Read Writing Movies For Fun And Profit! Online
Authors: Thomas Lennon,Robert B Garant
Writing Movies For Fun And Profit! (29 page)
INT. HOSPITAL — DAY
Local Thai police take the deputies’ statement as they lie in paper backless hospital gowns getting shots for borderline malnutrition. Sitting next to them, also in paper gowns, are the flight attendant Steve Austin and Captain Rick.
The corpse of Dr. White is wheeled in. Dangle looks at the corpse and at his tired officers and tells them — now they can finally close the book on the biggest case in their lives. It’s finally over.
A Thai POLICEMAN comes in and tells them that they are about to get a fax from Interpol: no doubt, congratulations. The fax comes through
with all of the vital stats of Dr. White — along with a photo …
It doesn’t look like the corpse at all
. They look closer, as flight attendant Steve Austin peers over their shoulder. Dangle supposes: What if that guy we killed was just another passenger who Dr. White put into his jumpsuit to throw us off? That means the killer’s still out there. Somewhere.
It’s VERY obvious that the photo is of flight attendant Steve Austin. He’s Dr. White
. They all realize this at the same time. Steve Austin smiles. “Well, I guess you caught me. You — you’re a better man than I thought. I guess I’ll turn myself in.” Then he head-butts Dangle painfully, runs for the window, and jumps into it. It doesn’t break, and he slides painfully to the floor.
He jumps up and runs out the door and down the fire escape. The deputies yell for the police and tell them that Dr. White got away. The Thai cops look at the corpse, totally confused — there is obviously a language barrier. Shit. So with their butts hanging out of their tiny paper gowns, the six deputies run out into Bangkok in hot pursuit.
EXT. HOSPITAL — DAY
Dangle stands in the doorway, facing Dr. White. He grabs his IV stand like the bamboo staff that the Dream Spirit has been training him with every night.
Cool “
Dangle’s about to kick some ass
” music swells
: In an incredibly fancy, badass move, he flourishes it like the life coach taught him. Dr. White takes a step back, terrified and cornered. Dangle steps forward — barefoot onto the hot asphalt. Ouch ouch ouch. He hops around and goes back inside. Shit. Dr. White runs, and
Dangle and the other deputies run after him, hopping unheroically on the hot asphalt in their bare feet.
EXT. STREETS OF BANGKOK — CONTINUOUS
The deputies run after Dr. White in their paper half gowns, butts hanging out. The locals point and stare. Many people call after the ladies, “How much for the blonde? $50 American! $100!”
EXT. STREETS OF BANGKOK — CONTINUOUS
Junior tries a
Dukes of Hazzard
slide across the hood of a car. His butt SQUEAKS and stops him. And he hops off the hot hood in pain.
INT. DOUBLE-DECKER BUS — MOMENTS LATER
Dr. White jumps onto the bus, next to a Hindu DRIVER. He screams, “Step on it!” The driver yells at him, “Why would I do that? Do you have a gun, nothing to threaten me with? What the hell is wrong with you, why don’t you put on some pants?” As he harangues, Dr. White gives up and climbs off the bus.
EXT. STREETS OF BANGKOK — MOMENTS LATER
Junior sees Dr. White running away. He turns and sees: a SPEAR, much like his fishing spear, at a vendor’s stand. He takes it. Williams turns to him, and nods: “You can do it, Junior.” Junior takes a deep breath, aims the spear at Dr. White in the distance — and throws … the spear PIERCES Kimball, who was JUST about to catch up with Dr. White. Oops.
INT. DOUBLE-DECKER BUS — MOMENTS LATER
Dangle and Clemmy jump onto the bus, and tell the Hindu driver, “Follow that guy — he’s a
serial killer!” The driver harangues, “Why would I do that? Do you have badges, some sort of identification? If he is a killer, why would I want to go nearer to him? Why don’t you try just PAYING for the bus like a normal person? What the hell is wrong with you Americans, anyway?” They give up and continue the chase on foot.
EXT. BACK ALLEY — CONTINUOUS
Clemmy runs in pursuit. A handsome PASSERBY yells “$25,000! American!” Clemmy runs out of sight. Then comes back. “Um, exactly what do you expect for your $25,000?” The handsome tourist whispers to her. She nods. “You had me at handcuffs.”
EXT. STREETS OF BANGKOK — CONTINUOUS
Travis and Williams run up to some COPS: “We need backup, pronto.” They’re, of course, arrested, as they try to explain what they’re doing on the street half naked. Kimball trudges back to the hospital, speared.
EXT. STREETS OF BANGKOK — CONTINUOUS
Dangle runs, getting winded. His feet are hot and sore. Dr. White is way down the street,
about to hop on the back of a moving truck
— he’s getting away.
Dangle can’t run anymore. Then he sees: a brand new bicycle. It’s a POLICE bike, almost the same model as his back home. It is chained to a bike rack. Dangle hesitates — then breaks the bike’s lock. As he picks the lock, he tells the camera, “Never, NEVER do this at home, kids.” He takes off the chain.
He leaps on the bike. “It’s go time.” Music swells, he takes off — and a SECOND chain
on the bike stops him in five feet. He flies painfully over the handlebars, to the concrete.
He looks down the street as Dr. White makes it onto the truck. He turns and waves at Dangle! “Good-bye, Dangle! See you in another seventeen years!”
He laughs … and slips and falls off the truck. Where he is run over by a bus. Then another.
CUT TO:
INT. MORTUARY IN THAILAND — DAY
Dangle enters in uniform with a medal on his chest, his arm still in a bandage. Dr. White is lying, dead, on a gurney. Dangle smiles, covers Dr. White’s face, and nods to the MORTICIAN — who opens the doors of the crematorium’s oven, flips a switch unceremoniously, and exits. A conveyor belt slowly carries White into the oven. Dangle smiles and whispers to White, “Who’s laughing now, bitch?”
SUDDENLY — Dr. White reaches out and grabs Dangle. As he is sucked into the oven, Dangle is being dragged too …
Dangle struggles to get away — but Dr. White is strong. At last Dangle kicks free, but White makes one last grab: for Dangle’s pants … Dangle smiles:
there are no pants to hold on to
. Dr. White screams and disappears into the flames. Dangle smiles — and adjusts his shorts, adjusting a ball back in that popped out in the fracas.
DISSOLVE TO:
EXT. Reno SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT — ESTABLISHING
Title Card: Reno, Nevada: six weeks later
INT. Reno SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT — CONTINUOUS
The deputies are back to normal: Wiegel is still a retard. Junior smiles sweetly, and he shows Williams a nice, romantic photo of the two of them from the island. She pays him $50, takes it, and destroys it. Dangle pulls out the old newspaper headline “NEW LIEUTENANT HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT!” He rips it up and lets the pieces fall into a garbage can.
Then someone notices …
Wait, where’s Jones and Garcia?
Oh, shit. Guess we didn’t really wrap everything up.
CUT TO:
EXT. THAILAND — DAY
Jones and Garcia are in their tighty whities in a cage in a traveling Thai circus. A circus WORKER sprays them with a hose, then throws in two heads of lettuce. They hold each other, crying and shivering.
THE END
Outline
by
Robert Ben Garant
&
Thomas Lennon
FADE IN:
DETROIT, MICHIGAN
We meet our heros: FIVE lovable INNER-CITY KIDS, who are a scout troop. (Not the official BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA but a BSA-type group.) They only joined Scouts to get out of classes early. Their SCOUTMASTER is a weird old loser; he’s always drunk and doesn’t show up most of the time.
They’re supposed to be learning BASIC AUTO REPAIR, but by the time the car engine’s been taken apart, the master is drunk and the kids have lost interest.
So they just goof around and play basketball. They LOVE basketball. But they SUCK at it, ’cause they all just wanna be superstars (instead of being actually good at basketball).
These kids could sure use a little lesson in teamwork
. They worship SOME FAMOUS BASKETBALL PLAYER. It could be any player, any team. For the sake of this treatment, we’ll say it’s SHAQ and THE MIAMI HEAT.
The main kid is MIKE. When the drunk scoutmaster yells at the kids for being a bunch of no-good punks, Mike tells him: Why should I even pretend I’m ever gonna be something? (His dad was a con man who left him and his mom to survive on their own. He’s got no hope, no goal for a better life.)
Mike, at home, lives with his MOM, DIANNE, and their sick GRANDMA. She’s a single working mom and doing her best. Dianne wishes Mike had something to give him hope. Mike asks her, again, where Dad is. She says she doesn’t know. Grandma sees this and shakes
her head, and Grandma decides to write a letter — BUT TO WHOM?
Then they all see, on TV:
MIAMI, FLORIDA. A PRESS CONFERENCE:
The MIAMI HEAT, in association with the Boy Scouts of America–type group, have sponsored a national contest: the scout troop that collects the most aluminum cans will get to play the Heat, in a five minute HALF-TIME GAME, to earn their athletic badges. Plus cash prizes and team jerseys and stuff.
SO …
Dianne and Grandma (AND THE KIDS) think it would be great for Mike to win something like this. Mike and the other inner-city kids in the scout troop win the contest. Their parents and aunts and uncles all work in a Pepsi factory. The kids don’t care a thing about scouting or the badges — they just want to meet the HEAT.
CUT TO:
PRISON:
WILL, prison convict, con artist, and MIKE’S DAD. When we meet him, he’s playing basketball in the prison yard with the other convicts. Will is the coach, coaching as he plays: and they play mean, prison-yard basketball. Will plays for keeps; they play really dirty, really rough, and really well.
LATER, IN PRISON:
Will is working — sewing in the prison’s factory — when Will gets a letter from back home in Detroit:
His MOM, Mike’s Grandma, is dying. (Don’t worry — we will later discover that she is NOT really dying. She’s an old woman who’s frequently “dying,” “recovering,” and “dying” again.)
So — Will breaks out of prison to go see his dying mother.
CUT TO:
DETROIT:
Will gets home, sneaks in to see Grandma — and Grandma slaps him. (She’s HILARIOUS and not dying at all.) She’s ashamed of Will. She’s ashamed that he’s in prison, ashamed that his 11-year-old-son, Mike, wouldn’t even recognize him if he saw him, ashamed that he let Dianne, the best thing that ever happened to him, get away. “If only you were a good father, I could rest in peace and not be a failure as a mother.”
Dianne finds Will in her home and slaps him too. He broke out of jail, and now they could ALL get in trouble. Will finds out that Mike has No IDEA that Will didn’t “leave them” of his own choice — he’s just been in jail for eight years. And Mike has no idea what Will even looks like.
Will tells Dianne he’s really changed from the selfish guy he was, a reckless gambler and a con man. Will really wants to make things up; to his kid, his mom, and Dianne — the only good thing that was ever in his life. She kicks him out — she DOES NOT want Mike to meet his escaped prisoner father — that’s not the kind of father he needs. Besides, Mike has already left — on the bus to Miami.
MEANWHILE:
At the prison, they’ve discovered Will’s escape, and they are hot on his tail. The main FEDERAL marshal is as tough as nails … but he kinda sympathizes with Will when he sees Grandma’s letter — since Will escaped to see his dying mother.
AT MAMMA’S HOUSE:
Will ducks out, “out of their lives forever,” as Mike enters.
But he overhears:
Why hasn’t Mike left? Their shifty old troop leader, who was supposed to drive the bus, flaked out. He spent all their traveling money that the Heat sent them — and he can’t be found. Now they have no money, no driver for their crappy old scout van …
They’re not going to get to play the Heat after all. Mike says, fine — “Good things don’t happen to people in this neighborhood, anyway.”
Will sees Mike through the window — sees that his son is on the wrong path …
THEN …
Mike and Dianne get a call — the Scouts of America has sent them a new troop leader to drive them to Miami. (It’s Will, doing a voice on the phone — he’s a very accomplished CON ARTIST.)
Will makes his own SCOUT UNIFORM. He breaks into the old scoutmaster’s house, steals the old man’s uniform, and sews on tons of badges.
The kids show up, to go to Miami …
TA DA! — Will shows up in the den leader’s uniform as their new den leader. (“Sent from, uh … Boy Scout headquarters in, uh, Washington.”) He’s going to take them to Miami. He doesn’t tell his son who he is, and Mike doesn’t recognize him.
Will, driving a crappy bus, with the Scouts, makes it out of Detroit and heads south.
So with no cash, and no scouting experience, they make their way across the country.
Will sees what a cool kid his son has become but also sees that he’s dangerously close to following Will’s path, the wrong path.
The first night, he tries to pitch a tent in a campground — and fails. It’s a horrible night, no tent, no food … The kids (no dummies) are suspicious of Will (he sure doesn’t act like a Boy Scout). He doesn’t even know what some of the badges mean, he wears his handkerchief like Tupac, his neckerchief clasps like rings, and there’s something in his canteen that’ll start a campfire.
The next night, Will shows them some “REALWORLD SURVIVAL SKILLS.” When he can’t set up a tent AGAIN, he says, “Okay, tonight I’m gonna teach you how to earn your ‘check into a hotel with no reservation and no money’ badge.”
He pulls a con. He checks into a hotel, claiming he has a reservation and it should be paid for: “The scouts should’ve covered it.”
Clerk says sorry, he has no record of a reservation OR a payment. So Will raises a huge stink, creating a scene:
