Irene

LOG LINE:

IRENE MCNALLY is a salty, old, smoking, drinking Irish landlady who takes in a veteran newspaper reporter going through a bitter divorce and leads him through the mine field with her wit and wisdom.  EDDIE FIELDS in turn gently walks his new friend to the grave after she contracts cancer in their Harold and Maude relationship.

SYNOPSIS

EDDIE FIELDS, 39, is a hard scrabble newspaper reporter searching for a room to stay after separating from a brutal wife trying to suck the life out of him and take everything he owns.  He finds the house with the lawn manicured so well it looks like astro turf and the welcome mat reads Caille Mille Failte (1,000 Irish Welcomes).

IRENE McNALLY, 72, had a tough life, the wife of an alcoholic steel worker who abandons her and her daughter leaving them to live on waitress tips that she earned in a bar down the street from the plant. She and her Labrador dog,  SADIE,  take EDDIE in and their relationship blossoms as she hands him wisdom through his turmoil like pieces of hard candy.

In addition to his marriage struggles, EDDIE faces a strenuous job getting caught up in a story about a police officer who beats his wife. The officer’s lawyer threatens to sue and get EDDIE fired. EDDIE exposes the cop, who kidnaps him at gunpoint and takes him to a deserted place to shoot him in the head until EDDIE talks the weeping officer out of it.

EDDIE’s wife cleans out their bank account, sending him into a rage to where he grabs her by the hair ready to pummel her until he catches himself.  From her perch on the white whicker patio chair, where she relaxes by smoking cigars and drinking Budweisers in her twilight, IRENE tells EDDIE that his wife is beating him twice by changing the person he is and allowing her to get inside the most precious space he owns: his head.

IRENE and EDDIE, a rock band guitar player, bond over music and IRENE’s favorite song “Freebird.” She goes to the doctor one day complaining of a side pain when they are told that she has pancreatic cancer and about six months to live.

EDDIE tries to make her last months on earth comfortable, with walks and talks on the beach.  He comes home one night to find SADIE dead, a sign to IRENE that it’s time to go.  To relieve her increasing and excruciating pain, EDDIE visits a pot dealer in his old neighborhood and he joins IRENE for a smoke session, taking her back to her wild days during the sixties.

EDDIE also looks for IRENE’s estranged daughter , BRITTANY, who hasn’t talked to her mother in years. IRENE rode her daughter hard as a kid to make her successful and so her daughter decided to cut ties. EDDIE finds the daughter and coaxes her into coming to say her last goodbyes.

IRENE passes but remains feisty to the end with her last words being: “I have two words for you Fields and they’re not happy birthday.”  EDDIE prepares the funeral, gathering up BRITTANY and the few friends her mother has for the eulogy about the woman who taught him to take life head on and fight for yourself and never let the world’s circumstances beat you. And the hearse rolls away to the sounds of  “Freebird.”