The Johnny Moss Room

The Johnny Moss Room, told in the probing, seriocomic voice of Lilo Moss, shines its beam on the powerful bonds between fathers and daughters--even when there doesn't seem to be any. Lilo's hopes for her father's love lie buried in the backyard along with the rainchecks he made her collect before he'd take her to a Yankee game. He never took her. Now she's 17, the '66 Yanks are in the toilet, it's the Day of Atonement, and Merv--an ex-Catskills comic somewhere between Lear and Ricky Gervais--drags her to temple so she won't screw up his account with the Almighty. Watching him pound his fists at his failure...as a father, a husband, and a man who sold out his dreams to the Almighty Dollar, Lilo realizes he won't be sealed into the Book of Life this year--and she's shaken by how hard her heart's grown. Across the aisle sits her best friend Juliet Wolfe's family, refined artists blessed by the wife's inheritance, and with the kind of adoring father Lilo craves.
When Lilo decides nothing--not even Merv--will stop her from becoming a film director, the magical way renowned actor Derek Wolfe helps her, awakens romantic fantasies mixed up with her father hunger that threaten her lifelong friendship with Juliet. Lilo shoots a film whose honesty pits Merv against Derek and winds up rupturing the Mosses, terminating her family's business, and linking Lilo's psychic survival to the completion of the film her father now forbids her to finish.
Following Merv's heart attack on the Triboro Bridge, when Lilo saves his life yet still can't pry open her heart to forgive him, her father eventually splits off from the family, molts the old Merv and moves to Miami Beach with an oddball new identity, in pursuit of a new life. Freed of him, Lilo pushes at the boundaries of her love for Derek only to uncover her deepest need--to connect with her father before he splits the planet altogether.