Question: Build a movie plot around this: How many travelers does the lawyer talk to on the train? three
Answer:
An East Coast lawyer (Gary Merrill) learns that his wife has been unfaithful. After a month of stressful uncertainty, he is unable to keep going in his marriage, and, despite pleas from his wife, decides to take a trip to Los Angeles to think things through. He gets on a plane that makes several stops along the way, and, because of inclement weather, there are delays and waits in waiting rooms and restaurants, where he strikes up conversations with three other travelers, a struggling actress (Shelley Winters), an alcoholic doctor (Michael Rennie), and a clownish traveling salesman (Keenan Wynn). While talking to his fellow passengers, he learns intimate details of their lives, their loves, their personal tragedies and failures. They become bound by the confidences and promise each other that they will meet again in the future to see what life has brought them. The plane crashes near LA, and the lawyer is the only survivor of the four. In his hotel room after being patched up in a hospital he reaches into his pocket, finds the addresses and names that had been given to him, and he feels the need to contact the families of the deceased in order to share details about what the three were thinking and planning during their last day of life. In his three separate visits he learns more about the lives of the deceased, and while sharing what he knows he does bring comfort and closure to the families. In the process, his own views on love, forgiveness, success and a life well lived are transformed.This film treats grand themes, life, love, death, tragedy. humor, success, failure, confession, forgiveness and redemption thorough its interesting subplot twists without becoming unduly maudlin. Great philosophical paradoxes make an appearance: You can't be truly happy until you have experienced tragedy, getting the success you hope to have often makes you unhappy, humor is often a mask for melancholy, forgiveness does more for the forgiver than for its target, confession and acceptance soothe as they hurt.