COMING THIS FALL...
The Brubaker family was just another homeless family living in the woods and eating bugs.
The father of the family, Burk Brubaker, spent his time thinking about the many mistakes he had made.
The mother of the family, Angie Brubaker-Jones, spent her time thinking about how her family could escape their desperate situation.
But the daughter of the family, Grace Brubaker, spent HER time talking to a magic tree stump named "Whoops."
Grace had met the tree stump while searching for valuable garbage and had instantly admired it-- even at 8, Grace was smart enough to know that the area around a tree stump might be just the right place to look for beverage containers with high return values.
The tree stump was quite a clever fellow, but he rarely said anything to his young friend. Instead he communicated with silence, charm, and occasionally by having a bug crawl out of him.
Grace would eat the bug and thank the stump kindly for his generosity.
Night was falling in the forest and she hadn't heard her mother calling out for her. Normally they would have done that by now, she thought. Grace didn't much want to go back to the damp, smelly tent. But still: she was too afraid to spend the night alone. She had been here for hours, talking to Whoops, and without her mother or her father's voice calling her she was no longer certain of the way back home. Maybe she could curl up between the roots of this stump? Maybe Whoops would keep her warm?
Mom! she yells. Dad! she yells. There is nothing but the sound of unseen cars on the highway nearby. Vrrmmm. Vrrmmm. Vrmmm Vrmmm. Constant but irregular. Darker and darker, and now the only lights are the headlights silhouetting distant birches. She huddles against Whoops, though he seems less friendly now, more solid. He is only a stump and nothing more, she knows now. She always knew. It is too cold.
Grace crams her filthy freezing hands into her armpits. She is no stranger to panic, but this is her first time panicking alone.
The father of the family, Burk Brubaker, spent his time thinking about the many mistakes he had made.
The mother of the family, Angie Brubaker-Jones, spent her time thinking about how her family could escape their desperate situation.
But the daughter of the family, Grace Brubaker, spent HER time talking to a magic tree stump named "Whoops."
Grace had met the tree stump while searching for valuable garbage and had instantly admired it-- even at 8, Grace was smart enough to know that the area around a tree stump might be just the right place to look for beverage containers with high return values.
The tree stump was quite a clever fellow, but he rarely said anything to his young friend. Instead he communicated with silence, charm, and occasionally by having a bug crawl out of him.
Grace would eat the bug and thank the stump kindly for his generosity.
Night was falling in the forest and she hadn't heard her mother calling out for her. Normally they would have done that by now, she thought. Grace didn't much want to go back to the damp, smelly tent. But still: she was too afraid to spend the night alone. She had been here for hours, talking to Whoops, and without her mother or her father's voice calling her she was no longer certain of the way back home. Maybe she could curl up between the roots of this stump? Maybe Whoops would keep her warm?
Mom! she yells. Dad! she yells. There is nothing but the sound of unseen cars on the highway nearby. Vrrmmm. Vrrmmm. Vrmmm Vrmmm. Constant but irregular. Darker and darker, and now the only lights are the headlights silhouetting distant birches. She huddles against Whoops, though he seems less friendly now, more solid. He is only a stump and nothing more, she knows now. She always knew. It is too cold.
Grace crams her filthy freezing hands into her armpits. She is no stranger to panic, but this is her first time panicking alone.
5 comments:
I think I see where you're going with this:
Grace's racing heart seems to slow as darkness descends upon her. The cold, though still sharp, fades into the background of her awareness. The darkness looms larger and Grace smiles weakly when she recognizes the darkness for what it is. It is Death. It is Whoops. It is peace and love and food and warmth and everything Grace had been searching for. Her arms tremble with effort when she tries to embrace the darkness. It is the friend who had been waiting for her all of this time.
Just then, Grace's eyes open and she finds herself in a stark-white testing chamber laying in a pool of bio-fluid. Tubes and diodes and leech-like animals cover her body. Grace, confused, begins to hyperventilate. She tears the equipment and leeches from her body and emerges from the bio-fluid terrified at the sight of her new surroundings.
From behind a double mirror, Rylof The Advantage watches and nods. Yes. Grace had known. The stump wasn't really magic, and finally, after so many years, someone had known. Rylof The Advantage presses a small green button and micro-bots begin swarming out of the ventilation system in the testing chamber.
Inside, Grace notices the micro-bots and begins screaming. They crawl up her body as she tries to shake them off, and soon enter her nostrils and open mouth. Grace suddenly grows silent as her eyes take on a mercury-like sheen.
With the micro-bots having augmented both her body and her awareness, Grace now knows that Rylof The Advantage requires her assistance in the war against the Lothans. This war has been ongoing for millennia, but Rylof The Advantage and his fellow Sylvosts are on the brink of defeat.
But what Rylof The Advantage himself doesn't know is that one of the micro-bots itself was a micro-bot sent by the Lothans and Grace's knowledge was also augmented with knowledge of their species as well. Yes, the Lothan-Sylvost war was brutal and nasty, but there was a reason behind it and the Sylvosts were certainly not blameless. Before the war, the Sylvosts had put trade restrictions on the Galaxy that amounted to essentially a Sylvost monopoly on Tryol and Meknar. As a result, the Lothans were poor, powerless, and starving. The Lothans tried peace. They did. But their pleas were rejected by the greedy Sylvosts, and as a result they had no choice but to wage war.
Grace's mind races as she considers all of this information and she sits down in an attempt to absorb everything. She soon realizes that she's sitting on Whoops. Whoops is now real, cleaned up, and looking like twice the tree stump she remembered. She stares at Whoops in disbelief. "Jesus is real!" Whoops says, and it's then that Grace becomes a born-again Christian.
She thinks about her mother and father (if they had ever truly existed), and where she would like them to be if they had frozen to death as Grace virtually done. She'd want them to be at peace and with God. She wanted that for everyone. Even Lothans. Even Sylvosts. But how could she, a micro-bot augmented 8 year-old girl, spread the Gospel when she was being asked to help wage the bloody war on the Lothans?
Martin-- you're right about the general direction, but in my screenplay it ends with Grace learning that her family is too disadvantaged to ever bring her out of poverty. She gets rickets. And the Lothans are called "Bothans" and they're gross.
Thanks for reading.
BOOM CRASH! go the cannons, and Blackbeard the pirate explodes out of space-time with a mechanized jaw and a passion for extreme extremes. I'VE COME TO LOOT YOUR TIMELINE OF ALL BEAUTY he shouts, in a robotic and terrifying monotone. Everyone screams because they were just not ready for this.
Ignoring the gunfire and military presence around him in nearby Syria, Blackbeard uses his peg leg selfie stick to take pictures of beautiful trees, sunsets, rivers, etc. When he's got a pic he likes, he sneers and uploads it onto a vast array of social networking sites. So-called friends and followers determine the pics beauty by "liking" them. THAT'S THREE LIKES! Blackbeard will eventually say. BEAUTY LOOTED. DECIMATE! Blackbeard then destroys the subject of the picture with his considerable supply of gunpowder and steam-powered can-do.
But where's the coast guard in all of this mess?! Shouldn't they have dealt with Blackbeard over a century ago?
No.
A German automaker named Paulie watches the situation unfold from his undersea bunker. It's up to me, he thinks, tearing off his real jaw and replacing it with a home-brewed polymer one. It hurts like a bitch, but is anything ever easy? Building submarines wasn't easy, but Paulie did that. Years ago.
Blackbeard uses his motorized grappling hook to propel himself onto Big Ben in England. From this height, he can see everything. Even the future. So much beauty. So many social media likes. So much to destroy. It is almost overwhelming, and he starts clapping his hands in appreciation. Faster and faster he claps them. Blackbeard looks into the camera with a slow intent, never stopping his clapping, clapping.
Turns out The Incredible Hulk isn't real after all, and no one can save anybody. Blackbeard continues to stare knowingly at the camera. Clap. Clap. Clap.
Dear Steeb - Request here: Can you please write a screenplay that has more to do with a specific dwarf? Lately, just this past year, I've really gotten into Game of Thrones. As you might expect, Tyrion Lannister is far and away my favorite character (TV AND book). And, after talking to my study group, I really don't think I'm alone here.
Personally and professionally, I'd really like to see a bit more of him in other settings. Perhaps you can include Tyrion in future screenplays and also retroactively add him to all of your previous screenplays? I've been attempting to do this myself, but frankly it's a lot of copying and pasting from your site. Another issue I foresee is that it will almost certainly cause confusion for readers. Reading both your version and the otherwise identical Tyrion version of your screenplay that I'm posting on my site, readers will likely wonder why you decided to edit Tyrion Lannister out of everything and why you dislike dwarves so much. That kind of negative publicity really can't be good for anyone, especially when me and my study group like Tyrion so much.
I also like Arya Stark, but please hold off on her for now.
Rich: I don't normally take requests, but luckily I had an outline I had written for characters from the movie "Steel Magnolias" that could easily switch over to being about Tyrion. Please mail me $10,000.
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