Script Synopsis V2

By dan from why.movie | March 12, 2019

03-12-19

omg. This could be a podcast episode. Yep might have to be. I realize tonight that MAYBE I should ponder the structure of the movie. Ponder the structure 3 days before sending a screener to Cannes? Ha, yep. Gotta love a crisis!

We promised high drama and big thrills folks. AND man are we delivering. The idea that tonight I realized for pretty much the first time that there are certain outcomes I want to accomplish at different stages of the movie. The ride we're trying to facilitate. What's supposed to happen when, I've heard that there is such a thing.

Better late than never. I guess that's all I got.

I've broken the script synopsis into outcome chunks. Below each chunk we're talking about what's supposed to happen. This should be FUN!

03-11-19

Prelude

Scene • If you could tell yourself something - Once Upon A Time

Scene • Carnage Theme Park - Armor staging area at Nuke Waste Repository

Scene • iRock - Surveillance before mission, see and hear Christina

Scene • Uncle Joe's Hideout - Context

Scene • Bicycle Ejaculation - exiting the Hideout

> Scene • Femur retracted - Hideout security activated

Scene • Joe Traveling - depart Hideout

Scene • Road River A

•••

What's the job that the Prelude is doing? The delicious pull of intrigue. There's a lot of mysteries and questions all at once, with enough of the mundane and familiar to cause a truly WTF moment. YOU WANT TO WATCH MORE.

Wait... a THEME SONG!

Scene • Post Apocalyptic Chardash - Flashes of extrapolation to come

Scene • Show Theme FUDIP - Opening Credits + Christina, Gerry and the Big Boat

The main idea here is fun. Now that you're at your most curious and open, here's a theme song injection so you'll get a little thrill at the start of every episode.. once you get addicted to this series. Surprise, you're watching a Netflix serial pastiche. The theme song is slightly ironic. Also confusing. As we're currently in the golden age of television, the theme song is a nod to that, I think. Plus growing up as a TV kid. Of course my first feature is going to have a theme song. How much better everyone's life would be if they all had their own sweet, custom theme song that would play when they woke up in the morning? Way better.

The point of this is a bit of mirror action, I think this is something subtle. The idea of a theme song in the middle of a movie, a pseudo-musical. Hang on, let's see how much humor there is in the prelude, be right back.

Strictly speaking, you can take the most of the Prelude at face value, unless we go over the top with the TUSK phone. The ads are mostly incomprehensible, dark humor. Subtle dark humor - not quite sure if it's supposed to be funny, maybe feels a little uncomfortable. That was some fucked up horror show offered in the Prelude. The Carnage Theme Park. Was that funny?

The theme song could be a cleanse of the palette. Hang on there folks, we're just here to have fun. It's just a story after all. Look, here's a cajun bayou type theme song, because maybe there's a whole lot more Bayou, what with those flooded coastlines. Good times!

Here's a summary.

  1. Dan wanted a theme song pretty soon after the inception of this movie. He had one lying around 🙂 That's just how he is.
  2. We can go way more dark and fucked up in the Prelude if we ease through with a theme song, signalling that we can have fun no matter what. Plus they are just toys. (Wait - dead toys) Oops! That's kind of even more horrific than dead humans... but not as awful as dead human children. Somewhere between. Again, signalling. We're on the middle path, the way of the neutral angels. This is the sort of symbology Joe C would dig. So the theme song establishes context. Yes, this is going to be fun movie and look!
  3. there are attractive people who you hope will get together. After some trouble and disappointment first, of course. Cause it's a romantic comedy.
  4. Music should just muscle on into any situation possible, music should be always ready to ambush us, take over our moments. Music tracks you down and makes a theme song for you and every morning you're excited to get up cause you're theme song is playing

The bottom line is... it's a mystery. I just feel this theme song is important without being able to fully articulate why. Maybe I'll figure out why later. I love how much writing I did to try and sort his out!

Introduction

Scene • Road River B - short, hint of teaching
snippet of Arborealists

Scene • People's Poetry Slam - Joe teaches Lena Arborealists + Boxes

Scene • Collapsing wave functions - Christina in her cabin with bubble wrap

+2 Scene • Kidhood flashbacks

Scene • Road River C - longer, more involved.
What's showing up on the road? More time longer poem, the road begins to get interesting. A time unraveling.

Scene • Paul's Pype - The Fungus Box Fusion

Scene • Ring! - Christina is brought back abruptly

Scene • Hello - A re-memory of meeting Roger, the ET

Scene • But... you're Dead - Raising a significant objection

Scene • Just Open the Door - Hero's invitation 1/3

>+3 (I2) Scene • Here I Come - Joe's farewell speech to the Clique Iteration 2

Scene • I'm opening the door

Scene • Best Scenario Yet - Childhood promise

Meeting the 5 or so main players and a slew of peripheral characters

The People - Wearing uniforms to keep them apart from the primaries and also unified into a common experience. They are all learning or being tutored, indoctrinated? They seem free and happy, so they must be choosing to learn.

Joe = Road. Bike Guy. Teaching, sending telepathic messages, subliminal programming?

Christina = Child. At first just mixed apoco memories, free association, a jumble. Contrasted with the hard edged clarity of the flashbacks that follow, triggered by her control... I mean her Uncle.

Gerry = Asleep. He's stands in for all us sleepers, the non-Clique. The boxes tell us about him, because he never would. Those boxes are better than having a cat and maybe even a lover. He's grown / invented a stalwart ally, deployed immortality. Just another average human being.

Boxes = the Daughter of God. Redemption, hope, promise, renewal, blooming. the fusion of science and mysticism, yin and yang, no more chess board with robots and mushrooms on the other, all one. Bronners. The boxes could be DOG all along, even Christina was radar chaff. Joe was so sly he even forgot what he was up to.

The Big Boat = Earth. The world. Extension of our 1st world experience beyond it's expiration date. They have beds and pillows, there are lights and that sink has a towel next to it. Edges and right angles. Monk like cells for collapsing quantum wave functions and communing with mycelial machine consciousness.

 

ACT I

Scene • Creaky - what's waiting for her out there...

Scene • Can I Come In? - Hero's invitation 2/3

Scene • Check It Out - Joe inserts magic disc

Scene • That's him - Hero's invitation 3/3, "Now?!"

> Scene • Road River C1 - Fauna ("lasers" under Open Season)

Scene • Open Season

Scene • Road River C2 - "scientists are found"

>+2 Scene • Boxes response - Gerry sleeping still...

Scene • Date Dance - recapitulating consumer tropes with costume

Scene • At Gerry's Door - In the hallway, about to knock

Scene • Grown Up Ghost - Reading PKD to young Christina

This doesn't get more classic hero's journey. A dead guy shows up and invites you to save the world. To be the mother of the Daughter of God. Because you can't be God yourself, you silly sleeper, you've got to be all indirect and give birth to God, like that makes any sense. Anyway, OF COURSE she's going to say yes to that. She's champing at the bit, but for the sake of appearances she's got to seem to need convincing.

invitations and objections

Doesn't look like she has a choice. Doesn't look like she wants a choice. This acceptance of challenge is on rails, forgone. Because she's crazy. Brave. Crazy brave.

Scene • ACT II

Scene • I've been sent by God...

Scene • We Just Have To - Christina at a loss

Scene • Road River

> Scene • Joe's boot hint

Scene • It's God

>+2 Scene • Road River

The task proves to be difficult, no cake walk. All her rote strategies are ineffective, she's got to be more than she ever has been. Only by taking a huge risk, telling the impossible truth can she make the breakthrough. Helped by unseen hands, or unseen feet in this case. Again, classic hero's journey.

ACT III

Scene • Do It Again

Scene • Credits

>+3 Scene • Boxes Display Christina (many locations)
"Now be all boxes. Even smarter. Gerry inside box. Keep Christina Safe."

Scene • Spook Office - Uncle Joe, I haven't seen him in days

Scene • This Is Your Uncle Joe

Now comes the so what moment. We've pastiched Netflix and television sitcoms, we've done the hero's journey. What other story is there to tell? Isn't the passing the road like a film running through a projector.

Scenes Inventory

Apocalyptic Diversions

  • Heros (4-5)
  • Scene • Post Apocalyptic Chardash (snippets of the above plus)
    • Scene • Return of the Saurians (Joe traveling)
    • Scene • Empire State (leaning in water, skyline under ice?!)
    • Scene • Abrams silhouette (gorgeous tank in sunset, prayer flags in silhoutte, bird landing in silhouette on barrel. or maybe with dragon or terradactyl flyby?)
    • Scene • Saucers face-planted in field with dunes in the distance. Old farmer, "this works pretty good, made it myself." holds home made device with hand lettering "scalar weapon".
    • Scene • skeletal hand with credit cards and a box of twinkies
    • Scene • Melted Cityscape (Skyscrapers like candles, homage to Planet of the Apes sequels. Clay on foam armatures.)
    • Scene • Tsunami Aftermath (Container Ship wreckage with Big Boat) Longer hold, then in the background of big boat
    • Scene • Breakthrough. Something Uncle Joe said to her. We will save the world. You will save the world. Anything else we need to say?

Christina Flashbacks / Re-memories

Joe Traveling

 

03-10-19

Fade to road. Stuff going by, (the real story) Iteration 2 we plug in the People. For now, placeholders and scenes that describe what he's talking about. Wall Street Under Water, Smart Money, Open Season, Canyon Princess. When switching between Joe and People, sometimes there's interstitial moments and sometimes we go straight to the people gathering.