What if a wimpy tech geek-cum-rookie journalist with a suicidal mom in the hospital, got thrust into investigating a psychotherapy cult guru rumored to be sleeping with his teenaged followers?
Marcus, the leader of Hand-to-Hand (HtH), a catharsis-based peer therapy group, is a strange mix of visionary and lech. Robert, the protagonist, lazes in his living room while, on TV, Marcus counsels a rapist to face his victim until the rapist “Cracks,” or releases emotion. Marcus’s methods have recidivism rates down and mental health patients moving beyond drugs and confinement. However, in his off hours, he beds his followers, forces sex on teenagers and treats his wife like a bad dog. What’s his deal? And why have none of his thousands of followers held him accountable for his actions?
When the senior writer on the story lands in the ICU after a hit-and-run, Robert reluctantly takes over. His informant Tandy trains him in the skills he’ll need to pass as an out-of-town leader. However, when he arrives on the scene of the “men’s group,” he barely escapes giving himself away as a poser in this weepy, touchy-feely, hand-holding group of guys who go into “Handspace” to “crack,” or, release their deepest feelings.
Robert’s buddy and longtime mentor Neil, an editor at a rival paper, coaches, encourages him, and even invites him to work at Neil’s own paper, but waves off the idea that anyone will ever get anything on Marcus. Upon return from vacation, Robert’s boss decides she’s made a mistake, and takes him off the story. Robert agrees outwardly but continues to work on the story in secret, while delivering boring story after boring story to the boss. Robert and Tandy start to identify a pattern in Marcus’s womanizing. They visit HtH headquarters and find that Marcus was kicked out of both Scientology and the Communist Party for bedding the wives and daughters of leaders. Robert also gets a strange wind of Tandy’s traumatic experience in those same headquarters sixteen years ago, just Aleatha’s age, he realizes. But Tandy’s clams up about this “coincidence.”
Now the HtH methods are starting to get to Robert. And in light of Marcus’s theories, he starts to question how the hospital is treating his mom. In the meantime, it’s not clear if Marcus’s zealous, overprotective son is stalking Robert, or how much danger Robert might be in if he is. Following Marcus’s anti-medication zeal, Robert tosses his sleeping pills, but then the nightmares about his abusive dad return. He wakes to a midnight visit from an HtH leader, who gets under his skin, and in a haze of vulnerable confusion, Robert learns Marcus has visited Claudia, Robert’s mom, and used HtH techniques to liberate her from her years-long mental prison.
Tandy’s already stretched to her limit, but when Marcus puts the moves on her daughter Aleatha, she loses it and moves to call the police. Robert and Aleatha just barely stop her. After all, if Marcus’s methods for reforming bad guys are so great, surely they could be used on him. Tandy’s skeptical—many have tried and failed to use Marcus’s own techniques to pull him out of his sexual compulsivity—but stays put for the moment.
Meanwhile, a group of Minnesota leaders unites to condemn Marcus’s actions, and he immediately excises the entire state from HtH. When Tandy appeals to her local leadership cohort for help and supprt, she is silenced, her concerns “treated” with HtH methods as merely evidence of past trauma, and made to take a “Loyalty Oath” to “protect” HtH and Marcus from the “dangerous detractors.”
Just when Robert’s flying highest, his boss gets wind of his having continued the story against his wishes, and fires him. Robert finally takes Neil up on his offer, and hands the story to him. Only the moment he turns the corner, Neil calls…HtH headquarters.
But Robert’s already on his way to get up in the wayward leader’s face. Joined by Aleatha, the two are puzzled to find the anti-medication advocate under some sort of chemical influence. Robert uses classic HtH tactics to penetrate the guru’s crusty defenses. Whatever he’s on has him more receptive than usual. When he hears Robert’s secret revelation that Aleatha is his daughter, Marcus begins his own First Crack. It’s a recast of the initial rapist-victim scene, only now Marcus is the rapist poised to crack, and the formerly timid Robert now wields the firm reformer’s hand he first witnessed in Marcus.
At dawn, a new Marcus finishes his tea, and with it, his life. But not before cops come and arrest him. Marcus’s last gasp is in the back of their car. In a flashback, the long-beleaguered Mrs. Bolinas spikes Marcus’s ubiquitous “Get Crackin’!” mug with his ultimate seasoning.
Robert returns to his mother’s house. Claudia glows now, a stark contrast to the pale, broken woman at the beginning. She asks Robert how he is, and offers him a hug. Now it’s Robert’s turn. He bursts into tears in his mother’s arms—Robert Coleman’s First Crack.
Know anyone who wants to see the script? Email me at jillcnagle@gmail.com. Hurry up, it may be about to be sold.
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