A stubborn 76-year-old vintage motorcycle dealer. Estranged brothers. A woman who won't let him hide. And the unlikely family that forms around a Pittsburgh garage.
THE BIG CHILL · THE BIG LEBOWSKI · THE KOMINSKY METHOD
Lenny's garage is a museum of machines nobody makes anymore, run by a man nobody makes anymore. Vintage BMWs line the walls — airheads, oilheads, bikes from the era when you could see the engine and understand it. The tools are organized. The coffee is terrible. The phone is a landline.
Into this world crashes Danny — Lenny's younger brother, a broke former broker who sold the family cottage ten years ago and hasn't been forgiven. Danny brings chaos, a crappy car, an eye for Lenny's neighbor Audry, and an unwanted talent for putting things on the internet.
And there is the band — a room full of men Lenny's age who still play, badly and seriously, and who turn out to be the only people he tells the truth to.
It's a comedy. It's profane. It's about old men who still know how to fix things, even when the thing that needs fixing is themselves.
Stubborn, profane, generous in ways he'd never admit. Estranged from his brothers over a sold family cottage. Still rides. Still fixes things. Still hasn't forgiven anyone, including himself.
Lenny's younger brother. Divorced, two kids who don't speak to him. Arrives uninvited, builds Lenny a website, sleeps with Lenny's neighbor, and slowly becomes indispensable.
Audry's son. Lenny's apprentice since age 13. Engineering student. Vegan. The surrogate son who absorbed Lenny's sensibility without either of them noticing.
Divorced. Two kids. Ten years of "pointless chatter and flirtation" with Lenny. She calls him her spiritual advisor. He calls her a friend. Nobody believes either of them.
Garden, chickens, no patience. Meets Lenny over a dropped motorcycle and a gravel driveway. Makes him want to be somewhere other than his garage. Calls him "Vintage."
Laid off from Philadelphia, two years in his mother's spare room, living on severance and a German motorcycle he bought because something grabbed him. Falls for an artist in Tel Aviv he has never met.
Winery in upstate New York. Prostate cancer brings all three brothers to Pittsburgh for the first time in a decade. The cottage wound gets aired out in a steam room with two bewildered old men listening.
Runs the church band Lenny plays in and the benefit that ends the film. The only man who tells Lenny the truth about his playing, which is also the truth about everything else.
Has to sell his bikes. Ben handles it alone. Waddington's last request: one final ride. Ben obliges — pink helmet, goggles, old man on the back whooping "fast, faster!"
Five professional evaluations · August 2026
"The script crafts such a sharply specific portrait of passion, regret, and decency that it is impossible not to both embrace him and, at a certain level, to buy into his love for vintage motorcycles and the purity of music."
THE BLACK LIST — STRENGTHS
"With a sense of artful tenderness and poetry, this script crafts a character piece that resonates. Regina, her son, Richard, and the members of Lenny's band fill out a magnetically appealing ensemble."
THE BLACK LIST — STRENGTHS
"There is something so distinctive and specific about Lenny's voice, perspective, world, and priorities, that it seems impossible not to embrace him. This is a production that can be put together on the budget of a modest independent movie."
THE BLACK LIST — PROSPECTS
"Lenny, Danny, and Davey offer opportunities for a trio of standout performances from veteran talent. This script could find itself on a promising path toward awards season."
THE BLACK LIST — EVALUATION #1 — PROSPECTS
"Lenny instantly stands out as a protagonist with a clear and distinct voice and easy-to-track motivations. The two brothers have incredible, lived-in chemistry. Lenny and Regina have great chemistry as well. Their banter provides some of the strongest dialogue in the script."
THE BLACK LIST — EVALUATION #2 — STRENGTHS
"The way this script explores aging is moving and thought-provoking. Lenny's gruff mentor relationship with Ben is another great strength of the script. Ben's interaction with Mr. Waddington on page 37 is fairly brief, but very poignant."
THE BLACK LIST — EVALUATION #2 — STRENGTHS
"Lenny could be an enticing role for the right actor. Harrison Ford's lovely, emotionally compelling work in SHRINKING comes to mind as a similar comp for this role. The popularity of similar projects proves there is absolutely an audience for a film like this one. It should enjoy relatively high odds of finding success."
THE BLACK LIST — EVALUATION #2 — PROSPECTS
"LENNY'S VINTAGE explores compelling themes about family, aging, legacy, and forgiveness through endearing characters in a warm and nostalgic setting. Danny walking back into his life opens the door to conversations that should have been had long ago and storylines that keep the script pushing forward."
THE BLACK LIST — EVALUATION #3 — STRENGTHS
"The themes feel relatable and deeply human, the script could be produced with a low budget, and the largely older cast offers nuanced and three-dimensional roles to actors who may not always have such solid opportunities this readily available. Similar themes are explored to great effect in projects such as THE BUCKET LIST, THE KOMINSKY METHOD, and even the recent HACKS."
THE BLACK LIST — EVALUATION #3 — PROSPECTS
"A little movie that has a charming way of getting under the reader's skin. It's littered with down-home similes that skillfully match the characters, dialogue, setting, and story, like a mechanic pulling on a favorite grease-stained jumpsuit. Its characters are all well drawn and feel like real people, someone the audience wants to pull up on the porch and drink a beer with."
THE BLACK LIST — EVALUATION #4 — STRENGTHS
"The characters all speak in their own distinct voices and the cast, while not small, feels vividly written. The whole script feels reminiscent of THE STRAIGHT STORY or NEBRASKA or, in some ways, the HBO series SOMEBODY SOMEWHERE, in that it treats its largely blue-collar characters with respect, empathy, and curiosity."
THE BLACK LIST — EVALUATION #4 — STRENGTHS
"Lenny and his associates are so charming and have such rich backstories, it's possible that this project could attract an elderly actor looking to expand his dramatic chops. The locations throughout are appropriately lean and could keep the budget modest and accessible for financiers."
THE BLACK LIST — EVALUATION #4 — PROSPECTS
"LENNY'S VINTAGE has voice and specificity. That is, Lenny is realized as a character through his knowledge of motorcycles and mechanics, and his vocabulary reflects that. The audience's hand is not held when he's talking about bikes. And when he's not talking about bikes, his tone, cadence, and attitude remain. In other words, he is consistent. Oftentimes characters will start out with a strong manner of speaking and lose it as a script goes on, but that doesn't happen for Lenny."
THE BLACK LIST — EVALUATION #5 — STRENGTHS
"His relationships to his brothers, Marvin especially, were also thought through. The conflict and layers of Marvin's 'betrayal' by selling Lenny's beloved cabin, mitigated by the disastrous state of Marvin's life and the fact that all three brothers are selfish in their own right, make for rich drama between them. It feels as if Lenny, Marvin, Davey, and Regina, all aging characters, have actually lived long lives and behave in accordance with their prior experiences. None of their actions feel inauthentic."
THE BLACK LIST — EVALUATION #5 — STRENGTHS
Logline, synopsis, characters, comps, and contact — one page, ready to share.
DOWNLOAD PDFScript analysis · August 2026
"The dialogue is the screenplay's greatest strength — sharp, funny, character-specific, and layered with subtext. Lenny's voice is distinctive and consistent. The humor never undermines the emotional stakes."
GREENLIGHT COVERAGE — DIALOGUE 9.0/10
"The screenplay's greatest achievement is making Lenny's transformation feel inevitable and earned rather than sentimental — a man who fixed everything except himself finally turning those skills inward. The specificity of its world and the authenticity of its voices elevate it well above standard fare."
GREENLIGHT COVERAGE — OVERALL 8.3/10
"Lenny is exceptionally well-drawn — a 76-year-old man whose gruffness conceals deep wounds, whose actions reveal more than his words, and who undergoes genuine transformation without betraying his essential nature."
GREENLIGHT COVERAGE — CHARACTER 8.5/10
"The sale of the R69S in the final act is the single strongest plot beat. It recontextualizes the opening — that bike, that ride, that entrance — as something Lenny was willing to release in order to buy the cabin. It's a sacrifice that costs him something the audience has seen him love, which gives the ending genuine weight."
GREENLIGHT COVERAGE — PLOT ASSESSMENT
"The screenplay builds emotional investment through accumulation rather than manipulation. The Waddington scene — the blind man's last ride — is devastating in its restraint. The benefit concert, where Lenny plays honestly for the first time in public, earns its catharsis."
GREENLIGHT COVERAGE — EMOTIONAL ENGAGEMENT 8.5/10
"'Further' as both destination and philosophy is beautifully threaded throughout. The screenplay explores how holding onto grievance becomes its own prison, how machines can substitute for people, and how vulnerability is the price of connection. The parallel between fixing bikes and fixing relationships never becomes heavy-handed."
GREENLIGHT COVERAGE — THEME 8.5/10
An AI-generated audio discussion of the screenplay — two voices exploring the characters, themes, and world of Lenny's Vintage.
Generated by Google NotebookLM
BEN & LENNY — THE PROMISE OF A BIKE — PP. 17-18
Later, Ben rides a 1991 BMW K75 through his high school hallways, crashes into the trophy case, breaks his wrist, and becomes a YouTube legend. Lenny's response: "Linoleum floors will do that."
LENNY SELLS GERALD A BIKE — PP. 3-4
Dialogue: 9.0/10 — "Sharp, funny, character-specific, and layered with subtext." — Greenlight Coverage
Jeff Ritter, Ph.D. spent 25 years as a professor at La Roche University in Pittsburgh, grew up in the folk music and free speech radio world of New York — WBAI, Gerde's Folk City, Newport — and holds a B.A. in Folklore from Hampshire College, whose motto Non Satis Scire (to know is not enough) is basically his operating system.
He directed the documentary ABANTU N'UMUCO, about Rwandan students at his university — $12,000 in grants for a first-time filmmaker, five film festivals. Lenny's Vintage is his first screenplay.
He wrote it from the inside: decades of riding BMW motorcycles across the country, up to Cape Breton and down to New Orleans, years riding with Pittsburgh's BMW club of unrepentant old guys, and watching his older friends do everything Lenny does — take in relatives, sacrifice, start over, fall in love again.
Lenny's Vintage is complete at 91 pages and available for representation. The script, a full synopsis, and the writer are all available on request.
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