Build a movie plot around this: What is Miss Riley ill with? Hodgkins disease
Answer:
The film is set in Coalwood, West Virginia in the year 1957. The coal mine is the town's largest employer and almost every man living in the town works in the mines. John Hickam (Chris Cooper), the mine superintendent, loves his job and hopes that his boys, Jim (Scott Miles) and Homer (Jake Gyllenhaal), will one day join him in his mine. When it appears that Jim will receive a football scholarship to attend college, this leaves Homer to fulfill his father's dream, although his mother, Elsie (Natalie Canerday), hopes for more for her son.In October, news of the Soviet Union's rocket launch of Sputnik 1 reaches Coalwood. As the townspeople gather outside the night of the broadcast, they see the satellite orbit across the sky. Filled with awe and a belief that this may be his chance out of Coalwood, Homer sets out to build rockets of his own and enter the science fair. Initially, his family and later his classmates think he has gone crazy and is wasting his time, especially when he teams up with Quentin Wilson (Chris Owen), the school's math geek who also has an interest in rocket engineering. With the help of his friends, Roy Lee Cooke (William Lee Scott) and Sherman O'Dell (Chad Lindberg), and support from their science teacher, Miss Riley (Laura Dern), the four try out their new passion. While their first launches are failures, they begin experimenting with new fuels and rocket designs. After several successful launches, the local paper runs a story about them.The next day, they are arrested accused of having started a forest fire with a rocket that had gone astray. After John picks up Homer from the police station, Roy Lee is seen getting beat up by his stepfather, Vernon. John intervenes and rescues Roy Lee, warning the drunken man that, even though Roy Lee's father is dead, he will fight for Roy Lee as Roy Lee's father would have. In a rare display of emotion, he tells Roy Lee that Roy's father was one of the best men who ever worked for him.The arrests, along with John's lack of support, crushes the boys'...