Plot summary for
Waydowntown (2000) More at IMDbPro »

Four young office workers have a bet going to see who can last the longest without going outside. In the maze that is the downtown core of a large city, glass skywalks connect apartment buildings, office towers and shopping malls. Its day 28 of the bet and over the lunch hour, as the office prepares for the company founder's retirement party, things start to seriously unravel. Written by Anonymous

Set in the voyeuristic maze of glass towers, malls, interconnecting walkways, and food courts that make up downtown Calgary Waydowntown is a comedy about a group of young employees who bet a month's salary, winner takes all, on who can last the longest without going outside. Tom (Fabrizio Filippo), a bored young trainee, comes up with the idea of the wager; but after a few weeks of being trapped like ants, Tom and the other participants begin to struggle to stay sane. Shot on digital film and transferred to 35mm, Waydowntown captures a sense of heightened realism in a suffocating world of offices, parking garages and constantly humming air ventilators. Burns' creates a world that has us questioning the way we spend our days and makes us reconsider our aspirations and goals, with energy, humor and imagination. Written by Anonymous

Tom, Sandra, Curt and Randy are twenty-something colleagues who work and live in downtown Calgary. "Work" and "live" are stretching the terms as they really try solely to survive in their meaningless jobs for Mather, Mather & Mather while amusing themselves. They've made a $10,000 bet with each other on who can stay inside the longest. They can do so since their apartments and their offices are all connected by a series of enclosed overhead walkways. Approaching the end of the first month of the bet which coincides with the retirement party for the company's well respected founder, Mr. Mather, each reflects on the bet and their lives. Unfocused Randy would hate to lose the bet on a circumstance outside of his control. After hearing that she is living in an environment of recycled stale air, Sandra becomes paranoid about being inside as she conducts her unofficial job, following Mr. Mather, a kleptomaniac, during his lunchtime "shopping" spree. Curt feels he's an easy winner of the bet if he can just satisfy his sexual needs, his latest sexual target being co-worker Vicki. And Tom is wondering if his meaningless life is making him become desensitized to the important things in life, especially as he deals with two despondent people, a jealous boyfriend named Paul, and a suicidal co-worker named Brad, who Tom has mockingly coined "Sadly I'm Bradley". Written by Huggo

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