Curtain Call

Tommy O'Rourke is a the forgotten star of popular, but bad, movies. He is now staring down life's dark tunnel. He lives with his daughter's dysfunctional family in Milwaukee. His old movie partner has just face-planted into a barn while sky diving. His name means nothing anymore and Tommy is ready to make his own exit. Into the breach steps Harvey Steinmetz, the oily son of the unscrupulous movie producer who put the kibosh on Tommy's career. Harvey hasn't fallen far from his father's tree. He's desperate for money and will do anything to get it. His Tucson dinner theater is failing hard and fast. He sees a way out by pairing Tommy and Junior Beckman, the alcoholic son of Tommy's old partner, in a schlocky Shakespearean montage. Harvey is more interested in selling tickets to the clueless than art, and brings in Tommy's old flame, Lucille Belinski, to whip the woebegone cast into shape. Lucille is bitter, having fallen from her perch as trail-blazing female director to putting on shows at a children's theater in Bakersfield. Old resentments flare, the only thing worse than Junior's boozing is his acting, and Tommy just wants it all to end. As the big night arrives, the simmering pot of ineptitude and personal grievances threatens to crater the show before it begins. But Tommy O'Rourke has an ace up his sleeve: an talent that no one ever realized he had.