SON OF ZEUS
While re-reading Homer’s “The Odyssey,” Jimmy receives a mysterious letter in the mail, prompting him to re-evaluate his childhood growing up as a Greek American son of a single mother.
Jimmy’s mom was a Greek belly dancer. A star at the Egyptian Gardens in NYC. As a five-year-old boy, little Jimmy would often go to work with his mother, spending the nights hiding under the make-up table in the dressing room. At this time, mom was just divorced from Jimmy’s father, who was 25 years her senior. Jimmy’s father wasa very violent, abusive man, and after one last attack on his mother, he was arrested and never seen again.
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While dancing, mom met another man, Joe, who was just released from prison completing a 15 year stay for armed robbery and manslaughter. He’s now back to work for the mob. Joe brings little Jimmy to work in NYC where his job is to collect all proceeds on the west side of Manhattan. Growing up with violence everywhere around him, Jimmy has to escape that world and create a new destiny.
‘A Bronx Tale’ meets ‘Zorba the Greek,’ “Son of Zeus” is a story about family lost, family found, and the challenges of living up to – or letting go of - expectations of masculinity.
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