Get Out of Dodge

Molly Hamilton is enjoying an enviable east-coast liberal's life, with a great job, an equally great husband, Chip, and talented kids. The only ripple on the smooth surface is Chip's mother, Caroline, who's been drinking a little too much. Then one hot summer day, her long-missing and fugitive father, Schuyler, knocks on the door. He plans to turn himself in and wants Molly to join him on a road trip back to Idaho, the place where he left her when she was 17 to mop up way too much blood, some of it oozing from a wounded U.S. marshal. While Molly agrees to help him, she tells him there is no road trip in her future. Schuyler's presence does more than rattle Molly. Family alliances shift as Molly fights Chip over how to handle the fugitive under their roof, and 16-year-old Phoebe embraces Schuyler's world, leaving the displaced Caroline to increase her drinking. Worse, Schuyler's story keeps changing, and changing, and changing, and yes, that is a .38 in his bag. It takes a DUI, an ill-timed communal prayer, a food fight, three lawyers named Henry and the utter collapse of Schuyler's plans to reveal Molly's path. There are all kinds of second chances. When it comes to family, the important thing is to grab one and make it work.

Digital script available upon request.