Comfort Food

A Screenplay

By Melanie R. Bird

The Milano's are a successful Italian, Catholic family living in Northern New Jersey. Johnny Sr. (Tom Hanks) graduated business school in order to take over the family business which is a fish market. He married a local beauty and well educated musical woman named Rosalyn. They live in a lovely neighborhood next door to Johnny's parents. Gramma Milano is usually in the kitchen, Grampa (Robert DeNiro) is retired from the fish market and putters around the house stopping now again to see what's cooking and wrap his arms around his wife and hum softly in her ear. She will blush, pat his arm and tell him to move on now ... she is busy.

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Johnny Sr. is a methodical man. He takes care of family and business in that order. He sees that the trains run on time ... that the family is well ordered. Everything runs smoothly except his oldest son Johnny Jr. (Johnny Depp) As the oldest son he is in line to take over the family business but is not inclined. His father is frequently exasperated at Johnny's day dreaming and lack of interest in school or work. But Johnny is a musician. He is naturally improvisational but can play at the violin, cello and even an accordion that belonged to his great grandfather. So he did inherit that.

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Roslyn calms her husbands upset over what went wrong with their son and encourages her husband to send Johnny to Julliard. Johnny Sr. commits to giving his son the best education and tools to hone his gifts and make his way in the world. (Besides Johnny they have three other children, Carolyn, Timmy & Jen.)

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Johnny's poor study habits continue into college. But one day while checking the school bulletin board he sees that a local pianist will be playing at the school. He attends Ed Norton's (Ed Norton) concert and is enthralled. Later in checking the musicians agenda finds out that the next concert will be at a retirement community. He attends fidgeting through the concert surrounded by the dozing elderly.

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Afterwards he cuts around the exit to meet Ed. Ed is used to a more substantial fan club after one of his concerts but he sees Johnny and stops to talk.

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To be continued...
The rest of the story is given to visual implications and is metaphorical in places. So it waits a sponsor; 

Melanie Bird 

birdhouse76@hotmail.com 
cottonginniestudio@gmail.com .... I accept checks.

The sequels are Timmy and Our Lady of Delaware .... another three break off  scripts in a new trilogy series is entitled Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done, and On Earth As In Heaven. It traces the progress of some of the main characters. One of the interesting things about the series is that one of the actors morphs into another character.

The actor for the character Ed Norton in Comfort Food becomes Timmy in the second script. He would also morph into another character in Thy Kingdom Come and Thy Will Be Done ... and On Earth As In Heaven.