THIS IS ONLY A PROMO - THE FULL FEATURE HAS NOT BEEN FILMED YET. WE ARE LOOKING TO PARTNER WITH A PRODUCTION COMPANY AND INVESTORS. WISH US LUCK AND PASS THE WORD :-)
Let me tell you a little bit about DERVAL ROSE... It’s a Christmas story set in modern day NYC. When I first started writing the script, I taped a notecard above my computer with one sentence on it:
EVERY HEART NEEDS A FAMILY TO BEAT WHOLE.
This is the driving theme of the story.
DERVAL ROSE (11) is a hard little girl who will melt your heart. After her heroin addict mom dies in Dublin, she’s sent to NYC to live with her father whom she’s never met. She constantly wears a tweed hat that droops over her eyes. It’s her only physical memory of her mother who told her it’s the hat John Lennon wore in Bob Gruen's iconic Statue of Liberty photo. Derval inherited her mom’s devotion to John, so much so that he’s become a paternal figure for her.... she even prays to him.
Derval wants nothing to do with her father, but he repeatedly tries to win her affection. On Christmas Eve he drags her to a NY Rangers hockey game. The star player scores a hat trick and fans celebrate by throwing their hats on the ice. Hats are sailing through the air in the Garden and a drunk fan grabs Derval’s hat and throws it on the ice. She darts off after it. Her father attacks the drunk and subsequently gets dragged away by security. Derval frantically runs around the Garden trying to find her hat, but ends up outside with the door slamming shut behind her. It’s Christmas Eve... she’s eleven years old, alone on the streets of foreign city, and the only thing she cherishes in the world has been ripped away from her.
She spots a Guinness sign at a pub, and runs in. Sitting there is SEAMUS, an ex-musician turned blundering hustler. He denies her pleas for help until two enforcers show up to collect on a debt. It’s then we see the first of many “hustles” by Derval as she shepherds Seamus to safety. She invents a story, duping him into helping her find her hat... but what she really needs is to allow her heart to love again.
It’s this journey of a little girl searching for her mother’s memory, a father desperate for a second chance to win his daughter’s love, and a lost soul who needs to believe in something again, that brings them all the promise of redemption.
It’s a story about how no matter how fractured a family may be, it can still be healed and grow to include the most unlikely of characters.
