| Timberlane Dave (This screenplay is displayed here in my personal format) 1st SCENE EXCERPT FADE IN: EXT. DESERTED PARK - DAY Child's POV A young child rides his bike in figure eight formations on a decayed cement basketball court. A miniature Evel Knievel doll is duck taped to the dented center cross bar of the handle bars. It sways left to right with every turn. Only the sound of rubber meeting asphalt is heard. The bike wobbles uncontrollably with each turn but the rider manages to stay upright; just barely. ADULT MALE (V.O.) I still don’t understand what it is that makes kids do what they do. I guess it’s how they process reality. Or maybe it’s how reality processes them. Either way, it’s cool to watch. Some fall flat on their ass before the first step, others just get by. But a few, they… they want to conquer the world; or at least the world of Timberlane. The bicycling kid begins to hum the hook to Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water and breaks out of his figure eights. He steers off the cement basketball slab peddling faster towards the parking lot exit. He turns unto the street, cutting off a dilapidated 60’s land yacht of a car. Brakes squeal. The windows are down. The driver is barely visible over the steering wheel. He blows the car horn, yells, and sticks out a “bird” from the window in protest. The bicycle rider, reacting slowly to what has just happened, wheelies up over the curb and gets on the grass. He accidentally steers under a small oak tree’s limbs. Foliage crashes around his face. His elbow covers his view, then both. The bike moves erratically through the branches. The car passes by very slowly and cautiously as they continue down the road in the same direction. KID’S POV A young male hippie with long greasy hair is completely visible through the passenger side front door of the car; he looks stoned and emotionally disheveled. His eyes are wide. A cigarette dangles precariously from his lips. He stares at the kid in complete shock. He says nothing as he slowly drives past. KID’S POV Struggling to recover from the oak tree limbs, both elbows come down slowly as loose leaves and small leaf-covered twigs fall from above his head. The car stops and takes a left out of view. The kid, still on the grass, turns right in the opposite direction of the hippie, and then ramps off the curb onto the street once again. He is breathing heavy. Below the dangling Evel Knievel doll, two scrawny legs move up and down like little pistons. Scabbed cuts and scrapes are visible on both knee caps. LONG SHOT OF BICYCLING KID A school appears in sight, left. The kid starts to sing an excerpt from the same Deep Purple song as he flips the “bird” for no reason and rather awkwardly, as if he just learned how. KID FIRE IN THE SKY Da Doo Da Doo Da Dooo Molly Hatchet’s Flirtin’ with Disaster starts to play at full volume as the camera angle changes to an increasingly larger overhead (bird’s eye view) shot of a young boy on a white motormotorcycle-looking bicycle (an Evel Knievel motorcycle look-alike). The boy retracts his “birdy” hand and quickly steers his bike to the right side of the road and out of the path of an oncoming car. You can barely see the smoke from the squealing car tires from way above. The driver gets out of the car and shakes his hands in the air angrily as the boy peddles away at full speed. ADULT MALE (V.O.) That’s where Dave’s reality is - just beyond the outer limits of saneness where the grass grows thicker and greener than everyone else’s. And he knows it… SCROLL CREDITS Bird’s eye view takes the viewer on a trip around Dave’s stomping ground: the school, swim club, Baseball Park, the woods, the creek, his house, and then back to Dave who has now taken a right into his neighborhood: Timberlane. The camera angle increasingly drops down to Dave’s level as he rides down the sidewalk. With one hand off the handle bars, he reaches under the faux gas tank of his motorcycle-like bicycle and pulls out a bath towel. Steering with no hands now, he ties the towel around his neck like a cape. He is preparing for God knows what. A barking dog approaches Dave from across the street. It seems to be agitated with all moving objects. TD tries to kick the dog while trying to maintain control of his bike. <Show no physical harm to the dog on film> It eventually makes a yelping sound and falls back out of site. TD runs up the side of a neighbor’s yard, on the grass, trying to get control of his bike. He succeeds only to stop a few more feet away at a fire hydrant. He places a foot on the hydrant to keep his balance without having to use the kick stand. Sitting on the bike, he bends over to tie his loose shoe strings. FIRST PERSON PERSPECTIVE His hands appear from opposite sides to tie the shoe’s laces. Dave is nervous for some reason and it shows. He is incapable of tying proper loops so he just makes a double knot. His laces are still dangling as long as they were before but at least his shoe is tight on his foot now. SWITCH TO THIRD PERSON PERSPECTIVE ANGLE: LOOKING UP AT DAVE’S FACE He raises his head to the sky as sweat starts to pour from his brow. He has a concerned look. ADULT MALE (V.O) Dave was never one to avoid much either. He cleared a path for most of us, friends and family alike. And it was always a grand spectacle… TD takes a visible deep breath and wipes his head on his new white LaCoste polo shirt; the one with an alligator. He lowers his head as if in prayer but doesn’t close his eyes. Instead, he stares into the camera lens trying to convey his stress level and worry to the viewer. After a moment of stone silence, he breaks free of his gaze and pushes off with his newly half-ass-tied shoe. CAMERA IS AT EYE LEVEL NOW CONCENTRATING ON HIS FACE TD stretches his lips in a weird grimace as if in pain. He lowers his eye brows, squinting like Clint Eastwood in a gun battle. He stands on the bike’s foot peddles from a sitting position while gaining speed making the bike sway from side to side in an overly exaggerated manner. As he makes a slow turn down the hill, it is quickly apparent that neighborhood kids have lined the street, sidewalk, and yards to see what he is about to do. All eyes are glued on Dave and his Evel Knievel-like bike. SLOW MOTION FIRST PERSON PERSPECTIVE Dave studies everyone’s faces. Kids of all ages and sexes are represented in the horizontal pan: a 13- year-old girl holding an infant while she baby sits in her employer’s front yard, other boys Dave’s age (7 years old) looking on in total disbelief, older teenagers wringing their hands in expectation of seeing something off the wall. An older married couple sneaks a peak as they pretend to perform medial chores in their front yard. The wife is watering a hanging fern from the front porch (the water stream is missing the pot entirely). The other spouse mistakenly tries to hedge the grass along the driveway with a broom. The shovel lay on the ground next to him. Both absolutely fixated on what is about to transpire. Everyone looks dumbfounded and dazed. Continued... --- from this point I’ll proceed with a death defying Evel "Knievel-esque" jump over an unfathomable line of garbage cans filled with trash, small kids, and stray cats as I specifically wrote about in Timberlane Dave (see Chapter 14 - Evel Ways). Copyright © 2011 by David C. Webb David C. Webb All rights reserved. 1564 Dauphin St. Registered, WGAe Mobile, AL 36604 You'll have to read Timberlane Dave from this point to get a better picture... |