MARY KAY and the TAIL FINS, John's Project : Movies : Amazon Studios

MARY KAY and the TAIL FINS

Age rating: Everyone

Kerl Garrett is a Sacramento lawyer. A good one. None better. He is stern, friendless, ill-humored, a grouch. So it comes as a great surprise -- a bombshell -- when he calls his employees together to announce he is taking time off ... to make music. Rock 'n' roll music.

Synopsis: You'd call it a mid-life crisis if Kel Garrett were about 20 years younger. No, it's just a sudden impulse -- a crazy notion inspired by the pink guitar he played when he was attending Cal and fronting a little band called Mary Kay and the Tail Fins. Just holding Mary Kay in his hands again after all these years thrills him ... makes him want to make music. A silly "girlie" guitar pink as a spanked baby's backside makes him want to find the others -- the Tail Fins -- to see if they will go on the road with him for one last hurrah.

Kel Garrett is the most severe. stern, no-nonsense man on the planet. He is friendless and feared (in the courtroom.) He has employees who swear they have never heard him laugh. Much less seen him crack a smile. And here he is about to walk away from Sacramento's most prestigious law firm for however long it takes to see if there's any magic left in rock 'n' roll.

Kel has not kept up with the Tail Fins. Not a word since graduation from Berkeley. He calls in the firm's Investigator. His name is Mack Veneble. Mack's usual work is process serving, herding reluctant witnesses into courtrooms, getting the goods on plaintifffs. This is not much different -- what Kel is asking him to do. To see if he can find the people in the old crinkled photograph and do it without them the wiser.

He reports back in two weeks. "I've got two for you, Kel. Darwin Gibson -- you told me he can play anything with strings -- is a street person. He hangs out in San Francisco's Union Sqare ... a bench over by the carousel. He's been there for 30-odd years. I guess you'd call him a homeless person. Seems allright in the head. Just kind of slow and bleary."

He points to the photograph.

"You're going to love this one. Billy McDougall has neen a guest of the federal government for going on 14 years. He's in the slammer in Alturas."

Kel is rocked. "Sticks ... 'Stcks' we called him. He was our drummer. What's he doing time for?"

"You remember the robbery of the Brinks counting room in Oakland? Big take -- twelve or thirteen million. He was in on that."

"Fourteen years he's been in. He must be due for parole."

"In the fall. I asked the warden. But, Kel, know this. The Mob is as interested in him as you are. It was Mob money that we stolen and not a penny of it has ever surfaced. Warden told me a couple of "Pig" DeSavio's boys make regular inquiries. They'll be waiting at the prison gate. As will a woman who represents the insurance company. There'll be a gang of you in the welcoming committee."

He snaps his little notebook closed. "Now I'm off to the East.

He finds Miollie Eagan, the girl singer with the stupendous voice, in Indianapolis. She is a nun. She belongs to the Order of the Sisters of Silence and Solitude. She does not deign to see Mack, just wishes to be remembered to "Kel and the boys."

Phil Yee, the entire brass section, is scratching out a living. Of sorts. He plays Holiday Inn lounges, cruiseships, Disney oom-pahs. He has four wives chasing his paychecks. Phil is a harried man.

In Pasacagoula, Mississippi after knocking on a hundred doors Mack finds C.C. Jefferson. He comes to the door pushing a walker. The right side of his face -- in fact his entire right side is paralyzed. He invites Mack in, insists he have a cup of coffee. He wants to hear everything -- everything -- about Kel. Slaps his knee and cackles when Mack tells him how successful Kel is. And then -- almost in passing -- he says he's got a gig later on and he must get ready for it. A gig? Broken-down old man like this has a gig? "You gotta come. Best pulled pork sandwich in the entire South. I'll see they set up a table for you."

So Mack is eating the best pulled pork sandwich in the entire South, the lights dim, the curtain is pulled and up there on the stage in tuxedos are C.C. Jefferson -- in front of the bass keys --
and another man -- much younger -- on his right. His nephew, it turns out. They light into "Proud Mary." Play the tar out of it. Four-hand piano. They light into "Shimmy, Shimmy." Play the lights out of it. And then C.C. essays "Rainy Night in Georgia," in a voice raspy and dry as old wood that makes your skin crawl.

Their set lasts an hour and ten minutes. The crowd is pushed up against the stage begging them not to stop.

So there they are.

Not quite. Kel wants Mack to track down the Gofer. The kid who did the lifting and carrying and setting up and driving. The kid who kept the rackety old VW van they called Hesperus percolating.

Turns out his name is Paul Voxseler. Of Vox Global. One of the richest men in America. Mack tells him what he's inquiring about. Has to because a couple of seccurity guards have him by the arms and are threatening to put him on the street. He yells out his story. Voxseler lights up. "Count me in," he says. "Tell Kel he's got a driver. And a new VW bus. I'll throw it in. Oh, God, this is the most exciting thing that's happened to me since our IPO."

So he got 'em all. Except the girl singer.

One night several months after Mack turned in his accounting the phone rings. Kel answers. It's Sister Mary Collette calling from the Indianapolis.

She comes right to the point.

"Kel, I've got a girl singer for you. She's a postulant ... you might say a nun in trraining. She has been with us for five months and, Kel, I'm afraid we're going to have to let her go. She's not cut out for religious life. She's too full of beans ... she talks too loud. But, Kel, what a voice! I hear her singing in her room. She's in the room next to mine. She sings what she hears on the radio in patients' rooms. She'd remind you of Janice when she gets all growly and gruff. And then she lets go with silver trills and a voice soft as chartreuse. Brings tears to my eyes."

There's a pause.

"I've told her about you, Kel. Be very good to her, won't you? This is a girl innocent as a child's bed-time story."

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Creator: John E. Frook
Genres: Comedy, Drama
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Creative Notes:

Kel Garrett surprises everyone -- mostly himself -- when he takes a leave of absence from his law practice to resurrect his old band, MARY KAY and the TAIL FINS. It's been more than 40 years since they were playing college hangouts along Highway 99. Kel has no idea where they are -- five men and a girl. But his law firm has an Investigator who's a real bloodhound. He'll find them if anyone can.