Another gosh-darned screenplay
Yep,if you thought I was done writing screenplays, you're wrong. DEAD WRONG. I've been working on this one for a couple weeks now, and while I'm not proud of the current result, keep in mind that I've been plowing through this and have done a bare minimum of revising. Mainly, I think a lot of it is too dialogue-driven and heavy-handed. But if you read it and decide to comment, NO HANDJOBS PLZ KTHX.
Black space. An alarm clock buzzes. Sound of a hand coming down and smacking it real good. Main title. For a few lingering seconds, we get a good look at WILL HAYDN, 15, a tall boy with a small frame and dark, unkempt hair. For a moment, he lies on his side, soaking up every last second of relaxation he can get. He’s visibly unhappy about having to get up. Once out of bed, he can barely walk a straight line. A quick montage and we see Will hopping out of the shower, grabbing breakfast, and heading out to the bus stop. It’s a familiar ritual for many, but for Bill Haydn it’s a very personal vision of hell.
Outside in the bus stop, his mood is no better. Huddled up in the dark, freezing November morning, he’s quite obviously regretting wearing a windbreaker today. He paces in circles, trying to get his blood flowing. It ain’t working.
He’s been waiting for a long time now. The bus comes, and for a moment a look of evident relief can be briefly seen. Upon boarding, we can hear the heat loudly blasting.
DRIVER (obliviously cheerful)
Sorry, old one broke down!
Will takes a seat by himself, fourth from the front, left hand side. The window next to him pops down. He gets up to fix it, but a few seconds later it just pops down again. This time, he doesn’t bother. Instead, he just curls into a ball against the seat in front of him.
Once in school, Will makes a beeline for the bathroom with such certainty that one gets the idea that he’s a regular there. He splashes cold water in his face, although judging by his eyes, the only thing that’s changed is the fact that now he has a wet face. Out in the hallway, the camera struggles to wade through the crowd of hundreds of students, but eventually the cameraman just gets frustrated and holds it above his head. A bell rings and the crowd instantaneously disperses like so many flies.
Happiness continues to elude Herr Haydn throughout most of his classes, as we quickly begin to gather. By the time school’s let out, he looks like a man who’s spent the last week trapped under fifty-seven pounds of spiders. When he gets home, he falls back onto his bed, face up.
Cut to black. Subtitle: DAY 84
EXT. Bus stop. Very early morning. Will is again standing, shivering, trying to bury his face in his jacket to stay warm.
WILL (narrating)
There are times when I’m out here that I wonder why I’m standing out in the freezing cold to go on a bus full of people I don’t like that’s going to take me to a place that I don’t want to go.
The bus pulls up.
WILL (cont’d)
The best answer I can come up with is “to ensure my future happiness”, but then, I’ve still got no guarantees. I’ve only increased my chances of going to ANOTHER place which promises to do the exact same thing, only better. And even then, nothing’s assured.
Sitting in the same seat as before, huddled in the same position as yesterday, he closes his eyes. Outside, it’s lightly snowing.
EXT. School bus stop. A little later. Will sleepwalks off the bus and into school, making a beeline for the bathroom, just like before. He considers using one of the toilets, but someone clogged it up with toilet paper. He leaves.
INT. Main hall. A slightly chubby girl with bright blonde streaks running through her dark brown hair. Thick black-framed glasses with no actual lens in them. Backpack consisting mostly of gratuitously-strewn duct tape. You know the type.
GIRL
Okay, you won’t believe what I found last night.
WILL
What’d you find?
GIRL
Guess!
WILL
I dunno, what?
GIRL
THIS!
The girl pulls a flyer out of her backpack. It’s a bright green advertisement for a church youth gathering. Across the top, in Oriental lettering:
TEENS LET’S ROCK OUT
FOR CHRIST
To the left is what can be unmistakenably identified as a photocopied image of Jesus playing an electric guitar. To the right is a picture of a mime performing for a wheelchair-bound teen, who’s hardly paying attention anyway.
Will looks up at the girl, and we freeze for a moment on her smiling face.
WILL (narrating)
Dana’s been my best friend for a couple years now, though sometimes I’m a bit hesitant to admit it.
INT. Dana’s bedroom, where hipness goes to die. The entire room isan epic temple to irony. If a modern historian wanted to document the rise and fall of pop-culture’s past 30 years, he’d need only consult her room. Mr. T posters coat the walls. An entire shelf is devoted to her Transformers action figures. Her CD collection consists of early 90’s rap and 80’s hard rock.
WILL (still narrating)
Dana’s been into all this postmodern crap ever since it started being trendy in the late 90’s. Of all the garage-sale fodder littering her shelves, her prized possession remains her autographed copy of Mr. T’s self-help video Be Somebody or be Somebody’s Fool. In mid-2004 she (ironically) attended a comic book/sci-fi convention and won third place in a costume contest for her fully ironic Thundercats outfit. To this day, the trophy remains on her mantle, between her official Junior Power Rangers certificate of authenticity and Miller Lite “Full Contact Golf” promotional Tee.
INT. Main hallway. Unfreeze on Dana’s face.
DANA
Tell me, is that not the best thing ever?
WILL
No, attending a U.N. meeting dressed as a pirate would be, and ONLY because pirates totally rock.
DANA
No, no, nope. (they begin walking together now) Read this. “Rock out for Christ”. It’s like it was written by the Burger King Kid’s Club or something. In fact (hits the picture of the wheelchair-bound boy a few times), yeah, this is most definitely Wheels.
WILL
Or I.Q., after he was gunned down by terrorists like in Back to the Future. And on a related note, HOLY GOD.
DANA
I.Q. was the smart one, right?
WILL (softly)
Dana. Your left.
Walking past by them in the hallway is a corpulent fellow by the name of Fred. Weighing in at about 300 pounds, standing five feet off the floor and sporting a snazzy leopard-print hearing aid, he’s a sight to behold if one can escape his gravitational pull. Sometimes, when he wears his green and yellow striped sweater, he bears an uncanny resemblance to an upside-down Christmas tree. Regardless, his distinguishing feature remains his wrists. About halfway down his forearm, the fat level begins to taper off to the point at which his arms look somewhat normal. His hands, however, are proportional with the rest of his body. It is for this reason that he’s earned the nickname “Fat Hand Man”. What’s caused such a stir in Will is that right now FHM is carrying a copy of the Kama Sutra in such a manner that he’s making no effort to conceal it.
DANA
Wow. It’s not funny anymore. Now it’s just gotten sad.
WILL
I concur.
Will and Dana watch FHM walk off as Will resumes narration.
WILL (narrating)
My first encounter with Freddie “Fat Hand Man” Jorgeson wasn’t a pleasant experience, but neither were my subsequent ones.
FLASHBACK. INT. Art room.
WILL (cont’d)
It was the first day of my freshmen year in high school, and Fred’s first day of his second sophomore year. We were doing this getting-to-know-you game, and he and I were partnered up on the grounds that I was too shy to pick anyone else and he just smelled funny.
Will approaches Fred, who’s drawing something.
WILL
Hey.
FRED (seemingly annoyed)
Hello.
WILL
You wanna…be partners?
FRED
Alright. Let me just finish something.
Fred continues to draw. Will, not wanting to be nosy, doesn’t watch him at first, but after some time curiosity gets the best of him and he glances over. To his shock and horror, Fred is drawing a picture of a bikini-clad Japanese-y woman with a figure resembling a pear with comically disproportionate boobs.
WILL (suddenly feeling awkward as hell)
Uhhh…
FRED (defensive)
What?
WILL
Nothing. (resumes narrating) A few months later, we had to present a project we’d been spending the bulk of our class time on.
Fred is at the front of the class with a large poster. At the center is a life-sized silhouette of a girl in fetal position, her eyes represented by shards of mirror. The backdrop consists entirely of dozens of newspaper clippings reading “rape”, “terrorism”, “teen drug use”, “child abandoned”, and the like. In the bottom right-hand corner is a cartoon picture of a guitar on fire that was obviously taken from a teen magazine.
TEACHER
So, tell us a little about your work.
FRED (having obviously rehearsed this)
I got the idea once while walking downtown…I saw this girl, about our age, and she was lying just like this, pressed against a windowsill. I wondered whatever could have made her so sad…and as I sat alone, pondering man’s place in this modern world, I began to realize that perhaps she wasn’t sad at all. Perhaps she was simply…scared. Maybe she was just returning to her natural state. (pauses for a moment to let that sink in) I made this silhouette outline with my little sister and a roll of black butcher paper. She’s an absolute angel. The mirror represents, obviously, the human soul. Are you looking at the art, or is the art merely a reflection YOU? I made the backdrop entirely out of newspaper clippings that, I feel, reflect these troubled times we live in. The guitar represents my burning desire to play the guitar.
WILL (narrating)
At that very moment, I finally knew what it meant to hate.
BACK TO THE PRESENT. Same moment we left.
DANA
You know what he reminds me of? Those fat twins on the motorcycles. You know, they drive side-by-side all the time? Only it’s the Fat Hand Man, so it sucks.
WILL
Oh, hey, I meant to ask you: how’s the job hunt going?
DANA
Not too bad, although I’ve still got my fingers crossed for the record store. I mean, where else does a trendy-as-hell Gen Y’er like me go?
WILL
True dat.
DANA
Welp, my class is down that way, so I’ll catch you later.
WILL
Bye.
Black space. An alarm clock buzzes. Sound of a hand coming down and smacking it real good. Main title. For a few lingering seconds, we get a good look at WILL HAYDN, 15, a tall boy with a small frame and dark, unkempt hair. For a moment, he lies on his side, soaking up every last second of relaxation he can get. He’s visibly unhappy about having to get up. Once out of bed, he can barely walk a straight line. A quick montage and we see Will hopping out of the shower, grabbing breakfast, and heading out to the bus stop. It’s a familiar ritual for many, but for Bill Haydn it’s a very personal vision of hell.
Outside in the bus stop, his mood is no better. Huddled up in the dark, freezing November morning, he’s quite obviously regretting wearing a windbreaker today. He paces in circles, trying to get his blood flowing. It ain’t working.
He’s been waiting for a long time now. The bus comes, and for a moment a look of evident relief can be briefly seen. Upon boarding, we can hear the heat loudly blasting.
DRIVER (obliviously cheerful)
Sorry, old one broke down!
Will takes a seat by himself, fourth from the front, left hand side. The window next to him pops down. He gets up to fix it, but a few seconds later it just pops down again. This time, he doesn’t bother. Instead, he just curls into a ball against the seat in front of him.
Once in school, Will makes a beeline for the bathroom with such certainty that one gets the idea that he’s a regular there. He splashes cold water in his face, although judging by his eyes, the only thing that’s changed is the fact that now he has a wet face. Out in the hallway, the camera struggles to wade through the crowd of hundreds of students, but eventually the cameraman just gets frustrated and holds it above his head. A bell rings and the crowd instantaneously disperses like so many flies.
Happiness continues to elude Herr Haydn throughout most of his classes, as we quickly begin to gather. By the time school’s let out, he looks like a man who’s spent the last week trapped under fifty-seven pounds of spiders. When he gets home, he falls back onto his bed, face up.
Cut to black. Subtitle: DAY 84
EXT. Bus stop. Very early morning. Will is again standing, shivering, trying to bury his face in his jacket to stay warm.
WILL (narrating)
There are times when I’m out here that I wonder why I’m standing out in the freezing cold to go on a bus full of people I don’t like that’s going to take me to a place that I don’t want to go.
The bus pulls up.
WILL (cont’d)
The best answer I can come up with is “to ensure my future happiness”, but then, I’ve still got no guarantees. I’ve only increased my chances of going to ANOTHER place which promises to do the exact same thing, only better. And even then, nothing’s assured.
Sitting in the same seat as before, huddled in the same position as yesterday, he closes his eyes. Outside, it’s lightly snowing.
EXT. School bus stop. A little later. Will sleepwalks off the bus and into school, making a beeline for the bathroom, just like before. He considers using one of the toilets, but someone clogged it up with toilet paper. He leaves.
INT. Main hall. A slightly chubby girl with bright blonde streaks running through her dark brown hair. Thick black-framed glasses with no actual lens in them. Backpack consisting mostly of gratuitously-strewn duct tape. You know the type.
GIRL
Okay, you won’t believe what I found last night.
WILL
What’d you find?
GIRL
Guess!
WILL
I dunno, what?
GIRL
THIS!
The girl pulls a flyer out of her backpack. It’s a bright green advertisement for a church youth gathering. Across the top, in Oriental lettering:
TEENS LET’S ROCK OUT
FOR CHRIST
To the left is what can be unmistakenably identified as a photocopied image of Jesus playing an electric guitar. To the right is a picture of a mime performing for a wheelchair-bound teen, who’s hardly paying attention anyway.
Will looks up at the girl, and we freeze for a moment on her smiling face.
WILL (narrating)
Dana’s been my best friend for a couple years now, though sometimes I’m a bit hesitant to admit it.
INT. Dana’s bedroom, where hipness goes to die. The entire room isan epic temple to irony. If a modern historian wanted to document the rise and fall of pop-culture’s past 30 years, he’d need only consult her room. Mr. T posters coat the walls. An entire shelf is devoted to her Transformers action figures. Her CD collection consists of early 90’s rap and 80’s hard rock.
WILL (still narrating)
Dana’s been into all this postmodern crap ever since it started being trendy in the late 90’s. Of all the garage-sale fodder littering her shelves, her prized possession remains her autographed copy of Mr. T’s self-help video Be Somebody or be Somebody’s Fool. In mid-2004 she (ironically) attended a comic book/sci-fi convention and won third place in a costume contest for her fully ironic Thundercats outfit. To this day, the trophy remains on her mantle, between her official Junior Power Rangers certificate of authenticity and Miller Lite “Full Contact Golf” promotional Tee.
INT. Main hallway. Unfreeze on Dana’s face.
DANA
Tell me, is that not the best thing ever?
WILL
No, attending a U.N. meeting dressed as a pirate would be, and ONLY because pirates totally rock.
DANA
No, no, nope. (they begin walking together now) Read this. “Rock out for Christ”. It’s like it was written by the Burger King Kid’s Club or something. In fact (hits the picture of the wheelchair-bound boy a few times), yeah, this is most definitely Wheels.
WILL
Or I.Q., after he was gunned down by terrorists like in Back to the Future. And on a related note, HOLY GOD.
DANA
I.Q. was the smart one, right?
WILL (softly)
Dana. Your left.
Walking past by them in the hallway is a corpulent fellow by the name of Fred. Weighing in at about 300 pounds, standing five feet off the floor and sporting a snazzy leopard-print hearing aid, he’s a sight to behold if one can escape his gravitational pull. Sometimes, when he wears his green and yellow striped sweater, he bears an uncanny resemblance to an upside-down Christmas tree. Regardless, his distinguishing feature remains his wrists. About halfway down his forearm, the fat level begins to taper off to the point at which his arms look somewhat normal. His hands, however, are proportional with the rest of his body. It is for this reason that he’s earned the nickname “Fat Hand Man”. What’s caused such a stir in Will is that right now FHM is carrying a copy of the Kama Sutra in such a manner that he’s making no effort to conceal it.
DANA
Wow. It’s not funny anymore. Now it’s just gotten sad.
WILL
I concur.
Will and Dana watch FHM walk off as Will resumes narration.
WILL (narrating)
My first encounter with Freddie “Fat Hand Man” Jorgeson wasn’t a pleasant experience, but neither were my subsequent ones.
FLASHBACK. INT. Art room.
WILL (cont’d)
It was the first day of my freshmen year in high school, and Fred’s first day of his second sophomore year. We were doing this getting-to-know-you game, and he and I were partnered up on the grounds that I was too shy to pick anyone else and he just smelled funny.
Will approaches Fred, who’s drawing something.
WILL
Hey.
FRED (seemingly annoyed)
Hello.
WILL
You wanna…be partners?
FRED
Alright. Let me just finish something.
Fred continues to draw. Will, not wanting to be nosy, doesn’t watch him at first, but after some time curiosity gets the best of him and he glances over. To his shock and horror, Fred is drawing a picture of a bikini-clad Japanese-y woman with a figure resembling a pear with comically disproportionate boobs.
WILL (suddenly feeling awkward as hell)
Uhhh…
FRED (defensive)
What?
WILL
Nothing. (resumes narrating) A few months later, we had to present a project we’d been spending the bulk of our class time on.
Fred is at the front of the class with a large poster. At the center is a life-sized silhouette of a girl in fetal position, her eyes represented by shards of mirror. The backdrop consists entirely of dozens of newspaper clippings reading “rape”, “terrorism”, “teen drug use”, “child abandoned”, and the like. In the bottom right-hand corner is a cartoon picture of a guitar on fire that was obviously taken from a teen magazine.
TEACHER
So, tell us a little about your work.
FRED (having obviously rehearsed this)
I got the idea once while walking downtown…I saw this girl, about our age, and she was lying just like this, pressed against a windowsill. I wondered whatever could have made her so sad…and as I sat alone, pondering man’s place in this modern world, I began to realize that perhaps she wasn’t sad at all. Perhaps she was simply…scared. Maybe she was just returning to her natural state. (pauses for a moment to let that sink in) I made this silhouette outline with my little sister and a roll of black butcher paper. She’s an absolute angel. The mirror represents, obviously, the human soul. Are you looking at the art, or is the art merely a reflection YOU? I made the backdrop entirely out of newspaper clippings that, I feel, reflect these troubled times we live in. The guitar represents my burning desire to play the guitar.
WILL (narrating)
At that very moment, I finally knew what it meant to hate.
BACK TO THE PRESENT. Same moment we left.
DANA
You know what he reminds me of? Those fat twins on the motorcycles. You know, they drive side-by-side all the time? Only it’s the Fat Hand Man, so it sucks.
WILL
Oh, hey, I meant to ask you: how’s the job hunt going?
DANA
Not too bad, although I’ve still got my fingers crossed for the record store. I mean, where else does a trendy-as-hell Gen Y’er like me go?
WILL
True dat.
DANA
Welp, my class is down that way, so I’ll catch you later.
WILL
Bye.