As PR practitioner Amelia heads to Paris for a defense industry conference things go awry when her spirited alter ego Ophelia surfaces and extends her trip to Italy.

SYNOPSIS:

Beginning:

Amelia goes to Paris for a work assignment. This is the largest European defense exhibit in the world and her job is to represent her company, a large defense contractor, and support their executives during media briefings as a PR practitioner. PR isn’t new to her. Working for a corporation doing PR also isn’t new her. The industry, however, is – as are the players and some of her colleagues. She isn’t prepared for what unfolds at this conference. Her motto is to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and assume that you are all playing for the same team/same company. The colleagues she encounters are not of the same mindset. It’s a high-stakes game, and they will play to win at all costs. After she makes this assessment, her alter ego Ophelia surfaces as a defense mechanism against the alter ego of this defense contractor – let the corporate games begin.

Middle:

As she realizes she is in a no-win scenario at this conference she fantasizes about piercing the corporate veil. Why is she putting her own life and health up for grabs as the shareholders line their pockets? As hard as she tries, she just doesn’t fit in with this crowd. At every turn her alter ego, Ophelia makes an appearance. Beginning with the first day, she has a near-miss on the shuttle bus when trying to sit in her seat. Then she mixes up her cell phone with one of the executive’s cell phones right in front of a dignitary. And it just continues. Breaking a heel on her shoe. Unknowingly riding into Paris on a motorcycle taxi with her business suit and flip flops. She can’t seem to fit within the confines of business protocol. And she enjoys every second of it. When the exhibition closes, she can’t be more relieved to continue with her journey of “Feeling Ophelia.” The weekend arrives, and she checks into a hotel closer into the Paris city center. Each time she goes out to explore she meets a “messenger,” that affirms her spirited personality. Then she flies to Italy where her own “Renaissance of the Soul” unfolds. She reconnects with one of her high school girlfriends just outside of Venice and meets Lorenzo a rickshaw guide in Florence where she has the realization that she needs to follow her dream of being a screenwriter. This is a dilemma for her, because she just started working for this company who required her to move to Tucson for the job.

End:

She winds down her trip and is back in the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris for her flight back to the US when she decides to read her work emails and turn on her work phone after 10 days of PTO. She sees a text message and two emails from her boss telling her she needs to re-route back to Tucson instead of going to Huntsville, AL for an all-week meeting. Though this is a bit cryptic, she doesn’t ask questions and returns to Tucson. When she goes into the offices on Monday, the next day, she is questioned by her boss on her performance during the Paris exhibition. HR and her boss decide to terminate her on Friday. She is relieved, but terrified. It’s now or never. She decides to sublet her house on Airbnb, stay with her mother and fly out to LA for a writer’s conference to pursue her screenwriting. Transitioning from writing press releases and pitching them – to writing screenplays and pitching her ideas is a natural one.