Hollywould

I was tired of being a poor writer, a friend told me recently.
Poor as in I should pay for this round? I asked.
No, poor as in I suck, he replied with a smile.
I told him: why not give screenwriting a shot. Apparently there is more money to be made, wider readership and lower standards.
I was too late; he had gone down that road already. He told me about his time in New York:

My teacher said he was the quintessential Jewish New Yorker, except he wasn’t. Actually he had grown up in Buffalo and came from a Hungarian family that had ceased to be Jewish before he was even born. What do I know, maybe that does make him the quintessential Jewish New Yorker, but the point is he said over and over that we should “tell the truth” in our movies. And he didn’t tell the truth about himself. I was there to learn how to lie, not how to tell the truth; I was used to telling the truth. Teach me how to lie, how to do it well and how to maintain the willing suspension of disbelief.

He did give us a pointer. He said: write every script in two columns. On one side write everything sans-dialogue (yes, he actually said sans-dialogue); on the other, write only the dialogue. He said that if the script was good, each column read independently would convey the meaning of the movie equally. I asked whether it might be in the least possible that a movie have several meanings to different people. He said yes, but the same meaning on both columns, nonetheless. I asked how we could even tell if the meaning was the same; as writers we knew the meaning even without reading it. The answer was obvious: show it to someone else.

Naturally I assumed that, out of this summer course, my friend had come up with at least one such script. He had, and he was more or less expecting the question because he promised me the script so that I could be that external reader he was waiting for (he doesn’t have many friends). He e-mailed the script, I take the liberty of copying it, since he has no use for it now.


Traffic Chaos – A screenplay for a short animated movie

INT. BATHROOM
A small bathroom with a shower, a toilet and a mirror.
A black man is done with shaving and stares at himself for a few seconds.
Complete silence.
Fade out.

INT. GARAGE
The man walks a large garage (about 30m in depth with a high ceiling).
He is now dressed in a dark blue suit, dark blue shirt and no tie.
In a Dutch angle, we follow the man as he walks to his vehicle, a futuristic version of a VW beetle, except made for only one person and fully yellow in color.
He walks and enters the vehicle to the tune of a soft progressive instrumental rock track.

EXT. FUTURISTIC SKYLINE – EARLY MORNING
We now know it is a bright and sunny day, as we can see the brightness seeping in from the windows of the vehicle.
The background is fuzzy, so it cannot be made out.
The same track keeps playing from inside the car.
A slow zoom out, shows us that the vehicle is actually flying over a typically futuristic urban landscape, full of high rise buildings and other vehicles flying about.
Gradually, the man, who we can still make out in the center of the frame, begins to drift towards another yellow car, as we watch other yellow cars also coming together.
In the end we have about a few dozen yellow cars swarming together through the sky.
Our main character is in the edge of this swarm.
We zoom back in on him as he wanders to his right side.
The point of view follows the man’s gaze towards a red vehicle in the near distance. Inside we see a beautiful black woman.
We see the man again with a half-smile turning the wheel to direct the vehicle towards the red car.
Zoom out shows he is not the only one diverting. After a short period of rearrangement, we notice now a swarm of multicolored vehicles, except all drivers are black.
The next shot shows the man in the yellow vehicle next to the woman in the red vehicle.
The man presses a button and the window rolls down.
The woman also rolls down her window.
The calm music we have been hearing is now taken over by funky electro-jazz-rock music.
The man grimaces and rolls up his window.
Zooming out we see that a bit further there is a white woman wearing a dark blue shirt. Our main character now drifts towards her.
Gradually, as before, vehicles begin to converge once more, resulting in multi-colored swarms with drivers wearing the same dark blue color outfit.
Cut to the woman in the red car (she is wearing green). She looks disappointed and grabs her neck.
Cut to her hand. We see she is gripping a crucifix.
Cut to her vehicle together with a black vehicle in which an old white man is also wearing a crucifix.
Same situation as before, we end up with a swarm of multicolored cars, where we see all drivers with a tiny shiny crucifix in their necks.
At this point, zoom out does not stop. As we continue to zoom out, a pattern starts to emerge. All vehicles are constantly moving from one swarm to the other with only brief flashes of stability.
On a wider angle we see the final chaos in which vehicles never settle and keep moving around, showing an almost single dirty color from the mix of the different vehicles, moving around like a swarm of bees.
The music is still the funky piece that has been picking up in volume, until moments later it starts to fade out with the image.


We met again yesterday. I asked my friend: where is the dialogue?
There is no dialogue, he answered, did you get it?
I got it, I just didn’t like it, I said bluntly.
Well, he said with a smile, why do you think I’m back to being a poor writer.
I bought him a beer.