TV PROJECT: "LEBANON"
Ava Grimaldi, former supermodel, gave up the glamour to be a wife to her notorious photographer husband Steve, and to raise their daughter, Toby. Now in her fifties, it’s all falling apart. Her husband is doing everything to hold on to his youth and his bad-boy behavior has made him unemployable and unbearable. Though she’s always turned her cheek to his infidelities, he crosses the line with a young Sicilian girl while on a photo shoot. Finally, she feels what he’s been feeling: the loss of youth and beauty. To escape the shame and humiliation she takes off for Lebanon, a snow-buried hamlet that remains lost in time, a pre-digital Brigadoon held together by close bonds and confidences between the locals. Hosting Ava is her friend Meg, a farmer, musician, and artisan cheese maker, who provides shelter and introduces her to a way of life that brings her face to face with her own desires, especially once she meets Hitch, the reclusive pulp fiction writer who lives next door. In Lebanon, Ava finds an altogether different definition of lust and beauty.
PRIMARY CHARACTERS
AVA GRIMALDI Fifties. Beautiful and lithe, Ava’s supermodel career came to a halt when she became pregnant with her daughter Toby, now a 26-year old doctoral student. Now she makes her living as a food stylist and blogger. When her husband, notorious fashion photographer, Steve Grimaldi, beds a teenage girl while Ava sleeps in the next room, it’s time to take stock of her life. To do so she must detach from everything, which leads her to Lebanon, a snowbound community of quirky characters. There, she meets Hitch, a Vietnam vet and pulp fiction writer with whom she enters into a dark, sexually potent affair.
STEVE GRIMALDI Fifties. Hot-shot fashion photographer for most of his life, his dilettante behavior is no longer tolerated and he’s bleeding work. Girls and coke are his favorite pastimes. When Ava calls it quits, he faces his infantile psyche for the first time in his adult life.
TOBY GRIMALDI Ava and Steve’s daughter, a reluctant doctoral student, Toby has been living up to her mother’s expectations her whole life - which means succeeding at something intellectual and meaningful, and never falling into the wrong relationship. Naturally smart but rebellious, Toby finds ways to act out her frustration, particularly through sexual encounters with unworthy partners.
MEG JENSON Fifties. Sturdy, fit and unfailingly grounded. Farmer, classical musician and artisanal cheese maker, Meg came to Lebanon after finishing music school with her husband Ian, to run his family farm. She's the soulful center of the town, the person everyone can count on. Now she faces a new challenge: grounding her rootless friend, Ava.
HITCH Sixties. Aka, James Caldwell, best-selling writer of international espionage thrillers. Reclusive Vietnam vet, Hitch is respected by the citizens of Lebanon, who leave him to his writing. He’s rugged and fit, despite having lost a leg in the war. He’s intemperate and laconic, but his curiosity about his new neighbor, Ava, opens him to a relationship with an intensity he could never have written, let alone, imagined.
TIMER Twenties. Meg’s college-student son is torn between his parent’s ambitions for him as a musician and his love for his family farm. He finds a comforting ear in Ava who sees him as an exciting prospect for her daughter, Toby. But Timer has other ideas, and in Ava’s fragile state, resisting his affections becomes a challenge.
SIMONE Forties. Bartender at the local tavern. A competitive bodybuilder with sculpted shoulders and sinewy arms. She’s tough and wicked and when Ava arrives in Lebanon, she finally has a friend she can relate to, which becomes complicated by the fact that she’s harbored a devastating crush on Hitch for years.