Mrs. Brady is standing, head bowed, cleaning the grime from Mr. Brady‘s glasses. She rubs them on the corner of her towel with a determined, squirrel-like intensity.
She freezes.
She hands the glasses to Mr. Brady.
She stumbles towards the couch. She drops heavily into the cushions. Somehow she is able to keep her towel on.
We reveal then, in the midst of this near-faint, the back story on how and why Mrs. Brady became Mrs. Brady:
The screen flashes back to a slightly younger, soon-to-be Mrs. Brady. We see her strolling along a sunlit suburban sidewalk. She has spent the afternoon helping out an elderly, but ‘still-sharp-as-ever’ neighbor.
Something is wrong at the home.
A shotgun is recessed within the manicured front lawn.
The gun is pointing towards the foyer.
A wicker-topped chair from the kitchen table is there.
The chair has fallen towards the house. The camera holds on this image of pointing gun and fallen kitchen chair, both embedded within the lawn.
Now we pull back and see the future Mrs. Brady
poignantly gripping the hunter-green mailbox.
She is immobilized by the scene.
The flag is still up: the mail hasn’t arrived yet.
You recommended that the scene be set up so that just the legs of the tipped chair are visible over her left arm; the arm that clutches the mailbox.
The camera will pull back further to reveal her, small and motionless at the mailbox- a mailbox identical to fifty others in this suburban neighborhood.
Powerful, stark-suburbia’s façade of uniform okay-ness is shattered!
And then the comedic masterpiece- the camera zooms in jarringly on the body.
Oh no!
Wait.
The body is a straw-filled dummy (referred to in the contracted way of the common vernacular as, “scarecrow,” a word justified with the argument that: “Weel. It skurs crows, so we say skurcrow.”).
There is a note, safety-pinned at all four corners, to the chest of this scarecrow.
Mrs. Brady moves to the scarecrow. She bends stiffly from the waist and pulls the note into her hands.
All four safety pins retain a corner from the note.
Perhaps we have the camera zoom in to show these paper fibers, raw, exposed and roughly torn.
Viewed close up, they are rags impaled by steel, melodramatically correlating with the state of this woman’s heart.
She reads the note aloud:
“Every day with you is like this. I’m heading to LA. Hopefully soon, I will write for TV. It’d be really groovy if we could pretend we never met. The kids are yours; my gift to you. Ciao.”
School bus approaches.
Pneumatic door whooshes.
A flash of pigtails:
“What’s that, mommy?”
“Mommy, it’s not Halloween yet,“
“She knows. Mommy is practicing.“
End of flashback.
________________________
This spec script did little, at first, to pull you from the ranks of hacks writing jokes for those stand-up comedians relegated to performing at strip-clubs, frat parties and ‘blue,’ venues. In fact, you began losing work as you transitioned into your new career focus.
“…So maybe you’ll like this. It’s in-line with that whole trend towards, “it’s funny because it’s true:
Now what’s the deal with these people killing themselves. Don’t they know that someone’s gotta clean that shit up?”
“Not funny. Not like your old stuff. C’mon. Jokes about poop- something everyone loves.”
says Raleigh of, The Lost Dove Bar.
“In poor taste, and brutishly insensitive,”
says Tomas, visiting Raleigh from Tijuana.
“But,”
you argue,
“All I’m advocating is that they just do it so that nobody has to, as I say, “clean that shit up. Discussing the social etiquette of suicide. New comedic territory, guys.”
Tomas stands up and crosses his arms.
“Is that supposed to be intimidating?”
Raleigh stops leaning on the bar and crosses his arms.
“Look. My little cousin killed herself over a boy. You think that’s funny?”
“More like ridiculous. I- I just think it’s important to see how there is humor- in, in, well, like the fact that you tattooed tear drops under your eye and that is supposed to signify toughness.”
They both step towards you.
You retreat from the low-lit dive.
__________________
More still to come. Also, I'm heading to the island of Brac- I'll keep you updated.
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