"If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" — Read The Screenplay By Mary Bronstein
A Psychological Pressure Cooker About Motherhood, Obsession & Survival.
In "In If I Had Legs I’d Kick You" (2025), Mary Bronstein drops us inside the unraveling mind of a mother pushed far beyond the breaking point. Set against the clinical, emotionally charged world of pediatric illness, therapy rooms, and crumbling domestic space, the story follows Linda — a woman fighting to hold together control, identity, and sanity while everything in her life leaks, rots, breaks, or outright collapses.
This isn’t a story about heroics. It’s about endurance. About panic disguised as functionality. About the terror of loving someone so deeply that you disappear in the process.
With surgical dialogue, dark humor, and surreal psychological horror flourishes, the script explores grief, guilt, maternal rage, and the quiet madness of trying to be “fine” when nothing is.
"If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" — Educator Resources & Study Guide
Writing Psychological Meltdowns Without Losing the Audience.
"If I Had Legs I’d Kick You" is a lesson in how to trap the audience inside a character’s mental state without losing clarity, empathy, or momentum. Mary Bronstein’s script teaches writers how to: Build tension through routine, repetition, and pressure; Use dialogue as emotional warfare; Create dread through environmental storytelling (water leaks, walls collapsing, machines beeping); Blur the line between reality, anxiety, and hallucination; Write trauma without sensationalizing it.
This screenplay shows how to make an audience uncomfortable, invested, and emotionally bruised — using nothing but character, structure, and psychological honesty.
This script doesn’t scream. It simmers, leaks, and slowly drowns you.
If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (2025) — Classroom Study
"If I Had Legs I’d Kick You" is a suffocating psychological portrait of a woman quietly coming apart. Linda -- a mother, caregiver, and emotional pressure vessel -- navigates a collapsing home, a medically fragile child, and a mind that refuses to stay still. Mary Bronstein’s screenplay places the audience directly inside Linda’s subjectivity. Reality bends. Sound design becomes psychological architecture. Domestic space turns hostile. The story never explodes -- it corrodes, leaks, warps, and tightens. Rather than using spectacle, the script uses routine, repetition, and sensory detail to build dread. It’s horror without monsters and drama without release -- just a steady emotional suffocation.
- Writing subjective POV in film.
- Depicting anxiety, mental illness, and psychological pressure.
- Domestic spaces as horror environments.
- Ethical portrayal of motherhood and rage.
- Sound, silence, and structure as storytelling tools.
- Slow-burn tension vs. traditional plot escalation.
"If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" One Sheet & Script Intel
With her life crashing down around her, Linda attempts to navigate her child's mysterious illness, her absent husband, a missing person, and an increasingly hostile relationship with her therapist. A24
| Type | ... |
FYC
|
| Version | ... | FINAL1.30 |
| Date | ... | 07.07.2023 |
| Pages | ... | 131 |
| Genres | ... | Comedy Drama Thriller |
| Screenplay | ... | Mary Bronstein |
| IMDb ID | ... | 18382850 |
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