Synopsis of Inconceivable! by Steve Marshall Cohen
Time and
Place: 1999, New York City
Genre: Contemporary Drama with historic and comedic elements
Leading role: Helene Talos, early 30s, athletic, wig designer by trade,
married, pregnant
Helene Talos
is frantic, buying pregnancy and childcare books at Barnes & Noble on 5th
Ave in Manhattan. When she gets outside,
she is overcome with emotion, spins the bags around her and the books fly out,
hitting pedestrians, taxicabs and a baby in a stroller. She is arrested for assault and her husband
Greco must bolt from a business meeting to bail her out at Midtown South. That’s when she tells him she’s pregnant. No
one presses charges and she is released.
The next
morning, they go to her gyn, Dr. Edie Arnez who asks them to give “informed
consent” for a medical procedure. But
neither can answer the required questions about their ancestry. Helene’s father committed suicide, and her
mother refuses to say why. Greco
confronts his mother at the Greek diner where she is waitress, but she refuses
to reveal the truth about his father, who he has never known. Her uncle backs
her up.
Greco Talos
is a location scout for an ad agency. He is assigned to accompany Shaina
Jaantje, a world-famous super model, on a location shoot in Ireland. Due to
volcanic ash in the atmosphere, the flight is diverted from Dublin to Berlin.
Greco seizes the chance to follow-up on clues to his background, leaving Shaina
stranded in Dublin and Helene in NYC, pregnant, conflicted and pregorexic (anorexia
while pregnant). In an annihilated village (shtetl) in the Pale region of
Ukraine, Greco meets Hershl Chosid, the local historian, who tells him the
story of Herman Peltze, via flashback.
FLASHBACK TO EASTERN UKRAINE, 1944
How Helene’s father escaped the massacre of his shtetl.
Betrayal…
FLASHBACK TO DUBLIN, IRELAND, 1945
How Helene’s father and mother met and married. Irish love story…
Shaina uses
her time in Ireland to research local history. [Shaina is played against type:
the is drop-dead super-model, and deeper, highly intelligent and
entrepreneurial, with a keen interest in World War II history and
culture]. She brings her entourage to
Clonyn Castle, which had a past as an orphanage after WWII. Her boytoy Irish lad is so in love with her,
he visits a synagogue in Cork to find out more about the orphans. [Script note: for the role, import an
unknown, young, red head, Irish Catholic actor and make him a break-out
international star!] After attending a sabbath service at a Jewish synagogue in
Cork, he learns how 100 Jewish orphans lived at the castle in his village. One resident orphan was Shaina’s father –
others were Greco’s uncle and his
mother.
When Greco
finally gets to Ireland, he makes a radical proposal to Shaina – that they both
abandon the Irish tourist campaign and instead, charter trips following the
path of the orphans from the battlefields and concentration camps of Poland and
Ukraine to the castle in Westmeath and then to NYC. In a quintessential Irish pub in Westmeath,
Ireland, she agrees and carries the plan back to her client in Dallas.
Meanwhile,
back in NYC, Helene goes for a morning bike ride and CRASHES! Nearly killing an
infant and killing a puppy. She is
assaulted by the enraged new mom, triaged at the scene, and undergoes emergency
surgery to save the fetus and her own life.
[This is played for tears, as classic operating room drama, with beeping
monitors, dripping IVs, sweaty brows – all women. [Female surgeon is hero!]
Complete bed
rest is prescribed, so Helene pretends to stay in but, but has a series of
visitors at her too-small lower east side Manhattan doorman apartment. Dr Coeyman brings drugs, her mother brings
organic tea but refuses to tell the truth, Madama Bernardaud, a high-society
wig client who reveals her double-mastectomy when asked about breast-feeding.
Dr. Portnoy, the androgynous genetic counselor confronts Helene with her tox
screen – it’s filled with “unknowns” from Dr. CC. Helene must get clean now! or
the baby might have birth defects.
Her high school
best friend who is now a “pain doctor” who lives to prescribe. Dr. CC is the villain, always lurking, ready
to supply Helene with any and every drug throughout her pregnancy. [She appears while Helene is in labor,
offering an injection to ease her pain.]
Starting the
third trimester, they go to a pre-natal seminar and meet Shayla Willians, who
desperately needs scalp medication and a wig. She turns out to be another
threat to Helene’s pregnancy, with just ten weeks to go. Helene and Greco visit Shayla’s’ slum apt in
Harlem to give her a new “do” when, EXPLOSION!
Greco is the hero, running into the burning building to pull Helene and
Shayla downstairs before the roof collapses on them. No time to grab the
cocaine Shayla left in the apartment. [Foreshadow – cocaine addicted baby.]
They are
still in search of the reason for Helene’s father’s suicide – they search her
childhood home and find the answer! In a
closet in a sealed box marked Casa Susanna are pictures of her father
cross-dressed as Connie Francis. Daddy
was a tranny in the 50’s – unbearable embarrassment for Helene’s mother. Helene knows exactly how to confront her
mother now – she calls a client and sets up a date for a night at Lucky Chengs,
a world-famous NYC drag bar and cabaret.
Her mother FAINTS! when Barbra Streisand turns out to be a man, but now
she is willing to admit the truth.
Helene feels
no contractions as the pregnancy matures to 40 weeks. On the tenth full moon she convinces Greco to
go for a MOONDANCE!, where she will dance naked in the moonlight, hoping the
lunar pull at full moon-high tide will act on her own water. Homeless men gather ‘round her in the dark –
in a FLASH! they have Greco’s face in the frozen mud and are threatening
Helene. One of the homeless men looks
vaguely familiar – have they met before? The threat dissolves into help the
couple get home safely. But – still,
after all that stress, no symptoms of imminent birth.
They are
still in search of the reason for Greco’s mother’s secrecy about her husband,
Greco’s father. With the photos he got from Shaina’s trip to Clonyn Castle, he
confronts his mother and uncle in the basement of their diner. She confesses: Talos is an adopted name; the
family is Ashkenazi from the Pale and her husband was a crown heights orthodox
jew killed in Viet Nam, never knowing he was a father-to-be. His mother dated just this once and never
again.
DECEPTION!
Dr CC sneaks into Helene’s labor room to give her an powerful injection to ease
the delivery. Dr Arnez enters just in
time to prevent the injection – a tense confrontation over who’s drugs are
better!
EMERGENCY!
Shayla goes into labor when she learns her boyfriend Cedric has been killed in
a tragic traffic accident. She’s gurneyed into the delivery room just before
Dr. Arnez’s water breaks – and Helene is still getting nowhere. After hours of pitocin drip, she feels
deepening contractions and now all three women are in the delivery room at the
same time: Dr. Arnez delivering the drug-addicted baby, Dr. Arnez having her
own contractions and Helene on the bed, but still not dilating! Tragically,
Shayla lives only long enough to glimpse her baby for a moment and to hear it
scream the pain of withdrawal.
KARAOKE to
the rescue! Greco enters the delivery room in scrubs and performs “Dizzy”. [Tommy Roe, 1969] The laughter causes
convulsions and – finally -- baby Truth crowns! Moments later, Dr. Arnez lies
down, and her baby comes! That is one
busy delivery room! Exhausted nurses congratulate themselves – 3 babies
delivered in 10 minutes!
The next
morning, Helene’s reluctance to breastfeed has vanished and she leaves the
hospital with Greco, and an infant at each breast – her white baby Truth and
black baby Ruth, whose parents Shayla and Cedric are dead. To all friends and relatives gathered in the
hospital lobby, Helene shouts “Twins!” Her neighbors on the Lower East Side, led by
her tipsy doorman, meet them at the sidewalk and sing Handel’s Hallelujah!
Chorus, KARAOKE style. She exits the NYPD squad car driven by the same cop who
arrested her in Scene 1.
THE END
EPILOGUE
INSERT
SERIES OF SCENES THAT WRAP-UP ALL THE SUPPORTING ROLES IN A PRETTY BOW AS THE
CREDITS ROLL. THESE ARE POIGNANT AND
FUNNY.
Contact:
Steve Marshall Cohen, 917 589 8862, smarshallcohen@usa.net
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