Jessie, Wilson, Dolores and Vodka

This is a script that I started working on for a script - writing workshop that I'm attending. This is the first beat. I'll post the others as I write them (if I write them).

[Jessie, a boy of 16 is standing on the front porch of a suburban house in a nice neighborhood, talking on the phone.]

WILSON:

(Sleepily) Jessie? What’s going on? How can I help you?

JESSIE:

Uh… you could start by coming down to your front porch for a minute. That would be immensely helpful.

WILSON:

(Jumps out of bed) WHAT? Are …are you down there?

(Walks downstairs and opens front door to face Jessie)

WILSON:

Oh...this can’t be good. This can’t be good at all.

JESSIE:

Hey! You just said ‘how can I help you’?!

WILSON:

It’s two in the morning! And I was really just being polite. I’d really rather not be of help to you at all. I…I’m gonna go/ now.

JESSIE:

No No! Wait. Please. You know you want to know why I’m here. Don’t pretend.

WILSON:

(Considers leaving for a moment, then) Right. Well. Fine. Let’s hear it then. What’ve you done this time? And more importantly, what do you want from me?

JESSIE:

(Pretending to get offended) How about you show a little faith in me, huh? How do you know it’s something bad? I could be here to give you great news!

WILSON:

(Gives him a skeptical look)

JESSIE:

Right. Well anyway … Dolores died.

WILSON:

DIED? You did this, didn’t you? Wha...what did you do?

JESSIE:

Nothing! It was an accident.

WILSON:

Of course it was. Your old man is going to KILL you. Dude, what the hell happened?

JESSIE:

Well, you see, I was on YouTube the other day…

WILSON:

Oh no…

JESSIE:

I watched this hilarious video! It was SO funny! It was EPIC!

WILSON:

(Voice laced with sarcasm) Yeah. I bet it was. My funny bone is still tickling.

JESSIE:

There was a drunk cat doing all kinds of crazy things! It was so cool! Anyway, I thought, you know, we have a cat. Why not try it? See what it does?

WILSON:

I do not like where this is going…

JESSIE:

So I sneaked some Vodka from the dad’s liquor cabinet and switched it with her water. She came and lapped it all up. Next thing I know, she’s dropped dead. In 5 seconds. I didn’t think she’d drink it in the first place. I mean what kind of stupid cat can’t tell water from vodka?!

WILSON:

So you try to give vodka to a CAT and the cat is stupid for drinking it? Great. Nothing wrong with that. That makes perfect sense. What did you do then?

JESSIE:

When my dad walked in on the dead cat, he went berserk. He went purple and sort of started puffing up with fury. He assumed, correctly I might add, that I had something to do with it. So I told him I had nothing to do with it, suggested a couple of alternative explanations and got out of there as fast as I could…although I’m pretty sure he didn’t buy it.

WILSON:

Setting fire to the kitchen, wrecking your neighbor’s marriage, almost running your teacher over with your car…and now killing your dad’s cat. You know, I think you’ve made progress. At least you’re not endangering human lives anymore.

JESSIE:

Exactly! I mean it was just a CAT! I’m telling you, that man is ridiculously attached to the cat. It’s weird.

WILSON:

(Looks at him with exasperation) Look, buddy, your dad is a peace-loving man, a very patient man. After all, he raised you. I’m sure if you go home and explain to him exactly what happened, he’ll let you live.

JESSIE:

The peace-loving man you’re talking about would have turned into revenge-seeking psycho by now! I can’t go back there without a plan.

WILSON:

(Sighs with resignation): Fine. Fine. Come on in. We’ll think of something. By the way exactly what alternative explanations did you give him?

JESSIE:

(Laughing nonchalantly) Oh yeah, about that…I told him you might have tested one of your chemicals on him.

WILSON:

WHAT?!

Psychofaff

Disclaimer: Names have been changed in the following conversation to protect identities and myself.

Three friends – Sane, Psycho and Silent Observer (how they became friends, I don’t know!) were at Irrelevant’s birthday party. They were having the following conversation….

Psycho: So when is Prabjot coming?

Sane: [thinking about it…] Prabjot….Prab…wait, who? Who’s Prabjot?

Psycho: Dude prabjot! You know Prabjot!

Sane: [blank face]

Psycho: Prabjot! The guy we met at the mall the other day?! You were telling me about him just a couple of days back!

Sane: [comprehension has not yet dawned]

Psycho: he’s your friend’s boyfriend! I know you know him! Stop pretending!

Sane:[ comprehension finally dawns] hahahaha….oh god!...do you mean Prateek? As in Anusha’s boyfriend Prateek?..Hahahahaha….I can’t believe you called him Prabjot!

Silent Observer: [breaking her silence] HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA……Prabjot! HAHAHAHAHA….why would you remember Prateek as Prabjot?! The 2 names don’t sound even remotely similar! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…

Psycho: [gets touchy] Stop laughing both of you! It was an honest mistake!!...I just mixed up his name…stop making fun of me!

20 uneventful minutes pass by during which Prateek arrives. He greets both Sane and Psycho. Small talk follows after which he settles down on the couch beside us.

Psycho: [leans over to Sane and whispers] So when is Prabjot coming?

Sane: [looks at Psycho with a mixture of amusement and exasperation] THERE IS NO PRABJOT!!!

Silent Observer: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA………..

I really want to write...

I really want to write. I don’t know what to write about.

I want the click – clacking of the keyboard to result in eloquent prose.

Scratching my head, I think aloud, “what do I write about?”

My sister looking up from work replies, “Stop scratching your head”.

I ask again, “what do I write about?”

Her disinterest replies, “Anything”……

Deciding to take her upon her word I look to my surroundings, trying to find ‘anything’

To write about.

Do I write about the annoying whirring of the fan, whose restlessness mirrors the restlessness of my mind?

As I try to find inspiration in the concrete jungle visible through my windows, my mind wanders.

My eye is caught by the rhythmic flapping of the cover of a novel under the fan, then by the bottle of 99% fat free Ranch Dressing, then by the stack of pills.

I still don’t know what to write about.

A million thoughts flash across but my mind stops at none; like some broken projector that runs through the images stopping at none.

Then

The thought fox suddenly bites me

And I finally decide to just write.

To write about not being able to write.

Boredom

Boredom: that’s the topic my sister gave me when I asked her to suggest a topic I could write on. Yes, you would see the irony of that if you were living my life. Having just finished my class 12 board exams and with friends who are preparing for upcoming entrance exams, the dominant and most consistent feature of my life , as I’m living it currently, happens to be boredom. Until I start college in July, assuming I get accepted, I have nothing to do. My life has no purpose whatsoever. And yes, I know what most people will say. And yes, I know that the right thing to do is to ‘use this time constructively’. My mum says I should use this time for self improvement, to apply home –made face and hair packs (made of substances that cling to your hair with astonishing tenacity and leave a lingering foul odor in their wake )and to take nourishing (re: long and tedious) beauty baths that I will apparently never again have the time for. My dad says I should accompany him to the office and learn about stocks and shares and banking and investment and other such words that an arts student like me, a lover of history and literature, (intentionally) knows nothing about, except that I find them dull and uninteresting. My elder sister , a working woman who gets no more than 1 day a week to get bored and do nothing ( and who secretly envies my current life characterized by boredom and doing nothing ) thinks I should give up my station/post as the couch potato and exert myself physically like hit the gym or dance to get in shape. I know that they say these things because they want to be good parents and mentors and they want to give me good advice but the truth is that if any one of them were given a month off , from their busy hectic work schedules , a month to just do anything (or nothing) , that’s exactly what they would do: nothing. I just finished studying for a month for the board examinations that lasted another whole month. I will soon start college which while I’m thrilled about, will be more hectic than school even. Only one person understood that maybe it’s not so wrong to do nothing and to want to do nothing. If having time to get bored and not do anything is something that all (working) adults seem to want so much that they’d perhaps be willing to sell a kidney for, then maybe I should utilize this time to do nothing ,to just be.

Dog Day Afternoon..(Warning..Spoilers Ahead)

I watched Dog Day Afternoon yesterday. It blew my mind. During the film I was completely engrossed and at the end I was completely amazed by it . I understood it’s a classic but for a while I couldn’t quite put my finger on what made it a classic, on why I it blew my mind . At first, it seemed like a simple bank heist film, with the regular hostages and negotiations with the police, nothing I haven’t seen before. And then I realized that it was because everything about the film is so brilliant that it is difficult to say exactly what its highlight is. It is partly the complex, compulsive paranoid hero of the film, Sonny who is just presented as is, without explanations and played by Al Pacino to such perfection and and with such neuroticism that it is impossible to look past the character, at the brilliant actor portraying him.

I was also impressed by the satirical but honest portrayal of urban existence in New York city- the media circus that is created outside the bank within minutes, the ineptitude of the authorities, the creepy caller who urges the robbers to kill the hostages, the pizza delivery guy who thinks he’s become a star because he came into contact with the robber, the man of the moment - in the eyes of the crowds and the media bank teller who refuses an offer to escape the hostage situation, saying her place is with her girls when the place she really means is in the center of a live TV coverage.

I was also intrigued by strange relationship that develops between the robbers and the hostages. The robber seems to deeply care for his hostages and understands that they have nothing to do in the situation. The hostages too begin praying for his success by the end of the film.

Sonny as a character is also immensely fascinating. The bisexual bank robber has an excessively protective mother, a large, shrill wife with two kids and a gay male wife. It is to pay for the sex change operation of this beloved wife that he decides to rob a bank. The film captures his unraveling with beautiful details. And the most spectacular thing of all is that all of this is based on a true story!

A Walk To Remember...

School gets over at 2.35pm. It was 3.05pm when I angrily made my way to the phone booth having just borrowed 2 bucks from a friend. I called my mum expecting her to say the driver had left long back and that he should be there any minute. What she said was that she’d completely forgotten to send the car. This frustrated me more, because it meant that after having shouted myself hoarse at the juniors during dispersal duty and after having waited half an hour in the on-again off-again rain I now had to wait another 10 – 15 minutes for the car to reach me from my mum’s shop. In another 5 minutes the street was empty. Both the school gates had cleared and were now empty. Even the traffic, at which I had been looking so expectantly, cleared, with no sign of the car. This wasn’t the first time my car had been late, but this was the most late it had been. And just like on previous occasions I began to contemplate taking a cab. This was just a result of the anger because I had never traveled alone by public transport. I had taken cabs but with friends or cousins. And anyone who knows me can tell you how unlike me that sounded. Then I remembered a cousin once telling me that she’d had to walk to my mum’s shop from school because even though it was a fairly long walk, cabbies wouldn’t go that short a distance. Not being able to stand around waiting any longer, at about 3.15pm I began walking away from school. Before I had realized it or thought about what I was doing I began walking angrily away from school, in the direction that would take me to my mum’s shop. At the end of the sidewalk adjacent to my school building I took a moment to realize that after that there was no turning back, from that point onwards school uniform on or not I would be on the real streets of the city walking like any other pedestrian.
As I stomped my way across the muddy, puddle filled streets of Calcutta I felt the strangest mix of emotions. I was angry but at the same time proud of myself. I was walking briskly as a way to vent my anger and annoyance but I had plenty of time to realize that for the first time I was walking all alone and getting acquainted with a city in which I had lived the entire seventeen years of my life. I passed familiar building after building and took the route I had taken a zillion times before but always in a car, in a shell, protected. Today when I had broken that shell, broken free of that protection, albeit in a very small way, I felt liberated, and confident, and strong. It may be silly that I feel this way because I know many girls my age and younger than me who take public transport alone on a daily basis or who are used to walking to places but it was a seminal moment in my life (at least in my teenage life) and I was proud of myself. I am the kind of girl whose mother is afraid of letting her go away for college because she is unsure if I can make it on my own. Well guess what ma? I just did!
What I learnt from my little adventure today was that there may be a lot of things I have never done before but there is nothing that I can’t do provided I am determined ( or angry ) enough to try.

Nothing Inglorious about these Basterds

Quentin Tarantino is a genius! And I didn’t even have to watch all of his films to come to this conclusion. I’ve watched maybe 2 or 3 of them and I’m a big fan already. I watched 'Inglorious Basterds' today on DVD and even though I was watching it for the 3rd time, it was just mind blowing.

The film with its quiet tense moments with hardly any real action kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time...despite the long dialogues in foreign languages that force one to rely on subtitles it keeps one wondering what’s going to happen...you don’t lose interest for a minute. The casting is excellent too..Brad Pitt’s Tennessee accent is bang on and helps to keep even the moments of extreme tension light. Christoph Waltz’s best actor academy award is completely justified- after having watched him for only one scene when he’s aiming at Shosanna when she’s trying to escape you know his character well enough to be completely sure that if he pulls the trigger , he won’t miss.

The music of the film has Tarantino written all over it...Nobody but him can make such unique choices regarding music or even make such unexpected use of it...

Although Tarantino indulges himself and rewrites history it’s in a way that’ll go down well with anybody watching the film. In fact it made me wish history really had played out the way Tarantino writes it...