In volatile mid-70’s Mississippi, a white boy and black girl risk everything for their forbidden love, igniting conflicts of race, class and religion that culminate in tragic consequences. AT LAST is a story of love: of music, of friends, of family, and of a boy for a girl – in a time of hate. It’s ROMEO AND JULIET set in the mid- 1970s Mississippi. A music-driven Romantic Drama inspired by actual events.

SYNOPSIS:

2017: ALAN ROBINSON, 58, is getting ready to leave his hotel room. A phone call tells him his taxi is ready. He grabs a necklace with a Jewish “Hai” and a St Jude’s medal before heading out. As the taxi makes its way through a “Black Lives Matter” protest, the driver finds out Alan is headed to his high school reunion in Jackson, Mississippi. While looking out the cab at the marchers, we DISSOVLE TO:

Jackson, Mississippi, 1970 where Alan, 11, is being led to school by VELMA GEARLES, 62, his family’s maid, who encourages him that he might make some friends now that the school districts have been desegregated and students re-shuffled. In the classroom the situation is still one of separation. As the teacher attempts to diffuse this by seating the students alphabetically, Alan stands up for BRIAN ROBINSON, 11, a black boy, who is being picked on by the white class bully TOMMY STEFFANI, 12, and succeeds in making a friend.

CUT TO: 1975: Alan, Brian and their Jewish friend ISAAC DREYFUSS, all now 16, sit at Alan’s kitchen table discussing music, and possibly putting a mixed band together. The three eagerly practice despite taunts at school from TOMMY and black-power follower CURTIS, 16, whose brother was killed by the police during the Jackson State University riots, warns Brian about mixing with Alan and Isaac.

A new student, NATHALIE DUBOIS, 16, arrives after her parents have moved back to the United States from a posting in Switzerland, and catches the attention of the boys. Intrigued, Isaac finds out her father is a new department head at the Mississippi Medical School, and her mother, who now teaches at their high school, is from a high-society black family in New Orleans and educated in Paris.

The boys return to play in their band in Alan’s garage after school, and are interrupted by a police officer who shuts them down. Alan’s mother BELLE suggests to Brian they move the practice to his father’s chapel at Tougaloo College, a Protestant historically black college.

Seeing Nathalie studying a cello score before class, Alan impresses her with his musical knowledge invites her to their band practice. He also wins over Nathalie’s mother, MRS. DUBOIS, 40, with his literary talent, and she agrees to read his submissions for a role on the school’s Literary Magazine. Nathalie attends the boy’s band practice after winning a seat in the cello section of the Jackson Symphony orchestra. She bonds with both Brian and Alan, who are both developing feelings for her.

Mrs. Dubois gives Alan the position of Assistant Editor of the Literary Magazine, and agrees to publish his poem “Butterfly”, which he secretly wrote for Nathalie, but Mrs. DuBois thinks it is for her. After Nathalie’s debut with the Symphony, Nathalie’s father DR. PRESCOTT DUBOIS, 40’s jokes about the poem his wife received from a student. Intrigued, Nathalie finds it in her mother’s study. Simultaneously confused and captured by its sentiment, she starts to set it to melody. After her first symphony concert, Nathalie borrows a bass guitar from her colleague JAMES, and learns how to play electric bass in secret so she can try out for the boy’s band.

Nathalie joins the group as the new bassist. Brian’s father, REVEREND ROBINSON, offers them a gig for the graduation dance for Tougaloo College – an all black school. The day of the concert, Brian arrives, having lost his voice. Isaac has an idea. The lights on stage are out, and the band begins by playing "Fight the Power." The crowd cheers, then one spot is turned on the singer: Alan. The oxygen is almost sucked out of the room by the stunned crowd. Then the entire band is lit up. The crowd goes wild.

Nathalie asks Alan to meet her at the chapel the following day to help work on a song, but Alan is delayed and arrives to find Brian there with Nathalie instead, working on a score to his poem Butterfly. He watches as Brian moves to kiss Nathalie, but she pushes him away just as Alan bursts out from his hiding place. Nathalie, upset, tells him she intended the song to be a surprise, before kissing him. Brian watches, hurt, from a distance. Brian will not easily forgive Alan and the boys break up the band and drift apart, with Isaac caught in the middle.

Nathalie and Alan must hide their love from everyone Isaac. Alan introduces Nathalie to Velma, who is happy for Alan, but worried about their dangerous relationship. Alan and Nathalie make plans to apply to Northwestern University in Chicago together. At school, after Nathalie rejects Curtis’s advances, he attacks Alan and warns him to stay away from her. Brian comes to Alan’s defense and the two reconcile. Velma warns the boys to let the incident go, telling them how her nephew was violently killed by the KKK for mixing with a white girl.

The talent show approaches, where the reunited band is to compete. Nathalie invites her parents to the talent show without telling them she is playing in a funk band. When they see her on stage Mrs. Dubois angrily disapproves. Nathalie has to fight her parents to earn the right to continue with in the band.

Nathalie is elected to the Homecoming Court, but starts to resent Alan for the secrecy of their relationship as homecoming draws near. She tells Alan that if he is afraid to be seen in public with her, maybe they shouldn’t see one another at all. After a potentially deadly conflict with the police between Nathalie and Brian, Alan takes her words to heart. At the presentation of the Homecoming Court at halftime at the football game, runs up onto the stage to kiss her in front of everyone, sparking a near riot.

Nathalie and Alan are suspended and Nathalie’s mother bans her from seeing Alan, fearing the relationship will damage their family and reputations. Nathalie is forced to meet Alan in secret at Isaac’s father’s music shop. She asks Alan to get them a room where they can be together, and Isaac agrees to cover Alan’s work shift at the convenience store.

Curtis sees Nathalie picking up Alan and furious, attempts to tail them. While Nathalie and Alan are together at the motel, Curtis goes to the convenience store and confronts Isaac. Curtis tries to beat the whereabouts of Alan and Nathalie out of him, and kills him at the exact moment when Alan and Nathalie are making love for the first time. Later, when Alan and Nathalie arrive back at the convenience store, the Police inform the lovers that Isaac is dead.

After the funeral for Isaac, Nathalie discovers that Curtis killed Isaac. After going to the Dreyfus house to pay his respects to MR. DREYFUS, Alan drives to the Dubois house and waits all night in his car. When he wakes, he sees Nathalie and her parents loading Nathalie’s suitcases and cello into the car. He frantically runs to her, and Nathalie tells him she is returning to Switzerland so that no one else will get hurt. Alan is devastated when Nathalie asks him to let her go. She leaves him with a St Jude’s medallion.

After her departure, Alan receives his acceptance to Northwestern University, but remains in Jackson to go to a local college so he can care for Isaac’s father. Brian goes away to college. Seven years pass and Alan is still at home, working on his novel “Brothers of Different Colors,” and caring for a dying Mr. Dreyfus. After Mr. Dreyfus passes away, Alan asks the Rabbi to teach him the Kaddish. As Alan holds a piece of paper with the Kaddish transliterated into English…

WE DISSSOLVE TO 2017: Alan holds an invitation to his 40th year high school reunion. He sits in the back of a taxi in Mississippi outside the Jackson Country Club, watching couples enter the reunion party.

Alan heads into his high school reunion where Brian, now 58, greets him. Alan and Brian renew their friendship. When Alan and Nathalie see each other for the first time in forty years, it is clear their love has not died, and perhaps that love can now have its time…at last.