Hollywood Priest: The Story of Fr. Bud Kieser

In 2015, actress Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) arrives in Savannah, Georgia, to research her upcoming role in an independent film. Elizabeth will be playing Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore), who, in 1992 at the age of 36, was caught having sex with 13-year-old Korean-American Joe Yoo (Charles Melton), a schoolmate of her son Georgie (Cory Michael Smith), at the pet store where they both worked. During a prison sentence, Gracie gave birth to Joe's child. 23 years later, Gracie and Joe are married with three children: Honor (Piper Curda), who is at college, and twins Charlie (Gabriel Chung) and Mary (Elizabeth Yu), who are about to graduate from high school. Honor was born behind bars. Gracie wants Elizabeth to participate in the film-making process and not be the "Hollywood" type leading lady, who just sit there looking pretty. Gracie hosts a barbecue at her home and invites Elizabeth to it. Elizabeth interviews Gracie and Joe about their relationship. People in the community still don't accept Joe and Gracie. Some of them leave boxes of feces on their doorstep. Rhonda (Andrea Frankle) is Gracie's friend. In private, Gracie treats Joe like a kid. She orders him around, tells him what to and what not to do, and so on. Elizabeth starts to spend time with Gracie to understand her as a person. Gracie's brother is a rear admiral in the Navy. Growing up they moved between states quite a lot, Gracie claims that she was very close to her brothers. Gracie and Joe met when he came to the pet store looking for a job in seventh grade. He worked there after school and on weekends. Georgie is married now, and has kids of his own, Bill and Cassidy. Elizabeth notices that Gracie carries no guilt or regrets for her actions. Visiting the pet store where the couple met and worked, Elizabeth sees the stock room where Gracie and Joe were caught having sex and reenacts the scene alone. Gracie got a job at the store in October 1990, as she remained a loyal customer even after a K-Mart opened around the corner. She started with just watching the store but was soon balancing the books and managing inventory. In summer of 1992, Gracie told the owner that she wanted a helper who worked at minimum wage. She speaks with Tom (D. W. Moffett), Gracie's first husband, and Georgie, who is now a musician, and her defense lawyer. They portray Gracie in varying ways, depicting her as naive and passive, but also show how destructive her actions were. The lawyer says that Gracie had no clue that she had done anything wrong. She believed that she could explain it all to the judge and that would be it. He adds that even today Gracie may not have the sense of any wrong she may have done with Joe. Georgie says that the episode ruined his childhood as everybody stayed away from him after that. They could not understand what made Gracie, a 36-year-old woman, to have an affair with a 7th grade student. Joe engages in a private text conversation with an unnamed friend who shares his hobby of rearing monarch butterflies. At one point, he proposes they take a vacation together, but she rebuffs him by reminding him that he is married. Elizabeth participates in a Q&A at the twins' high school and discusses what the intimacy actors and crew members feel when shooting a sex scene. She says it can be difficult to distinguish between real feelings and fake feelings during a sex scene. Elizabeth says she enjoys playing morally ambiguous characters, but Mary is visibly offended. Later, Gracie teaches Elizabeth how she does her make-up. Gracie also learns a little about Elizabeth's life. Gracie teaches Elizabeth to bake her famous pineapple cake. Elizabeth spends time with Joe and learns about his hobby of rearing butterflies. He says that he was neglected in school and only Gracie saw him. At home, Charlie shares a cannabis joint with Joe, who reveals to his son that he has never tried cannabis before. High, Joe has a breakdown and weeps in Charlie's arms. Joe basically never got to live his childhood and went straight to adulthood with all the media glare and being the father of Honor. The family, accompanied by Elizabeth, celebrate the twins' graduation. At the restaurant, they have an awkward encounter with Tom, Georgie, and Gracie's old family. Honor is not happy that a movie is being made about Gracie's life and is also unhappy with the present that Gracie got her for her graduation (a scale). Gracie tells Elizabeth that she is naive, and she expects that life would be perfect and that her children would love her. Georgie proposes that Elizabeth get him a job as a music supervisor on the film in exchange for details about Gracie's life; he claims that he read Gracie's diary and discovered that her older brothers had sexually abused her. Georgie also threatens that if not given the job, he will disparage the film to the press when it is released. Elizabeth gets a ride home from Joe. Elizabeth invites Joe to her accommodation, where he gives her a letter Gracie wrote him early in their relationship. The two have sex, and Elizabeth tells Joe that he still has time to start a new life. Joe leaves once she refers to his experiences as a "story", saying that story is "his life". That night, Joe tearfully confronts Gracie about the start of their relationship, wondering whether he was "too young". Gracie insists he seduced her, and repeatedly asks who was really in control. After Joe leaves, Elizabeth reads Gracie's letter to Joe and enacts the same as would do a scene in a movie. The morning of graduation, one of Joe's butterflies emerges from its chrysalis. Later, the whole family watches Charlie and Mary graduate while Joe weeps alone in the crowd. As Elizabeth prepares to leave, Gracie tells her that Georgie fabricated the story of abuse by her brothers. On the set of the film, Elizabeth films multiple takes of a scene depicting Gracie seducing Joe at the pet store. While the director is satisfied, she asks to film another take, insisting that the scene is "getting more real".