The traumatic lives of Mary Beth Mills and her special needs daughter Erica play out in the shadows of the Monsanto plant making Agent Orange in Nitro, WV. Their journey contrasts with that of playboy Henry Kissinger who actively extends the Vietnam War in Nixon’s White House, condemning the lives of Cambodian villagers.

SYNOPSIS:

NITRO

(synopsis)

Chauncey Roberts copyright 2017

Original Screenplay based on true events and Nixon White House conversations

Genre

Nitro is an unabashed political anti-war drama, which targets Henry Kissinger.

Logline

The traumatic lives of Mary Beth Mills and her special needs daughter Erica play out in the shadows of the Monsanto plant making Agent Orange in Nitro, WV. Their journey contrasts with that of playboy Henry Kissinger who actively extends the Vietnam War in Nixon’s White House, condemning the lives of Cambodian villagers, also victims of Agent Orange.

In 1979 the Monsanto produces Agent Orange, of which the byproduct is dioxin. Employee Jim Totten comes to his daughter-in-law’s car during a lunch break and proudly feels Mary Beth’s pregnant stomach. Consequently, Erica Totten, is born with sensory integration disorder, mild retardation and a double uterus. She faces problems in school and developing friendships; she collects dolls and watches wrestling on TV.

The absolute stink of Nitro wafts into the life of Mary Beth upon marrying Jimmy Totten. With Monsanto smokestacks looming over the little street of bungalows from Nitro’s creation by the US Government in World War I, Erica plays outside, ignoring the plant’s alarm whistles, as she steals flowers from a neighbor. When Erica is seventeen Mary Beth suffers a nervous breakdown while at a fitness center with her mother, her childhood abuser. Mary Beth cries out repeatedly, “Get her away from me! Get her away from me!” Mary Beth’s family cares for her, while her husband strays; Mary Beth eventually emerges from the nervous breakdown, her life in hiatus from the enormity of her mother’s cruel physical violence directed towards her, the oldest daughter of six children.

Naturally warm and exciting, a momma tigress with a whiskey bottle on Friday nights, divorced Mary Beth considers romance with a single parent, Mike, who rapes her. Meanwhile we see the United States raping Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, as if a spillover of a Nitro factory explosion. The whistle blows.

As Vietnamese farmers escape from their village huts, Agent Orange pours from the skies of US military planes defoliating the trees, raining into the streams from which a young boy brings water to his mother nursing a baby. Nixon refers to “the little brown people halfway across the world, who would care?” And Kissinger enjoys his swinger image while referring to a meeting of African leaders, “I wonder what it will smell like.” The racial prejudice or Nixon and cronies lays bold across the screen, shadowed by the conscience of Vietnam protestors and young Daniel Ellsberg, former Kissinger student and colleague.

Naturally warm and exciting, a momma tigress with a whiskey bottle on Friday nights, divorced Mary Beth considers romance with a single parent, Mike, who rapes her. Meanwhile we see the United States raping Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, as if a spillover of a Nitro factory explosion. The whistle blows.

Mary Beth falls in love with Tim Mills, who honeymoons with her at the local Marriott. But too soon Tim falls ill and acquires MYRSA. (Family members who fight over flowers at the funeral.) So Tim dies, Mary Beth’s abusive mother dies, and Erica battles breast cancer… the two women alone with their Bible lessons on the couch. On this living room sofa Mary Beth inhabits like a Cheshire cat, she lolls through various stages of tranquilization, intoxication, euphoria, tears and loneliness.

Confronted at a Mary Kay party with small-town Nitro ladies who suggest she isn’t “the right sort,” Mary Beth I don’t need this ugliness

and hypocrisy outta ya’ll today. Nitro, West Virginia hoi polloi.”

Then comes redneck Harold, her impotent convict boyfriend who dances the mashed potato at a bar and in Mary Beth’s living room. She sleeps with Harold’s brother and even her late husband’s father who tries to get her to sell her house. As if incubating small town scandal, she has become Bessie Alcatraz.

Jill St. John finally snaps at Henry Kissinger that she doesn’t feel romantic to the tally of Vietnam War deaths. The US losing the Vietnam War does not appear in American history books. Thus, with Mary Beth exclaiming to Erica that her parents said “the Communists would be in our living room if McGovern had been elected,” Erica with her dolls and sensibility lambasts modern-day warmongers led by George W. Bush.

The Cambodian family still impacted by Agent Orange continues its struggle with this ghastly reminder of the American War. Ditto survivors of the landmines Nixon aid Haldeman once joked about.

Although Erica survives breast cancer, a year later Mary Beth succumbs at age 58 to a heart attack as she lounges on her couch. Erica implores her, “Mom, wake up! Wake up!”