny at the Tiki nightclub in Lakewood. She told him she hadn't seen it. He believed she had. She asked if he had a gun. She asked if he would stay with her for a week until she could get out of town.
He said yes.
What the podcast captured is the shape of the story. What it couldn't fully convey is the character of the man who said yes, or why Sara chose him specifically, or what happened to her after she left. Those answers are in the screenplay.
Carolyn Ossorio has since gone on to produce The Shadow Girls, a deeply reported podcast on the Green River Killer's victims, now continuing under the title Criminal Mischief. She's worth following. The Carbone episode remains one of the best documented accounts of the enterprise available in audio form.
The Screenplay
The Teenage Bodyguard is a feature screenplay based on these documented events. It opens with Danny McCormick's murder. It carries the historical record through title cards and court documentation. It traces Sara's flight through the Carbone network's reach, the Seattle connection through the Colacurcio organization, and the week one young man spent keeping her alive on instinct, karate, a Civil Air Patrol background, and a .357 he knew how to use.
The screenplay has won 17 international film and screenplay contests across three continents, including:
Best Feature Script, Bab Al Bahrain International Film Festival (Bahrain, 2024); Best Drama Screenplay, Best Hollywood Day Short FF (Winter 2025); Outstanding Achievement Award, Brandenburg International Film Festival (Germany, 2023); Best Screenplay, David Film Festival (Istanbul, 2023); Best Feature Script/Screenplay, Great Oman Independent Film Festival (Oman, 2024); Gold Award Feature Script, Hollywood Gold Awards (USA, 2024); Best Crime Screenplay, International Film & Script Festival-Lotus (Greece, 2023); Best Feature Screenwriting, Medusa Film Festival (USA, 2023); Best Original Screenplay, New Cinema Festival (Buenos Aires, 2024); Best Feature Script, New York Movie Awards (USA, 2024); Best Feature Screenplay Honorable Mention, New York Screenwriting Awards (Summer 2023); Best Screenplay, Tibriz Cinema Awards (Iran, 2023); Best Unproduced Drama Screenplay, US Motion Picture Alliance (USA, 2023); Best Screenplay, Washington Film Awards (December 2023); Feature Script Outstanding Achievement, World Film Carnival (Singapore, 2023); Best Feature Script, Bab Al Bahrain (2024). And a variety of Official Selections.
A separate rewrite with input from producer Robert Mitas, who has long worked with actor/producer Michael Douglas, added three additional recognitions to the story. It is a shorter, tighter screenplay, but it's not the same story and not as true to what happened as the longer, original version that has been worked on with help from Robert, as well as screenplay consultants like Jen Grisanti.
Why not a Book?
Maybe. A screenplay is the compressed form. It does what screenplays do: it moves. But the story underneath it is larger than any two-hour film. As Danny Baker said, it could easily be a prestige series in the FX, Netflix, or HBO formats.
The documented Carbone enterprise. The FBI operation. The Janovic conviction. The Seattle connection. The young man who grew up in the Pacific Northwest, trained in martial arts since childhood, earned his letter in riflery three years running, flew search and rescue missions with Civil Air Patrol, and walked into a week that no one in his life knew about for the next fifty years.
And Sara. Who she was. Where she went. What the Carbone network's reach actually meant for a woman trying to disappear in 1974.
That's a book. Narrative nonfiction true crime with the court records to back it up, a living primary source who has never told the full story, and an ending that the screenplay only hints at.
The story is documented. The witness is available. The work is already begun.
The Teenage Bodyguard screenplay is represented by its screenwriter, JZ Murdock. Robert Mitas and UK producer/director Danny Baker, are available when this project begins to move forward.
Inquiries welcome.
Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!
JZ Murdock is a retired Senior Technical Writer/IT administrator, and an active award-winning author/filmmaker, documentarian, and writer based in Bremerton, Washington.
He publishes commentary on the state of things at murdockinations.com and on his creative works over at Substack. He also posts on Slasher.com on the horror genre.
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