A Marriage of Convenience , Michael's Project : Movies : Amazon Studios

A Marriage of Convenience

Jimmy Riley, a principled man from Chicago, succumbs to the temptations that only “marrying up” can bring; a horrific tale traced through the lives of three people who converge to wreak havoc on each other as Jimmy "marries up" only to regret it when the world ends.

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Full synopsis

Synopsis: Jimmy Riley, a principled man from Chicago, succumbs to the temptations that only “marrying up” can bring; a horrific tale traced through the lives of three people who converge to wreak havoc on each other. The main character is the love child of two 1950’s physics professors. He leaves her, she abandons the “mistake” to Janet Riley, a woman with a past (vehicular homicide during WWII). She beat the rap thanks to her father’s legal connections. Unable to have kids, her husband (James) doesn’t want them but goes through the motions to placate her since she is his “supplemental income”. She works as a cosmetics sales-girl in a drug store. She quits her job after the baby (Jimmy) is literally placed on their doorstep. James relents given his past rejection from his father due to his (James) union sentiments in the 30’s. James also uses his union connections for a sham adoption since he, too, has a checkered past (2nd degree murder---killing a cop during a strike in the 30’s). He beat that rap thanks to union connections. Janet takes to motherhood but their economics plummet after James exposes shenanigans at the local. (i.e. racial “separate but unequal” and the hiring of Mexicans below minimum wage to give organizers pay perks). Janet resents James’ nobility, returns to work and has an affair with her manager.

Jimmy is a latch key kid who is scorned by teachers given the fact that he is illegitimate, intelligent and from “the other side of the tracks”. Also, they know the “secret”. Jimmy doesn’t. He gravitates towards stability (i.e.: church and the Boy Scouts) but grows estranged from his alcoholic parents. Teachers continue to resent him and his clairvoyance (he warns of a 9/11 as early as 1969). Jimmy catches his mother in the affair. Distraught, he sees Marty, a friend from Scouts, racing towards the pier. He, too, caught his mother in an affair---at the same time.
Bent on suicide Marty jumps, Jimmy dives in, rescues him and tries to save Marty’s mother who arrives and leaps in to save her son and drowns.

Jimmy is later drafted and sent to Vietnam in spite of his grades and SAT score (he doesn’t qualify for aid since most scholarships are gender and/or race based). He witnesses the murder of his CO by a black soldier/childhood chum (Malcolm) who sort of looked after him as a kid. His platoon rescues a lost rifle company where Marty, his childhood friend, is wounded. Jimmy is hurt after a female POW blows herself up. Malcolm murders the CO because Jimmy had to take command after a PTS episode. Both Marty and Jimmy are sent to Chicago’s VA, get spat on by protestors as Jimmy is decorated. At the VA hospital he meets Nori Richards, a lower middle class girl whose father abandoned them for a woman with career clout. He was a college professor. He later kills himself after his “convenience” dumps him. Then there’s Heather Lancaster, a stunning upper class girl whose father rifles through women to acquire their ad agencies. She’s a scheming vixen whose daddy can do no wrong and one who uses sex to get what she wants having seen her father do the same with gullible women in need of “marrying up” for economic purposes.

At his college graduation Jimmy learns his parents, and Marty, were murdered on the subway while in route to the ceremony. Nori, Jimmy’s VA nurse, falls in love with him and later finds papers revealing he was adopted. She says nothing to Jimmy. The two marry and work (she’s a nurses assistant since she only has a GED and he at Lancaster Advertising as a media grunt since the economy plummets after the 73’ Arab oil embargo). It becomes
a dead end job since he can’t drive due to the inner ear injury from the war. He’s hired to pick up the slack by single moms who are seldom there because of their kids. Money is tight, especially after their son Mark is born. Nori hears about federal openings and sets up interviews for Jimmy with the CIA and State Department. He interviews with Aldridge Aimes, the very real KGB mole who rejects him due to his seeming lack of material ambition. Nori rants after the State Department rejects Jimmy due to affirmative action quotas. Heather, now Lancaster’s CEO in Chicago, has a bio clock ticking and sets her sights on Jimmy after he saves her and the office from an armed, disgruntled stepbrother Jack destroyed. At Heather’s insistence Jack offers Nori lucrative terms for divorce. Jimmy marries Heather, gets promoted to VP, and lives the high life. But Jimmy sours on Heather, a control freak, and exposes Jack’s chicanery (corporate mbezzlement). After 9/11 Heather becomes psychotic and gloats after the 2008 victory of a John Kerry like candidate who works out a deal with radical Islam by abandoning Israel.

Soon the sirens wail and cities go up as the word is given to cells in the US and the west to detonate nuclear explosives rigged inside of taxis. As everybody flees Jimmy arranges for a rendezvous with the family he had and gave up---this at the very end. Heather and Jimmy race home to get their daughter who was brought in to the world by a doctor who just happened to be Jimmy’s ex-wife Nori. She used some of the settlement money to go to school. Heather’s vitriol is incessant as she rants that the Jews are responsible for all this. She freaks-out after they hear a radio announcement that Jerusalem was just nuked. “So, the Jews did this to themselves?” Jimmy snaps as Heather pulls a gun from under her seat. Jimmy wrestles it away and orders her to drive home. He then locks Heather in an upstairs room of the mansion her dad bought them. Jimmy then tells the Mexican maid to pick up her husband and son and drive to the Chicago subway station that has become a fallout shelter.

When they arrive he finds Nori and Mark (his son from Nori). Mark is twenty. He also sees Malcolm standing alone – awaiting judgment. “Will the defendant please rise,” he mutters. “So say you one so say you all,” Jimmy replies as judgment awaits them. Jimmy admits to Nori that what he did with Heather was a convenience, a ruse that he now regrets. He admits to the sham claiming it was to secure a better life for them---materially. Nori laments bashing him for not making enough money to give her what her father never gave her materially. They both lament the time they lost together before ordering Mark to go to the subway---the ark---since it is “the fire next time” as opposed to water that will destroy some of the planet. Jimmy gives his daughter, the child he and Heather had, to Mark telling him that she is the only family left and to watch out for her. He reminds him that in the end, family is all that is left---family and God. Troops guard the entrance and will only take people age thirty and under. While the hapless parents of the children inside are on their knees and praying a terrorist detonates the nuke that destroys Chicago. It is the end of time, or is it? The Riley’s die in each others’ arms, with other couples---other mothers and fathers---all races and nationalities and faiths; people who just wanted to love their children and live in peace. The story ends as a torn, battered and burnt American flag flaps wildly in the torrential winds near the Lancaster logo atop Jack’s empire---one that is now in flames. It fades out with the vision of the subway shelter holding the future huddled inside. They are spared and will start over from the caves---again. Hopefully they will avoid the same mistakes---the next time around. Hopefully they will heed the warning issued by many, and one man in particular. It was the Russian writer Feydor Dostoyevsky who said in the Brother’s Karamatzov: “ Without God---anything is permitted.” Hopefully they will remember that---the next time around.

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Creative Notes:

Jimmy Riley played by the rules in corporate America and got no-where during the 73-74’ recession. He needs to move his family to a safe neighborhood in Chicago and a better life and does so playing on the affections of the company President’s gorgeous vixen of a daughter Heather Lancaster. The ruse backfires as the end of time awaits.