Four amateur poets, stuck in their day-jobs, stumble toward a million dollar poetry competition in front of a live audience. 

SYNOPSIS:

A throw-back to Best in Show, Million Dollar Poet is a family dramady.

Each day-jobber makes poetry their tickets to rise as they stumble to become solid contestants. The most feared high school dean, Mrs. Edwards, preaches poetry but she can’t write it, the heavyweight boxer, Grizzly Frost, spews poetry but it’s only supposed to be an act, the dental hygienist, Josie D’Angelo, has the poetry runs but freezes up at the mike, and the physicist, Owen Nothnagle, is way too in his head.

Poems and More Poems Magazine of Chicago has been endowed $100,000,000 from the late Lilly Crest under the condition of a contest awarding an unpublished poet $1,000,000. The wealthy granddaughter, Melinda Crest, clashes with the intellectual magazine editor, Forest St. Thomas, in her handling the contest as a “coming out party.” She wins and rents the convention center for an event of the century.

The contestants prepare for the live contest; from Grizzly moonlighting incognito at a slam club, to Owen seeing an all woman’s writer’s group behind his wife’s back, to Josie only pretending to clean teeth, to Mrs. Edwards stealing poems from her student. From Grizzly’s confession to his ditz girlfriend, to Owen giving lectures on poetry and science co-existing, to Josie using her ten year old son’s friends as an audience, to Mrs. Edwards trying to keep up at a bizarre writer’s workshop.

A dental convention at the center collides on the same weekend as the poetry contest which puts Josie in a tizzy. Grizzly must convince his coach of a new kind of coaching and Mrs. Edwards is shocked when she sees the student author of her poem in the audience. Right up to the last seconds, it doesn’t seem like any of the four are going to pull off their poems to a packed house. We have our winner.