ABOUT TIGER'S HOPE

LOG LINE:

An infertile entertainer with almost everything going for her -- talent, notoriety, and a quick temper -- risks her health and singing career to battle her father and the bureaucrats of the local Catholic diocese to get pregnant and have a baby on her own terms.

SYNOPSIS:

Anna Marie "Tiger" Norwell and her husband Jake toured the country as popular singers for more than a decade. When they finally got around to starting a family in their late 30's, they settled down in her hometown of Farrow and Tiger went off the pill. "Daddy" set them up with a dinner club where she could sing, and everything seemed great. But after several years no babies came. Her father, a daily Catholic communicant, encourages Tiger to try the "in vitro" thing, but Tiger is not fond of doctors who poke and probe. In fact, she despises needles and even the thought of putting drugs into her body. Although not much of a church-goer, Tiger happens upon an old priest friend and decides that suffering for a good cause, like having a baby, is a good idea. So she grits her teeth, submitting to the rigors and the invasion of needles and drugs that come with in vitro fertilization. What she doesn't know is the alarming extent to which her life is being manipulated by Neville McCray, the chancellor of the local Catholic diocese, and his golfing buddy, a widely respected, extremely wealthy in vitro specialist, Dr. Fredrick Hahn. When Tiger gets pregnant on her first cycle everyone celebrates, and she enters her first trimester excitedly expecting their first baby. But then a phone call comes from Dr. Hahn. There was an unfortunate mistake in the lab, and the baby in her womb is not hers. It belongs to another woman. Jake also learns that the sperm used to fertilize the eggs that were implanted in Tiger, were not his either. Joy turns to devastation. But in the days afterwards they rally and are determined to be great parents nonetheless. Their determination is short-lived however, when they're visited by a bevy of lawyers and a court processor who come to announce that Tiger cannot keep the baby after it is born, and that she cannot terminate the pregnancy, but must keep her body in the best of health. Devastation turns to dread. The baby comes early, and is abruptly given, with out ceremony, to the nameless, genetic parents. It's then that they must decide what to do, next. Tiger's father, who is still more anxious than ever to be a grandfather, urges Tiger to be inseminated again. Emotionally exhausted, Jake and Tiger believe there's got to be a better way. Yet even now, they have no idea of the powers within the Church hierarchy and the medical industry that have been manipulating their lives all along, and that have no intention of allowing Tiger and Jake's plans to be fulfilled. In the end there's a serious need for absolution but not everyone will accept it.

The screenplay and featured songs are available for review to quantified participants. Contact info below.

ABOUT THE TRILOGY

ABSOLUTION is the name given to a trilogy of screenplays about how the rejection of natural law leads to barren lives and impotent institutions, and how the adoption of natural law leads to fruitful lives and redemptive institutions.

The three stories are classic chancel dramas about individuals who risk all to make their family whole, while battling misguided church bureaucrats led by a bishop who fears conflict more than truth. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) in contemplating such men, recalls:

The words of the Bible and of the Church Fathers...those sharp condemnations of shepherds who are like mute dogs; in order to avoid conflict, they let the poison spread. Peace is not the first civic duty, and a bishop whose only concern is not to have any problems and to gloss over as many conflicts as possible is an image I find repulsive. (SALT OF THE EARTH. Ignatius Press, 1997, p. 82.)