West End Story (2005)

When Johnny found his life wasn't to his satisfaction he decided to do nothing about it. That's not strictly speaking true. You see, he formulated a philosophy of sorts and started to live by it. He noticed that the number of things that go wrong in a person's life, the number of disappointments, the heartbreaks, are directly proportional to the number of things that a person does. He even drew a graph to prove it. So Johnny decided, quite simply, to do less. He was so good at his job doing clever things with computers that he negotiated new working conditions with his bosses. Rather than being paid progressively more money for the same amount of work, he asked to be paid the same amount of money for progressively less time spent working. The working week got shorter and shorter until Johnny could fulfill his commitments from the comfort of his sofa sometime between the midday news and the afternoon movie. He lived his simple life almost exclusively within his G12 postcode. The West End of Glasgow was his whole world. Like all the great philosophers, his big idea was no panacea. The flaw? The less things you do, the less things go well and make you happy. But then a young woman brushed past him in a café, spilled his coffee, broke his walkman and forced him to consider returning to rough and tumble of romance. Then a chance to go and work in San Francisco forced him to really consider what wanted out of life in general. Like Johnny, the young woman, Jane, is a dreamer with a dull job (as a proof-reader). In her spare time she writes fairy tales about a six-year-old fairy princess who lives just off Byres Road in Glasgow. Johnny is smitten but if only it was that simple. Meanwhile, Johnny's livewire best friend Alex returns to Glasgow after a year abroad. He is forced to confront some of the loose ends he left behind, including Johnny's sister Tanya with whom he was involved before his sudden departure and his DJ/producer partner Chris who has been patiently waiting for him to come back and make a record. There is also the small matter of Audrey, Jane's best friend, whom he hooked up with in London on his way home. In their careers and in their personal lives, each of the characters is forced to choose between the safety of what they know and the danger of reaching for what they want.