FADE IN:
INT. BROOKLYN APARTMENT - NIGHT
Lawrence lays in the dark. Places his cell phone on the
night stand next to an overturned book.
Checks the clock. Only 7:30. Finger tips touch his bright
red ear, sideburns.
It's wet. He checks his fingers. Too dark to see the
liquid's color.
LAWRENCE (V.O.)
We got off the phone. It was early
but it felt like bed time.
The CD in the stereo spins silently. Paused.
Lawrence walks across the room, touching his face. Turns on
the light. Looks in the mirror.
His reflection a mess of scabs, dry skin, and thick outbreak
under his beard-line.
LAWRENCE (V.O.)
No internet connection. No real
desire to write. Hadn't really
processed the night's discussion.
Presses on his face. Sticky blood peeks out. Winces pain.
Whimpers back to bed. Crawls under the covers, hiding.
LAWRENCE (V.O.)
We'd talked so long the mess next
to my ear got angry. I felt like
the simplest animal. Even my
sounds were a wounded pup.
He crawls out of the blankets. Picks up his book. But the
overhead light is a brutal hanging sun.
LAWRENCE (V.O.)
If I could reach, I would've even
licked my wounds. In the wild I'm
sure mated couples and families
lick each other's wounds when they
can't reach.
Ducks under the covers again. Falls asleep.
INT. BAR/CLUB - NIGHT
Lawrence sits on the floor, against the brick. Drinks a
fruity cocktail.
CLUB-GOERS (20's) dance an arms reach away. Dropped jackets
and purses keep him company.
Lawrence types a text message into his phone.
BRIDGET (28), tall, British, growing out a bleach job, pushes
through the crowd. Kneels to talk to him.
BRIDGET
(yells into his ear)
You alright?
Lawrence nods. Trying to look cool.
She stands up, unsure of where to go from here.
From his low vantage the dance floor looks like leg-shaped
tree trunks on a forest floor.
She turns and makes her way back through the crowd. He
checks the scabs around his mouth, making sure none have
gotten embarrassing.
LAWRENCE (V.O.)
So where was I? Animals. Wait no.
Time travel. I think I'm getting
better at time travel. I need you
to go get 'Slaughterhouse Five' by
Kurt Vonnegut. You're not ready
for 'Life of Pi' or 'Sidhartha'
until you've read 'Slaughterhouse.'
Lawrence stands. Bridget, who's talking to JUAN (24), skull
cap and business suit, notices.
LAWRENCE
(screams)
My theory of time travel, by
Lawrence Gewillickers.
The DJ scratches the record right off the table. The crowd
suddenly shuts the hell up. Some listen.
LAWRENCE
When Lois Lane died in Superman, in
his grief he reverses the rotation
of the Earth to turn back time and
bring her back.
EXT. OUTTER SPACE - N/A
A galaxy swirls counter-clockwise. It stops. Reverses spin.
INT. BAR/CLUB - NIGHT
The people in the club shrink to infants. Their clothes fly
off their bodies. Reverting to cotton plants, sheep, vats of
chemicals.
Liquor flies from mouths and glasses. Becomes hops and
potatoes, then dirt, then worms and finally the rotting
bodies of dead farmers.
The bar changes too. From a club to a home, walls shift.
Brick and mortar. Then to clay and chalk and stones.
The only thing left intact is the DJ booth.
Lawrence has changed too. He's an ape. Everyone's become
baby apes. Playing and crawling over each other.
The Monkey with acne starts to lecture.
LAWRENCE
You see change. How easy to see
change. Even on a giant scale.
You see the stone turn into powder
to cement and into a bar. You see
evolution over millions of years.
All so clearly changing.
(beat)
But you're still stuck in time.
He crawls, leaps, swings into the DJ booth. Drops his heavy
ape hand on the turn-table. Instead of a record, a galaxy
spins.
The needle is labeled: "Human Scope."
He scratches the galaxy back and forth. All around him the
world responds. Monkey's grow old and die, grow young and
are born in reverse.
Grow old and die. Grow young and are born in reverse.
Minerals to life to minerals to life. Ashes to ashes, dust
to dust.
After enough back and forth it's difficult to determine which
way the record should be spinning.
LAWRENCE
You were right about one thing. We
are animals. Simple, limited
animals. We can't see anything
beyond our conscious limits. In
this case, the space from birth to
death. But time extends beyond
this perception. Me and Kurt's
theory has a few interesting
implications.
INT. THAI RESTAURANT - NIGHT
Hilary and Lawrence sit at a table, looking over their menus.
LAWRENCE (V.O.)
It precludes choice. Effectively
making us part of the grand machine
once again. Our path as certain as
the orbit of a star.
INT. BROOKLYN STAIRWELL - DUSK
Hilary on her cell phone. Lawrence opens the door to his
apartment. Sleepy and wide-eyed.
LAWRENCE (V.O.)
It sets the future in the same
place as the past. Making
alteration impossible. But not
ruling out movement along this
path.
Lawrence opens the door to his friend.
INT. GRAND CENTRAL - AFTERNOON
Hilary makes her way across the terminal.
LAWRENCE (V.O.)
How easy it is to travel time so
long as you participate. Instead
of as an outsider, a traveller.
Separate from time. We travel into
the past with time often.
They hug.
INT. HARLEM APARTMENT - NIGHT
Lawrence reads the email responses to a Craigslist posting he
made the day before.
LAWRENCE (V.O.)
The perception is we only get to
experience the future and the past
to the extent that our monkey self
lives. This is where Vonnegut and
I part ways. Are we really to
believe that birth and death are
anything other than the culmination
of elements into what seems like
something separate. Consciousness.
He scans one in particular.
LAWRENCE (V.O.)
As though you weren't in the Globe
theatre when Hamlet debuted. On
the pocket of the first person on
Mars. Who are you kidding?
INT. BAR/CLUB - NIGHT
Lawrence, back to human form, takes Bridget by the hand.
Leads her across the club. Turns quickly and speaks
romantically into her ear.
LAWRENCE
Do we say the bar is more than the
some of it's parts? Chalk,
limestone, water, clay. Do we fear
the end when the bar's
consciousness will cease to be.
BRIDGET
What?
Lawrence just kisses her. It's not a movie-kiss. It's a
drunk and sloppy monkey-kiss.
Her lips touch his scabs, the places around his mouth too
wounded to talk about.
LAWRENCE (V.O.)
Perhaps everything changes, but
also nothing changes. Licking my
wounds, this fellow animal did me
great service that night.
Lawrence touches her cheek, brushing her ear.
LAWRENCE (V.O.)
And I, in turn, lost her earring on
the floor of the club.
Bridget feels her ear. Looks down.
They both hit the forest floor. Feeling in the darkness,
between the rooted feet, around wooden legs.
INT. BROOKLYN APARTMENT - NIGHT
Lawrence wakes up, crawls out from under the blankets.
Ambles out of bed.
Pulls the clam-shell laptop over to the rocking chair and
window and powers it on.
He leans back, puts his legs on the sill. Types.
"BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT I REALIZED. THAT'S NOT WHY I'M ON
PAGE 6 ALREADY. I'M TRYING TO GET AT SOMETHING ELSE."
He slaps the laptop down. Dawn sits on the floor staring at
him. Her head between his propped feet.
DAWN
Hey.
LAWRENCE
Hi.
DAWN
Why can't you write our story? You
finished the story in real life.
That was supposed to do it. I
guess life didn't turn out the way
you wanted.
LAWRENCE
I don't know why I can't write you.
And nothing ever turns--
DAWN
Do you still want to meet me in
December?
LAWRENCE
Yeah. If I can get myself looking
halfway decent again.
Dawn frowns at him. She pushes his legs up and wiggles out
of her seat.
DAWN
You're an idiot.
Lawrence keeps his gaze out the window as she walks behind
him. After all, she's imaginary.
DAWN
You wouldn't come fight for me.
You stopped calling me when I
stopped calling you. And you
fucking lied. Every time someone
even mentions the word 'liar' I
think of you. That's not a good
pneumonic, Larry.
LAWRENCE
(flips out)
Why are you here? I don't need to
feel worse right now.
Dawn drops her gown. Her pink reflection blurs into the
window in front of him.
DAWN
Come here man. This is what you
want. Not some story. Hold me,
I'm here.
LAWRENCE
You're not. You're on the page.
DAWN
So are you. Take me on the page if
that's the last place you can take
me.
Lawrence thinks about it. How sad.
He kicks his laptop through the window, shattering her
reflection.
Dawn disappears. He is alone once again.
LAWRENCE
What I'm talking about goes further
than acceptance, further than fear.
It's the whole structure.
Lawrence throws the rocking chair across the room. Returning
it to the earth in splinters.
Dawn appears in the paint. Her face a pattern of wallpaper.
She laughs at him.
LAWRENCE
The dual nature of a man who
chooses to not only write about his
life but live life through writing.
It's inescapable.
Lawrence points to the pile of sticks that was once a chair.
He swirls his finger counter-clockwise.
The sticks becomes rye then dark brown whiskey. The broken
glass from the window forms into a bottle in his hand.
LAWRENCE
One prevents the other. Writing to
live, living to write inhibits
both. This is the meaning of
impotence.
(beat)
There are definite patterns. Gases
to stars to novas to gases. Love
won to love lost. Block to
progress. Destruction to regrowth.
Lawrenc brings the bottle to his lips. Fills his mouth.
LAWRENCE (V.O.
Son to Father to Son.
Wait. He pours the whiskey into the ground.
From a thousand places on the wall the Dawn-wallpaper speaks.
DAWN
What are you doing?
All over the place actually. Furniture, papers. He spits
the liquor in Dawn's face. Coats the walls.
LAWRENCE
I'm destroying something
symbolically.
Lights a match.
LAWRENCE
What does it look like?
Dawn screams.
QUICK FLASHES
Lawrence on the steps of a school house, talking into his
cell phone.
Dawn behind a small building, smokes and talks. A jet plane
flies overhead.
Lawrence finishes kissing Bridget. Blood pouring from the
places around his mouth.
Dawn at home with her boyfriend. He kisses her chin. She
smiles.
Lawrence stares at a blank screen, unable to type anything.
Dawn stares at a blank screen, unable to type anything.
FADE OUT:
FADE IN:
EXT. BROOKLYN STREET - NIGHT
Lawrence sits in a mass of smoking ash and rubble.
LAWRENCE
I've been here before, Hilary.
I've created and destroyed worlds
before. How do you think this is
going to end? I'm asking. I've
told you about the Phoenix from
their cocoon of ashes. I've
exampled patterns throughout
history. Cycles of defeat and
rebirth. This is our bread and
butter, you and I. It would be so
easy to finish this script. All
I'd need is a new hope. Some
direction to point towards. A new
blonde girl, a new theory or
method. That ending would work.
It'd be a lovely ending and all
would rejoice because their hope
fixation would once again be
filled.
Alice walks up to her building. Keys in hand.
ALICE
What the hell did you do?
LAWRENCE
I've come to remember something
about time. The patterns are the
same forwards and backwards. After
enough back and forth the labels
become arbitrary. Start to wonder,
which way are we going? Not just
in general, as though always
forwards or always backwards. I
mean from one moment to the next.
No matter how small the
measurement.
Alice calls the police.
ALICE
What are you babbling about? You
belong in a hospital!
LAWRENCE
Is it possible we're moving in both
directions at once. Is it also
possible we can only perceive one
at a time, a limitation but also an
adaptation of our weak little
animal brains.
The police arrive. Two OFFICERS (30's) walk over to talk to
Alice.
LAWRENCE
I mean, we might break down, go mad
if we had to experience both at
once. But this is what I'm talking
about. I'm traveling in both
directions. And I'm starting to
reme remember the future.
OFFICER #1
Hey! Will you be quiet for a
minute while we talk to your friend
here?
LAWRENCE (V.O.)
Ugh. Fine. The won't get to know
the ending. Only me and whomever
can read my thoughts will know.
Better keep it down anyway. This
isn't a very popular theory.
Lawrence stands. Walks towards the camera. Grabbing it by
the matte box. He shakes the frame violently.
OFFICER #1
Sir, stop shaking that. You're
disrupting everyone.
Lawrence pulls the boom close to his mouth. His face so
close to the lens, everything goes out of focus.
LAWRENCE
(whispers)
I'm writing this now. I'm on my
eleventh page because...
(beat)
I've already written it.
(beat)
Effect before cause. If you choose
to see it that way.
The camera melts. The film inside bursts into flames.
OFFICER #1
What did you just say.
LAWRENCE
(shouts)
I'm on the precipice of discovery
but also remembering something I'd
forgotten!
ALICE
See, he's crazy!
The Officers tackle him. Wrestling him to the ground.
LAWRENCE
Will I spend the rest of my youth
in a mad house? Does this all seem
maddening? What to do? When can I
go?
INT. BROOKLYN APARTMENT - NIGHT
Lawrence's cell phone rings. It's Hilary.
He turns his book over on his night stand.
Pauses his music.
LAWRENCE
(answers)
Hello?
HILARY
Hello?
LAWRENCE
Hello?
HILARY
Hello?
FADE TO BLACK:
Thursday, November 18, 2004
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