Sean O'Connor

WOUND
(Synopsis)
(Dramatic Comedy) – Ronan receives a letter from his estranged brother, Rufus, blaming him for the “dark secret” that caused their father’s death, and the family’s downfall 50 years prior (the night of the Apollo moonwalk), and demanding that the family heirloom...Joe Dimaggio’s cufflinks...are rightfully his. They agree to meet at the family home, abandoned since then. Ronan and his wife, Liz, arrive. Coincidentally, it’s the eve of the publication of his childhood memoir, The Wound. Turns out Rufus has also penned a memoir: True Wound. But once the brothers step into the house, it’s as if they’ve entered the shared unconscious mind of the family. The past, the present and the future are all there, at the same time: neighborhood kids looking exactly as they were; Beatle songs “stuck in the air” beneath the willows; the President’s skull blown to bits and raining like comets from the sky; Gilligan’s ship washing up downtown; Walt Whitman’s eyeballs dug up in backyards all across town; an atomic explosion taking all of Philadelphia, Aeschylus roaming this house of writers...and the family—Dad, Mom, Uncle Ben the war hero (each of them deceased)...the abandoned sister Sylvie, even Ronan’s son, an old man who wanders in from the future...all back somehow...to unearth the truth behind the dark secret that caused the tragedy, to decide finally who gets DiMaggio’s cufflinks...and to relive, once again, the night that shattered the family...in the hopes that it will finally set them free.

Miss Hollywood
(Catcher in the Rye meets West Side Story.)
N.J. 1968. Nam. RFK. Nixon. Motown. Tommy James and the Shondells. And Lukas. 14, handsome, smart, shy, from the wealthy side of tracks, parents divorced, is invited over by Patti (the famed Miss Hollywood), 14, gorgeous, brilliant, from the other side of tracks, her parents Jewish, desperately trying to get into the WASP swim club. Lukas arrives, terrified. Patti takes over. They start making out just as her boyfriend calls—Eddie Gallione, from a neighboring working class town, 16, with a tough guy rep (his macho dad forcing him into the Golden Gloves and to Nam), but true talent and sensitivity as a visual artist. Eddie, pissed off, demands a rumble between the two towns. Lukas can’t get out, he has to dispel his rich kid image...but he’s terrified. 150 kids gather on a Saturday night. (The evening before, though, Eddie’s dad was arrested for molesting a boy he works with. And kids painted swastikas all over Patti’s garage.) Eddie arrives, his head swirling. They square off. The band plays Tommy James in the background. They begin the rumble. But what happens then...changes both of their lives forever. They never see each other after that night. Except once. Accidentally. 45 years later. In an Art Gallery in NYC. And they remember.

1969. Paulie Parcells, MIA in VietNam, assumed to be dead, appears a year later at his family’s New Jersey home. Julie, his old girlfriend, who’s been involved with his brother Nicky, returns to Paulie. And his father, Gus, who recently refused to buy a new truck for the younger Nicky, buys one for Paulie and invites him into the family business. Nicky, devastated by these betrayals, discovers a secret about Paulie’s tour in VietNam. In a desperate attempt to win back his father and Julie’s love, he embarks on an action that will bring havoc to this family forever.

Dean, mid-forties, a man who believes that Elvis was Jesus, split from his wife, Glenda, and his boy, Chip, fifteen years before, when the boy was a year old, and ended up in Las Vegas, his own Eden, where Money and Fame, the two-headed God of this American Mecca, are no more than a roll of the dice away. A roll that has apparently eluded Dean’s hands his entire life. And here it is, fifteen years later and Glenda, happily remarried, shows up at the door of Dean’s seedy, motel room with his sixteen year old boy, Chip. Neither of whom Dean has seen in fifteen years.
They agree that Chip will spend the night. And that Glenda and her husband, Dale, will come back early in the morning to pick him up. Dean promises that he won’t go out. That he will spend the entire evening with his son, getting to know him, being a “Leave it to Beaver” type dad. Glenda, a little wary of Dean’ past and apparently present wildness, decides to leave them be. She joins her husband at a hotel.
Chip and Dean, wary and insecure at first, try to connect. A few arguments about the past ensue but Chip is won over by Dean’s innocence, his off-beat humor and the poetic meanderings of his strange soul. Dean is won over by the fact that Chip is a great, great kid.
But Dean breaks his promise. His comrade in arms, Eddie, shows up. Eddie goes by the name, “Mr. Ed” because he is a great adimirer of “Mr. Ed”, the horse, whom he sees a great American, a true television pioneer. And Eddie lures Dean out with a tale of women and easy money leaving Chip despondent and by himself, with nothing left to do but go to sleep.
But that sleep is shattered early in the morning when Dean and Eddie arrive back with two “gals” they met, Betty and Wilma, two Vegas dancers a couple of years past their prime. A little tension ensues but Chip gives in and engages in the all night reverie of cheap champagne, Elvis rock n’ roll and stories of lost innocence. In the process and despite the bumps, strange lessons are learned and Chip and Dean
reach a deep and beautiful connection, a connection that, after this night, shall never again be broken.
But right when the party has reached it’s wildest apex, when Betty and Wilma are innocently dancing around the young Chip in bikinis and Elvis’ voice is roaring from the speakers, a horrified Glenda arrives with her husband, Dale. A fight ensues and the stage is cleared as Dean and Glenda are left to digest just what it was that happened to them fifteen years before. Glenda finally leaves, aware that a bond had miraculously been reached between father and son, but also aware that this man whom she had loved so dearly as a young woman, this man who is the father of her only child is still trapped in a crazy, neon lit dream of riches and fame any second now and of a life that shall forever, impossibly, remain wildly young.

"WHO COLLECTS THE PAIN"
(Synopsis)
New York City. 1993. Twenty five years to the week after the shooting of Dr. Martin Luther King. Racial conflicts are erupting all over the streets of NY. Mickey, an idealistic, white, Columbia student, meets Lorraine, a beautiful, black, aspiring writer. who's spent all her life in Harlem. Despite enmity on both sides (Mickey's cousin Ryan, also at Columbia, harbors strong racial resentment; as does Lorraine's brother Mercy, and her recent ex-boyfriend Danny). Mickey and Lorraine begin a deep and passionate romance, which unhinges the volatile Danny. Tensions deepen even further when Ryan discovers that his brother Scottie's watches (Scottie was killed in racial incident out in Brooklyn) are missing. Believing that Danny stole the watches, Ryan grabs a gun and races off into the Harlem night. He arrives at Mercy's apartment at exactly the same time that the enraged Danny has confronted Mickey and Lorraine. Domestic and social tensions explode simultaneously in this brilliant, award-winning drama.

Suburban, N.J. 1960s. Vietnam, the assassinations, sex, drugs, civil rights and rock n’ roll burn up the American streets. And Jack Murdoch, a brilliant, charismatic, Sinatra-obsessed NYC psychiatrist can’t escape the alcohol and rage of his Depression-era past. Sammie, who idolizes his father Jack, has to more and more protect his beautiful, aristocratic French mother from his dad’s attacks till his relationship with Jack becomes an all-out war. As the 60s unravels, Jack abandons them for another woman, and Sammie too begins to unravel. Once a star athlete and student, by 15, his journey is now engulfed by alcohol, drugs, vandalism and his rage towards his father. Finally, 1971, Jack returns and breaks into the house for a final confrontation. A deep and penetrating resolution is earned by all in this tender, volatile, and throughout, wildly funny play.

Harp Farrell and Becca Rodriguez...N.J. high school lovers back in the early 1970s...meet for the first time since their graduation night, 47 years ago, when Harp was accused of killing Becca’s gay and troubled brother Donnie. Harp, the Golden Boy, got off (though many believed he was guilty) and fled town to a difficult life up in New Hampshire. Becca recovered and married Ben, African American, and Harp’s best friend way back then, and has had a great life. Neither she nor Harp, though, has been able to forget their first, and strongest love, and after a little wine, conversation, and a sudden passionate kiss...they are back in the past, 18 years old once more, where they relive that fated night, and the truth behind Donnie’s tragic death, the truth that now turns both their lives upside down, is finally made clear.

Two lost souls, Bud and Lou, join a Knitting Club to meet girls. Immediately Bud, just back from Kandujar, becomes obsessed with Norma, a distant beauty he spots across the room. Finally, it’s the Knitting Club’s Sadie Hawkins Night. They arrive with their needles. Lou, traumatized because a homeless man called him “bald,” keeps putting on wigs, rubbing “bald crème” into his head and pleading with Bud, “I don’t look like no Uncle Fester, do I?” Music begins, there’s Norma, across the room, Bud is terrified. Bud recounts that it’s his birthday, and his sweet daughter Dinah (who he’s estranged from because of PTS), didn’t call. Lou recounts how he and Ronnie, his old girlfriend, are getting back together. “We’re soulmates, Bud.” Suddenly, Norma starts crossing the room. Bud is ready yet terrified. Lou, again, starts obsessing about Ronnie. Bud finally tells him the truth. She split with Paulie McIntyre. They’re getting married. Lou is devastated. Norma finally arrives but crosses right past the hopeful Bud to the devastated Lou. Asks him to dance. He looks to Bud who nods sadly, “Go do it.” Lou walks away with the alluring Norma. Now Bud, equally devastated, picks up his knitting. Begins. A door in back opens. It’s his daughter. “Happy Birthday, Daddy. I was looking all over for you.” They walk off into the night.

Somerset, N.J. One morning, the state awakes to thousands of birds lying beside the turnpike, all the way to NYC. Making crying sounds. A zoologist is called in. He says there’s nothing wrong. “‘Cept they’re broken. Way down inside their eyes. There’s something broken.”
Dave McCarthy, “McCarts”, 37, a working class guy who grew up in and never left Somerset, is separating from his wife. A trauma in his past has made it impossible for them to truly consummate their relationship. On the night that he’s leaving he hears that the local hero, Alex Bennet, who grew up there and became a heartthrob star of the TV show “Cop Guy”, is back in town. McCarts loved and idolized Alex when they were boys. But he believes that Alex was one of the kids responsible for this trauma, years back. He decides to pay Alex a surprise visit. In his motel room along the turnpike.
He arrives. Alex is very uncomfortable. McCarts keeps slowly stalking him around the room, telling him he’s watched him on TV for years, “...but you haven’t been in anything for a while, what’s up?” Alex keeps avoiding the question, keeps disappearing into the bathroom. Then McCarts starts demanding that Alex say the key line from “Cop Guy”, the line that ended every show, the line that all the girls loved, the famous “Allright, McGreevey. Take me downtown.” Alex, thinking this will finally get McCarts to leave, says the line. McCarts goes bananas. Loves it. And won’t leave. Alex demands to know what he wants. McCarts begins circling him while recounting the traumatic incident from his past, when Alex and “Chuckie Wendell” got McCarts drunk when he was 11, so much so that he fell unconscious, then they tied him to a tree and left him. Then Mr. Climan, a local weirdo, who apparently had a history of something like this in Utah, found him and had his way with him deep into the night. Scarring McCarts forever. Alex claims that he left by the time McCarts fell unconscious, that it was Chuckie Wendell who tied him to the tree. McCarts doesn’t buy it, snaps out a switch blade, puts it to Alex’s neck, and offers his ultimatum: he demands that Alex teach him to say “Allright, McGreevey. Take me downtown” exactly the way he’s seen Alex say it so many times, for so many years on so many televisions. “Like a hero.” If Alex does this, he’s free. If not, he’s dead.
Alex starts teaching him but McCarts can’t get it. Each time he tries to do it, it’s false, it has nothing heroic about it. McCarts, incensed, threatens him with the knife. Through an old acting technique Alex finally gets McCarts to do it with some strength, some heroism. McCarts is ecstatic. He can’t stop doing it, all over the motel room, “Allright, McGreevey. Take me downtown.” Alex finally thinks he’s going to leave. But McCarts has one more thing on his mind. Fame. McCarts- “I’m up in the air now. But I want more. I want to fly. Give me fame, Alex. You got it. You can get it. Get me fame.” He raises his knife. Nervous, Alex goes to call his agent. To get McCarts fame. McCarts, feeling thankful, tells Alex he believes him now. That it wasn’t Alex who abandoned him that fateful night, years ago.
The door bursts open. It’s Julio, a guy they both knew from childhood, whom they called “Hummingbird”. He’s a transvestite now and runs a Krspy Kreme shop off the turnpike. He’s running around the room screaming that Alex, for the third time, broke into his shop and stole from the cash register. Then he explodes into the bathroom that Alex has been disappearing into and comes out with a mirror filled with cocaine. “So this is where my money went?!” Hummingbird hurls the mirror, then reveals the truth about Alex. That he’s a coke addict and a thief, that he ruined his career, then came running back home, that he and Hummingbird have been having an affair till Hummingbird finally kicked him out... And then he reveals the big truth. That it was Alex who tied McCarts up and left him that night. “He told me two weeks
ago. After three bottles of wine.”
Alex lets out a yell, leaps and starts brutally strangling Hummingbird. McCarts tries to
intervene, Alex picks up a bust of the Maltese Falcon (which he bought in Hollywood years before, when he was successful), to crack it on McCarts’ head. But McCarts, protecting himself, slips the knife into Alex’s chest, killing him. Hummingbird flees the motel.
McCarts calls his wife. Says he’s returning. Tells her to get some wine for tonight. “Things’ll be OK now.” He then tenderly cradles Alex in his lap. Closes Alex’s eyes. And whispers, “We’re free now, Alex. We’re up in the air. We’re flying. We’re home now, Al. We’re free.” The sounds of the birds, the broken birds along the turnpike, flying up, flying free, are heard.

"KIDNAPPED"
(Synopsis)
A dark comedy. W. Va. Two lost romantics, Tyrone and Marylee, meet for the first time in a bar. She's running from an abusive relationship with her father, who she thinks she's just killed in a fire. He's running from his tyrannical coal company boss, who he thinks he just killed, and whose severed ear he's carrying around in his pocket. She confesses she's a direct descendent of Betsy Ross. He confesses he's a direct descendent of Daniel Boone. They both express their desire to go West, to discover an "America that used to be" and to live a "real life" like their ancestors, "not this fake thing you see nowadays." Sirens outside, each convinced they've found their soulmate, they flee, pursuing their dream.
They spend the night together. In the a.m., Tyrone hears a baby in the next room. Marylee confesses but won't tell him who the father is. He confesses to having a kid too, a 13-year-old boy. But the mother kidnapped him to Carson City, Nevada. "So that's where we'll go. Take your baby, pick up my boy and keep our seed goin' forever." She rushes to the bathroom. He hears the baby in the next room, picks it up, turns out it's a doll - a tape recorder doing the crying. "You lied to me!" She confesses she had a child, a daughter, "like a brand new Jesus" but its father...was her daddy. And daddy took it to the river and put it in the water. But she saw the baby swimming away with it's name "Madonna" ("a new type a' Jesus") taped across its forehead. Tyrone asks what her daddy's name is. "Joe Buchanan." That's the coal company boss Tyrone thought he had just killed. (Joe doesn't die easily.) He holds up the severed ear. "This is your daddy's ear. We gotta split right now, baby!"
They steal horses and flee. But Joe Buchanan and his boys are right behind. One night, camping in the woods, they decide to make a baby. And through that child, climb back into that "chariot of lightnin'...that at birth, we was all kidnapped from." Soon they steal clothes from a store, and dress as Boone and Betsy Ross. Tyrone discovers that Betsy and Daniel were rumored to have had an affair in Daniel's cabin, ironically in Carson City. Which is where they're headed. Marylee, joyfully discovers she's pregnant. A few weeks later, one night, choppers all over the place, Buchanan and his boys are closing in. Marylee,
freaking out, thinking Jesus is punishing them, runs into woods. They escape Buchanan but lose their child.
Two days later, at Boone's cabin. A doctor has told Marylee she can never have a child again. Suddenly the place is surrounded by helicopters. Joe is coming fast. All seems lost when the caretaker, a drunken shaman, points to a tree outside the cabin. Says Boone and Betsy Ross planted that tree before they died and are buried beneath it. Tells them to grab the roots and follow them down. Ty and Marylee flee outside just as Joe and an assistant burst into cabin with machine guns.
They follow the roots to a netherworld of music, a river and Boone and Betsy Ross dancing. Boone and Betsy, happy to see them, teach them the "ways of the world": Boone shows Ty how to hunt. Gives him his gun and some Boone family seeds. Betsy shows Marylee how to sew. And gives her candes "for the darkness." Suddenly Joe appears with a gun. Is about to kidnap Marylee back when a shot rings out. It is Ty, holding Daniel's gun. Joe falls. Dead. Finally.
They follow the roots back up but as Daniel said might happen, they end up 20 years past the time they came from, at a river, where, ironically, Tyrone's son is standing with Marylee's grown daughter, Madonna. They're about to surrender their own baby to the river cause there's no jobs, no money, and they never had family to teach them "the ways of the world" when Tyrone and Marylee walk out of the shadows. They embrace their children. A family lives on.