These days

the long version

Fueled by a passion for 1940s movies and her jazz musician father's nostalgia for a time when "every hole-in-the-wall bar had a band," 14-year old Becky Shelling dreams of a career in show biz. It's 1974, hardly a high point in jazz history when trumpeter Ernie Shelling disappears, abandoning his adoring daughter to an abusive step-mother, an indifferent step-sister and a step brother-in-law who lusts after her behind his wife's back. For solace, Becky befriends Carolyn Kibble, upstairs neighbor and barmaid at Ernie's former haunt, the Half-Mile Bar. But it's the attention of Lenny Moss that's the real salve for her emotional wound. Smooth-talking, dapper, and very married, Lenny has nostalgic yearnings of his own. Unbeknownst to Becky, his nostalgia is limited to a time when men ruled and women knew their place. Taking her to work for him on Baltimore's "World-Famous Block," Lenny inadvertently leads her down a path of self-discovery on a once-stylish, now-decrepit adult-entertainment strip, where everyone has a tale about the good old days, but nothing is quite as it seems.