The Nines

Three peripherally related stories are presented. Beyond taking place in the same semi-fictional universe, the stories are connected by a stock company of actors portraying different characters in each of the three stories, those characters who are meant to look like each other from one story to the next. In "Part One: The Prisoner", Gary, a successful Hollywood television actor, has just been placed under house arrest, his sentence, out of circumstance, to be served in a house connected to his publicist, Lola, instead of his own house. While acerbic-tongued Margaret, one of Lola's representatives, works on keeping Gary's good name within the public fan-base in tact under the circumstances, Gary, lonely and alone at the house, makes a connection with Sarah, a married mother who lives next door. Sarah entering Gary's life is not by accident. In "Part Two: Reality Television", screenwriter Gavin Taylor has just had his television project green-lighted by the network. Concurrently, he has agreed to star in another just green-lighted project, a reality television series based on the making of his show. Gary wrote the show with his good friend Melissa McCarthy in mind to star, she who quit a lucrative gig on Gilmore Girls (2000) to accommodate Gary. But Gary ultimately has to answer to the network - Susan Howard who is acting on behalf of the network - while Susan and the network kowtow to their advertisers. All the players in question may have different and conflicting priorities. In "Chapter Three: Knowing", married Gabriel and Mary, a video game designer and editor respectively, and their eight year old daughter Noelle return to their car from a secluded wilderness hike to find it has a dead battery. While Mary and Noelle wait at the car, Gabriel goes for help. The first person he encounters is Sierra, who is out for a hike herself. Sierra ultimately but somewhat reluctantly decides to help Gabriel to the best of her ability, which hides her true motive. By the end of the third story, the connections between the three stories are shown to be more than what appeared on the surface, those connections largely on a metaphysical level and centered around "the nines".