Tuesday, September 27, 2011

RemembeRED: The Story of my Life

Prompt: Congratulations! Your best selling memoir has just been optioned by a major motion picture studio, and the producers want you advising on the script. Write the opening scene for the movie. Would you begin with a visual montage? Voice-over? Flashback or forward? A conversation? The trick here is to look through a lens. The camera needs to tell the story through visuals, action, dialogue. Yeah, I'm not really very secure about this, but I'm trying it anyway. Fake it 'til you make it, right?

Flash Forward: The scene begins at a nursing home situated on a hill. Two little old ladies are sitting hunched closely together in their wheelchairs on the porch. One of the ladies, Laura, is watching the cars passing by at the bottom of the hill very intently; the other woman, Tina, has dozed off, her head slumped so that her chin rests on her chest. She snores a little, and there may be sleep drool. Laura notices that her friend is asleep. She smiles, then leans over to adjust the blanket that covers the legs of her friend, then pats her hand. She then returns to her car watching.

A red Volkswagon Beetle speeds by. Laura suddenly sits up straighter in her wheelchair, and her eyes light up with what might be described as fiendish glee. She leans toward her friend Tina and punches her in the arm as hard as she can, yelling "Slugbug!" Laura cackles loudly, and does a turn on her wheelchair, as if celebrating a victory. A very startled Tina jumps upright in the middle of a snort, her blanket flying. She puts her hand on her chest and takes a deep breath. Tina turns to Laura, rubbing her bruised arm.

"What the hell you doing, Laura?" Tina angrily asks. "Why did you hit me? "

"Slugbug!" was all Laura could say, because she is still giggly/cackly, and it's making her start to cough a bit and probably tinkle in her diaper a bit. Tina then recalled that her friend had been waiting for several weeks for VW Beetle to pass by. Just so Laura could yell "Slugbug!" and punch someone in the arm. It was on Laura's bucket list.

Tina sighs heavily, shakes her head and smiles. Flashback; The camera transitions to the front of a college dorm, with Tina and Laura staring down a hill watching traffic go by. A VW Beetle goes by slowly. Laura leans over and punches Tina in the arm, yelling "Slugbug!" Tina rubs her arm where the punch landed, smiles.

The action proceeds from there.

10 comments:

  1. Ahhh the best friendship, the girls who have known each other forever, I would LOVE this movie. You were so descriptive and really gave me a sense of these two women and the relationship they share. I really really liked this.

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  2. :) adorable! i really could see the giddiness in Laura and it instantly made me smile.

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  3. That was simply adorable. I really like how distance the two scenes are, but how the friendship is still there, still ripe in them both.
    I thought it was going to take a different turn, so I really enjoyed the impishness of it all.

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  4. Oh how I hope that I am sitting in a rocking chair with my best friend in the end. Wouldn't it be wonderful to never forget our youth? I loved how much joy was in this opening scene.

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  5. That is a fabulous opening scene.

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  6. I love this!! I could see the two women, sitting, sleeping and waiting. So good! I'd definitely watch this movie. And read the memoir!

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  7. "Tinkle in her diaper a bit" = possibly made ME tinkle in my pants a little! This was a hilarious and wonderful take on the prompt. Thank you!

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  8. I really, really like the nature of this -- would the screenplay work out as a "now & then & now & then & now & then?" or would it be a scene in the now, head back to the past, and let the story play from there?

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  9. I love the connection between the two of them, the friendship that spans so many years. I am a sucker for friend movies like that, so I would love to watch them have adventures together throughout their lives!

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  10. Good work of the prompt. I love the then and now. Or was now and then?

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