ABOUT THE SCREENPLAY

An unfinished scrap of script by a writer-blocked Garrett Gilchrist

PROF. PARIS

Can I have your name, please?

MIGUEL

Miguel Agfa, sir.

PROF. PARIS

All right Miguel, what is a motion picture screenplay?

MIGUEL

A written record of dialogue and actions used to compose a film?

PROF. PARIS

[laughs] Sure, why not? And how does this screenplay begin, Miguel?

MIGUEL

With the title?

PROF. PARIS

No, what is a writer looking at when he begins writing a screenplay?

MIGUEL

He ... looks at plot and character motivation?

PROF. PARIS

No! What is in front of him? What is his friend and greatest enemy?

MIGUEL

The antagonist?

PROF. PARIS

NO! THE SCREENPLAY ALWAYS STARTS WITH JUST A FIELD OF WHITE ON A BLANK

COMPUTER SCREEN! Not that your answer was wrong Miguel. It's just, well,

okay, so maybe it was wrong but there are no right answers in this class.

MIGUEL

No right or wrong answers, sir?

PROF. PARIS

It's not your turn to speak, Miguel. Look at this board, everyone. It's empty.

He looks at it, and it actually has his name written on it. He erases this.

Empty. Totally empty. That's the way a script begins. When it's finished that

script could be anything, from a three-hour epic about the heroes of medieval

France to a ten-minute jerk-off flick that's almost too bad to be shown on the

Internet. The white screen, that's the only point where all scripts are equal.

The writer, if he is a writer, and isn't just pretending to be, has spent weeks,

months, years, bottling up all the nagging thoughts and ideas and random

observances and some funny thing this guy on the street said when he didn't think

anyone was listening. All those forgotten, subconscious mental notes are there

somewhere, moved from the wastebin of the brain to its internal, well, let's call

it a coffee maker.

INT - COMPUTER LAB - NIGHT

ALEX VOICEOVER

The coffee maker of the mind is a twisted and sadistic little appliance.

ALEX wipes the sweat from his brow. He is bleary-eyed, sitting down at a compute desk where he has

obviously been sitting for some time.

ALEX VOICEOVER

So maybe it can be turned on at any time by the writer, but it tends to shut itself

off at the most unopportune moments, and stay off. Creativity turns into a blank,

brainless stare. The writer is unable to write anything. He can feel the pile of

unused ideas in his head grow and topple over themselves, like a cancer. They scream

and bang themselves against his higher consciousness. A song lyric here, a line of

clever subplot there. They have already overtaken and destroyed space in the brain

required for thought, speech and motor function. The helpless zombie writer sits as

his great screenplay starts to eat away his mind.

We see an entire row of people sitting at computers doing nothing.

ALEX VOICEOVER

I have been sitting here staring at this computer monitor since 9:30 PM. The time is

now 2:48 AM. I am wondering if I should go home and get to bed.

He sighs, clicks to save his blank document, and ejects the disk. A quarter falls off the computer.

He picks it up and looks at it.