Week 4 Discussion (Part Two)
Part One
My love,
It’s my time to go. If I don’t make it, know that I have always loved you. I will see you on the other side. Tell the kids and my parents I love them so much. Hug Lucy and tell her I will miss our walks. I’ll see her soon. You’ve given me a life of happiness and memory, and I will never forget you. I am so sorry for all the things we won’t get to do. You are a beautiful bright light and I want you to keep doing incredible things without me. You have been the light in my life, the one who gave me strength when I felt weak, and joy when I felt lost. I wish I could hold you one last time, feel your warmth, hear your laugh, and tell you how much I love you.
I always wanted more time with you. I want you to be happy after I’m gone. Be strong. Remember the best parts of us. You deserve all the happiness the world has to offer, and I hope you find it even if I can’t be by your side. You were everything I could have asked for and more. Every moment with you has been a gift. I wouldn't trade a single second of our time together. For anything I said in anger, I am sorry. I love you with all my heart. I always will, even if I can’t tell you that tomorrow. Hold on to that love and let it guide you. I am forever with you. I’ll see you again when you get there.
I can’t hold on much longer. Please forgive me, and never forget how much you mean to me. Be strong, my love. Be happy.
Yours, forever,
Matt
Part Two
My current script opens with two local boys breaking down the door of an abandoned building, making their way up a stairwell until they reach the door of a haunted East Village apartment in 1968, daring each other inside. Against their parents’ warnings, they are seeking out the body of Peter Pan, who their parents tell them died in the building. But upon discovering a body, still barely alive, they become party to a violent supernatural ritual whereby the junkie’s frame of Bobby Driscoll, the real-life child actor who played Peter Pan, harvests their youth in order to restore his own body. The scene closes with a renewed Bobby making his way outside and into the streets of downtown Manhattan.
What’s apparent here is that I have a large amount of exposition before we actually get to the inciting incident, and the event which propels the rest of the story forward, the harvesting of the boys’ bodies by Bobby. In cutting the exposition in order to get into the inciting incident as soon as possible, I can remove everything before the boys arrive in the apartment, which also gives me more room to have Bobby appear earlier. By doing this, I make the opening sequence more about my main protagonist, and much less about his victims. Opening on Bobby himself instead of the boys, I can indicate his near-death condition immediately, but also visually signal the boys’ entrance into his room. Rather than have pages of exposition focused on two characters who lose their lives on page three, I can make it more about the central character of the story, and get straight to the gruesome point.
What this adjustment also does is give my opening significantly more urgency and terror. It gives the boys enough exposition to arrive into the abandoned apartment, but no time to escape before they are consumed. We do not need to build the boys out as characters if we are going to kill them so early. Any exposition prior to the inciting incident is only to show Bobby’s condition as a junkie, rather than spending time on the condition of the abandoned building, or the personalities of the boys. Such scene-setting is irrelevant and brings no urgency to the story. Such establishment will be more apparent from the boys breaking down the apartment door rather than the building’s front door. By having Bobby ‘hear’ them before they arrive, we bait the trap the boys are about to fall into, even though as the audience we don’t know how horrific the consequences are going to be. Bobby becomes more like a spider awaiting his prey. The urgency and struggle of the boys’ efforts to escape can then be treated with a heightened sense of terror, and Bobby’s consumption of them given more space to reveal itself.
By creating this space, it affords me the opportunity to not only escalate the inciting incident sooner, but to also make more sense of Bobby’s restoration, which is a central behavior which drives his story forward. His physical rejuvenation at the cost of the boys’ lives and eventual exit from the building will also allow me to show more urgency from Bobby, and much less of his victims’ actions. I had originally wanted to focus on the boys in order to introduce the concept of Peter Pan, but I can now visually include those more urgent elements more as Bobby departs, such as a chiming clock, dancing shadows on the walls, or even his eventual hallucinations of pirate ships in the night sky.
