A noir once upon a time opens with an early morning bank robbery and a seemingly unrelated, a dozen years prior, daring nighttime art heist. Multiple story lines with colorful characters, weaves and intersects its way through a tale of mayhem and creative independence. 

SYNOPSIS:

Film script synopsis. 05/25/2021 © Thomas Pollart

STRIKE A POSE

Cinematic noir, Miami, 1972, the Dolphins are undefeated, cocaine is the new drug of choice and the DNC is in town, holding their presidential election convention.

Central protagonist Laura Hemingway is introduced in swimwear, poolside, working on her novel, mindscaping, relaxing in a chaise lounge recliner when in the wind we hear the hum of a small plane, closing, coming in low from the north along the coast, hawk or falcon like in design, flying right up to and suddenly down upon her. A wing tilt, aerobatic, admiration wave, whooshing by insane show off close as its winged shadow races across the length of the pool. As it passes, we read the trailing script on its enormous advertising banner, ‘Miami’s Annual Marlin & Sail Fishing Tournament, December 5, 1972’, and then just as quickly, it’s already fading away into the southern sky. Before it disappears, we hear the airplane’s engine sputter, stop. .. and catch again.

It opens with a brazen, early morning bank robbery and a seemingly unrelated, a dozen years prior, daring, nighttime art heist that weaves and intersects its way around a cast of colorful, attractive and enterprising characters and criminals, including a Miami Dolphin cheerleader, struggling writer, former stripper and waitress, after stumbling into a questionable inheritance, now charters her own fishing boat and drives a shiny new pickup, but still always finds herself a little short on cash. She’s infatuated with a Viet Nam veteran, an artist, who also restores cars and plays guitar and after customizing a damaged Cessna airplane, dreams of spending long, lazy days flying around the world, painting and getting stoned and living off the sale of his prints and the occasional original.

Exciting and vivid locales, marlin fishing up and down coastal Florida, a history lesson in banking while visiting Grand Cayman Island, a scenic cocaine run over the Panama Canal that detours over central Cuba on the return flight home. We trip on cactus juice at a restaurant and open-air dance patio roof topped at night by a celestial kaleidoscope of stars in Northern Chile. A Playboy after Dark, mod living room party sing along with Marvin Gaye and we roast marshmallow Smore’s in the park with the first couple of country, Tammy Wynette & George Jones. Monopolize a dance floor with buyers and heroine traffickers inside an exotic nightclub along the port harbor of Marseille and after splitting a Quaalude chased with tequila, we after hours, night tour the tallest monument in the Western Hemisphere, the Arch in St. Louis, which includes going out, atop through a portal and replacing the size-able, air traffic, warning light bulb, just to name a few.

Adding to the mystery and uncertainty, celebrity appearances by Jane Fonda, Stan Musial, NFL players Joe Namath, Larry Csonka and Jim Kiick and musical performances by Marvin Gaye, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Miles Davis and Tammy Wynette and George Jones.

The charter fishing is awesome, the horse races are fixed, the classic cars are cool, the customized Cessna, single engine airplane is beautiful and the live music absolutely grooves, where everything you can imagine is very real and only limited by Laura Hemingway’s spirited, run away imagination which is penciled inside her cinematic, unfinished novel, Strike a Pose.

STRIKE A POSE