Author's Biography:
VINCENT LEE ACCETTOLA is an Asian American filmmaker and MBA/MFA thesis candidate at New York University. KOBAYASHI is his second script to be featured on the Purple List following BLUE COMEDY in 2024. Prior to attending NYU, Vincent graduated from Yale and Harvard, where he studied neuroscience and education policy, respectively, before going on to work as a producer for Academy Award-nominated documentarian Christine Choy. In 2017, Vincent founded the National Youth Orchestra of China, producing concert broadcasts for ARTE, CCTV, NPR, and Medici.tv with Grammy Award-winning artists such as Yuja Wang.
Script Synopsis:
For Takeru Kobayashi, eating is not for sustenance but a sport – one perfected through years of discipline, training, and technique. Coached by his ailing mother Toshiko, the 22-year-old shocks Japan by dethroning his mentor on the hit television show Food Battle Club, only to find competitive eating outlawed after a teenage fan chokes to death trying to imitate him. Half a world away, brothers George and Rich Shea bet everything on transforming the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest from a Coney Island sideshow into a marquee event for their latest venture, Major League Eating. Desperate for a star, George recruits Kobi for the 2001 competition, where the 128-pound wunderkind manages to devour 50 hot dogs and buns in just 12 minutes, doubling the world record and becoming an overnight sensation. But while fame, fortune, and romance follow for Kobi, so do the deterioration of his relationship with the Sheas, the failure of his mother’s health, and the emergence of his first true rival in the all-American Joey “Jaws” Chestnut.
WRITER’S STATEMENT:
Vincent was interested in hot dogs from a very young age.