



Dennis J. Manning is a neo-noir screenwriter and filmmaker crafting psychological thrillers, memory-driven dramas, and elevated character studies built for directors with a strong visual point of view.




CARNIVAL LIGHTS - The Final Screenplay of 2025 - a modern noir about chosen family, moral collapse, and the cost of belonging.
2025 I wrote 14 scripts.
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3/1/2025 One Less Egg To Fry
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3/17/2025 Deuce's Wild
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4/8/2025 Handrptint
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4/24/2025 Another Rose On The Vine
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5/9/2025 Chasing Truths
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5/15/2025 Dreamland Lovers
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6/8/2025 Dreamland: 2nd Offering
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7/1/2025 Strings Attached
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7/11/2025 Refuse to Go Dark
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9/17/2025 Blank Canvas
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10/21/2025 Have At It
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10/23/2025 Honesty 1
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2/3/2025 Black Diamond
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12/30/2025 Carnival Lights

The Shaft , Chasing Truths & Handprint — Under Contract with Price Productions — Packaging in Progress.
The Substitute Wife - Under Contract with Voyage Media
"More Going Down" – Awarded Stage 32 Double Recommend (Top 1%)
Redefining LGBTQ+ storytelling through bold, cinematic narratives where love, power, and fate collide in a neo-noir landscape.
I don’t write “gay stories.” I write thrillers where power seduces, love destroys, and fate never blinks. The fact that some of my leads are queer?
That just makes the stakes higher.
I'm not chasing trends. I’m redefining them.
Beautifully unstable narratives that linger long after the credits roll.
9-screenplay slate. 5 completed in 75 days. All killer. No filler.

Synopsis
JUST A FEW follows DEVON, a sharp, funny, deeply controlled man, as he moves through the days following his husband Patrick’s sudden death—without ever allowing himself to say it out loud.
Across Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, Devon maintains the rituals of domestic life: walking their dog Teddy, handling groceries, dealing with Patrick’s family, fielding well-meaning strangers who seem to know Patrick better than he does. Everyone else is preparing for something Devon refuses to name. He corrects details. He jokes. He bristles at being helped. He insists on order.
Patrick is never seen alive in the present—only through absence, through the stories others tell, through the spaces he once filled. Devon’s grief expresses itself sideways: irritation, humor, hyper-competence, avoidance. Teddy, their small dog, becomes Devon’s anchor—the only being who doesn’t demand explanation.
On Sunday night, alone in the house, Devon finally cracks—not in a speech, but in a quiet admission to an empty room: he doesn’t know how to do this.
On Monday morning, Devon enters the funeral home and the truth arrives all at once. The audience realizes what Devon has been running from—and why. At the service, Devon sings an original song, Just A Few, transforming private grief into communal release.
The film closes not with closure, but with stillness—returning briefly to the moment of Patrick’s death, and ending on a single, irreversible image of loss.
Just A Few is an intimate, restrained drama about how grief doesn’t arrive all at once—how it waits, patiently, for us to stop running.

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