My Own Creation

Skeleton of Script
A Shower

SCENE I
Movie opens with Lear and his friend, Rose, sitting at Barrington Beach, RI on Narragansett Bay. They have a pile of bottles and they are writing messages in them and throwing them into the bay. Lear remarks to Rose on how sending the bottles make him feel connected to everyone, how they will go anywhere in the world. Rose sits contemplatively for a moment, then asks Lear if he wants to go “The Fort.” Lear agrees. They go over to the dunes, find a specific dune, lift it up, and enter a series of tunnels and under-sand caverns made possible by the clay-like sand of Barrington Beach. Rose tells Lear a story about their gullible friend, Joe, who was tricked into going to school that past Saturday. [Lear and Rose are juniors in high school-age] Scene ends with Lear and Rose parting ways, Lear walking up steps to home.

SCENE II
Scene opens with fight in Lear’s household. Lear is yelling at his older brother for breaking his favorite video game “America’s Army 5.” It is revealed that the video game is free and distributed to anyone at no charge by the US Army. Lear, Edgar, and most other kids they know play the game. Lear makes a crack at how Edgar should just keep studying, that he should go up to his room and be alone where he belongs. Edgar, clearly hurt, runs upstairs. As he runs, Edgar tells Lear that if their parents hadn’t spent all their money helping Lear with his mental disorder, he could have afforded to go to a good school—or at least have had a television in his room. Lear goes outside to work on sanding his dory paddles. He is seated on a bench directly under one of the windows looking into the family room. He can hear the television in the background. The television is on a news channel, which incessantly drawls on about an impending meteor shower—one in which golf-ball sized meteors may hit Barrington. Suddenly, it cuts to a special public service announcement—a well-respected and renowned psychiatrist is talking. He speaks of the danger that the meteor shower will impose on people. In a shocking moment, he reveals that kids playing the “America’s Army 5” video game will, by an intricate system of electrical impulses in the brain, be affected by the meteor shower and will become violent and unpredictable in less than a half hour. The psychiatrist suggests locking kids who play the game into their rooms. He explains that he has hijacked the network connection to warn the public—that the government intended to use the video game’s susceptibility to such violence in order to exterminate the working class families that have kids that play the game. He goes on to say that the upper classes have already been warned, that their children have been given the antidote. Lear’s parents watch the TV in surprise and fear, run upstairs to lock Edgar in his room, accomplishing this task but look around desperately for Lear, who is already running down the street.

SCENE III
Lear makes it to “The Fort.” Rose is already there, visibly frightened. She talks to Lear frantically about the announcement, saying that her parents have already fled, that she is glad she never played the game. Rose knows that Lear has played, and asks Lear what he’ll do. Lear explains that he doesn’t thinking it will affect him, because his brain chemistry is already so messed up by the medication for his mental disorder. Lear and Rose sit and listen to the sound of thousands of cars going away at top speed, full of parents leaving their children behind to rot in their rooms. After a half hour of panicking, Rose hears another sound—one sounding like a thousand golf balls landing on the ground. Lear and Rose know that the shower is here.

SCENE IV
This scene shows the shower hitting and the visual effect of thousands of cars in gridlocked traffic trying to escape to where they think children will not be. Meanwhile, the anguished cries of children cry out. After a few minutes, these cries of isolation are replaced by shouts of terror, indicating that the transformation from normal human child to violent zombie-like creature is complete.

SCENE V
Shows various scenes of horrific violence committed by the transformed kids on their parents, who are trying, despite warnings, to take them with them to safety. Eventually, the transformed have gone to the streets, wreaking havoc.

Shows clips of government press release revealing that the Department of Domestic Security will ensure the safety of its citizens by quarantining the affected children in a special facility where they will be rehabilitated. The release denies any claims of governmental conspiracy and assures people that the children will not be harmed.

Cut to clip of Iranian PM denouncing Western excesses and proclaiming this plague of violence to be Allah’s purging of the “Western devil.” To assist in Allah’s plight, Iran announces that they are stepping up their nuclear weapons program in preparation for an assault on the United States.
SCENE VI
Lear and Rose are happily excited that Lear is not transformed. However, this gaiety is more than dominated by a pervasive fear of what is happening above “The Fort,” in the real world. The two know it is mayhem by the sounds they hear. Lear decides that they must go back to his house and see if any of his family is still alive, despite the risk.

In a series of narrow escapes, they make it back to Lear’s house. Lear finds Edgar in his room, listening to the noises outside and clearly frightened. Edgar asks what is going on, and Lear explains it to him. Lear tells Edgar that he is also one of the lucky ones that didn’t transform, but Edgar remarks that he can feel a strong force within him being awakened. Lear passionately asserts that it is completely a machination of Edgar’s mind, but Edgar nevertheless begins to visibly change into one of the transformed [which consists of a haggard appearance characterized by an intense crouch, arms forward, and frothing mouth]. Lear and Rose narrowly escape outside, and somehow manage to get back to “The Fort.”

SCENE VII
Lear and Rose decide to set a trap in “The Fort,” expecting Edgar to find them and go after them, knowing that he has knowledge of the location. Lear and Rose openly discuss how Edgar’s transformation only occurred when they arrived, and question how humans could ever commit such horrific acts. Rose reasons that, if such acts were possible, human nature could not be inherently good, and that society must restrain such profligacy. Lear disagrees, stating that the video game and the government behind it was the source of the problem.

Edgar is heard attempting to break into “The Fort.” He falls into the trap, but hits his head sharply against a rock, rendering him unconscious.

Edgar comes to, and Lear and Rose try to talk to him. He is raving mad, writhing and frothing at the mouth. Lear and Rose remind him that he can fight it, that it is possible as shown by Lear’s resistance. After a while of this, Edgar starts to visibly change to become more human again. Lear reasons that it can be fought by strong willpower, and praises Edgar. In a moment of epiphany, Rose states that perhaps the meteors never did affect the kids—that it was all due to people’s stubborn belief in the corruption of government and the hypersuggestivity that followed from that belief.

Edgar admits that it was a conscious choice to change—that changing to a violent, simple world was easier than staying in a rational one that seemed inherently corrupt and unfair.

Lear goes to let Edgar down from the trap, but the rope snaps as he is loosening it, and Edgar hits his head on a rock again. Edgar dies.

Lear and Rose, stricken with sadness and despair, decide on their course of action. With only a few moments hesitation, they take a pen and paper and the bag of bottles. The movie ends with their rowing to a nearby island in Lear’s dory while mayhem ensues in the background.



RELATING THIS SCRIPT TO EUROPEAN MODERNISM IN ONE PARAGRAPH
The inspiration for this movie script was the philosophy of Modernism. Modernists examined parts of society to evaluate their efficacy. In my script, I evaluated the inefficacy of irrational mistrust of government and hypersuggestivity caused by prejudices. The goal for the script was to show that, in misunderstanding, one can be tricked into performing even the most horrific acts and transformations. I also slipped in subtle theories on human nature as a whole, in the spirit of European Modernists subtly including lofty ideals even in their most mundane poems. The end of the script especially comments on the nobleness of human nature to want to help, even if the only method of help is by sending a glass bottle down the stream. I also honored the European Modernist tradition of using prior works of literature in strange ways in their work by superimposing the Lear and Edgar characters onto mine, when the connection is not intuitively obvious. Further, I used the European Modernist style of titling my work, giving it a title that creates multiple initial reactions, and is revealed to be relevant only later in the work.