BREAK
OLIVER STONE
Copyright @ 1969
Anthony's trip through three moods/locations:
1. The City -- Speed and Fear
2. The Forest --Decreasing Speed Fading Into Dream
3. Prison -- Silence (The Death of Words)
Freedom (End of Movie)
1. Small, student's French-type garret decorated
in deep-red, suitcase on bed. Anthony to his desk,
hurriedly examining his thick papers and books, and
throwing them on the floor. Takes a book (closeup
photograph of Genet, book's author, a photo from early
50's, in his burglar's T-shirt, his name in large, Visible
letters at base of photo) off night table, puts it in
suitcase, locks suitcase, opens door, suitcase out
door. A. back into the room, wine bottle from mantelpiece,
pouring red gasoline over books and manuscripts piled on
floor, spreading the gasoline around the small room.
Looks it all over, bends, lights match, tosses on fire,
backing up, an instant later sound of wind popping a tent
Shot of A.
and red flames shooting up. A. forced hack.
through the jumping flames, sweating with the heat and
watching. Shot of closing door through
Opening the door.
fire. A's fleeing footsteps down the gothic stairs,
trotting. Fire. cut.
Footsteps (running).
2. Voice Off:
So you ran away from school.
(Pause)
Yes.
Shot of father and son, son in jeans, boots and vest,
long hair, early twenties, his hair getting longer with
the progress of the movie, his features, icily handsome,
becoming more and more expressive and tender.
You quit.
A :* : (Inwardly)
Yea.
(A.'s small pocket knife is out, playing the edge with his
nail, shot close of his hands slightly quivering with
inner tension.)
I can see you're on acid,
Father:
Probably on
you're on pot.
pills. God knows what else!
(Laughing 'at himself)
A .-.
sex . . .
Dancing. Mushrooms.
my mind is blown.
(Gently out of tension rubs the inside of his upper leg)
(Looking at him as he
Father:
does this)
I think you're sick.
(Puts knife away)
A*: tun
I love you, you're
Anthony,
P. :
my boy*
A. striking match, watches it burn. Telephone rings.
Father picks up phone. Pause.
Strange voice hissing over the phone:
sssssss.
Hanging up.
Father, bothered, hanging up. The match in A.'s hand
burns out. Father sees it go out.
A; rising, not looking at his Father, walking to elevator
which opens directly on the luxurious apartment.
3
I think your fire is out
A:
I think
Dad . . . I'm sorry.
I need a woman, Dad. I'm
going out and find a woman, Dad-
F. startled, very distant, slowly wondering aloud:
You really are sick . . . You
have no idea really of what
reality is.
A, turning around at entrance to elevator which opens
as he talks. Then softer:
Looking at Father hard.
Right here.
Reality I have.
(Gesturing with his
hand to his genitals)
Right here.
(Head)
Right here.
(Heart)
So man . . .
(Softly)
Dad . . . don't ever tell
me I'm sick.
Shot: footsteps into elevator. Hand pushing elevator
button. Elevator drifting across Father's face,
disappearing,
3. Anthony's
Elevator opening another floor.
mother with Siamese cat on her arm getting into elevator
4
first, group of friends following dressed in fancy threads
ready to go someplace.
ITother, looking at in elevator, at first unable
A. to
recognize him: Anthony?
Yes, Mom.
A:
How are you?
Marina:
Elarina, who says this, is Russian looking, is tall with
She locks down closely
a husky voice and long black hair.
at A., who is leaning up against a side of the elevator.
Mother from distance:
Come with us.
Where you going?
A .:
Looking at Iilarina, who is looking at him.
Mother turning bored to her son, looking at :him, blowing
smoke out of her mouth:
To Hell! What difference
A .:
does it make?
A Dylan-type, freaky hair
4. opening.
Elevator
and corduroys and knee-high boots (seen later as Lerner)
is leaning up against the side of the elevator in same
pose as A's as elevator opens. Looks at the party of
people wth cold blue eyes. Goes in elevator after last
has left.
A. combing his hair in the reflection
5.
Marina
of the glass doors, with a large light-blue comb.
standing behind him. To the side.
5
A .: No.
!I. : Why not:
A .: No.
14. : why not?
A .: No.
Anthony returns to pocket of his jeans.
comb
6. Faces of party going out the glass door, mother
first, son the last.
7. Anthony at front of door, waving to them as the
doors of the limousine close.
A. (off in low whisper):
Ciaou,
8. A. gloved hands in pocket not wearing jeans
but fancier, better clothes, walking down a city sidewalk
in the damp night. A young, cautious, slightly tense walk.
Passes
A belted raincoat on, drawn up around his neck.
a tall black standing in the shadows of a doorway, very
well dressed, a silk scarf about his neck, a distant
green light blinking on and off. To the negro's right
there is a fence with a manifesto tacked on. A. stopping,
looking at the black, at the manifesto, approaching, reads
it. Camera follows down the manifesto, line by line with
his eye.
Hen Wanted
Are You a Man
Can you Kill
Are A Realist.
You
Can You Rape.
Can You Steal.
Can You Die!
Assure Yourself.
Go East.
Go To War
Today.
Shot of spade treading past A.'s back, as he reads.
9. Camera follows spade from side walking down
Reading
street. Stopping at lighted newspaper stand.
a Glamour magazine. Pull of white models.
Marina, in
Fleeting full-screen shots of the model:
Russian leather and Egyptian outfits.
A, looking, Pan his eyes to newstand where the
spade is casually walking away with magazine.
Voice off (low), ALEXANDER's soft
cultivated voice:
I fled moral courage. I
read Vogue magazines and
Comic Books . . . and suffered
as I looked across the abyss
at Beauty, such complacent
Beauty . . .
Quick full-screen blowup ?.larina; then the Silver Surfer
(a comic-book hero).
&walking down another street. It is starting to rain.
7
Cut to A. as he is trying to close a window in the middle
of the night, the cold air blowing on his naked.body. He
finds the window stuck. It will not close.
Voice off:... but then I was a
soldier . . . a soldier is a
soldier . . . and a soldier
never cries . . .
Close, A. wearing a horrible white face mask, a cigarette
stuck in the mouth hole of the mask, smoke blowing out.
Voice off:... he dies.
A. walking faster, hands in pocket of raincoat.
10.
Voices off, reeling by fast:
I know exactly how you
feel, man.
I know exactly what you went
through over there darling.
I'm hip man, you're emerging
from a cosmos of insanity.
Full screen blowup: Eisenhower, smiling, in a golf cap-
REAK H To The Other Side.
Drums starting up. B ON THROUG
Drums fade.
Voices off:
Cool it man, cool it.
Another voice:
See Alexander.
8
Voices off:
It's a fcDl man, who plays
it cool.
(Pause)
A-'s voice, off:
. . . on the loneliness tri?
they all split. Dad's face
I leave behind in the elevator.
Shot.
A's voice, off:
My mother's voice dies on
the telephone. She . . .
Shot of Marina in the hall behind A. combing his hair.
A's voice, off:
splits. I split.
...
Shot of A. in student room at fire, his fleeing footsteps.
A's voice, off:
We all split . . . We all
fade.
(Pause)
My mouth feels dry.
A. passes camera, his back to it,
11. Anthony in coffee shop next to movie theatre,
standing, eating, what he's eating. Beautiful blonde girl
waiting at the counter for her change, catch each other's
eye, the voice on the radio saying:
Drive slowly, don't gamble
with your life, remember . . .
the stakes are too high.
9
A. following her.
Shot of her moving out the door.
Superimposed images of the two walking separately.
Voice off (Alexander's):
. . . the streets are full of
The City is the fear.
fear.
The sfi>dOWS
The wind is fear.
off the buildings are fear.
The plastic people are fear . . .
the silence is fear.
Blonde girl arrives outside her doorway, sees shadow of
A. coming up to her silently, his hands on her neck,
Kissing her cheek, lightly kissing
softly kissing her.
her on the mouth again, his finger gently under her chin-
She responds gently.
Her fear melts into tenderness.
Cut to Blowup (full screen) of Joanna (seen later) in
the woods with a thin Egyptian band shaped as a snake on
her head, her face painted green, not a model but a
member of a strange tribe living in the forests.
12. Voice off, (A.'s):
I wanted to sleep with you
as soon as I saw you.
She is a painter, her comfortable
Set: Diana's apartment.
pad full of large unframed colorful paintings on the wall.
She has long silken white hair, a pale face, green eyes,
is in her late twenties, speaks with an arrogant British
tone. Together they are lying on a rug next to the fire,
10
a lion's head telling us what sort of rug. She is
Her Doberman Pincer
warming A's cold feet in her lap.
is quietly resting on the couch above them, surveying.
Sound of fire crackling.
D-. (answering):
Oh we will eventually. It
takes time. Right now you're
perfectly dreadful . . .
You don't know
you're uptight.
Look
what to do with yourself.
They're beautiful
at your hands.
long creative hands,
Shot of hands.
D .: but they're tense, quivering
as if you'd had malaria in the
East.
Smells him, a bit of disgust in her face.
D .: You're giving off no scent.
You're cold . . .
No smell.
You're clammy.
Shot: painting of black man with large red flaming
D' S
eyeballs, black on red background, an edge
semi-abstract,
insanity to it.
of
A: (off): Wow like some oyster in
his shell on a seashore.
D, (off): No, an oyster is wet,
It isn't at all
damp.
the same thing.
11
Pause, looking at A's e'yes closely. A. not relaxing
with her,
A .: Wow what do I say.
Don't say Wow, it doesn't
D .:
mean anything to me.
A But baby,
l :
(bqoving his head
with emphasis)
wow means a lot to me.
-
Shot of A. at Temple in the Forest, with black brothers,
A. saying with
Slow motion.
in their primitive clothes.
great feeling and adoration WOW (no sound).
D.'s voice, off, the camera returning to her
apartment as she talks (petulantly):
Hide Hide Hide1 Why do you
You don't have
Hide things?
to perform with me . . . if YOU
...
want me . . . be yourself
don't be honest either . . .
there's no such thing as honesty
. . . those who try it inevitably
come off smelling stained.
Cut: Coming closer together on the rug.
Shot his fingers kneading the inside of her mouth,
Shot D. playing with his zipper.
Shot A. taking his brown leather pants off.
Shot dog watching,
12
Shot D.'s face examining his naked body from above,
judging,
observing,
Shot Anthony on his back, his eyes wander to the painting
semi-abstract, examining a butterfly
of a naked woman, also
This painting,
cupped in her hands between her knees.
unframed I grows almost to full screen as camera zooms in
slowly.
D.,off: Now your bones are getting
softer. You have a lot of
bones and very little flesh.
Didpu know that?
(Pause)
A ., off: No, what does that mean?
D *, off: You're not a fish anyway.
Camera has panned across wall to closeup of painting of
black man. The voices Off;
Now you're tasting good.
D.:
You're being yourself.
A .: The fire's out.
D .: Let's go into the bedroom.
A .: Let's stay out here,
Voices, off, trailing into the bedroom:
A .: Maybe I'll go in the back.
D .: No, you may attack me from the
rear, but you will enter at the
front.
13
Shot: door closing on dog who attentive to his mistress,
is circling at the door.
Shot (sharp tense freeze) of D. upthrust on bed, arching
herself, a green scarf clinging by its tip to her mouth.
Ai's left hand, with a leather wrist band on it, on the
In her face, eyes open,
side of her head, framing it.
a sudden and surprising fear -- fear of A., fear of
release, fear of sex.
Shot close on A's face, looking at her under him, curious,
not passionate.
cut. D. naked combing her long hair with a brush in the
mirror above her boudoir, wearing small black reading
spectacles on the tip of her long nose. In the mirror, we
see the big dog lying warily on the bed with A.
You've got a nice body.
D.
You've got nice hands.
But
You've got nice hair.
I can get a thousand nice
bodies and nice hands in this
Therefore, if you're
city.
going to come back, produce.
But a little
Not just a tool.
more of everything: guts, talent,
intelligence . . . and then
together . . . we'll work.
Is hurt, not
A* on bed, hands behind head, listening.
to show it, gets up, going towards bathroom.
14
Oui, mama.
A. (bored):
D. sees him in mirrur, turning, coming towards him aslant
as he moves, black spectacles on her nose, green scarf
tied around her neck, putting herself up against him,
Dog raising
his
tapping buttock with brush reassuringly.
his head, looking at them quietly.
D .: If you are what I think
you are . . . it'll work . . .
we'll run away . . . we'll
get out of the City -..
A- (deadpan):
Oui, mama.
As he says this, earlier picture of Genet full-screen
Blowup, passes on screen through his mind.
A. goes to bowl.
Shot of solitary red rose floating in the toilet bowl.
Shot A. curious about it.
D ., off: I want to watch you
pee.
Shot of rose being destroyed by the urine.
A ., off: why?
D ., off: I'm curious.
(Pause)
What do you want from me?
A ., off:
A. in
Shot, the dog on bed looking at them both naked.
Growling lowly,
at the door watching him.
the bathroom. D.
menacingly.
cut.
15
13. The sound of jazz now, as an increasing
Clash.
We go faster.
senseof unreality envelopes the city.
It's cold, he
Anthony walking the dark night streets.
briskly, driving on in spite of his
hugs himself. Walks
growing fear. Pliles-Davis-type jazz playing off.
Shot of cat (Alexander's cat seen later) from the top,
his striped back undulating, gliding, jumping up, sitting.
Shot of A.'s other cat, the Siamese, sitting, watching the
striped cat.
The former
Shot of the street, a homosexual is digging A.
wearing a fur overcoat festooned with flower patterns and
Xoroccan lace.
Shot of A. through the homosexual's orange-colored shades
(jazz growing intense, into the drums, mimicing his
Orange shades melting into red stoplight.
fantasy-passion).
A. crossing the street at the red light, in the drizzle,
quick image shot ofa speed limit sign marked with the
twin zeroes representing infinity.
Pan across thevine covered abandoned Temple in the Forest
-(used later for second set).
Pan into the cat's eyes, cat's eyes fusing into the eyes
of spade in super-threads sitting at a small table in the
A. is only white
middle of a jazz club, decorated in red.
at the table, with the spade and a couple of heads, each
One brother with goatee very
isolated from one another.
lightly sleeping on his muscles, another softly shaking
his head like a snake riffing on the music, the third, the
16
spade with an African head sitting there perfectly stoned
within himself, eyes open, looking ahead, almost not even
paying attention to the beat.
Shot of candle.
Shot of jazz group leader, close, a slight sweat on his
himself, starting to grow more intense,
face, carrying
playing the same jazz that began the scene.
Voice, off:
Betray: Explode . . . I:
Negative . . . Betray:
Explodef
Quick shot candle.
Shot: terrifying explosion of a mine in a tree (seen later).
A. rising from table quickly, sweating, flushed, treading
Freaking on the jazz, needing
shakily towards men's room
Heavy soul James Brown, coming
something stronger. music,
UP fast on the jazz score, beginning at the moment of the
explosion in the tree . . . Brown moaning "I got the feeling".
Shots quicker in rhythm with new music.
Shots: Sweating jazz leader's face
The blacks at his table, individually
A's burning room back at the university
feet running
His
A. shakily gliding through club to men's room.
Goes in. White walls of john momentarily break his mood.
Shots Two cats locked in the toilet, their feet visible
Snorting.
under the door. Sounds of strong sniffing.
17
Bumping up against the door of the toilet as they hear A.
coming in. One of them saying in husky drugged voice
Yea . . . well a . . .
Shot: A. combing his long hair in the mirror with the
light blue comb. Closer.
Shot: A's calmer face.
Shot: A. in his forest threads, his hair longer, in the
forest, combing his hair with a small jagged pocket mirror.
His face reflected on a jagged screen.
Long shot from side of in woods combing his hair.
A.
Shot: same explosion. James Brown beginning all over
again *.. I got the feeling!
Shot: A. dancing to the music with a colored chick, alone
in his apartment, working it out. Both dance well, fast
slow, never strenuously.
Superimposed images: A. back in the jazz club
Candle
Jazz man swinging
His books and papers in flames
Smashing his photograph (seen later)
Cat, moving, watching
14. These superimposed images fading, A. and the girl
dancing to the music. I Got The Feeling peaks.
cut. No sound but that of the rain falling on the streets.
Still night.
A. getting out of the car at the corner.
One of the brothers, with the goatee, driving in the front,
the spade next to him, in the back in the shadows the third
The window wipers rubbing the
head, very high and silent.
windshield.
18
open, talking to brother in back.
A. keeping the door
Listen man think we're
A .t I
on two different trips
tonight and wow . . . it's like
we're still circling each other.
Brother in back, shy smilk-ng, not quite looking at A.
Well you kfiow how it is . . .
3rother:
we all got our secrets --
the man at the wheel's got
his. I got mine.
The
Shot of driver looking out at the rain, bored.
spade next to him adjusting his scarf.
A. looking at brother in back.
A .: Would you like to come up
We'll get so
to my place?
high, we'll have to unite.
Brother (still shy, elusive):
. . . Well it's getting late
and we gotta be at the Man's
Fe got your
in the morning.
number. FTe.11 give you a ring.
(Pause)
A .*0 Okay, man, have it your way.
Brother: Keep it cool.
A. closing door to car.
Shot of two in front looking ahead through the wet
windshield.
Car driving off.
19
A. walking through a cloud of steam rising from the sewer.
15. A girl in motorcycle gear (same girl who later
as member of the tribe is killed by Bunny; some
distinguishing feature so as to be recognizable) looking
closely at Rodinls sculpture The Kiss.
Voice, off:
I never knew why before,
There's
why it was so beautiful.
no sex.
follows her gloved fingers as they probe the area
Camera
of the male's missing parts.
16. On a wall
A. coming through the steam cloud.
A cop
behind him is painted "Freedom For Italy's Young!"
in a blue overcoat with a stick is leaning up like a
prostitute against a building down the street, trying to
keep out of the rain. walking past him.
A.
Shot: A. trying to close the window in the night. It
won't close.
turning his face -on Anthony, coming out of the shadows,
Cop
taking his cap off, long white hair tumbles down from the
cap. A. sees Diana, dressed in blue. NO look of surprise
in A.* s face, rather an acquiescence to the fear. He sees
what happens to him, not as unreality or dream, but as
objects of fear. Only later, does this Fear fade into
Dream.
20
17, Voice off, Ibther's regalvoice, previous scene
dissolving into bedroom of Mother's who is in bed looking
like a fiery wreck.
Mother, I just don't know I have
pains all over my ears, my
eyes, my spine . . . I can't
tonight I thought I
move -*.
was going to die.
Oh I'm suffering Anthony since
the East,
you've been back from
you leave this apartment in such
a mess, you're a pig! I can't
have it . . . I'm going to . . . Oh
IRm in pain it doesn't matter.
want my place impeccable all the
I
do you understand that?
time,
A * I distracted, flicking his cigarette in the waste basket
at his mother's bedside. Fire erupts immediately as if
gasoline had been soaking the trash. Mother shrieking as
the red flames jump up and block her off from A. Through
the fire, her voice:
I4OTHER: Oh you fool, you've put the
place fire.
1'11 go and tell father.
A.:
18. Shot of father sitting cross-legged on a divan
in an afghan-type robe, smoking long Turkish hashish pipe.
21
Father's voice, off:
My son, blessed be the stars
that bring f7ou to me.
-
Cut to A. picking up his young boy's face,
19.
encased in a photograph frame and throwing it out the
Father in robe behind him,
picture window onto the street,
looking off distracted somewhere else.
sound of breakage,
Long shot from above of it dropping. NO
His face in the street, the rain pouring down On it.
20. Cut to shot of telephone.
Telephone voice, off (soft):
Keep it cool.
Cool it man.
Slow fade.
21. This scene done in deadpan semi-documentary style,
mostly medium and long shots, Anthony treading lightly
into the subway, no longer wearing raincoat, but looking
more like a cat, wrapped in a light beige wool overcoat
down to his knees with hood which he has over his head and
light-blue sunglasses over his eyes, tan warm tight pants
It's about two in the morning
and heavy warm moccasins.
and the underground station is deserted save for a colored
cat well dressed in a silk scarf and wearing light-pink
shades over his eyes, leaning up against a tier on the other
side of the tracks.
Long shot of them across the tracks from one another,
22
glancing through their shades at each other, unconcerned.
An utter silence,, A. casually strolling back and forth.
Advertisements on walls for soups, intermixed with posters
Dean. Dette Davis.
of people's faces,blownup. Brando.
Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman-
Edward G. Robinson, etc.
A. stops at Blowup of The Silver Surfer.
Walks on. Shot of him through colored cat's
light pink lens across the tracks. A. reading a Poster:
Believe That Love is the Greatest Thing
w I
in The world; that It Alone Can Overcome Hate, That Right
Can and Will Triumph over Might. " --John D. Rockefeller Jr.
As A. reads the poster, a whistle down the tunnel.
An express train whistles by, shot of moving people's
Express disappears.
zombie faces shooting by in the night.
Utter silence returns; whistle from down pedestrian
corridor. Ri'ch croesus-rockefeller type emerging dressed
He's old with grey
in rich furs, a red flower in his fur.
Walking back and forth near the
hair, distinguished.
tracks, a bit nervously but detached and rich.
Puts a pair of light yellow shades on, looks at
A, on his side of the track and the brother across
the track, Sees them both looking at him with their
variously colored shades (shot of them through his yellow-
He doesn't
shades). Puts them away.
He takes ihem off.
like them.
shot of rich man pacing through A.'s blue shades
23
(if in black and white, a frontal view of A. looking is
good enough) and then through the brother's pink shades.
Suddenly train whistles down tunnel, coming down
A.'s track. Then brother's. -Train
Shot through A-Is eyes.
approaching, screaming. Shot through rich man's eyes.
Nervously pacing at the very edge of the track. Roar of
train. Rich man jumping head on into the tracks. Roar as
train goes by, pulls to a stop. Long shot A. casually
getting into subway. Shot of brother, left
Pulls away.
alone. on subway platform. Watching the train pull out.
Train through his pink shades. Looking at the bloodied
tracks. Do not see what he sees. Camera on his unsurprised
eyes. Greys can kill greys.
22. seated, a white wall behind
Solitary shot. Woman
her. First shot, her beautiful legs. The
Tilting up.
face and body of an old woman. Staring at the camera.
23. Blow Wp Pull Screen of Mureyev. Momentary.
(Nureyev the ballet dancer)
24. Shot A., narcissistically examining his own face
in the mirror , proud that it is icy. Trying suddenly to put
expression into it. Not satisfied.
2s. Cut to Anthony throwing his photograph into the
street (seen earlier). Slow motion as it descends onto
sidewalk, shot from above. Shot Nureyev's face smashed in
the street.
24
26. Anthony in a stark white walled toilet, a violin
Anthony
softly playing off screen a classic Mozart melody.
writing with pencil on wall in large capitals:
To Be Real!
To Feel!
FREE!
(semi-documentary effect to this scene)
Camera dwells on Free.
cut to
27. Some stock footage out of the great fencing scene
in The Sea Hawk (1940) with Errol Flynn battling his adver-
sary in the castle, their two huge silhouettes leaping up
on the stone wall behind them.
Its effect camping the seriousness of A.'s feelings perhaps
This
implying his own ability to see himself comically.
ability being what makes him go on and not give up, the
difference between him and Alexander.
Violin is still playing through this scene. Footage is
cut at the moment Flynn kills his adversary.
Violin continues.
28. Camera panning a park, discovering Man in the
Cold, in the day, not raining, his head in his hands,
looking at a small fire burning in wired trash barrel.
a
Dwells on him.,
A dime mister?
Voices off:
A: If you need bread man, steal it
(pause)
25
A: (cont'd): Can I steal it from you?
(pause)
Here, take this key . . .
(low mumbling follows and fades)
29. Shot of father in business suit, speaking
Scene
on telephone, his arms gesturing, angry, disgusted,
done in silence except for violin which is still playing.
Pan from father's gesturing arm across to his
looted apartment, drawers on floor, food eaten in kitchen,
liquor bottles open, the mirrors stolen from their frames.
Pan across his library full of rich leather bound
books, left untouched, Panning across this, camera comes
to a young boy with long hair (Anthony) in a Cardin-type
suit playing the piano (the same child is seen later as
Anthony's own child). The off screen violin fading, and
Anthony picking UD the same gentle melody on the piano.
Camera not stopping long at him, keeps panning to his
young ITother, much younger, virginal, in a long dress
reaching to her ankles as in the early 50's, looking in
profile out the window at the garden, an afternoon sun
shining.
(soft, a boy's tiny voice)
Voice off:
The world is sorrow, nothing more,
and in its bosom I play . . . the
practice of my heart.
Camera panning out to the garden. Dissolve very slow.
26
(off 1
30. There are no Truths outside the gates
of Eden.
Shot of
Shot: unframed blowup of Dylan on wall.
ALEXANDER'S back on side, looking at pester, hating just
spoken this. Turns around:
I was what you are . . . I am what you're
going to be.
Alexander, handsome all in voluptuous black, walking
This
away from poster, down a few steps, into his apartment.
scene, as very important to the
well as the apartment, are
theme of the movie, Alexander being a throw-back to the
A blow up
feelings expressed through Words, through Poetry,
Of Dylan in his apartment and a romantic unframed portrait of
Anthony,
Rimbaud, the young French poet he identifies with.
in the apartment with him, is more modern, more uncertain Of
his symbols (so far Genet, Movie Actors, Vogue and Glamour
Models being his only glow ups; he makes Alexander's trip here
in the Apartment and later again one last time, in Prison,
where Alexander's destiny is unfolded along with Anthony's*
Two different roads, but sprung from a similar source.
Alexander's dark brooding clothes accentuate the
idea of a modern bewildered Hamlet lost in a sea of words in
a world where Words are dying.
During the course of his monologues, the camera Will
pass through his Apartment, picking up objects such as his
two cats, one striped, one Siamese, the paintings, the blow-
ups of Comic-Book characters Alexander has but on his VJall~
27
a poster of Jim Morrison of the Doors, and several large
plants (optional) -- and flowers. The Apartment's colors
could be plain white and black, either black walls and
ceilings and bright white furnishings or vice-versa, but a
Plastic
stark contrast between two schemes, old and modern.
white chairs, bubble tables with neons glowing on them,
abstract portraits, that of Rimbaud could be semi-abstract
red and green, contrasted to this single classic furnishing --
Alexander -- all in black, pacing through his large one-room
apartment studio. A picture window looking out on the
dark city way below. Also a fireplace above which hangs a
torch. Not an Apartment stressing Wealth, as Alexander is
beyond it, almost mythic to Anthony.
As written, the camerats effect is to circle the
room time and again 1 panning the objects as the spoken words
themselves encircle themselves.
The Siamese sits in a white plastic chair, looking.
The striped cat is on the move.
Alexander gliding past his objects, finding a
cigarette, Anthony is sitting across
lighting it, standing.
from him in a chair, dressed in a light motif -- contrasting
to Alexander's black. Looking at Alexander, Anthony in his
clothes looks like he's burned his lar;t candle.
Alexander looking at him, understanding::
(softly) What's happened, Anthony? Tell
me.
A, pausing, shrugging, saying "Oh" like the French
say it. Lighting cigarette. Camera wandering away from him-
28
His voice off, soft, almost an interior monologue:
Strange things happen to me .-- feel like a
I
little boy inside a crazy crazy city, trying to close a
window . . . and the window's jammed . . . (Pause) .-. I keep
having accidents,
Camera moving around room takes in another Anthony
sitting there, in another outfit, spilling champagne on
himself, camera continuing past him as if nothing has happen-
ed. Quick cut to A. flicking the cigarette into his Mother's
wastebasket but before fire can erupt, cut to sight pf auto-
mobile accident, an anonymous body lying in the street . . .
Cut to A.'s face close, worried:
I met a girl yesterday in the park . . .
I was walking my Mother's dog.
Shot of A. in the park walking his Mother's little
Diana walking her Doberman. The Doberman swarming over
dog.
A.'s dog. Talking
Diana berating her dog. Leashing him in.
A. talking to
to A, who holds the little dog in his arms.
her. Both talking.
I: didn't know it then . . . but she was
the law.
Shot of Diana, her long white hair, in the blue
policeman*s overcoat, her voice off:
You may attack me from the rear but You
will enter by the front,
Fading into her freeze in bed, the green scarf
clinging to her teeth by its edge, draped on her bosom, the
29
fear of release written in her eyes:
. . . so I was the thief (&net B~CJW UP)
explanations, in contrast to Alexander=,
Anthony's
are mostly made in images:
... cop a cigarette case from her.
I
Shot A. leaving her apartment, taking a gold cigar-
ette case.
. . . she sees me . . . (D. sees him) . . . she
pretends she hasngt.
Shot Diana acting as normal, the dog still growling
at A., soundlessly.
. . . says goodbye . . . says call me soon . . .
knows I won't . . . I stole . . . I'm caught . . . I don't return . .
(pause) . . . she adores it . . . I do what she wants . . . she's
a thief . . . doesn't know it. (camera dwelling on Alexander's
portrait of Rimbaud) . . . she paints . . . she steals . . .
Shot of full screen of Diana's painting of the
woman and the butterfly. Shot A. photograph, similar to
Shot
Genet's, in a t-shirt, looking sensitive and a thief.
A. close, talking, blowing cigarette smoke out mouth.
. . . but she doesn't admit it . . . stays a
COP . . . loves . . . like a cop.
Shot Diana in bed, freeze, green scarf, etc.,
fading into shot of red rose sitting in the toilet bowl,
slow fade.
Alexander: But you're not a thief, are you?
Anthony, looking up at Alexander. (Pause)
Alexander: Any others?
A. mood, starting
changing to smile:
Oh . . . I met this crazy chick at an auto-
mobile wreck .., (shot of same wreck, seen previously) . . .
she takes me home to her place ,.. we talk . . . she's incredi-
bly warm .-. we go to bed . . . then very suddenly ehe says,
do you like to dominate or be dominated? . . . I say it doesn't
make any difference . . . I don't think about it . . . she says, I
want to beat you . . . okay ..* she weighs about a hundred
pounds . . . it's passionless . . . I feel foolish . . . she says,
man, you're so square . . . beat it .-. beat what? ..- get Out
of here! . . . she throws a boot at me (shot of boot hitting the
wall next to A.)
Closeup; A's face:
We just couldn't get together . . . (pause)
(A. reflecting) . . . You walk around and you meet so many
squares you begin to think you're square ,.. then sometimes
just everybody's out of his head . . . then YOU
you think meet
the freaky obsessed ones like that chick . . . snake people,
cat people, dog people .,. (pause; closeup A.'s face) . . .
and YOU just don't know where you're at.
punish yourself-
Alexander: (a tender look) YOU
A: this crazy chick
Yeah, that's just what
said, Why do you punish yourself, That's what they always
say when you want to find something and you're looking very
hard. You'll it) anything just to
try anything (emphasizing
find out, and if nothing is available, you go out and force
A, in street, walking) and because YOU
yourself to look (shot
31
force yourself, these crazy people pin a label on it --
Masochist, why do you punish yourself?
Alexander: So now what?
(pause)
A: (shrugging, shifting mood)
(Camera dwelling on timbaud, shifting
to the Comics) ...I'm sick of sitting in movies . . . there's
some kind of real war in the East . . . they need men . . . I
need new faces . . . It11 enlist.
Alexander and Anthony, looking at each other. A.
going on almost in apology:
.e. the money's good, you keep what YOU
take . . . you find out . . . if you can kill . . . if you can't
(shrugs at his own morbid
.-. (pause) . . . do you get killed?
thought),
A soft
Alexander picking it up-
Telephone rings.
feminine voice, husky, saying over the phone:
Is Diana there?
Alex&tier: She's gone,
Is she coming back?
Alexander: No.
This is Luna. How are you, Alex?
Alexander looking at wall, reflecting, hesitant
about something. The voice continues:
I have a partin a
I'm going to the East,
Will you still be
new movie of Godard's, I'll be back.
here?
Alexander, looking puzzled:
I don't know.
32
Alexander hanging up, pacing to front of abstract
Able.to be read:
lettering hanging on a canvas on the wall,
"Painters paint, Writers write, Poets sing, Killers kill (read
by camera going down from line to line).
Alexander turning away from tableaux, asking A:
Are you a killer who kills, Anthony?
(going on) You have never . . . ever ,., betrayed yourself to
me .., ever, it's sad that you're this way . . . you insist
really on being your own hero in your own little tragedy.
Shot: face. His offscreen voice:
A,`s
Words
The images begin. Four quick images from Anthony's
mind tumble on screen, each image running through his mind
with a click, as from a slide viewer:
1. A. killing the anake with his knife (seen later).
Shot from A.'s
2. A. as sole survivor of massacre.
shoulder, of desolate stream bed in the forest (seen later).
In profile.
A. being decorated in dark shadows.
3.
A dark hand in a greta garbo glove putting an orchid on his
afghan-type uniform.
The silver bird (airplane) flying across the
4.
sky (seen later). Silver bird on airfield runway, stopped,
Alexander,
the door opening. Parents,
The hero returned.
Diana, others there. Four strong black brothers in furs
bearing a pink marble coffin strewn with yellow and black
flowers from the plane. Shot of horror on Parents' faces-
looking
Diana
Alexander bowing his head, tears on his cheek,
hard, offended by this heroic act.
33
Images end.
Alexander: . . . I don't think you know yet whether
you want to live or die.
Close shot A's face. Pause,
(becoming hard] . . . I see before me with
A:
my eyes. I see a Siamese sitting pn a chair (camera follows
these objects he mentions) . ..I seeposters of Dylan---Morrison`
Superman . . . people with secret identitie . . . I see a library
full of exalted expectations -written by people who've been
eaten by worms .-. I see a portrait of Rimbaud . . . young,
tender, bold . . . (camera dwelling on portrait) who after all
his travels and adventures was delivered back to the beginning
dying of syphilis
into his mothergs arms . . . (bitterly)
l . .
. . . and I see one writer (camera directly on Alexander,
humbling him, beginning to reveal his identity) - He
wrote a poetic book at the tender age of
eighteen. He's lived inside these
He's done nothing since.
four walls for more than a year now wrizing to all hours, dream-
ing thinking imagining having his women around him like little
insects, and without knowing it himself, becoming an ultra-
sensitive, very tender plant,
An interior
This wounds Alexander. A long pause.
monologue delivered offscreen between the two of them, in
urgent, intimate whispers, something they might have said to
each other before somewhere in the past:
(soft, said quickly) . . . when I die will
A:
Will you let me in?
I see your face at the Gates of Eden?
I don't think I'd let myself in.
Alx:
34
Camera which has been panning the room during this
short interior dialogue, returns to Alx. who is talking more
to himself in a wistful vein:
It's
We really live like plants though.
the wordless part of ourselves where things just happen to
us .., we're hard on our animal selves, so hard, and we travel
such a long way, looking at Dylan blow Up "it's so hard to
very few of us young ones ever
get on" . . . and so few, SO
really make it, (Turning to A. After a long pause) I've been
here tco long--. like yousay.. My mindistooloose, my legs
.areinstagnantwaters- Last night...1 took mylasttrip,..., I
asked my -.,"insect woman",--to leave me-.-She did-
Shot of A. listening to Alx's conversational story,
imagining it. Alx on floor in lotus position, Diana, his
Diana, painting ~1~'s face with long snaky luminescent colors
Alx
sprouting from the eyes, the nose, about the forehead.
She
looking very Indian, very intense, about to be brutal.
is finishing. stands, looks in the mirror, says something
He
to her, looks at her tenderly. She leaves,
A: . . . as soon as she left, I set my Poems
and my books, everything on fire (shot of flames seen in
same 1) . . . it was everything I had done #is last year we-
I took a bag -- writing -- and
but it made no difference.
went to the end of it, as far as could go, and you know
I
All else had
what I found . . . I found nothing but myself.
fallen -- Truth Illusion, whatever it is, and The Dream had
very suddenly come down to an inescapable almost implacable
35
unmerciful factor, factor-inanition One. Me! . . . I, like some
poor poet would say, had punctured by beautiful beautiful
quintessence. Quintessence is a lung. Bang SSSSS.
He hisses. Walking to a flat table designed as
a chess board, with the pieces on it, all of them white, A~x
picks up a castle in his hand, rolling it over, saying a bit
more gayly:
Alx: So I started playing a game of chess with
myself today (turns to A.) it makes sense . . . (camera on
the all white chess pieces, A~X replacing the castle) . . . and
I shall play until I've completely lost track of which piece
belongs to which, of what belongs to what, of who belongs to
who . . and then when the game is over (he pauses) . . .
You'll what?
A:
Camera on Superman Blow Up, shifting to one of
Tarzan.
Alx: You know, Anthony, what the most beautiful
dream in the world is . . . it's the iris of a glistening green
serpent snowfloating on a film of mosspink water,
perforating pupil gazes at your naked back, it slices
its
through the fluid brim . . . it goes on and on, fingers of the
dawn.
A.indifferent to any meaning Alexander attaches
to it:
words.
These are just
A: I don't understand.
Words fall out of
Alx: But words are thoughts.
the sky like this rain. They glide from street corner to
36
street corner *.. (Camera dwelling on cat, the striped one,
moving, the Siamese looking at him, the cats play a little
game as the monologue continues) . . . thinking, there's
always one more word* one more thought nonetheless, isn't
there? Train of thought. On the last
On the next corner,
corner. I pass. What was it?
I go. I passed it by. YOU
search, You fail, You wish perfection in the mind, YOU
are close, closer , yesterday but one, tomorrow but one, SO
close you are almost there. Tomorrow! It collapses and
where are you? Thinking, dimly thinking. On and on, through
a threnody of streets, through words made of rain. (A.
looking at the Rimbaud portrait).
Interior monologue. hollow distant boy's
A I
I wrote the inexpressible, I fixed frenzies in their flight.
I purged my mind of all human hope. strangled joy. 1
I
pounced with the stealth of a wild beast. called to the
I
executioners. I gnawed their rifle butts as I died.
Oh! the banner of raw meat against the
silk of seas and artic flowers. veerings of chasms!
Music,
and the clash of icicles against the stars (pause) I*11 re-
turn with limbs of iron, dark skin and furious eyes; people
will think to look at me that I am of a strong race made-of
I will cover myself with gashes, tattoo my body, as
gold.
I'11 howl through the streets.
ugly as a Mongol, you'll see,
37
1 will be raving mad and never work and never show my jewels
-
. . . and one night (pause) the demon will seize me. and embrace
me and we will wrestle on the floor and one night I will lose
and come to regard as sacred the disorder of my mind1
Shot of Anthony's face, closer up, closer, his face
dissolving into the trees blowing in the forest right after
the explosion (seen later),
Shot of Alexander, looking out the window down at
the city. Goes on talking. As he talks, camera casually
panning Anthony as he rises, puts his coat on, and leaves,
He has be-
to go back outside (to the street) which calls.
Alexander
come really just another object in the apartment.
His back is
accepts his leaving without saying anything.
The camera alter-
turned. He is speaking as if to himself.
nating between the Apartment and the rainy street Anthony is
walking down,
Last night I was alone
Alexander: (his voice off)
. . . at the musicend of death .,. staring flatfaced into a
pond . . . the sea, the ghosts of the lungs . . . the promise of
things to be . . . A bony damp cavern where women grow like
in the night,
seaweed from the sea, they owl iboo iboo. cry
her hand like an edge on my isolated shoulder -- so sweet as
I rest, in her breath in her breast my head on her shoulder
and weep. Weep Weep! (shot of Comic Book Blow Up fading to
shot of Anthony chasing Joanna through the woods, seen later)
. . . the fingers of the dawn they weep . . . all is seen through
an eyeccave of bonepillars that redound . . . percussive 0-m
38
. . . porous . . . stumbling towards spectrum . . . slipping on
sound ,.t eating air. I tell myself, reminding myself, it
is wet in my shell, in my strong, strong shell, it is wet and
0 now I feel . . . I feel the days melting into years and light-
years liquidating the years and time itself crumbling . . .
through the lungs the ghosts sing, their songs carry into the
air, air atmmsphere, air all about (shot Al%% face, quick
Cut to A. emerging in the street, sniffing gratefully the wet
air) . . . air air, fixed and silent, how silent . . . long
silences inhabit this air, the drip drop of it in my ear, in
the air perched, sounds, tedium's sweat, like the movies, a
forgetive imago, in black and white and chevied with chiaro-
Yes --
scuro . . . and in the zoo it takes two days to say Yes.
the only word that matters in the language . . . it's in Eden
. . . Yes.
A. walking down a street hooded with construction
On the wall painted in red are
timber, the walls in blue.
the words, Freedcm for Greece!
Alx: (concluding) Out on the ocean (slow shot
of ocean late just before the sunset) when it is green and
desolate and cold, and the big waves come up (slow shot of
Seagreen blue
waves rising and falling) out of the emotion.
water, Thrashing on the skull . . . I dip my face inwards
(Camera panning to an anonymous youth floating by himself in
the water) and float my starved eyes on the wide window of
the sea. And lull my eyesockets to a wide-eyed sleep . . .
strange sample of the sea, transfusing the spark of ingenuity
39
(shifting, asking) there is no ingenuity in the sea is there?
... I wonder: what sharks are poised between here and there,
what fish lie lonely under the waves.
Shot A. walking, back Cut to Alx.
to the camera.
looking in a mirror , puzzled, perhaps realizing A. has left
and he is alone, his words are much slower now:
A face . . . is a face . . . nothing more?
The end of Truth . . . is this face? . . . (pleading, his voice
off) flee the fugitive dream . . . it glistens in the moon . . .
it dances on slithery serpents (shot of slithering snake in
(Shot
theTemple . . . by rushing waterfalls.
(seenlater)
Squeezed inwards by
the stream in the forest, seen later)
flesh-fed pythons that coil slimes of eternity about my eyes
(Shot Anthony being bitten by the snake, seen later) and . . .
To die . . . to
forgive, forget . . . free to finish my hope.
be - . . . no more . . . Dead!
me (both question and exclamation).
Shot: Francis at the stream, dying, seen later.
Cut to Alexander's sad face. Alexander approaching the end,
which is played out later in Prison.
street, these words following him,
Anthony, on the
He's tired, exhausted, worn
leans up against the blue fence.
out. His offscreen voice whispering, fighting off the
desire to give it all up:
Words . . . just Words wrapped around
Words.
Anthony in the
Dissolve to Previous Scene 26.
bathrobe, scrawling on the wall with the pencil:
bleak white
40
To Be Real!
To Feel!
FREE!
(But instead of the previous semi-documentary
style, this scene is shot again with a closer, realer camera,
catching the strong desire in Anthony to achieve what he
writes.
Dissolve
Forest - Stream - Temple
The City
Time and place and worlds have changed.
has been unreal, frightening. Here a much more relaxed
primitive world -- that of snakes, slow quiet, but suddenly
Anthony moves
very fast, very violent, and very dangerous.
from the Fear of the Cat into the Dream of the Snake. He
And never for-
will be bitten by it, and he will kill it.
getting it, will journey on into the final, deep-sea world
of silence. Then Freedom.
A, has gone to the East to fight with the mercenary
He's part
soldiers against the wild tribes of the Forest.
of a small detachment of fifteen-twenty men resting deep .
in the jungle-forest of a small old abandoned Buddhist
temple. The relics are broken, the statues on the floor,
mixed with the mercenaries' light individual equipment --
41
rifles, small knapsacks, grenade belts. In this temple
Buddha still stands , some stray unknown forest people still
coming to worship here, There are fresh joss sticks burn-
ing. Several mercenaries, mostly black in their early
twenties r are inside the temple, sprawled on the floor on
their ponchos, a small fire going. One is sleeping,
another reheating a piece of meat; they have killed a wild
deer and his half-eaten corpse is still slowly roasting on
a stick built over the fire. Several of the blacks are
smoking the Forest Hash which they are passing sound in
They wear an
two pipes which are very long and beautiful.
individual mixture of uniforms although their pants are all
If they wear
the same -- light tight-fitting breeches.
shirts -- several are bare-chested with medallions (Bud-
dhist, Christian, sharks' tooth, other designs) and tattoos
-- the shirts are loose, some of them ruffled, and mixing
with the camouflage of the jungle -- green and tan gold,
Some wear head bands around
black and white striped, etc.
their long hair, silver bracelets, beads, one wears sun-
glasses, another brother with a thin hawklike nose wears
a black bandanna tightly wrapped on his head, as if, like
the other brothers, he was just off the city block taking
This is to be kept in mind for the
a trip in the Jungle.
Fate that befalls this outfit results from the fact that
they are not really part of The Forest.
Very few of them
spite of their disguises, from The City.
will be able to survive the primitive ordeal of this world,
42
Though th@ outfit has been several weeks in the Forest,
the blacks have no beards. A small transistor.radio plays
inside the Temple and two of the Brothers are dancing
softly to the sound of soul music.
The white world is for the most part outside the
Temple, sprawled about it in the thick grass, relaxing.
Some have beards, others have shaved, but their faces are
hard and dirty, dust and dirt is deeply ingrained in the
cracks of skin, Anthony is an exception, he has kept him-
self clean, his beard barely visible, although there are
small lines of fatigue under his eyes and a small scar
under his left eye, the result of a previous wound, not
serious. He tends to rub it occasionally. Ironically, in
the war, he has become even softer. Time has crumbled:
he is spacing himself.
The contrast is made then, by camera CloseuPs,
of the black and white features, The Blacks are tenderer,
softer. The Whites are tired, cruel. The blacks Sing-
Dance. Although inside they are as blue as the sky, and
scared.
Opening Shot (set to Music, contrasting to the
World of Words Anthony has just left behind in the City.
31. A black soldier with rifle and grenades, but hat-
less like all the rest, is striding through thick elephant
grass and thicket, the camera with him as he walks, catch-
ing the effect of the green elephant grass splitting apart
43
as he walks, the sun gleaming through the trees, almost
moving with him, seen and then not seen and seen again.
From a distance, inside the temple, on the radio, Sam
Cooke's song "Cupid" is playing loud, and sort of sad like
all Cooke's songs , giving a texture of music and sunlight
to his walk.
He breaks through the thicket into the crystal
clear sun shining over the tiny clearing around the
Temple. The Whites sprawled about.
As he breaks through the thicket, Anthony, wear-
ing silver bracelets and a Buddhist medallion around his
neck and a ruffled dirty shirt, his hair unkempt, longer
than before, is taking his picture from a distance through
a telephoto-lensed camera, which for the first time, he
A. snap-'
carries with him, Radio still playing "Cupid".
the shutter again. Photographic freeze of Robinson
ping
and Anthony's first use of his eyes
(the soldier), XUS~C
are themes inherent to The Forest.
Camera on A. as he moves about the clearing,
pictures of the White soldiers. Their photographic
taking
freezes. Introducing their hard faces.
A. shooting Lee, who is at the head of the out-
fit (later described).
A. shooting Bunny, the youngest soldier, who is
handsome and tender looking, though later his actions
describe him as stupid and cruel.
A. pausing, walking a little bit further away
44
from the temple.
* Isaac, a
A. approaching from a distance moder-
with sharp attractive
ately tall, slender, muscled Indian,
features, no beard whatever, his long black hair curling
down over his forehead, could look like a little boy but
he stands there away from the rest, sharpening his long
glistening hunting knife. His chest is without hair and
he wears a thin loose-fitting vest of black cloth hanging
from broad The way he sharpens
unbuttoned hLs shoulders.
his knife, with stone and cloth, it is obvious this is his
most important possession.
A. raising the camera to his eye to take his
, sees Isaac raise his head
picture. Through the lens, A
Shakes
as he feels the camera on him. Looks at camera.
his head. Turns away from the camera-
A. walking back into the Temple after his trip
32.
the scene in the Temple as described
into the white world.
Two Brothers.dancing to the music- He
previously,
stops at the threshold of sunlight, thinks about taking
in here cannot
can't, this wrld
a picture but knows he
goes and sits by Francis, a brother
be photographed, He
has tender features-
He
who is very close to Anthony.
A. listening, smoking the bowls as they come
directions.
around, from both They are all feeling -very
nice. On the radio, Smokey Robinson's "Tracks of My Tears"
45
is playing, and as the two brothers dance, Francis, who
has a very high singing voice, though not as good as
Smokey's whom most people mistake for a woman he sings so
'tenderly, starts to sing with the radio:
People say I'm the life of the party
cause I tell a joke or two
Although I may be able to laugh loud and hardy
deep inside I'm blue
So take a good look at my face
You'll see my smile looks out of place
If you look closer
It's easy to trace
The tracks of my Tears
I need you . . . Need you
Since you left me, if you've seen me with
another girl
Seeming like I'm having fun
although she may be cute
She's just a substitute
because you're the permanent one
So take a good look at my face
You'll see my smile looks out of place
Look a little bit closer
It's easy to trace the Tracks of My Tears
etc.
song, his brand of blues, the camera
As Francis sings
closes on him; in the backdrop, Buddha sits.
46
As he sings, the rest do not look at him sing,
they know he can sing, they've heard this song a hundred
times, they know it too. They lie where they are, look at
what they do, and deep inside, where it's blue, they listen.
The two brothers, on their feet, dance slowly, a
gestures with their hands about shoulder level, and
few
their feet moving in a tiny circle of tenderness,
The pipes continue to circulate, Francis even
interrupting his singing momentarily to smoke, hold, ex-
He is not performing, he is
hale, and then sing again.
just singing along. The smoking of the Hash naturally has
some relationship to the surrounding dream world of The
Forest, but isn*t really significant and like the singing,
is very casual , going almost unnoticed by the camera.
The song ends.
33. Camera dwells on Buddha at peace, another long
The camera moving to
afternoon in The Forest drifting by.
Adams who is very high, off by himself in a corner of the
temple. He is one of the whites, wandering through his
head, his low interior monologue . . . The monologues here
are done swiftly, voices following quickly on other voices.
Adams: {off) There's no entertainment out
here. There's no movies, no shows . . . no girls . . . I live
in a beautiful world .., where things don't make any dif-
ference. It will take them a long time to come where I am
at . . . maybe they think I'm crazy . . . but I'm not . . . I
have friends.
47
Camera moving from Adams to the ones he calls his
friends. To King, who is the biggest brother, very black,
with big white cotton picker*s nails. His large pink hand-
some tongue, as he says:
Adams: The King has a pink tongue es. He says
he eats a lot of chicken *.. there ain't no chicken here
.a. in the forest.
King's voice off following quickly on Adams@:
King: Cotton is easiest to pick, it's tall,
I could pick 600 pounds in a day.
Camera on Francis who's talking to Anthony,
b
Camera moving to King,
Francis: (voice off) There's nothing harder than
a hard Mexican, ain't that right man, Anthony says there
ain't nothing harder than a hard Mexican ..-
Another Voice: (off) How old are you Anthony?
Ageless,
A.
Francis: As old as water hunh?
All these voices are off.
Adams: Francis got soul . . . he got it in his
voice . . . he got it just all over the place.
(off - following quickly on Adams') Z:
Voice:
myself to sleep at night wondering what it's all about.
cry
Voice: Candy,
Voice: Is that what she calls herself.
Voice: No.
Voice: What she call herself then?
48
Voice: Louise.
Voice: Louise?
Her real name's Daisy filae.
Daisy Mae? Daisy Mae what?
Another voice: Daisy Mae Highway.
Shot of Manny chuckling, wearing sunglasses,
very skinny and nervous.
Manny: Louise . . . Almond Joy. (chuckling)
The rest picking it up, (chuckling) off:
Veronica . . . Big valley
Lili *.. Jazzfingers
Patsy Pinkbottoms
Irma Greasepit
Olive Oil
tit fades)
Camera to Adams examinging a photograph of his
girl at home, who is fat, his voice off:
I miss you baby .., I miss you so
much . . .
Hey man, put your woman away .-. we
Voice off:
got a long walk ahead of us.
Camera on A. who is smiling having just taken
part in the name game. Scratches his scar.
(off) I used to think he was crazy .*.
Adams:
he was always taking pictures with that camera . . . really
he's very kind of smart and is good at it too . . . once he
49
told me when I asked him why he took allthcse pictures, he
said he'd never used his eyes before . . . he says this
wasteland is beautiful . . . that's what makes him crazy . . .
talking like that . . . those kind of people never seem to
get killed though . . . he got grazed below the eye . . . we
thought he was dead . . . somebody somewhere looks out for
him 0.. me I'd never used my ears before I came to the
forest . . . I'd like to write when I get out, I'd like to
write down what I hear. First I'd go back and get some
schooling and catch up on my spelling . . . there're a lot
of questions I have but they'll probably never get answered
. . . like how high is the sky, how many flies there are in
the world . . . how do they know people don't live in the
stars?
As Adams is wandering around in his head, camera
moves from A. to Jeremiah (called Rhah) who is strutting
up very confidently, his walk snake-like, all waves, un-
dulating. He looks older than the rest, his Origins seem
He speaks with a slight
obscure, probably from the South.
Southern twang. He's white.
arriving, standing above the relaxing group,
34. Rhah
over, a slight malicious smile on his face.
looking them
Francis looking up, smiling
What's happening Rhah?
pausing, fixing the whole circle in his
Rhah,
eye, settling on Buddha for his address, smiling:
50
Rhah: I'm what's happening and if you don't
dig me, Your shit is hanging in the wind, that gentleman,
is what say ..- Baaaaaa (he delivers this last like a
I
growl, a neigh, implying I am what I am).
Lerner, the only other white with Anthony and
Adams in the Temple, a Jewish looking boy from the City,
young and freaky with curly hair, thin (he was the boy at
the elevator in scene 3) looks back at &ah, his tongue
hanging out like an alcoholic grotesquerie.
And Baaaaaaaal back on you (delivers it
with all the contempt and venom he can, shaking his head,
a stuporific look in his eye, making a grotesquerie Out Of
what Rhah delivered with a certain style).
Rhah looking at Lerner hard with distaste.
Rhah: If you're going to do it, do it right.
(Rhah winds himself up and with a dramatic downsweep of his
fist, at the same time taking a step with his foot, de-
livers a huge convincing Baaaaaaaaaa! his head shaking,
staring wide-eyed at Lerner.)
The group laughing. aah
Draws himself up.
smiling and proud of himself.
Laughing dies.
Lerner looking at Shah with half-closed eyes.
I didn't like it.
Rhah coming right back,
You're a child. I
Screw yourself.
don't waste time talking to a child.
51
Lerner taking his head into his hands, shaking
his hair, pretending to weep:
I'm a child. I'm a child.
aah looking away in disgust. Shot of A. looking.
Francis to Lerner:
Wow man don't take it so bad,
Werner, raising his head:
Oh it doesn't bother me what Rhah says.
He can't even begin to bother me. see I know what he
YOU
is and (his eyes looking at phah, malicious and gleaming
like he was going out of his head too here in The Forest)
he's just a tangled up screwed up scared up little man ..*
getting old.
Pause. Shah his back to Lerner, getting annoyed,
turning back on him, suddenly serious:
And I'm
I'm little.
Dig it. I'm old.
scared, and I done the crimes of stealing and killing, 1
I been in the United States
been in the Foreign Legion.
I been to Africa, China, Vietnam and countries You
Army.
never heard, been a truck driver, a
I been a cook, I
picked cotton till
parachutist, an officer, a scout, I
Then I picked
there weren't no more cotton to be picked,
smoked more shit
rocks and sold those. I done my time. I
been busted four five
than you`ll smoke in a lifetime. I
times. Ask King (looking at King who is lying on his cl-
bows, his eyes closed, almost ready to crash) we been the
same way in life, we smoked our brains out together, we
52
=li-&ed the walls, we balled ourselves ask a King young
ma, ask him if in all the time we been together he ever
Once. (waving his finger) once saw me lose my cool . . .
Hever! Right King?
King, barely able to speak:
Yea, F?hah and me been the same way,
done the same things.
Rhah: (looking hard at Lerner, who is looking
at the floor, bored) And dig it baby I got silver stars,
bronze stars, Croix de guerres, all kinds of silver and
maybe a hundred and sixty stitches says I made the scene.
(Stopping) Whatch you got? (Shot A. looking up at
Rhah's face, forced to pay his respecgs, because Shah is
really telling the Truth) Rkrah going on, concluding, draw-
ing himself back up; more humorously:
So put it this way, if I want to
pretend I'm Superman, if want to let my hair grow
I I
will,
as long as Thor's, I will, and if anybody points his little
be in his shit so fast he'll think
pink finger at me, 1'11
speed was going out of style . . . he'll be hanging out there,
in the wind, wondering (Shah wagging his head) Who was
that. That was Rhah!
pause
Lerner, head bowed, saying: Whew.
Anthony has listened.
On the radio, which had temporarily broken down
during Rhah's appearance, starts up again, Manny playing
53
with it. As when Francis was singing, most of the brothers
have not seemed to listen to F&&I make his scene, They
hear but they don't look, as if their ears, eyes, and mind
were all separate senses.
Manny toying with the radio, gets it playing
again but some crazy station and Lili Marlene is being
sung by Marlene Dietrich, about ten seconds before Nanny,
slightly embarrassed behind his black shades, turns to
the soul station, saying:
that's some old time sides they're
WOW
throwing at us.
1s smoking like an old
F&ah has seated himself.
bull.
Outside, Camera moving to the
Commotion.
35.
windowless sunlight hole on the side of the temple (several
Shot
such holes around the walls, about 3 by 4 feet.)
Cries.
through this frame of some whites chasing around.
"Get the snake!" "Food!" etc.
Camera outside closer, shot of a large yellow
black and red snake, moving very fast over the ground,
The snake moves
fluttering white hands trying to catch it.
with great twists of its body, making you wonder how it can
Camera
move so fast. Knowing these hands are Death.
dwelling on this snake, moving at about five miles an
hour, sliding through, over, under, but unable to get Out
of the large circle the whites have made around it. We
54
almost sympathize with the poor snake, fighting wildly,
through the circle and they .are running
Suddenly it breaks
after it again. They cannot catch it, but the powerful
snake, making one mistake and unable to pick out Isaac,
the Indian, who is standing perfectly still watching,
slithers unknowingly through Isaac's spread silent legs.
We haven't seen Isaac yet. First shot of his
legs and the snake sliding through. His hand speeding
downandpinning it by the neck. Tilt up, medium shot, to
his face as he scoops it up. A grimace of pleasure on his
face, snake dangling by its neck, its tongue flickering
Sees it
helplessly. Lets it dangle,
Isaac hisses at it.
Wraps it around his
is non-poisonous. Stops hissing.
wrist; on the other wrist, coincidentally, he has a replica
of a snake done in silver, smaller, three or four coils
The snake crawls up his arm
wrapped around his wrist,
towards his neck. This scene with Isaac and the snake is
shot fairly fast, not too dramatically.
Long shot of Isaac and snake through the Temple's
Taking a
sunlight hole. A. focusing his telephoto lens-
picture. Freeze of picture.
Isaac seeing A. take the picture (close shot of
Isaac's eyes) a virile smile on his face, and wordlessly,
because it is his snake, walking out of the small throng
of whites who are around him, admiring the snake,
walking in his soft tread towards the temple, the snake
now wrapped around his neck (by now it should be obvious
55
that it is not poisonous) its tongue and head swaying over
Isaac's chest. On his bicep, Isaac has a small graceful
tatoo Born To Kill,
Long shot of him approaching Temple.
Francis: [off) Crazy people dig snakes, crazy
people.
A. Violence is like snakes.
We hear the snap of his shutter as he takes
another picture of Isaac approaching . . . very quick ,o,
Veq unexpected ,,., Click.
Quick freeze of snake's head swaying.
Side shot of Isaac moving, from the waist up.
The camera zooming out slowly on Isaac, till it
brings Francis and Anthony into view looking through the
sunlight hole at the moving Isaac.
He scares me man, he's
Francis: (off at first)
He plays his knife like she was
wild, crazy in the head.
a woman.
(taking another picture) He moves nice
A.
man 0.0 it's funny it's tender, it's soft ..O it's SO all
alone.
Nothing.
Shot out to front of what they see.
Isaac has already glided in around them, in the tiackdoor
of their Temple.
36. As the camera is focused out through the light
hole, there is a slight rustling behind them, the sound a
56
snake makes when it sways. Frontal
They turn swiftly.
shot of Isaac standing right behind them the snake wrapped
around his arm, its head swaying out in front of Francis.
Francis doesn't move, but his face muscles tighten and his
eyes dilate a little.
Francis: Don't fool with me man, don't fool
with me,
Isaac smiling. Behind him, still sprawled
around, the radio Flaying, are the brothers and Shah and
Lerner and Adams, but things are quieter and without look-
ing they listen.
Isaac
Anthony is also repulsed by the snake.
sees this. Smiling a bit, says slowly,
Isaac: You been staying a long time in the
shade Anthony. fixing to get a tan? . . . Like his
YOU
(nodding at Francis) or red like mine? (he smiles)
Isaac coiling the snake in the cup of his hand,
it up to A.
Offering
A. hesitating a moment, putting the camera away,
looking at Isaac, takes the snake, not looking at it as
its wet living body winds through the fingers of his hands,
The snake
Isaac smiling. A. looking directly at him.
A look of comprehensix and re-
winding up Anthony's arm.
Isaac sees it,
laxation coming into his face.
Isaac: It's alive, isn't it?
nodding, taking the snake in his hands,
Anthony
passing him around his neck, his waist, beginning to feel
57
a tremendous joy in this living wet damp creature, his
fear of it disappearing. The snake responding P beginning
to calm down on Anthony'sbody. At this point, Isaac says:
Give it to me.
Anthony hesitating. Attracted by the power in
Isaac's eyes.
He gives the snake back. Isaac cups it in his
palm.
Isaac: (to Anthony) Come,
They go down together, down the three steps
which separate the raised floor around the inner wall of
Isaac leads Anthony
the Temple from the worshipping floor.
up to the Buddha,
As they walk, we pick up from the radio the
hollow voice of Sam Cooke again, singing "Let's Twist The
Night Away' -- almost a four o'clock in the afternoon
voice, at the dead end of the day, this accent on Twist,
Twist, Twisting the Night Away.
Isaac places the snake on
Buddha has many arms.
The
one of these arms. Anthony to his side watching.
snake, in the arms of this new almost golden object,
starts glistening and sliding wildly through its many arms*
Isaac drawing his long hunting knife with his right hand
from his left hip, his features dedicated, as a priest
before the blood-letting.
Isaac: (not looking at A.) We sacrifice.
Quickly he pins the snake's speeding head With
58
his left hand and without hesitating violently slices its
head off, a cruel look of brutality on his face.
With his left hand, Isaac whips the snake's
*im?iw head in the air, as if it were a scalp. His arm
is quivering. His head is down, the gesture not deing
that solemn, but more spontaneous, quick, contemporary,
the gesture has already faded, he pulls in his arm. Puts
the head to his lips. Drinks.
A. looking
Turns to A. Offers him the head.
at Isaac, powerfully attracted by the look of strength in
Drinks.
Isaac's eyes. Takes the snake head.
it goes down
Tastes the blood in his mouth.
strong. A smear of it on his lips making them corral-
Close shot of Isaac's
colored. Close shot of his lips.
wide strong mouth.
A shot, a single rifle shot is heard from out-
side.
Its echo dies.
They look at
Anthony and Isaac haven't moved.
Isaac's eyes alight with anticipation at the
each other.
Anthony's eyes completely
- rifle shot, the call of danger.
lost in Isaac's animal eyes, feeling a powerful attraction
to this almost human fire.
Shot of fire. Scene 1.
Anthony under-
close, of Isaac's face.
Shot,
standing the fire is in people and between them-
The other soldiers
The rifle shot is repeated.
59
are hurrying out of the temple now, not having been
alarmed by the first shot. The radio going with them.
Shot of Isaac and Anthony standing in front of
Buddha.
Solitary shot of the rifle that fired being
raised by an arm into the air. Resting in the sky, flat,
in Indian style. A cry is heard. (Explained later, the
cry is "Freedom" but in a strange language).
Dissolve
37. The screen is in blackness for several seconds.
Then a chant begins in the blackness, a Dionysl'an chant
or something similar.
What is the name of the father
What is the name of the son
What is the name of the father
What is the name of the son
. . . Dionysos Dionysos
God of Joy
God of Love
. . . Dionysos Dionysos Dionysos
(example taken from "Dionysos in
'69" off-Bdway play)
The chant is repetitive, accompanied by a tarn-
bourine, but in this repetitiveness, in this lack of desire
to search for new interpretations, there is a real feeling
for love, which is really a source without words.
60
The screen slowly comes to light and we see a
young tribe, maybe a dozen, dancing freely in the forest by
a stream. Perhaps they are the enemy, it is not made clear
yet. They are a mixture of young men and women and their
children, white and black. They dance hugging each other,
their long hair jumping, in all sorts of love contortions
that display their freedom. They are all in love with each
other, with And easy as it iS
forest.
their god, with the
to make fun or laugh at, this scene at first must be done
with the camera truly involved in their spirit of joy and
freedom.
The hair
Some are blondes, some black haired.
long; the players young and contemporary looking and above
to preserve the spirit of the scene, they must move
all,
well, in some sort of time to the tambourine, throwing
their bodies into it. Ideally, they are naked, and some
But barring that, they wear fiasy
of them body painted.
threads, hand made, of beautiful colors,
primitive tribal
A few wear colorful head-
exposing their handsome bodies.
bands, all of them some kind of ornament -- bracelets,
beads, native jewels, clasps, etc. The colored tribesmen
do not exactly wear the same clothes, as I think they would
look sort of silly. Their threads suit them and nobody
else and there is no need,to establish any equality/
similarity as far as clothes go, saying that Freedom has
If they're not naked, then let them
no respect for clothes.
What they
look beautiful with their own motif in mind,
61
want to be is left up to them, In his mind, the writer
forms the image of the black panther -- a sort of ineradic-
able wariness at the root of their Freedom, unlike the
White who when he loses his mind, really proceeds to lose
it, and to embrace the new. Whether the blacks actually
dance is left up to them. They could be sentinels in the
woods, they could be on the stream watching the others do
their dance.
38, Camera paning up slope from the tribe into the.
Long shot
woods. Their singing carrying with the camera.
of soldiers moving slowly in single file through the woods,
in the same combination of clothes as at the Temple, carry-
ing rifles, small knapsacks on their backs, hatless.
Having cautiously,
Camera zooming slowly into the point man, who is
Bunny, the youngest one, set out to prove he's as good as
any man, his features assuming a distorted hardness.
Camera now encompassing Lee who is second in the file,
He is small
carrying a map in his hand, a young sergeant.
with a heavily repaired face indicated by the seam of scar
tissue running from his ear along his jaw to his chin. He
wears a red bandanna around his neck.
Bunny still in the camera's eye, turning back
Lee gives him
to Lee as he hears the sound of the music.
a tight look, squinting; he frequently squints, nervously
assuring himself of which part of his face is really his.
62
Comes up on Bunny. Puts binoculars over his
eyes. Do not know what he sees. Brings binoculars down.
Looks at his map. Is puzzled. around.
Squints. Turns
Motions to the men with his arm to sweep out downslope,
slowly. Finger to his lips to indicate silence, although
the men know what they are doing anyway and can hardly see
his gestures.
Frontal shot
The men disappearing in the forest.
of them inching down the slope to the stream. Then side
There are
view of them approaching. Music growing louder.
no sentinels around, oddly.
They approach the stream and quietly crouch down
behind rocks, trees, dead logs. Take off their knapsacks.
What they see at first does not really excite them, they
are much too wary and as a group have up to now functioned
as soldiers.
Shot of A's face. A. moving up further, very
interested. They have been watching for a while and Un-
Francis and
controllably, they start inching further up.
They pass
another brother joining A. from different sides.
Anthony, putting his rifle and
each other a puzzled look.
knapsack down, taking his camera out and shooting the
tribesmen.
Others.
Shots of Adams, Lerner.
Shot of Lee, his tight body on the ground, his
39.
binoculars to his eyes , propped on his elbows looking.
63
Puts the binoculars down. Picks his rifle up, puts it to
his shoulder, his eye squinting, medium to close shot, he
is an expert marksman, his legs loosely spread and the
stock of his rifle deeply imbedded in the shoulder, the
rifle slightly twisted inward, his rear elbow coming up
off the ground as he sights in; for a little man, he
shoots high off the body, very confident, very precise.
Camera dwells on him as he is about to shoot.
But he hears footsteps behind him. Takes his eye from the
stock, squinting, not looking around. The footsteps
getting closer. On the feet
Shot of the feet next to Lee,
are moccasins, they are Isaac's, Lee looking up at Isaac,
who has a small French submachine gun cradled in his arms,
and is looking down at the stream bed. Isaac giving Lee
a look and proceeding down to the stream, his action fore-
stalling a massacre. Lee with hate in his eye, staring at
Isaac's back. He squints.
40, As Isaac walks down to the stream in the Openl
The tambourine stops.
a female in the tribe sees him.
Shot of one of the tribe's blacks
They stop dancing.
standing up from where he was watching and warily looking
at Lsaac, Proud, but
who walks on down to the stream.
He stops a little
puzzled for the first time in his life.
dis tame away.
The leader of the small roving tribe, no older
than his early thirties calls to him.
64
(Making with his hand
Peace and Joy1
a small sincere gesture, something like this: 9x1 the word
Peace, showing the back of his hand, Joy: the front of
his hand, implying an empty hand, stretching it, saying:)
Join us.
Isaac pausing, puzzled.
J&O are you? What tribe?
The leader, smiling, turning around to give the
sign for more singing, dancing.
Find out.
Join us.
The tambourine resumes playing and the tribes'
people resume their dancing and singing as if nothing has
happened. The few blacks are still wary but the whites
fall to it and soon are becoming more intense than ever,
perhaps thrilled that they are dancing the Passion Dance
in the eyes of the cobra with the gun. They carry no
weapons.
41. Shots of individual soldiers seeing what has
They start creeping slowly down to the stream.
passed.
Isaac puts
Spreading out on the logs and rocks watching.
his weapon away and sits watching by himself. The blacks
in the tribe have become more wary seeing these other
soldiers but they cool it although they rightly feel
Lee remains up in the wood.
there's going to be trouble.
The black soldiers more
is the last to leave him.
Bunny
or less assemble together on a huge fallen log and watch.
65
Anthony with them. The whites
other more thinly spread.
A shot of Shah looking.
The dancers growing increasingly erotic, their
limbs interlaced, men on the ground, women passing their
bodies closely over them, feeling everywhere with their
hands. Shots of the soldier's faces growing more and more
desirous. Isaac, perhaps feeling this desire, wanting
suddenly to be alone and think, retreats into the woods by
himself, without a rifle, pensive looking. His disappear-
ance is fatal as he was the only force that could have
Suddenly,
prevented what occurs. The dancers writhe.
with a yell, Lerner rips off most of his clothes and jumps
in with them and starts to writhe and join in the spirit of
freedom. The tribe accepts him but with no display. He
mixes well, Hs belongs, but his action only agitates
further the other white soldiers.
Shot Rhah's face. A hatred for Lerner's fool-
ishness on it. Shakes his head slightly, saying quietly:
You child -.. You fool.
Not
The dancers almost copulating to the music.
even singing anymore.
Shot: one of the males on his knees his head
buried in a woman's belly, her arms around his head,
writhing against his head.
cut
Bunny heaving the same girl up on his chest,
42.
66
hugging her. She is so far gone into the ecstasy she
doesn't notice really who it is. He grins madly and
The other
starts making off into the woods with her.
whites with shouts following him, hugging the women like
satyrs at the rape, kicking the almost unconscious, help-
less men away with their boots, some knocking them away
with their rifles. Lerner fighting for the women but
The women begin to realize what is
being knocked aside.
One
A few screams.
happening and start struggling.
heavily bearded white chasing a girl, no more than sixteen,
Shah wading out to
into the stream, thrashing with her.
help her, struggling with the big soldier who throws him
off. Shot of Lee in the woods raising his rifle and
expertly firing into the water around Rhah, warning him
off. A black
Rhah looking wildly up into the woods.
tribesman jumping on him. They scramble in the water-
Shot of Lee, putting the rifle away,
Doesn't
He squints,
looking down at the chaos, pleased.
move.
Shot of Isaac deep in the woods hearing the
Turning around slowly, his face muscles hard, but
shots.
He doesn't
his eyes already resigned to what has happened.
move.
Shot of the Rape from behind the brothers who
Anthony is no longer there.
are still on the log watching.
Camera moving to their side, shooting them in profile,
watching, resigned, indifferent.
67
Robinson, the soldier who was coming through the
bush at the beginning to the sound of "Cupid"; rises.
I might as well cut myself a piece too.
One starts
He looks back. They look at him.
eating the food he has carried. Robinson shrugs, moves
off.
43. Cut to Anthony. He's way out in the woods, on
the far bank of the stream, opposite his companions, with
The
his rifle looking intently for something he has seen.
music is still playing in the distance but fades as he
runs after Joanna. He is not aware of what will happen
at the stream. It is before Runny began the Rape, which
will be simultaneous with his.
Cut to Joanna leaning, her hands behind her, up
against a tree. Her naked body painted green like a sn*e-
Her face as well. She is a stunning
Her hair is blonde.
sight.
Anthony at last finds her, approaches hesitantly,
looking at her as if she were unbelievable, but naturally
He stops, p uts his rifle downc
drawn to her primitiveness.
takes his magazine belt off, not taking his eyes from her.
A snake is hanging from the tree above her head.
A long pause.
You're not scared of snakes are You?
Joanna:
Anthony: No, not any more.
you're not scared of me are you?
J*
68
A: (hesitating) No.
She smiles.
Camera on Anthony, as Joanna says:
Joanna: Take your clothes off then.
The snake in the tree rustles, Anthony takes
his clothes off. Stands there naked in front of her.
Joanna: Vho are you?
Anthony: (hesitating) Anthony,
J: 01 .*. Anthony.
Here she either takes the snake down off the
tree and she wraps it around her neck, its head swaying
over her breast or, more easily done, puts her hand up
into the tree and the snake glides around her hand and arm,
or she just simply slides off the tree, saying:
I am called Joanna .., but Anthony
Joanna:
(looking at him smilingly with her eyes and shaking her
head) will never have Joanna because he is scared of her
arEI he will never catch her . . . (she laughs and starts
moving away).
Snake rustles and dry
Anthony watching her.
bird calls out of the trees. The distant sound of the
tambourine. Anthony who has never really pursued before,
He hears
The bird calls increase.
begins to follow her.
the dry dangerous clicking rustle of snakes, which seem to
She walks faster,
inhabit the forest. He walks faster.
They move from
not bothering to look over her shoulder.
The chase
tree to tree, both naked in the green forest.
69
begins, a long sequence. Their movement is deeper into
the forest away from the fast-fading music. They increase
their speed until they are running as fast as they can
through the trees. Joanna is as swift as a deer and al-
But
ways seems to elude Anthony, who is also very swift.
rather than lose him, she hides, and he finds her or she
lets him see her, and the chase begins again, the only
sound their speeding naked feet on the forest floor- As
Anthony runs, he sees the snakes in the trees and at their
foot, and in his path too but the chase has made a young
savage out of him and he runs by these hissing snakes
without thought or concern. Just to take her, like his
companions are taking back at the stream.
The chase is long. He catches her at the base
of a tree, perhaps the same tree where they began, the
same snake hissing in the tree. They entwine, taking long
deep breaths (shot in slow motion) they are falling togeth-
er onto the forest floor, their eyes closed, Anthony SO
happy f so out of breath, his breathing her breathing, his
(Shot
animal moan the only sound now in the forest .
low
as they fall together of a snake biting Anthony in the
arm (seen later), #is shot in slow motion so that it
melts into their fall, also in slow motion, possibly a
superimposed image). The camera on them as they writhe in
each other's grasp like two snakes, feeling, touching, in
the wild freedom seen at the dance, all over each other,
Anthony's face in close up, a picture of pleasure and pain
70
and breaking through that to freedom, a great expressive-
ness in both their faces. The camera leaving them alone,
panning slowly back to the stream, passing the trees, the
snakes. The pan dissolving, putting the screen in dark-
reluctantly, we come back to The Rape at
ness. Slowly,
the stream.
Bunny's boyish
The screen still in darkness.
44.
angry voice off:
F?hat's the matter do I smell bad? Am
I dirty? (Sound of hitting her) Hunh, Don't
Am I ugly?
you people believe in sex or do you just dance, hunh.
(hits her)
You people
Her voicetYou coudln't understand!
could never understand.
Bunny: What do I got to understand? Hu.nh.
(hits her)
How to feel! she screams very loud,
like a bird dying.
The dull monotonous
He hits her again and again,
The echo fading-
echo of slaughter on the black screen.
On the screen, a shot of the girl lying beaten
45.
shot emphasizing
to death, draped on a broken tree limb. A
horror. She is already very white and looking stuffed.
She is the same girl seen earlier in the motorcycle suit,
Fossibly a silent shot Of
looking at Rodin's The Kiss.
Camera dwells on this
this previous scene, cut short.
71
dead girl.
Trying to kill
46. Cut. Anthony springing on Bunny.
Bunny, Butit'san even match and they go on fighting use-
lessly and camera, losing interest in them, pans to tribe
people running off into the woods on the other side of the
stream like fauns. Some soldiers are standing around the
dead girl, some of them amazed that the rape should end in
murder. Anthony and Bunny, both exhausted, are struggling
off to the side, out of breath. The Leader of the Tribe
striding up to the girl, picking her up, she dangles wax
white in his strong arms, a lifeless puppet. He speaks to
the soldiers, clearly, slowly:
. All of you will pay for this, black as
well as white . . (shouts) you are animalsi you are beasts1
l
47. Cut to Leader moving away in the rain across the
stream from them, the girl lifeless in his arms, moving up
the other slope (it has begun to rain but we did not see it
begin, it is already in progress in this shot; the rain
will continue till the very last scene in the Forest, when
it suddenly breaks). On the opposite bank, Joanna (clothed
now) waits at the woodline for the Leader in the same pose
of waiting that she uses later when she waits for Isaac at
the edge of another woodline overlooking this same stream.
AnthonYceases to struggle with the exhausted Bunny and on
his knees, dirt all over his face, he looks up and sees her.
She sees him. Then vanishes in the wood, following The
72
Leader. Anthony still looking after her.
Shot: Anthony running through the woods after
Joanna.
Shot: Anthony entwining and falling on the floor
The camera doing the same Pan
of the forest with Joanna.
as before across the trees back to the stream.
His voice: You'll have our child.
I'll have the child of many fathers.
Her:
Pause
1'11 go.
Him:
Go and Kill,
Yes.
Her:
I'll come back.
Him:
Her: No,
The camera pans right into the rain as it heads
48.
downstream (the above voices do not begin until the camera
is into the rain) and picks the mercenaries up later on
their march. Long shot through the woods of them walking
right down the stream itself, which comes up around their
knees. The bush on both sides of the stream is now to0
They are walking in a staggered
thick to walk through.
double file, one on the right side of the stream, another
further back on the left, another further back on the
Occasionally, crack6 of thunder come out Of
right, etc.
the sky. Cries of the deepening
The rain grows worse.
forest.
Lee, at the front with
49. The men are soaking wet.
73
They squat on
Bunny, motions for them to take a break.
the rocks on the edge of the stream, pulling their ponchos
out and covering themselves up completely, looking like
great sad useless tents, hardly paying attention to the
surrounding forest.
Shot: whiskered old looking Rhah pulling his
poncho out, getting into it, his tired lined face peering
Thinking.
out from under the hood. Squatting on a rock.
Pilling the
Pulling out a bowl and a small plastic bag.
bowl with the last of his Forest Nash. Throws the bag in
Wearing his
the stream. Anthony slowly comes up on him.
poncho which he drapes over Rhah's head as Rhah strikes a
Smoke
match and lights the bowl. A crack of thunder.
Rhah*s face
rising from the poncho. Coming off his face.
glowing with contentment as the thunder peals again.
Offers the bowl up to Anthony who, taking it, seats him-
self next to Rhah and smokes. They both look out into the
Camera
hard rain thinking. Shot of Rhah's exhausted face.
to Anthony who is staring into the woods on the side of the
stream, the rain beating in his face. The camera going to
what he sees -- a tangle of forest, and leaves falling off
the trees, and rare cries.
:, Diana's petulant voice off:
why do you hide things?
Hide Hide Hide.
He answers in a
His eyes slowly pan the trees.
tired voice, off:
Because.
74
His voice,
Shot: A's face, his eyes cast down.
off:
Without you
Joanna .*. I loved you.
. . . it is darkness.
Shot of the woods.
His eyes rising.
Thinking. Even tu-
Shot: F&ah's face in profile.
ally, he says in passing:
Isaac didn't come back.
During this scene of thought on the rocks between
Rhah and Anthony, Francis and a few other brothers, includ-
ing the white smoker, Adams, make a slow individual pro-
They
cessional by Rhah and A. to take a pass on the pipe.
come by in ones and leave again to go back to their own
rocks; the effect is almost of a ceremony celebrated for
the last time.
50. Lee (at the front) semi-shielded from the rain,
sniffs the weed in the wind. Looks hostilely towards
Nmh and Anthony. His hand goes out to move out and re-
luctantly Bunny the point man, moves out, the others taking
their time rising.
Shot from side fading into shot from front of
mercenaries moving down stream, Bunny way out in front.
It is
The battle that now erupts is not heavy.
like the snake, very quick and deadly, and violent, it is
over fast, brutally, it is achieved in silence, and
almost
the revenge is almost entire.
75
Bunny, still way out front,
Thunder peals again.
passes a water snake reclining on a rock, the snake not
bothering to move at the sight of these heavy waterlogged
tired objects inching by.
toward the snake*
Camera, passing Bunny, ZOOIIIS
Off-screen, the trickles of stream water and a fast rus-
tling, like a snake. But the rustling is heavier now,
like bodies moving very quickly on both sides of the stream
He wades out to inves-
Bunny's face as he hears.
The stream is
tigate. The men behind him haven't heard.
deeper where he wades and the gurgling water rises to his
waist. He advances down the stream.
The noise stops.
His eyes, almost
Shot the bush he sees. He pans it.
of
naturally, come to settle on a pair of bare feet painted
green like the bush. He goes by it almost, comes back.
His eyes tilt up and he sees Isaac standing there next to
a tree, looking down at him proudly, knowingly, his face
painted with brilliant colors, his whole body, nearly
The paint ingrained in the
naked, striped like a snake's,
skin, not dripping off in the rain.
Zoom to closeup of Isaac, his submachine gun
still cradled in his arms.
Cut. Closeup: Bunny's amazed frightened face-
Several cracks of a rifle.
Closeup of the blood spreading on his young face.
He falls into the stream.
Closeup: a huge mine set in a tree.
Quick Cut.
76
It explodes. Same shot repeated three times, in quick
succession.
shot of the trees
Silence. A bird crying.
blowing with the force of the explosion (the same shot
Anthony saw in his mind, back at Alexander's), leaves and
branches flying through the air, noiselessly.
Quick black out.
In the silence, the screen opens again With a
Francis
full screen Blow Up of Francis' face as he is hit.
Panning to a bandanna floating
collapsing into the stream.
The
by itself in the stream. A body tumbling onto it.
heavy machine gun the body was carrying crashing on the
rocks next to him. Camera zooming out slowly, catching the
living trying to fish the dead and woulded out of the
stream, Manny, one of the wounded still gesturing to his
radio which is sinking in the stream. A brother reaching
for it. He jerks back, shot in the head.
Camera still zooming out on the chaos, still the
silence, catches the brother, Robinson, coming out on the
bank Opposite to the one on which the dead machine gunner
lies, and sprinting closely past the camera into the bush.
Sound returninq
We see his white eyes, full of fear.
momentarily. Sound of firing and cries of the wounded,
and from the opposite bank the cries of the attackers,
all painted, man and woman, black and white charging down
to the stream. Camera swivelling around as Robinson hurls
a grenade. On one knee, trembling, pulling another grenade
The
Out from his belt. Sound of first grenade exploding-
last sound. Back to silence. Robinson pulling the pin
from the grenade across his body, it's a faulty device,
the grenade blows right in his face.
Sound. The same explosion that killed Robinson.
Shot: a poisonous snake slithering through the rocks tryin9
to escape this madness, Anthony being hurled by the close
explosion down over the snake, The snake in reaction
Anthony jerks, g rimacing with the
biting him in the arm.
pain. Anthony on his knees
The snake slithering off.
Pins the hissing
in quick reaction pulling his knife out.
snake. (Fleeting third-of-a-second images of 1. Isaac
slicing the snake's head off in the temple, fading swiftly
into 2. Anthony and Joanna in the woods, falling together
entwined. cut. A's knife slicing the poisonous snake's
head off. He recoils from his action samgely, a bit
stunned, his eyes glazed with savagery. The butt of a
One of the tribes-
rifle no sooner crashes on his head.
men straddles him as he lies on the ground, his head bleed-
ing, about to scalp him, a brutal look of revenge on his
face. It is the former leader of The Tribe. His knife
in the air. The tribes-
A hand grips it hard. Stays it.
man turning to Isaac. Hesitates. RUGS off to kill again.
Isaac looking at the unconscious Anthony. His smashed
camera lies next to him. Seeing the dead snake, taking
it all in with a little gleam of the eyes, perhaps amused
78
by the irony, and as Joanna runs up on him, carrying a
rifle, Isaac bends to quickly cut the poison out of A'S
arm. Joanna feeling Anthony's brow and the would on his
head, her savage look of revenge melting into tenderness,
looking at Isaac who nods quickly to indicate he'll be
alright, she runs her hand over his forehend quickly one
last time, and runs off to fight.
This whole scene could be ridiculous
if it isn't done brusquely, swiftly, like a dream in
PLqthonyts head.
The battle coming to an
The sound is off again.
The attackers
end. The next scenes speeding by dreamlike.
pouring down in mass onto the Stream, even little children,
Fade into:
A black tribesman on top of a young black
soldier, both of them straining, the tribesman's knife is
back in his hand pressing against the soldier's belly, the
latter's hand gripping his wrist. They are both looking
each other in the face, straining. The soldier's hand
slips. He cries out and dies
The knife enters his belly.
in his black enemy's arms. Fade into:
One of
Adams, wounded, crawling on his belly.
the women picking up a heavy rock and hurling it down On
his head. Fade into:
Lerner, glazed, drugged, running crazily out of
the woods. Rhah who is slightly wounded, clubbing him
with his rifle. Lerner on the ground, crying in pain.
79
Rhah above him, breaking the silence, saying quickly:
You fool, you crazy fool!
Then clubbing him again so he won't crY- Rhah
Rutting Lerner's headband
quickly ripping his clothes off.
on, taking his old rifle and despite the lad of Warpdlt,
runklg off into i?.~ woods, hollering like mad.
Fade into:
Raising
King (closeup) stumbling into a thicket.
his e:+- Y
_ IL Sis large face spreading with fear, as Joanna
stands there with a rife. Shooting him.
Fade into:
Isaac dragging Bunny's corpse out of the stream
onto the bank and taking his scalp.
Dissolve.
The battle is over. Lee
The rain has broken.
is bloodied on the stream bank on his back, still
lying
barely breathing, his eyes closed, he is squinting madly
like a fish on land trying to breathe. His bloody red
bandanna is loosely draped around his neck on his belly.
Medium shot. Sees
A passing female member of the tribe.
him, The
Shoots him. Long shot of her shooting him.
,'
hollow clack of her rifle. Still the long shot as she runs
i
t:
into the woods with the rest of the tribe. In the distance
The stream iS
we hear the drone of a helicopter coming up.
Same long
deserted but for the bodies littered around it.
80
Camera turning to catch Isaac, at medium range,
shot.
The
looking down at the stream, the last to leave.
The trees conceal
helicopter approaching. Helooks up.
the stream from the sky. The wind from the hovering
helicopter's blades is blowing the trees wildly back and
forth. Standing on the slope looking down at the stream,
he raises his rifle in the classic Indian fashion, flat
in the air (the same shot seen earlier at the Temple
except we only saw his arm) and shouts a word in a
strange language. A subtitle flashes on the screen:
FREZDUM!
Isaac runs off into the woods, the wind in the
trees blowing wildly. Joanna waits for him at the edge
of the woodline, -J'ust as she waited for the Old Leader.
She follows.
He disappears in The Forest.
Dissolve.
81
Prison
Anthony awakes as from a
The story goes on.
dream, at first isn't sure of what he is anymorel falls
back on his distrust of Life, is arrested, put in Prison-
Here in endless silence, the Silence of the Fish, he cuts
his final tie to the world of Alexander and regains his
.
sense of feelings in the person of Jonah, who is a briefer
of Isaac, At the same time, Alexander, his Own
form
prisoner, wrapping his words about himself, severs his
every link to the World. Anthony's relationship to Jonah
From it he accepts that
is brief, dreamlike, beautiful.
Feelings are
A Movie.
Love, Life itself, is just a Dream.
Dreams, Dreams are Feelings. Dream is
Freedom is Dream.
Freedom. Anthony dreams on, makes movies, and in his
He's free.
dream/in his life, he leaves Prison.
51. Anthony's eyes looking up, opening from a dark
screen onto light, a kind face looming above him, asking
just as he opens his eyes:
Would you like me 40 say a prayer for
your. my son?
fading into darkness as
Screen
Anthony closes his eyes. The Father's
Opening them again.
questioning eyes, The camera moving a little higher as A-
begins to rise up, look around, make sure he is not dying-
He is in a hospital, all
He is slowly looking around.
blazing white, The patients, including A. are in black
82
pyjamas with pink hospital monograms on their breast. fn
bed next to him one of the patients has died and the white
is spread over his face but his hand is stiffly
sheet
hanging out from the sheet.
(as he looks around the hospital)
A:
Cigarettes'11 do.
Father: 0 . . . any particular brand
A. Menthols if you have any?
F: (smiling, producing two separate
brands, one pack full, one almost empty) Take your choice
A. taking the last cigarette from the empty pack.
The Priest striking a match, lighting his cigarette. A
sucking in on it, looking over at the dead patient's
outstretched hand,
The Priest seeing this, looking at hand, saying:
We couldn't preserve him . . . I think
the boy was Protestant. (Walks to the bed, puts the hand
back under the sheet, lifting the sheet as he does this,
Anthony sees the puffed white face of Adams. He is jolted.)
Rhah is strutting down the aisle to visit A.,
wearing his dress uniform. His coat is afghan with a lot
of sheep's fur. Taking it off as he comes up on A., the
same thief's smile on his face. Under the coat, wearing
f
`.
a pink Cossack shirt with black vest and black leggings
and a large Macedonian belt with a snake's head on it. His
boots are laced to his knees, and from outside the cossack
shirt, on a looping thick necklace hanging from his neck, a
83
black skull and ivory white cross hang side by side. He
looks like he just came out of the forest -- wild, crazy.
Vhat's happening Father . . . IS Our SOn
F&ah:
going to get well? or did the snake put the evil seed into
him.
Father: (surprised by this visitor) No, I
think Our Father's son is in . . . good hands
Shah, kissing Anthony on both cheeks, rising,
turning to face the Father:
He both must be . . . because (smiling
(As he says
crazily) dig it, Father . . . I'm still here.
this, the dead patient's hand casually drops down from the
sheet once again, and the Father sees I&ah's strange neck-
Feeling uncomfortable
lace, his eyes growing a little wider.
in his presence.)
Shah turning back to Anthony taking some comic
books out of his coat.
Rhah: Look here, I brought you some books to
kill the time.
Anthony examining the covers. Enemy Ace (a long
thin ghastly looking drawing), Spider Plan, and another one
(Doctor Strange) with a cover drawing of an immense creature
of evil with huge green eyes and hair hanging to his
shoulders and immensely long fingernails. Opening the book,
he finds a few thinly rolled cigarettes taped to one of the
pages. F&ah points to
Looks up at Rhah who is smiling.
the huge creature on the cover. says both to the Father and
84
Anthony, wiggling his shoulders a little:
that huge ugly creature's got
Actually
IRhah:
a soul. It blew my mind when he said to himself, "C'mon
If keep up this nutty
I
now, Beast, get a hold of yourself.
1'11 be a candidate for the funny farm."
soul-searching,
Rhah snickering
Anthony doesn't join in.
The Father, more uncomfortable than ever, Produces
a pocket Bible , giving it to Anthony:
Here
Yes . . . well I must be on my way.
is a small Bible for you Anthony .,. it will pass the time
. . . I will return. (Leaves, ignoring Rhah.)
Rhah bending over Anthony's face, and sneering at
the departing Priest. His fist goes out in a gesture Of
triumph. He is laughing now.
Anthony, unable yet to attach himself to Shah,
saying in a monotone:
Wow, I think you blew his mind, man.
Rhah: (interrupting his laughter) Yea
Putting his fist out again. A returning the
fist, tapping Rhah's fist from the top, Rhah coming over
and tapping A's fist with his fist, Rhah sneering and
laughing again, stopping again.
Yea
Pause (Rhah scratching his nose, fingering his
skull and cross. A. scratching the scar below the eye)
85
II: Listen man,whereyou headed for when
you get out of here?
F=
.. California
Then
I?: Wow I'm going that way myself.
back to Mississippi.
A: I'll miss you man
Yea man, and I'm going to miss You.
R:
never passed up a
You were boss. You and Francis. YOU
smoke, you'd stay up all night with me if I asked you ..=
poor Francis (Shot: Francis dying at the stream) ... he was
a prince and you were a prince . . . pant (shaking his head
with admiration)
A not looking at Rhah.
Rhah:-.. (rearing up a bit) Take care of yourself
They
man, you hear. The forest made beasts out of US.
cut us no slack in the World . . . and California
Won't is
the worst man ,.. It's a bummer police state (Shot: the
barricade of twenty-five motorcycle policemen, seen later)
I can go back to Mississippi and plant all the seeds I want
in all the swamps and become the new Johnny Appleseed of
the South. But you (pointing his finger) No! (his finger
Waving) There's going to be an earthquake in California.
The farms and prisons are full of the young, and there's
going to be hell to pay for. (Shot: the fire scene 1)
A: (thinking) I was going to take some
Forest Hash back with me.
R: Where?
86
On my back
A:
(thinking) Do it. It'll work. You got
R:
border police and informers all over the place, but wear a
heavy coat and they won't shake you, they're too busy
busting brothers . . . (taking his coat) here man, take this
coat, it'll wrap you up like an iceberg
A: What you going to wear man?
Take it. (Puts
Hell, me, I stay warm.
R:
it next to A)
A: (feeling the warm coat) You never
mentioned the others.
R: (shrugging his head) None of them made
it man. I was lucky to split . . . I didn't know how you
felt,
A: (pausing) I don't know. Like it was
all just a dream. (Turning a page in the comic book, almost
talking to himself) It was all just like a dream.
(Coincidentally, in the comic, there is a large final
Picture Of a villain behind bars, Camera catches this)
Rhah: You
You got to be strong man, to live.
got to be strong to smoke. got to be strong to do what
YOU
you did. You got to be strong to survive.
A, not really hearing him, reflecting, putting
the comic down, not looking at him, in a weak wondering
voice :
I wonder what prison is like . . . IS
that a dream too? (,Blow Up of Genet, A. turning to Rhah,
directly) Tell me about prison, shah.
87
Rhah, not liking Anthony's
attitude, not really understanding, frowning, he hesitates,
shrugs, says:
Prison? . . . it's a fish world . . . silent
. . . you take it slow and easy (Shot: tropical fish slowly
swarming in an aquarium) . . . it's a whole trip, you dedicate
your life to it. (Same Blow Up full screen: Genet -- very
quick)
Anthony looking up at him, dreamily, as if he is
envisioning the fish swimming around in eternity
You know . . . prisons and palaces . . . are
Rhah:
the two trips I never made (spoken wistfully)
Anthony looking at him
Phah: (a little water in his eyes) Well man
, you're a tough cat to lose . . . take
I'm going to miss you
. . . swim,
care of yourself . . . and if you do go to jail
and don't give too much if you ain't getting anything back
. . . see you.
He kisses Anthony affectionately on both cheeks-
Anthony kissing him also, his eyes a little bit watery as he
loses another friend.
Shah strutting back down the aisle in his Cossack
and vest. Anthony turning to the dead soldier lying in the
On the sound track, a short riff of the
bed next to him.
Spanish guitar, very sharp, dangerous, mellowing, ending
softly.
88
Shot: The silver bird (airplane) flying in the
52,
c&ouds.
Shot inside: Anthony and Flash sitting together.
Anthony loosely wearing the afghan coat Rhah gave him8
underneath wearing a green shirt with large ruffles and
brown leather breeches and the tightly laced boots of his
Flash is very black, wearing Polaroid shades
uniform.
He has
which conceal his eyes and reflect what he sees.
shiny red beads around his neck and wears a green ma0 shirt.
very quiet and silent, he is blown out of his head and his
four front fangs are framed in gold; the two outside
top
teeth have green rubies mounted on them, the inner two
teeth have heart-shaped red diamonds mounted, so on the
rare occasions that he smiles, his teeth glisten in red
and green.
-Anthony bored, reading a comic, putting it away:
Let's go get stoned
Fullscreen Blow Up of Dylan (seen at Alexander's)
They walk down
Flash rising. Anthony following.
the aisle. They check the stewardess out as they meet in
the aisle. She smiles, sees Flash's fangs, which we also
see for the first time, is horrified. Anthony smiles at
6. her, maliciously. She fades on him too.
Don't smoke in the aisle please.
A rat-faced stewardess very tiny (close up as she
speaks) confronts them. Flash and Anthony running up
against her, they lightly bump into each other. Getting
89
Putting sticks out.
by her. their smoking
A stewardess
rear.
They approach the john in the
Lights her cigarette with
is sitting relaxing in the back.
Looks up
Puts the pack and lighter down,
a gold lighter.
She stares at him.
at them. Flash smiles.
Smiles.
Shot
Anthony meanwhile looking at the pack and lighter.
close. The lighter is shaped in the form of a fish.
They go into the lavatory together.
They come out of the lavatory together, both very
Light
high. Anthony now, like Flash, wearing his shades.
blue glasses. Blue like soft water.
Shot of them in the back talking with the seated
stewardess.
Giving them
The rat-faced stewardess returning.
a disapproving look.
Wonder Woman
Blow Up from the comics.
Shot: They are sitting back down in their seats,
the airplane droning on.
A taking a cigarette from his gold case (the one
he stole from Diana ages ago) and lighting it with the fish-
shaped lighter he just copped from the stewardess. He
smokes, shot close of his face. He has a reverie which is
noiseless except for the music.
Long
Shot: He is in black leather and boots.
hair. A black thin
Looking like a rock and roll singer.
Putting the
suitcase in his gloves. Inside his weapon.
blood money in the pocket of his tight leather pants. A
90
Picking the
few hippies hanging from statues watching.
Walking slowly like High fqoon down the
suitcase up.
little sidestreet.
Shot: Twenty-five California cops in motorcycle
boots and plastic helmets with Brando goggles and gun belts
Pan of their
and sticks and badges gleaming like diamonds.
bodies and faces, the camera going down the barridade they
have set up. The faces, all white, are strong, their thighs
husky.
Music off, starting
Shot: A walking towards them.
very lowly: When I wake up, put on my makeup . . . and I
I
A small
Aretha Franklin.
say a little prayer for you.
portion of the song. A approaching
Cut to silence.
closer, zooming out from him to catch him with machine gun
in his gloves. Rlow Up of Joanna on
Stopping. Close up.
the cover of a magazine, the title of the magaiine in large
letters CINEPTA.
Sound returns, but an echoing semi-documentary
type clatter. Side view of the cops crashing all over the
trash barrels violently. Shot: One dedd..oop in the middle
of the street, all alone, sprawled on his back, his helmet
off his head, hand flung out, his yellow goggles have
slipped down over his eyes, looking like an anonymous fish
with blood trickling out of his mouth,
The cops firing back with their popguns, and
A. sprinting behind a trash barrel leading into a side-
street, Firing like a daredevil, like a French gangster
91
Explosion
picture. A. throwing his huge pineapple grenade.
(top view) causing general silence from the cops. Anthony
standing excited and panting at the street corner, trying
Suddenly a girl in a black
to decide where to escape.
vampire costume with a black hood on her head appears on
of Joanna on the
the side street. Blow up, momentary,
cinema magazine. The vampire girl waving her hand for A-
to come fast. He pauses, runs wildly down the street after
her. They take hands and tear down the street together-
On the sound track the Beatles' Revolution starting up- Fade
Anthony in airplane, lighting another cigarette.
Offering one to Flash, who takes it. As A. lights his
cigarette with the lighter, he asks:
A: What are you going to do now?
Flash: (deadpan, from behind the shades.
Anthony's face reflected in them) I'm going back to
Florida and be a cop.
Flash glancing at
A clicking the lighter shut.
it, smiling, saying:
It works out nice. The law pays me
my bread, and 1 roam free in their backdoor.
A: (his face reflected in the shades)
You were a cop man?
Flash: I was a cop before I went on this
Eastern trip.
Pause. Drone of the airplane
A: A soul cop hunh?
92
cut to : stock footage from Godard's Pierrot
lie Fou. Belmondo leaning up against the wall, mimicking
Americans, saying several times:
Yea, Yea . . . Okay . . . Yea
posters advertising
53. The California airport.
Anthony, his shades on, in his afghan coat having
THE SUN.
his bags examined. Flash is one counter down, also being
examined. They are both very stoned: at least Anthony is
and everything he sees is through a detached fish-eyed
lens, slightly colored blue. They look up, catch each
other's eye.
A looking around through his fish-eye at the
roving officials who circle outside the baggage line, their
hands behind their backs, watching the examiners and the
examined.
Shots of exiting passengers/soldiers, in forms
of eastern dress, contrasting with the square neckties the
Officials all in black with badges wear. As these
passengers leave the building, a few are intercepted by
the roving officials and pointed towards a side door --
the physical examining room. The majority however walking
out the door to freedom, Anthony sees this -- first a
(
passenger being intercepted, then his eyes moving to the
Looking
door where there's fresh air and sun waiting.
down at the official who is repacking his suitcase full Of
rich clothes -- purple shirts, etc. a large flamboyant hat-
93
He looks up and sees Flash, baggage in hand,
moving towards the doors, walking slowly and ultra-
steadily. He is stopped by one of the old grey-haired
Flash talking to him slowly, turning his
jowly officials.
Anthony's
back to Anthony, the -official turning with him.
Flash seems in command of the
eyes taking this in.
situation and as the loudspeaker announces a departure,
Flash, with the official following, turns back around
slowly, his dark mirror-like shades panning slowly down
the baggage line, panning past Anthony, as he continues
to move his lips,
Starts a slow
Anthony picks his baggage up.
slightly stiff walk towards the doors. Sound of his foot-
steps. Flash, ahead of him, exiting through the doors, a
gleam of sunlight shining into the airport as he opens the
door. Anthony's eyes feeling dizzy. The camera swirling
around the Airport quickly one time, A large ad for The
Sun, and a big red fireball with an airplane gliding past
it. TO his side, Anthony carefully watching one of the
officials, hands behind his back, bouncing up and down on
his heels. Anthony walking past
Camera dwelling on him.
him. Shot of a hand lightly touching his shoulder.
Just a moment please.
Face hardening.
A. stopping. Looking ahead.
Turning. Looking at this old decrepit looking official.
who says:
Will you step into our examing room
94
This way.
please.
Long shot of the official pointing to it.
Looking
Anthony walking stiffly to the door.
His voice off:
one last time to the exit doors.
Run!
The
54. Shot: Anthony at the examining room door.
official from behind, opening it.
Stepping inside.
Anthony scratching his scar.
Officials behind a large police station type desk.
One brother in front of it, putting his things back in his
pockets, smiling at A. giving him the fist of triumph sign.
Heavyset official looking up at A. disinterestedly:
Well, you know the procedure.
Pause
A: No
Take every-
Official: We run a bodysearch here.
Put it on the desk.
thing out of your pockets.
Shot: desk
A. slowly, resignedly but still hoping, taking
The
items out of his overcoat. Taking his coat off.
contraband tightly laced to his back under his green,
ruffled shirt. The official running through the items On
the desk, holding a pistol slug in the air, a couple of
teeth, a small black skull (a present from Rhah), glancing
critically at A.
Official: Okay (comes around the counter) Arms
out please. Stretch the legs.
95
He feels under the arms, down the chest, into
the crotch, the legs, straightens back up, looking A. in
the eye, circles his back with his arms.
Close shot of his hands tapping very lightly and
just once the plastic bulge under his shirt- A' facial
S
muscles tightening. official straightens, looking
triumphant.
Okay take the shirt off SlowlY.
Anthony, a distant smile on his face, unbuttoning
his shirt, taking it off. The flat p3astic knapsack is
revealed,
Anthony unhooks the two shoulder straps. Takes
it off in one hand. Tosses it on the counter.
The second official at the counter immediately
dipping into it.
Anthony: Burn me.
Take it, burn it . . . Take me-
Second official, at the counter, leaning it,
on
the weed in hand. Says off, the camera on A's face:
We have the evidence here to run you in
on a federal government smuggling charge . . . voll'll be
you'll be behind ba r s for five years,
found guilty.
Thcr-e is no lighter sentence. ?qe have all
probably more.
the evidence we need . . . If you cooperate however and you
give us information leading to the apprehension of any
contraband , your sentence could possibly
person carrying
be reduced to as little as two years.
Camera still on Anthony's face. He doesn't speak.
96
Shot of Flash leaving the airport (seen previously)
Rhah's low voice off: They won't shake you. They're too
busy busting brothers ---
Official: Okay, search him. (Turning to desk man) Get the FI
55. Shot: A, leaning forward on a speaker's podium
He is totally
in another room, warmthless and white.
shot from
naked, His body is hard and tight and cold.
the rear of his buttocks squeezed together in a noose-
The second Off
first 6fficial standing behind him.
The
to the side, watching.
First: (off) Now spread the cheeks.
He is
Shot from side, A's hard facial muscles.
coming to understand the reality of his situation, the
ignominy of it. His hands go back to his buttocks.
First: (off) Wider . . . F!ider! Okay, hands
back on the desk.
Side shot of A. putting his hands back, leaning
forward, the moment he does this, the first official kicks
A'S legs from under him,
Anthony's face orashing into the podium as he
falls. On the floor, wiping his mouth
Sound of falling.
where it hit the podium, It's slightly bleeding.
The FBI is
Second official: Okay that's all.
here. Get your clothes on.
Into the hall. men in black suits with
TWO FBI
narrow lapels, and hatless, waiting, the one in charge
giving A. an amused look of disgust. A in his furry afghan
97
coat. The FBI man, nodding his flat crewcut head as if
to say 'I like it'.
An attractive, rich-looking in her thirties
woman
is handcuffed to a chair in the hall, looking as if she is
about to cry, lines of fatigue under her eyes, as if this
was her first narcotics arrest.
The
The FBI man unlocking her from the chair.
handcuffs are shiny and big and silver. His key very
small. He smiles and
She is hassled and twists her wrist.
says to her:
The more you move, the tighter they get.
She hardly looks at
He handcuffs her to Anthony.
him, she is so distracted. The blood
He looks at her.
smeared on his mouth.
FBI: Let's go,
56. Shot: Getting into their black sedan, the FBI men
in the front, the assistant driving, the one in charge
seated with his back to the road not taking his eyes from
the two prisoners in the rear. The windows are sealed up.
The woman,
The sunlight outside is sparkling, They drive.
distracted, looking out the window nervously at the passing
streets. Anthony looking at her, beginning to fully
i
understand what is going to happen to him now. He is no
longer stoned. The
Looking out the window with her.
streets assume a fish-eyed aspect. cut
57. Prison. Shot of an electronic door sliding shut.
98
Sound of other electric doors opening and closing. Grating
metal on metal, followed by this underwater hollow silence.
A momentary sound of bubbling water in a fish tank. A shot
tropical fish swimming in the aquarium. Fading into
Of the
a shot of a strong muscled black standing, gripping the
bars, looking out blankly, his t-shirt off, muscled arms
and his powerful chest exposed. A sardine-
A black beard.
Fading into shot of
shaped ring hanging from his left ear.
Anthony in shabby light beige prison pyjamas. the top
removed, revealing a sleeveless t-shirt, exposing his under-
arms. He is sleeping on a mattress on the floor of his
cell. Blankets lying messily about, a few prison books.
His long hair is completely
His sleep is simple, childlike.
unkempt. He sleeps with his mouth closed, on his belly, one
arm loosely wrapped around his neck, the other flung Out.
Camera dwelling on him, fading again into the
aquarium full of tropical fish, fading from there to the
prison block; about ten cells to the block and one dayroom,
The shot is
five-six prisoners in each overcrowded cell.
of the prisoners, in singles, walking about pointlessly,
just to move, not more than six or seven treading.
The prisoners are all young except for one or
two old lifers; they are mostly smugglers, hard types, out
of motorcycle gangs, repair shops, broken families and in
California style, very hip. young, they have smiles that
say they know the score. Quite a few have beards and
tattoos, but no external ornaments, which is not allowed,
99
S* as distinguishing marks, they use their threads.
Each walks differently from the
other, like different types of fish in an aquarium. There
is also a large minority of old 'hippy' types, Youngr not
so tough, a fatalistic young romantic look about them,
Society was unchangeably lame and it was inevitable they
should end up behind bars. tr3hen they get out, they PJill
probably split into the hills, to llexico, South America,
Their hair is very long,
islands unheard, and never return,
a lot of golden brown beards and once-suntanned faces, very
quiet, keeping to themselves, not even talking, each sits
They look very primitive in their
by himself and meditates.
shabby pyjama pants and t-shirts.
Voice off:
58. Camera panning through the block.
Getting into the car.
Over there,
Camera fading to catch three of the prisoners,
swarming high up near the ceiling on the barsI like fish
rather than monkeys, looking out the small slit of a window
looking down into the parking lot.
VOICE : The yellow chick in blue.
Side Shot (close) of their faces, catching the
sunlight. One of them sucking in his breath.
Shot: Blonde getting into the car in the Sun-
light, slamming the door. In the background we see the
sealed prison building, modern, small windows, in the
heart of the city.
100
Shot: their faces looking out through the bars,
wide eyed, exaggerated effect. Fading into
Shot of the head trustee (also a prisoner)
bearded, coming up behind the prisoners. Pointing.
Get down.
59. Camera following trustee as he walks on down the
block. Stops at a
He is a powerful looking young man.
cell. Looking inside. Anthony lying on the mattress,
still sleeping, though he has changed positions and is
sleeping childlike on his side, his arm still about his
neck, the other arm outflung. toilet bowl and in
A basin
Trustee glancing
the cell. One bunk bed. Very cramped.
to see everything is in order.
Passes two
Walks further on down the block.
60.
brothers with pompadours sparring with each other in the
Passes by them
space between the cells and the bars.
unconcernedly and passes out of the camera's eyes8 as the
They move well,
camera remains to dwell on the brothers.
taking it easy, equally sized. They start slapping a
little harder, noses bristle, sweat starts up: a few others
gather round, coming from separate directions, alone,
digging the action. The camera observing their faces as
the fighters pass out of the camera's eye; the mixture of
hard types and nomadic types.
One
The fighters come back into view, dancing,
of them with a brother
is now Anthony, jabbing, sparring
101
who is probably an amateur boxer and is getting the better
of A, slapping him harder and harder with his open palm,
his own nose starting to open and close, his mouth working
small cries, as if he were taking a black vengeance on the
white boy. The hard unsympathetic faces of the gathered
crowd. A'S blurring vision; his opponent's face fades into
that Of Francis hitting him harder and harder, his face
fading into the Blow Up at the stream -- his dying face
crying
61. Voice: (off very-loud) Ulysses1 Albert0
Ulysses!
Camera panning to one of the guards walking down
The
the corridor outside the bars, calling this name.
fight breaks up. The two brothers (not Anthony) who were
originally sparring calmly quickly walk off in separate
directions.
Ulysses walking past them towards the sliding
The door
door at the far end of the block. v?aiting there.
slides open, Camera catching him walking
Another door.
The guard
down the corridor with the guard behind him.
stopping at a box tied to the bars and taking the Slips
full of special requests, following Ulysses out the
corridor. They disappear.
Fade.
62. A. waking up from his sleep, his hair very
dishevelled, lines under his eyes (he has slept most of the
102
days and nights away) Looking around in a daze at the
blankets. The little shelves on the wall are neat, with
small personal possessions on them. A young prisoner
lying on the top bunk.
A: Can I get some cigarettes?
The young cat reading a Reader's Digest, turning
the page, his voice distant:
Sunday
I haven't had
A: Can I get one from you.
a smoke in days.
Long pause
(Turning the page of his magazine) No
Fade
The water
63. The sparring brother in the shower.
The
He pushes a button.
squirting out like a fire hose.
shower stops. Comes out. Dries himself, humming, then
singing.
Fade
64. Anthony on the mattress trying to read a prison-
book. Rutting himself in the
Putting it down in boredom.
Disliking
yoga position. Breathing in deep like a fish.
it. Getting up, walking, in his singular tread, towards
the dayroom, passing the brother drying himself outside the
Going to the small stove
shower, which is in the dayroom.
The
Looking at it.
where the coffee pot is brewing.
brother coming over in his towel, taking the lid off the
coffee.
103
smelling just nice.
Urn,
A: Yea, all I need is a coffee cup
Brother, heading back towards the shower to pick
up his soap and slippers. Looking back over his shoulder?
It's hard to get a coffee cup in here.
Walking on) Ain't no sugar either
A: (to himself) No, ain't no writing
paper, Ain't no pens. Ain't no telephone
Ain't no beds.
calls. Ain't nothing
Ain't no lawyers. Ain't no women.
is there?
Brother from distance, going back to his cell:
No, ain't nothing
Fade
Close shot: an old lifer crying "Chow"
65.
Low anin\al mumbles, following his cry, down the
block. Prisoners heading back to their individual cells.
It is late afternoon, but the clock on the wall is broken
The corridor outside the cells
it doesn't really matter.
SO
is now empty. A silver dinner tray, glistening chrome, the
center of attraction, wheels past the electric door into
the cell. The trustee, by himself, rolls it down the cells
into the dayroom, some of the men's faces looking at it as
it passes their cell.
The Trustee: (calling out) Four Five Six!
The men from these cells eagerly pour out, heading
Two pieces of white
for the dayroom. They eat voraciously.
104
bread, no butter, ravioli and a small sticky piece of cake,
Nothing to drink but coffee. Anthony eating with them, his
undershirt still on, his hair a mess. There is little talk.
The sparring bro.ther, the same one who was in the shower, is
sitting with another brother across from A. Looking at A.
curiously. Asks:
Whatcha ya in for man?
A: (tired of the whole gig) Crime
The Brother: (smiling, persisting) You look like
one of them cats gets stuck for the first time on a grass
rap.
A shrugging, eating
Brother, finished, lighting a cigarette, offers
one to A. Brother smiles at his friend.
He shakes his head.
Brother: This is my
Don't get uptight man.
ninth trip. James Brown here (indicating his friend) is
facing life. Whatcha you facing. Five years.
A. has finished eating. Doesn't know why he is
hanging around.
Brother: It's
Shit, you might pull a probation.
all depending on the Plan. Federal?
A. nodding
Brother: Judge Lowery'll
Then you're SO-SO.
he'll hang five on you.
Brown: (interrupting) They call him The
James
Vulture. He's black (laughing) yea he's as black as my
daddy.
105
Brother: Monroe. He's soft on kids. He'll rap
to you an hour about Justice till you think he's gonna put
you away for ten lifetimes. Then he'll hand you a probation,
saying, "Stay Clean"
Brown:: Yea, but your riff in court better
James
be nice . . . just nice
A. rising, going to the sink in the dayroom,
drinking water out of the tap, turning around, taking a long
deep breath, wondering what he's going to do next
Fade
66, Anthony, later at night, is looking out the bars.
He has pulled himself together, has combed his hair,
showered, removed his t-shirt, stands barechested, has
washed his face; he is thinking.
Fade; into his thoughts
He sees the faces of Joanna, Isaac, Francis, and
Joanna standing painted green
-*ah, each of them separately.
Francis singing his
under the tree where he first saw her.
Rhah
blues. Isaac offering him the snake's head to drink.
giving him the coat in the hospital.
They fade. On the other side of the bars, looking
in, he sees Alexander, The camera panning past him casually;
no element of magic in it.
around, walking back to his Cell.
Anthony turning
Alexander's voice (off, low as an interior
monologue):
106
Once I spoke to you of long silences
where we stare, just stare at air. Once spoke to you and
I
said life was but a dream, it's been said, I said, I was
what you are. I am what you're going to be
Closeup Anthony's face.
He enters the cell.
Anthony's voice off as in interior monologue:
Don't the winds ever change?
67. He sees Sonah huddled up in a blanket, on the
floor, slightly trembling as if this prison were too cold
for him. He's rubbing himself slightly under the blanket.
His hair is black, Indian, long and wavy, hanging to his
shoulders, the reincarnation almost of Isaac but younger,
about seventeen, eighteen. He has a beautiful face, much
warmer features than Isaac, his two eyes bright and looking
straight straight ahead as if he were on a permanent high.
His voice is soft and when he talks he smiles tenderly
He has a slight
with his eyes and sometimes his mouth,
accent -- sounding almost Israeli or European.
Anthony sits down next to him on the floor, not
feeling any need to explain why he sits down next to him.
He is simply attracted by him, by his warmth and by the
i
sensitivity that makes him tremble in the cold prison.
Jonah looks at Anthony with his wide eyes. He
Anthony is forced
smiles, trembles, but doesn't speak.
to ask:
107
What did you do?
Jonah, smiling, wrapping his hands around his
shoulders under the blanket:
They call it White Slavery
Anthony looking at him puzzled
Jonah: The little girl told the Judge she was
raped steadily for half a year . . . and she was so beautiful
in a pink dress in the court the Judge he believed her . . .
(laughing a little) so they take me to the big prison
tomorrow,
A: For how long
J: (looking ahead, trembling: For five
years
Jonah seeing
Pause. Sorrow on Anthony's face.
his face. Changes the subject:
J: Where do you come from?
A: From the East
J: I was over there (smiling) Yhen I was
just a boy. They call me Jonah.
I fought with the Tribes.
A: I fought with the soldiers. I'm
Anthony.
Jonah looking straight into A's eyes:
glad you came and talked to
I'm
Good.
me. I needed somebody to talk to ma. (Turning away) I'm
scared tonight. (Trembling)
Anthony almost touching his shaking shoulder
with his hand. pulling it back in.
Hesitating.
108
Jonah: (not him do this, a slight
seeing
smile on his face) I was twelve when first killed. I
I
lay in a tree all day. The soldiers came
Xtd set a snare.
by late in the afternoon, and they tripped it. It was
an old-fashioned bow and arrow, but it killed. And I was
so happy? Have you killed?
Anthony: (pause) No
Isaac: (smiling) did you rape the women?
A: (pausing) No
Isaac: (smiling) You didn't steal anything?
A. shakes his head
Isaac: Are you proud?
A: (at a bit of a loss) Sometimes
Isaac: Who is your woman?
Anthony puckers his smile, shrugs
Isaac (Also smiling) It doesn't matter any
more, does it?
Anthony : i40
Isaac: (smiling) HOW old are you;
I don't
Anthony: (smiles a little, shrugs)
think I remember.
His interest
Pause. Jonah has stopped trembling.
in Anthony has brought him out of his fear of the future.
Jonah-, (looking at A. tenderly) I- remember.
I'm eighteen. Xy mother and father were killed by the
soldiers. I was taken from the Forest, imprisoned here.
The City
They set me free and I wandered into the City.
109
was cold and hard and I was lost but there were people like
YOU Anthony in the City. There are a lot of them. We
shared together. r've loved more beautiful
We made love.
things than there are stars and I'm only eighteen and
You're older but Anthony (looking straight into his eyes)
believe me, believe me you never . . . good god you never
lose track of your heat . . . (taking his hand from the
blanket) Take my hand *.* Feel it
Anthony feeling it
Jonah: Mine are warm.
Yours are cold.
Shot, short: Anthony chasing Joanna through the
woods. His voice off in a whisper:
I remember.
You have to kill Anthony (Shot, very
JOnali :
You
short: Ant.bony killing the sneke) You have to love.
to be free (Shot: Anthony chasing Joanna through the
have
woods. His voice off: I pemember) . . . and you have to be
warm (Shot: Anthony catching Joanna in the WOOLS (no sound)
toppling over on the ground, their bodies
in si~w motion
entwining. His voice off in a whisper: I remember)
Pause, Anthony feeling the warmth coming off
Jonah. Jcnah's eyes smiling encouragement and tenderness
i
at him,
Jonah: you're warm. (lithely moving over
,
NOW
closer to Anthony) you've been warm before . . . I Can tell.
It isn't solemn,
(He kisses Anthony lightly on the cheek)
the kiss) His
it's light, joyous, easy. (Anthony returns
110
voice off: I remember. Anthony slowly takes Jonah's head
in his hands, brings it together with his. Anthony
releases his breath. Jonah's hand feels his cheek, gropes
along on it. They kiss each other's mouth, tenderly, their
eyes closed. Fade, past the faces of Joanna, Francis,
Isaac, Rhah, in that order back to the face of Alexander,
who sits all in black by himself in his apartment, slumped
in a chair, his hands between his knees, looking very sad,
his head hanging off his left shoulder. His voice off,
very low:
We dreamt
68. Your mind was mine Anthony.
together. We discovered reality and it died with the dream
We grew another
and what we dreamt, we could never have.
mind, We emancipated our souls, and the cost . . . was that
our feeli:;gs died. We buried ourselves in the security Of
thought and not knowing it, we fell prey to our own minds.
If ir. cannot eat other minds and
Our thought was hungry.
other minds cannot eat it, then like some horrible plant,
which yc~ accused me of being, the mind will curl in and
eat its own self.
Fading into
Alexander rises from the chair.
Anthony and Jonah together fading into
69. Alexander's face returning, painted in vivid
His
tribal colors -- yellow, black, red, blazing colors.
books and papers are strewn on the floor in fl-c)nt of him.
He is pouring gasoline through his apartment, The posters
111
and paintings are ripped off the walls, except for the
Rimbaud which he now stops to look at.
His voice: (off) Big explosions pockmark our
skies, Joyce . . .
Aristotle. Shakespeare.
Aquinas.
Rimbaud . . . ending like literature, in death and disease,
Rimbaud's hollow boy's voice off:
and one night I will lose and come
to regard as sacred the disorder of my mind!
Alexander taking the Rimbaud off the wall and
throwing it with the rest on the floor.
Alexander, his voice off, kneeling to examine
what he has devoted his life to:
For this? . . . descend sin by sin into
a maelstrom, full of false dreams arising like twilight,
false words tilxt dance by the moon and mirror themselves
God! I
at the bottom of the ocean's floor . . . for this?
swallowed sleeping
did my very best. I opened moons. I
forms. Sighs too
I sang songs that sighed with effort.
deep for words and prayers from the deepest pit of the
brain 0 God! Emerging
I was in you and you were in me.
from Leaping up, like winter-spring ardor, to
mists.
light sodden coals of creativity, it was patience and it
was passion, it yearned in the horrifying silence Of
infinity . . . Does appetite grow again? . . . and I a god am
I reborn? Did Zeus swallow his own flesh in order to
preserve it, do I not swallow my own self in order to live
again?
112
Alexander rising on camera. His voice still
off, in parody of what he has just said:
I was conceived by my father, born of
my mother, suffered under both, was crucified for this
(pointing at papers), died and soundly buried but the third
day I rose again from Hell, and ascended unto Heaven where
I sit on the right hand of God The Father Fiction, from
whence I shall come to judge . . . all painters, all poets,
all creators . . . you . . . amen
Walking towards his fireplace, taking the old
medieval torch off the hall, shifting moods, his voice off:
Must smash the
sin, must rise up.
Xust
Fire. Flew.
barrier of my selfish Ego. Must free . . . Free.
I go. Through the Ego he . . . Malked
Walking to and fro.
thrcagh the Eg;-. To and fro he walked .-. Through the Ego-
Through the garden of Ego.
I& holds it next to him,
Lighting the torch.
burning brilliantly, casting a weird surreal light on his
painted face. His voice, mocking: .
In many centuries from now .-- when the
futurians dig up theageold crusts of our earth . . . they
will discover a bronzed likeness of a human being from the
Twentieth Century, and they will marvel at this figurepiece,
and they will hang it in their lighted museums for all the
survivors to see, and they will flock about it, and they
will celebrate it, and they will never again commit it to
earth, for . . . and . . . it . . . wrll be Me. (laughs. Checks
himself)
113
What, who is this laughing at who?
Which Alexander laughs at which Alexander? . . . Which
Alexander shall inherit the Earth? . . . - shall inherit
Ye
the Earth. (Shifting, a mock puzzled look on his face)
The voice is gone. (Shifting again, theatrical) but alas!
A face is a
the birth of faith follows. Faith and face.
face. For have I not functioned on, samefaced everyday
forever, believing, having to believe in as simpk a thing
. . e as divine good, divine aid, all the divinities my fear
urges me to snatch at ..* at any time, at any 5pace, I came
cracking downward, creativeness I thought forever purloined
. * . how shall I function on, miracle of miracles -- sprung
from the Holy Ghost loins of the Virgin llary, Alexander
made flesh in it ball of fire, come to cleanse the Earth,
turn water to b lood . . . (Tausing, shifting again) O=. turn
life to death .*. turn death back again . . . To Life!
(Taking a random sheet and setting it to fire,
As he does this, his voice, businesslike:)
The world, it was writ, shall be
cleansed this time, not by water, but by fire. (The sheet
Alexander
with his large looping handwriting on it burning.
looking at his two cats who are circling uncomfortably under
a table) It burns . . . like cats slinking away, slowly at
first, it grows. It is a - wind,
high
It flies higher.
The long romantic loops of my
bowelbound and visionary.
hand, scratched by the she pen, she knows everything I know
and am about to know (Flame has engulf&d the sheet, Alexander
114
still holding it in his hand, tasting the fire) disappears
in an insanity of flame, The fire in my eye.
La Lune.
(The Siamese hissing at Alexander, Alexander smiling) SSSSSS,
go! gargoyle, sit on my mind no more, petulant and fed with
boiling seething creatiousness . . . like a succubus! like
a sea! like a vast Cinerama leech!
Alexander putting the torch to the books and
Then
papers. It starts up just as in the opening scene.
The cats, the hair
it quiets and starts to spread and burn.
on their hacks, retreating up against the wall, hissing.
Al*: (off) The fire rumbles like a pig in
frightened, so very frightened still of its
the slough,
fate, its awareness that I am real, not unreal, not false.
Mow in the hot heart of hell this real I burns the she out
of it (indicating the papers} stealing the light out of my
love, stealing stealing killing killing. 0 fantastic
insanity. My eyes are pearls of religious light, lit with
a lustre of wrath, spiking the skulls of dead demons lying
in the burning slough of hell, o Fantastic, these insane
words and words and words marching over my mind an army of
cannibals icccold sinfraught moistness of these words Gush
pond Foam! Livid skins. Of enemy kings cast in viper pits
to wheeze themselves out in celestial slowities of Death,
the little pigs grunt the sizzling snakes stand on the wall
and black butterflies sail up into the air and there in
the air die, asphyxiated. Spineless reptiles, as swift as
doom-ridden windswept poetry, snow floating in blood washed
115
Gush pond . . . foam, roll over and
by ice, alerted. Alert1
over, rise and roll, rise and roll (he pauses)
(The flames spreading wildly through the apartment.
The cats,
Shot of Anthony's fleeing footsteps (scene 1).
screaming. Alexander backing off from the heat, his eyes
alight with madness, sounds of breaking and tearing and the
roar of the flames)
Sound fades. His voice off, calmer, more lucid,
bringing to an end:
In the garden when I was young the
They are beasts of a fabulous
small graceful lions run.
elegance they sniff flowers and crack open pink parasols,
when I was young, in the aethiopian gloom, in the shaded
of afternoons splendid with ambitious odors and
memory
primitive yearnings and I embraced it all, sing! that once
1 stood in front of the dawn and bathed my sandals in the
sea, that once on freezing frontiers my armies roamed, that
I kissed the hands of fantasy queens and bade my time
pausing on flowers, these and arabia too where the winds
shrive, in the sapphire waters off moorish Spain, fields
Of flanders and wheat so golden it devoured the sun, songs
Of Swedish castles and sonqs of spiders, groans of feeling
from dungeon corners and keening organ music in german
towns and nights in the forest and days so black widow's
tears ran with the Ehine . . . The Christ was long distant
and light so far ahead and I lay my cheek down on the side
of an alp, and ran my toes through the wows of afghanistan.
116
In the north was the nothing, towards the south the void,
and over it an old God had hung an invisible mantle he
(Veaningless-
called Life .*. it's so sad, so meaningless.
ness in his voice) In its bosom we play the practice of
our hearts . . . our hearts expire, puff adders vex the desert
sand . . . we titter . . . we stop . . . without warning, we see
the genesis and the genius . . . and harmonies collide . . . and
the eye is lost in puzzles of fire
(Alexander is now a negative)
His voice.- (off) My throat above the fire.
Fire . . . my throat in the fire floating backwards *.. the
last secret to madness . . . the core the rot .-. beinglessness,
embrace the steel .*. spit .O. clog . . . choke on the semi-
circles of the moon . . . fantasy blood, purple flamed . . .
then gut and sink ..+ into the wealth of fire at the music
end of Death.
Alexander's negative engulfed in the fire.
Slow fade on the fire, engulfing everything.
69. Fading into -Anthony and Jonah embraced, but
Anthony's face, as if he knows what has happened, is looking
up, looking at nothing. There is sadness in his face.
Fading into mirth; the realization of dream.
His voice: (off) Feelings are dreams, dreams
It's
are feelings. Dream is Freedom,
Freedom is Dream.
all nothing but a Dream.
They embrace.
He kisses Isaac.
117.:
Fade.
The movie camera begins to purr offscreen,
coming to the end, fading from the characters, implying
that Life is just a Movie.
From the death of Words, we start a sweep Up
Beginning by making a Movie of
into Anthony's Future.
what has passed.
First still photographs come on the screen,
The
freezes of the faces and things Anthony has known.
purr of the movie camera is heard offscreen until the End.
Photographs, Blow Ups
1) The Fire
2) Father
3) Vother
..
4) Diana
5) Rimbaud
6) Alexander
7) Francis
8) Rhah
9) Isaac
10) Buddha
11) Joanna
12) Flash
13) Genet
14) Jonah
15) Anthony
These shots fade very quickly into one another.
118
They could be closeups, distant shots, shots in action,
shots mixed in time, but an effect of passing speed and
dream,
1) A shot of Alexander as a young boy, writing
poetry. 2) Then a shot of him in his apartment with
Anthony. 3) Lastly a shot of him as a negative.
1. F&ah at the hospital
2. Rhah clubbing Lerner in the woods
3. F&ah rapping in the Temple
[Reversing Time)
The stills starting to move with the purr of
the camera
1) Isaac at the Temple in front of Buddha slicing
the snake's head off, fading into
2) Buddha with the living snake crawling through
his arms, fading into
3) the candle at the jazz club Anthony rising from
the table sweating, fading into
4) Isaac with the machine gun in his arms
the leader of the Tribe at the stream
COnfrOnting
5) Isaac in his classic pose at the stream after
the battle
6) a comic strip Blow Up of The Silver Surfer
7) Joanna following Isaac into the woods
8) Anthony coming on screen-chasing her
9) Anthony drinking the snake blood
10) Anthony and Joanna entwining
119
11) Francis singing his blues
the r&ream.
12) Francis crying for help in
13) Anthony dancing to the James Brown with the
colored chick, the sound of the song breaking the silence
of the movie camera's purr.
14) Anthony and Jonah touching each other for
the first time
15) Anthony in a cardin double-breasted suit and
turtleneck, wide brimmed hat, expensive gators, flowery
handkerchief, looking very strange and out of character
passing between two chicks (their off screen whisper, in awe:
Where does he come from? Where is he going?
161 Footage from the Errol Flynn swordfight in
the Seahawk
An offscreen voice, loud and distant, the guard
calling "Darnell! .., Anthony Darnell!
17) The guard walking down the corridor, calling,
fading into
An off-screen voice (the guard's):
Tell him he's wanted
18) Joanna and Isaac bendingoverAnthony at the
stream, nursing him
19) Anthony kissing the snake
The snake biting Anthony
20)
21) Anthony embracing Isaac after Alexander's Death
22) Frontal shot, medium range, taken from the
Anthony
eye level, of two horses riding with the camera.
120
his hair blowing in the wind on the first horse, a chestnut
stallion. Almost abreast of him, his young (future) son
(seen earlier playing the piano) his long hair- blowing in
the wind also. They gallop.
Sound of hooves beating, Camera holds on them.
Side shot as they pass the camera, riding off.
A slow Spanish guitar melody starting up, movie
camera's purr fading into the music
23) Son and father on street, the father a little
bit ahead, both hands in his pocket, his shoulders hunched,
back to camera. The son, younger than the one in the
previous shot, like his father wears a sweater, and leather
pants. The guitar riffing.
The purr of the camera.
24) The guitar fading.
The son, now a baby, is building a sandcastle on the beach.
His father approaching him. Baby waving him awayr as if to
say Don't play with my sandcastle. Father opening his face,
like a little boy his eyes wide, showing his son he is hurt.
The son looking, beginning to smile. The guitar starts up
again, Father laughing. Going to son and lifting him up
on his shoulders where he rests, Walking down to the sea.
His left arm going out and Joanna running across the camera,
under his arm, they laugh, turn their backs on the camera
and baby on shoulder, wife under arm, walking off down the
beach, fading into
25) The big muscled black with the gleaming ear
ring, seen at the beginning of The Prison sequence, his hands
121
on the bars (the purr of the camera), now his hands
movie
wrapped around the guard's neck, who is ninncc? against
up
The black making cold .Eaces of
the bars, struggling.
exertion, bringing the guard lower and lower, finishing
Look of intense
him on the floor. Back up to the bars.
He takes the bars in hand and
concentration on his face.
He just about makes
like Steve Reeves, bends them apart.
a circle out of the two bars, bending them inwards, giving
The rest
Going through the breach.
them a concave look.
of the prisoners following, caution and excitement on their
faces, emerging three or four at a time.
In a double-breasted
Anthony through the bars.
Little gangster gun in his
suit, a flower in the lapel.
hand, an ultra-broad brimmed hat on his head.
The prisoners moving fast down the corridor.
Anthony way behind them banging a guard on the head with
the gun. Standing there over the guard, turning one way
The
Shooting him.
Can't up his mind.
then another. make
hollow clack breaking into the purr of the camera. A.
looking around, he hasn't moved, sees a vase full of flowers
Shoots it.
Pauses.
sitting on a table in this corridor.
A still hasn't
Vase and flowers breaking and falling.
Sees himself filting
moved, looks off down the corridor.
himself on camera, his double in looser threads, without a
Shot
hat. Pauses. Aims his little gun his double's way,
The hollow echo breaks the silence.
of it (close) firing,
Anthony picking a strawberry out of a strawberry bowl.
122
Fade, The prisoners running much faster through
the corridors of green and blue and pink sudr!enly breaking
Cra.sy
out into an open green field full of flowers.
Prisoners running like wild through the field some rolling
in the grass, some hugging each other, some pissing, some
picking flowers, the rest running very fast in separate
The last shot of the black Bar Bender tearing
directions.
through the grass (eye level shot) lively music playing off
the guitar.
The purr of the camera
This abruptly stops.
Anthony as some kind of
Blow Up Comic strip.
caped crusader, very fast.
70. Fading into Anthony kissing Jonah goodbye, fading
into Anthony at the electric door waiting for it to open.
It opens. Anthony disappearing in his
Going through it.
Sound of another electric door opening.
light beige pyjamas.
Anthony, in a cardin suit and turtleneck, no hat walking dowr
the corridor on the other side of the bars (camera behind
bars) e Side view as he walks on down the corridor and
disappears.
The purr stops
The screen dissolves into colors shaped like
molecules, perhaps a theme to it of three separate worlds
merging (cat: white, snake: green red yellow black etc. and
3Ielt .
fish: stripes, dots) Collide,
They merge.
End of Movie
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