Laura San Giacomo

In 2005, Otis Lort is a movie star who has an extreme alcohol problem. He crashes his car and gets into a violent, drunken altercation with police. He is forced to go to a rehab facility, where his counselor, Dr. Moreno, tells him that if he leaves the facility before they say he is ready, the court will send him to prison for his violent offenses. Dr. Moreno tells Otis that he has PTSD, which he denies repeatedly, but she encourages him to look into his past through exposure therapy. Going back a decade earlier to 1995, Otis remembers working as a child actor, who is accompanied on set by his father, James (Shia LaBeouf), a former rodeo clown. James is four years sober but clearly on edge and unpredictable, manic and aggressive. The two live in a meager motel complex where a shy young woman (FKA Twigs) lives across from them. Otis is in the Big Brother program at the behest of his mother, despite James's dislike and jealousy. Otis wants to go to a baseball game with Tom from the program, and James agrees if Tom comes over for a barbecue. To 2005 again, Otis is shown communicating with his rehab roommate Percy and continues therapy. He resists the process, finding it unhelpful. Back to his memories, Otis remembers Tom coming over for the barbecue, and James throwing him into the pool and violently threatening him. When he is offered a part in a movie that will be shot in Canada, Otis calls his mother, who isn't sure if James can accompany him because he's a registered sex offender. This causes James to begin screaming at her via Otis, who has to relay both of his parents conversations back to each other. Back to present, after resisting yet again, Otis's counselor Alec advises him to go into the woods and scream as loud as he can. Then the film shows James attending an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, where he tells of his abusive stepmother, how he got into drugs and alcohol abuse, and while blacked out attempted to rape a woman which got him registered as a sex offender. Alone at his place, Otis spends time with the Shy Girl, and the two cuddle and he gives her money. James forces Otis to rehearse his scenes over and over again, and he stops to scream at the neighbors across the way for being too loud. Otis asks him to stop, and tells him that no one else would hire him because he's a sex offender, and that Otis is his boss since James is making money off him. In 2005, Otis thanks Alec for the advice, and continues to work with Dr. Moreno on controlling his anger. In 1995, Otis finally confronts his father and tells him he needs to start being a better dad to him. James hits him in the face twice, furious at Otis for speaking to him that way, and then leaves on his motorcycle and scores drugs at a strip club. Alone, Otis spends time with the Shy Girl, and the two are caught waking up together the next morning by James. The Shy Girl slaps James and leaves, and James vomits and asks Otis how he thinks it feels to hear his own son talk to him like that, and to have to resort to accepting payment from him. Otis tells James if he didn't pay him James wouldn't be there. James takes Otis to marijuana plants he has been growing off the highway and smokes cannabis with him. In 2005, Otis revisits the motel, and imagines himself finding his father there in his rodeo clown costume. He tells his father he's going to make a movie about him. James asks him to make him look good. The two ride away on James's motorcycle, which fades into Otis alone driving away.

Stuart Smalley has a program on public access cable. To make money, Stuart waits tables, but his new healthy lifestyle interferes with his ability to simply do his job. Smiling all the time, he tries to give unwanted advice. The viewer learns he is a waiter while he is goofing off talking about life with his pretty and successful friend Julia. Not a romantic friend, but a very nice person who does a lot to help Stuart throughout the movie. She always has time for her friend, even with her big shot job, and she knows so many people who can help him out of his jams. Stuart is mistreated by his boss, who banishes him to late night and upsets his fans, though the boss won't reveal this fact. Others do that later. But Stuart has a more immediate concern: his beloved aunt has died and he must go home to attend the funeral and help mediate the battles between family members. For one thing, a cousin demands to use the family plot where the aunt would have been buried, showing up at the cemetery with cops after being ignored earlier. Later, it is determined that the aunt's house was built partly on a grumpy old man's land. And the grumpy old man wants a lot of money for it. And thanks to Stuart's bumbling, now he wants even more money. So Stuart may have to lie in court. He's too good a person to do that, or is he? Stuart's show is loved. And a cable network wants to make 20 episodes. It will take four hours to film them all. How Stuart got to this point involves some illegal actions and the firing of a receptionist who appears in his most memorable episode. Another crisis: Stuart's dad has always had a serious drinking problem. It's time to finally do something about it.

ultra-realistic, gritty, urban drama - following the highs & the lows of life on the street as a kid in L.A. become part of there family, follow them in there usual goings-on. Become a fly on the wall, take it easy & just go where the day takes you.

Sharpshooter Matt Quigley is hired from Wyoming by an Australian rancher paying a very high price. But when Quigley arrives Down Under, all is not as it seems. Sharpshooter Matt Quigley is hired from America by an Australian rancher so he can shoot aborigines at a distance. Quigley takes exception to this and leaves. The rancher tries to kill him for refusing, and Quigley escapes into the brush with a woman he rescued from some of the rancher's men, and are helped by aborigines. Quigley returns the help, before going on to destroy all his enemies. —Ed Sutton {esutton@mindspring.com}

Graham, a college friend, drifts back into the lives of John, a philanderer, his angelic wife Ann, and her saucy sister Cynthia, leaving their relationships forever transformed.