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Steps and Stones
A film by Rhonda Buckley
Iris and Hazel are best friends. They are in a small town, Boulevard Crossing, NL, 20 minutes from the abandoned Air Force base. Iris would say a town of used-to-be, sitting in a bank where planes don’t fly.
Iris is a singer and guitar player, mainly at the local bar. She paid $5 to her young friend Jimmy at the arcade for his guitar when she was 10 and has played it ever since. She hangs on her mom’s last words “Everyone dies famous in a small town.” That’s the note her mom Pauline wrote, when she left not for the first time, but for the last time she would see her.
Women inspire Iris; a local girl wins big on Jeopardy, a woman chopper pilot speaks at the base, and Penny has her own bar. But Iris no matter how hard she tries can’t seem to be that woman.
Iris hangs on in a town of small moments; plays the Star of the Sea and comes home every night to Wes. He loves her and is always there.
Iris and Hazel take to the road to play a few gigs. Hazel skips out and takes the bus out west. Never to return to Boulevard Crossing. Iris longs for something that is hers. All that comes in her wake disappears.
Hazel is different. Hazel always has to go. She doesn’t care what hardship is on the other side. She wants out. She escapes an unfit boyfriend at an early age, only to get pregnant by the bar owner Sam. Hazel takes her chances it can’t get worse.
Iris tries to find Hazel. Her friend Paige shows her a new social media program Facebook, and Iris asks Hazel to be her friend, again, online. She doesn’t accept. Lonely takes a whole new turn without Hazel. Iris now has over 400 followers who think her music is pretty good.
In an act of bored rebellion, Iris tells Wes to go home alone one night. She walks by a circus in town and ends up drinking with the men who seem enamoured at first. They give her a free ride on the Ferris wheel then turn on her, taunt her, and burn her guitar in an oil drum as a lark. Iris still on the Ferris wheel is helpless in the sky, enraged. She jumps off the ride, grabs the guitar handle, and storms home.
Iris finally gets closure from her mom; when she finds out she has died when her ashes arrive in an urn in her mailbox with no return address. Iris is forced to reach out to Hazel for support, as she has always been there for her when her mom had run away.
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