Plot
Max Phillips is a bookie who finds out via telegram that his son Pip, a soldier, has been seriously wounded fighting in Vietnam and will likely die. He is regretful that he didn't spend more time with Pip when he was younger. With that in mind, he returns $300 to an unlucky customer and gets into a fight with his boss and the boss's hitman. Max is shot by the hitman. Wounded, he stumbles into an amusement park and is surprised to see Pip, who is now a child again. After having some fun, reliving and expanding on enjoyable outings in the past, Pip runs away into a house of mirrors. When Max finds him, Pip explains that he is dying and vanishes. Max prays to God and offers to trade his own life in exchange for Pip's, then collapses and dies on the freeway. The next day, the full-grown Pip - walking with a cane due to his war injuries - visits the amusement park's shooting gallery and recalls some of Max's advice as he begins to play.
Read more about this topic: In Praise Of Pip
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I’d read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers—especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a daily basis has no time to write an advice book about it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)