Chuckerman Makes a Movie

When thirty-five-year-old celebrity branding guru David Melman’s niece and nephew inform him that he’s hit “rock bottom,” he realizes that some personal change—and growing up—might be in order. So when his sister Marcy, with her own ulterior motive, pushes him to take a film-writing class taught by her friend Laurel—dubbed “The Mormon Rodeo” by David’s brother-in-law—he agrees. Once he’s in the class, Laurel, in turn, pushes him to write a movie about the 1977 Cadillac he inherited from his grandfather, the relic of a pivotal Christmas vacation that ten-year-old David and his family spent in Miami Beach with his grandparents and dozens of other Jewish snow-birds. Unexpectedly, David, the Jewish man-child, begins to fall both for Laurel, a sexy Mormon with her own family issues, as well as the film she forces him to write, and for a time, their relationship—along with David’s script—progresses. But eventually decisions that Laurel must make force David to make his own decisions about their relationship. And as he struggles, he begins to see how the movie he’s writing about his past sheds light on the movie that is his real—not reel—life.