Blinding Lights: A female musician struggling with a difficult family life and troubled past, works to overcome the strikes she has against her to finally make it big in the Atlanta music scene.
Blinding Lights: A female musician struggling with a difficult family life and troubled past, works to overcome the strikes she has against her to finally make it big in the Atlanta music scene.
SYNOPSIS
Phylisia Davenport (known to her friends as Phylly has been in love with music since she was 5 years old. From her first kindergarten talent show, she knew she wanted to be “singer”. Through elementary school and high school she was always writing songs. When her mother was abusive and alcoholic, she used her music as a way to express her anger. When her father left her mother at the age of 16, she used music as her means to cope with not having her only advocate and positive influence on her life around full time.
Now 22 and working as Uber, Lyft and Door Dash driver, She spends her day to day life behind the wheel of her very basic car writing songs about her very basic life. She spends her nights performing for small crowds at a local dive bar on the outskirts of Atlanta. She doesn’t get paid much, but the free drinks help.
One night after a decent performance and a full night of drinking she crashes her car into telephone pole. When wakes up in the emergency room cuffed to the bed the hospital staff tells her that she was in an accident and her car was totaled. Now she’s under arrest and her only means of making a living has been destroyed she finds herself at rock bottom and decides to write a song about her life. While in custody, Officer Sandra Sinclair takes a special interest in her. Sandra soon finds a new Daughter figure in Phylly and Phylly finds the opposite in Sandra. They become close and when Phylly’s mother dies from mixing pills and alcohol, Sandra is there to console her.
Sandra finally gets a chance to meet Phyllly’s father, Lance Davenport at the funeral and the two form a bond while getting Phylly back on her feet. When Phylly starts performing again, her song starts to take off and she is gaining a following and her audience become bigger and bigger. While major labels are starting to take notice and she’s becoming more and more successful, Phylly still struggles with the loss of her mother and her drinking. On top of that, She now has to decide if she wants to accept a record deal from a major label or remain the small town girl with her small town values. She loves the freedom she has to create and be who she wants to be on stage, but she is attracted to the allure of the glamorous life; the parties, the attention, the money. She makes a decent living performing now and has a decent car, decent apartment and he affections of Casey, a nurse she met while in the hospital.
She thinks she has finally made up her mind about what paths she wants to take when she catches Sandra and her dad in bed together. It brings up so many past emotions of abandonment and issues with her mom that she storms out and avoids talking to them both for months. It doesn’t matter that Sandra and Lance are in love and they found each other while putting Phylly back together, all Phylly knows is that the two people that mean the most in her life are now making her 2nd to them. This sends her into a spiral of alcohol and drugs. She starts going to more parties and missing important dates and messing up on stage. Her relation ship with Casey starts to suffer and she soon left alone in crowded rooms of strangers telling her how great she is.
Her 2nd rock bottom comes with Casey leaves her and the record label drops her. She has no more fans, and she’s pushed all the people who cared about her away. She feels like she’s all alone and everything she loved is gone so she decides she doesn’t want to be on this earth anymore surrounded by pain and misery and she doesn’t believe anyone will care if she there or not and she has nothing left to add to the world so she swallows a handful of pain killer and downs a half bottle of tequila. She plays her hit song on her guitar until she fades away.
She wakes up in the hospital again with Casey, Sandra and Lance at her bedside. Casey leaves to attend to other patients while Sandra and Lance explain their feeling about each other and how she fits into the equation. They explain that they want to be the loving example of a family that she didn’t have growing up and that Sandra doesn’t want to replace her mother, but she wants to be what she never got a chance to experience. Lance explains that he excited that he can have both a loving wife and his daughter back in his life. Over the days that pass, Phylly begins to warm up to the idea and realize that Lance and Sandra only have her best interest at heart and they both deserve to be happy. While she’s been in the hospital, Casey has been really distant and almost giving her the cold shoulder. Phylly tries to reconnect with him, but Casey is not convinced she’s changed her ways.
When Phylly gets out of the hospital she check herself into rehab and starts going to AA meetings. While she’s on her journey of recovery, she starts to find the love for writing and music again. She writes a song about overcoming her strongest adversity which was her feelings of inadequacy and not feeling like she deserved to be happy. This new song is the opposite of her previous hit song. This new song is about growth and knowing your worth, its an anthem to all women especially women of color. Its one that she wants to share with the world and so she starts to perform again.
The new song takes off and become popular and the labels come calling again. Now that she knows that its more than just her career at stake, its her soul on the line too, she turns down all offers and asks Lance and Sandra if they will help her to create her own label and do it all as a family. With no hesitation they both agree and Lance takes care of all the business aspect from his experience as an attorney while Sandra helps with bookings and promo appearances. Soon Phylly has her new song out on the airwaves and her new video hitting millions of views on her own website that she owns. She’s become successful without compromising herself or her values and remaining sober in the process. Everything she has ever dreamed about has now come true, but she still feels a void in her heart. She yearns for the love in her life to return. She knows she lost a great guy and wishes there was something to she could do to get him back. Its something that remains in the back of her mind during the interviews, video shoots, autograph signing and even while she performs on stage and then one night in a small venue for her album release party, the shadow of a face all to familiar appears; its Casey. He smiles, she smiles…