Plot

A playwright whose marriage and career are in a free fall has an explosive run-in with his former neighbor, a right-wing ex-con.

Robert Longfellow is a playwright whose latest play in New York City has just bombed while his marriage is in no better shape. Seeking an escape, he travels back to Los Angeles to visit his mother, meet a dear secret girlfriend and decide on new writing opportunities. However, everything changes when his brutish childhood neighbor, Gus, takes Robert hostage with the police surrounding the house. In this situation, the strained conversations inside drift to Robert's profession and the nature of creative writing. To placate Gus, Robert introduces him to improvisational dialogue and the pair engage in some dramatic exercises. However as they perform, the material becomes more personal as the trapped pair confront each other with hard truths that will leave neither of them unscathed.—Kenneth Chisholm (kchishol@rogers.com)

The latest Broadway play by fifty year old liberally-minded Robert Longfellow, once touted as potentially the voice of his generation, is the next in a series of his critically panned flops. Already largely absent from his family's life in New York, he, to regroup after the play closes the day after opening night, unilaterally decides to head to Los Angeles to the working class home of his mother, Irene Longfellow, in Reseda, both to help her in whatever she may need at her aged stage, and to pursue other writing opportunities which he had placed on the back burner. One of those opportunities allows him to visit successful screen actress Emma Stiles, who got her start in his plays, the two who have not seen in each other in eight years following having had an affair with each other. At his mother's, Robert sees that now fifty-seven year old Gus Williams, who he's known since childhood, still lives across the street with his mother, Betty Williams. Apparently, Gus has led a troubled life, including having spent some time in prison. When Gus corners him into having a beer together before he heads back to New York, Robert politely agrees. So when Gus comes over to the house late one evening to have that beer, Robert, who is alone, lets him in. It is shortly into their visit that Robert learns when the cops amass on the street that Gus, who has a gun, is a fugitive and is holding him hostage. Beyond trying to determine what Gus actually did to have the cops after him in such force, Robert has to get into Gus' mindset to try and maneuver a way out of the potentially deadly situation alive. In the process, the two men end up touching upon a shared history that may either diffuse or ignite the situation.—Huggo