Light Fingers

Synopsis

Early 1964, only months after the Kennedy Assassination and the arrival of the Beatles. Big changes are coming, and nobody knows what the future holds. Meanwhile, Sonia Wittman’s Minneapolis family has fallen apart. Her father, Ron, a contractor, had borrowed money on their home to shore up his struggling business. Now their house is being foreclosed. Sonia awakens to the chaos of bank officers and sheriffs taking possession of the house. After a chaotic day, the family, now homeless, drives to California, where relatives have rented them an apartment in a lower middle class area of Los Angeles, in Santa Monica. Ron, once a proud business owner, will now have to take any job he can find, as will Caroline. They had lived in a sort of dream world where success was always just around the corner. L.A. is an utterly alien environment—huge, smoggy, full of freeways and populated by strangers. Disillusioned, Ron spends his days on the patched sofa, drinking beer and devising grandiose schemes for starting over. Caroline, finds a job as a clerk in a “five and dime.” Sonia starts at Santa Monica High School. She is a bright bookworm who dreams of becoming a writer, but her shyness and midwestern style don’t fir into this world of surfers and cool kids. Sonia’s parents can’t pay the rent and they move to a cheap motel with a burner to cook on. But Sonia is a Beatlemaniac, and when she joins the fan club at school, she is surrounded by other obsessed, infatuated girls. The “British Invasion” has taken hold; the girls fake British accents and devise fantasies about parties in London or Liverpool. Life has only one goal: to meet the Beatles. When Ron borrows $500 from a loan shark, Caroline confronts him in fury. “When I got off work, some little man threatened me. I gave him my paycheck. How will we eat?” Caroline throws Ron’s suitcase onto the front lawn, and Ron sadly drives away. The following Monday, Beverly’s friend Cheryl corners her in the hall at school: an English band is staying at the Oceanside Motel. The girls are going to cut class and go out there. At the motel, they meet two British boys, TOBY and SEAN, who promptly pull them into their room and seduce them. Trudging back to school, Sonia and Cheryl agree that this had been a very bad idea. Sonia’s biology lab partner is JEFFREY HOLSCLAW, a mysterious boy with a surgeon’s touch as they dissect a frog. Sonia learns that Jeffrey’s parents are hopeless alcoholics living in squalor. Jeffrey gets by as a member of a shoplifting ring run by LOUIS COOPER, a Fagin-like character who fences the items the teenagers steal. When Cheryl confesses to Sonia that she is pregnant from their encounter with Toby, she wants to get an abortion. But there is no money. When Cheryl threatens to kill herself, Sonia asks to join Jeffrey’s shoplifting ring, the “Lifters.” They train Sonia in shoplifting techniques and take her along to observe. When Sonia accompanies Jeffrey in lifting a diamond watch from a jewelry store, he gives Sonia $500 for the back room abortion. But the girls arrive at the frightening dirty room, and Cheryl loses her nerve. They flee and decide to fly to England and try to find “Toby” the father. They are sure he will marry Cheryl. Meanwhile, Sonia is hired by the school vice-principal to tutor English to NICK, a friend of Jeffrey (and fellow lifter). As the war in Vietnam heats up, Nick’s dream is to join the Marines. But he has to graduate first. Sonia and Nick debate the war: each feels the other is not living in the real world. When Sonia finds out that Jeffrey is having an affair with their biology teacher, “Miss Karp” she breaks off their friendship. But she misses him deeply. Sonia’s father Ron arrives to take Sonia to lunch. He announces he has found a job selling carpets. But when he arrives at the carpet store, Ron is fired in front of Sonia’s eyes. Sonia finds out that a short story she wrote about the Beatles has won an award, and she has a scholarship to a Ivy League college. Nick meets Cheryl, they strike up a romance and in the last scene, they are at graduation and getting married, with Cheryl hugely pregnant. Jeffrey and Miss Karp run off together and Ron moves back in with Caroline. He still has no job, but as always, his hopes are high.