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Underground > Creation >

Barbelith Film Script

  
  

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We're The Great Old Ones Now
12:04 / 19.06.01
Right. This is a collaborative project, but it's totally undemocratic. We're going to write a film script together (assuming anyone wants to play), and I'm going to edit it ruthlessly, cut its excesses, however good they are, unless they make the whole project work.

I'm going to provide a grid of sequences broken down into scenes, and anyone can write them, then we'll all rip them apart and make it work.

To get started, though, we need a plot, a central character, and so on, and these we're going to grow organically from the fertile soil of the group.

So:

I want a place.

I want a profession.

I want a mood.

That's it for now. Off you go.
 
 
Ellis
12:14 / 19.06.01
Hmm...

Lowly office/ temp worker with no life finds enlightenment somehow while walking through his home town one Saturday. Very cold and sombre and slow.

[ 19-06-2001: Message edited by: Ellis ]
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
12:15 / 19.06.01
Place: Edinburgh.

Profession: bartender.

Mood: edgy.

[ 19-06-2001: Message edited by: Zenith ]
 
 
Wombat
12:15 / 19.06.01
Place: A shabby bar somewhere in London. Near closing time.

Proffesion: A mathematician specialising in flocking behavior.

Mood: Noir.
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
12:31 / 19.06.01
Place: a greasy-spoon. It's early evening and it's raining. There's a breakfast on the yellow formica table, and it's already congealing.

Profession: Freelance philosopher. Existentialism a speciality, but will dabble in other forms for cash. Sliding scale, depending on how wide a worldview you want.

Mood: Mike Leigh-like. Grimy.
 
 
theroadtorio
12:31 / 19.06.01
Potential scene derived from the above...

I remember a drunken night in Edinburgh coming across a gang of rabbits in the grounds of the castle. Could be the basis of an interesting scene for a mathematician into flocking.
 
 
Sunday
12:42 / 19.06.01
Place: A Large University Library

Person: Female Grad Student/Genius/Sex Maniac

Mood: Barely contained joy
 
 
the Fool
13:14 / 19.06.01
Lowly office/ temp worker with no life stumbles into a bar in Edinburgh. He's just achieved enlightenment and realised the world is going to end in one hour.

In the bar are
Freelance philosopher. Existentialism a speciality, but will dabble in other forms for cash..

Female Grad Student/Genius/Sex Maniac who falls joyously in love with barely contained joy until she realises the sham of their existences from the combined knowledge of her genius and his enlightenment.

the philosophy student debates them to the bitter end, forcing them to consider,'must we kill this pratt so we can have a shag before the end of the world!'

action, tension, apprehension

the script ends, the universe vanishes.
 
 
QUINT
13:50 / 19.06.01
place: train station
profession: confidence trickster
mood: nervous
 
 
Mazarine
17:52 / 19.06.01
place: An NYC TV studio.
profession: The host of an infomercial show where kitchen appliances and exercise equipment are lauded for an hour at a stretch.
mood: impending hysteria
 
 
wembley can change in 28 days
18:24 / 19.06.01
How many of the above were penned with yourself or your best friend in mind for the title role? Just out of curiosity...people can be strange.

Place: All around USA.
Profession: Circus performer/contortionist.
Mood: Suicidal

I'll be an extra.
 
 
Ganesh
09:57 / 20.06.01
Place: Kerala, South India
Profession: Ear Cleaner
Mood: Labile
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
16:27 / 20.06.01
Right.

A mathematician is employed as a waiter in a roadside cafe.

Why?

When?
 
 
Sunday
16:41 / 20.06.01
quote:quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Nick:
Right.
A mathematician is employed as a waiter in a roadside cafe.

Why?

When?


The mathematician is trying to determine the precise fluid ratio between gin and vermouth that creates the perfect, Platonic Martini.

He's been kicked out of University for repeatedly handing in papers on "squaring the circle" rather than his assignments.

The only book he has read besides math textbooks was Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" when he was 14.

This story takes place just after "Octopussy" hit the theaters.

[ 20-06-2001: Message edited by: Sunday ]
 
 
Lee
17:34 / 20.06.01
Place: Alaska
Profession: Trapper
Mood: Ride the High Country
 
 
01
17:48 / 20.06.01
Place: Mosh pit of a large indoor concert. There is a mirror on the ceiling.

Profession: Web Designer/ Programmer / Whatever

Mood: I y'am an anti christ..

Said character, thrashing around in pit, looks up at the mirror on the ceiling, viewing the entirety of the chaotic movements of the mosh pit on the floor. The whole thing is swirlling around.

Cut to. Top view. Cream being poured into coffee cup. It's swirlling around in the same fashion as the mosh pit was.
 
 
z3r0
19:13 / 20.06.01
PLACE: Under the sea
PROFESSION: ROTTING CORPSE
MOOD: JOYFUL
 
 
ynh
19:55 / 20.06.01
quote:Originally posted by Nick:
Right.

A mathematician is employed as a waiter in a roadside cafe.

Why?

When?

Why? Hir partner was offered a position at the local liberal arts college, and he's basically unemployable in any real job due to hir education: ie they can't afford to pay hir.

When? Oh, I'm really into the present as viewed through flashbacks thing lately, but it should definitely be now so you can take advantage of all our crazy math. The mathematician should close the cafe, or at least work the graveyard shift, and wait on travelers and truckdrivers who bear resemblences to people like Feynman, Rudolph Von Bitter Rucker, Benoit Mandlebrot, Isaac Newton: either in appearance or conversation. These encounters should generate either musings as s/he wipes tables or really fascinating conversations.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
19:55 / 20.06.01
Message deleted owing to a sudden irrelevance.

[ 20-06-2001: Message edited by: Nick ]
 
 
Mazarine
23:41 / 20.06.01
quote:Originally posted by Nick:
A mathematician is employed as a waiter in a roadside cafe.
Why?

When?


He is a brilliant mathematician, but incapable for no apparent reason of grasping anything except for a base five number system, which somewhat limits his capacity, so he makes his money waiting at this roadside cafe. During McCarthy's witchhunts.
 
 
nul
23:57 / 20.06.01
PLACE: An alleyway, underneath some bits of cardboard and paper.

PROFESSION: Unemployed writer/journalist, beggar

MOOD: Asleep, occassionally twitching, but generally expressionless.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
07:12 / 21.06.01
HOKAY, folks, hold up!

The profession is 'Mathematician employed in a roadside cafe', okay? That part is over.

Our questions now are WHY is he employed there? and WHEN does our action take place?

I like McCarthyite America, but it gives us a problem of detail...
 
 
Wombat
07:12 / 21.06.01
Why? Unemployable following a recent breakdown. She was studying the maths of human behavior and decided that people where being manipulated by an external force. Also some people didn`t follow the models at all. Paranoia and delusions followed rapidly. Loss of job and imagined persecution reduced her to her current state.

When? Now

[ 21-06-2001: Message edited by: Wombat ]
 
 
theroadtorio
07:24 / 21.06.01
What do you mean by 'a problem of detail'? Is that a question of research? If so, we've got some smart people here who're good at digging things up. And the McCarthy era is a fascinating one, and provides one very easy step to why a mathematician should be working in...well, it seems to have become a diner...if s/he has been removed from academic tenure for hir alleged political sympathies. One option in terms of developing background would be for the character to have come to America to flee Germany just before WW2, giving hir added perspective on what's happening with commie-sniffing. Or maybe imported to the States via the paperclip conspiracy, before opting out of what s/he realised was an arms race. Anyway, those routes bring why and when together in potentially interesting ways.
 
 
QUINT
08:45 / 21.06.01
Why? She suspects the world she is living in is not the one she was born in, and is on the run from people she suspects are trying to kill her because she is an illegal immigrant.

When? Today
 
 
Rex City-zen
19:07 / 21.06.01
Rex City-zen

Perception Engineer

Pensive
  
 
nul
20:43 / 21.06.01
You mean this isn't a job application? Where am I? *falls over, gurgling*
 
 
ynh
01:14 / 22.06.01
I think we could compromise between Mccarthy's America and Now, and put it in the 80's. I caught part of a Bill Moyers special that dweleed a bit on Ronald Reagan saying stuff I'd like to have kept repressed. In any case, you put a television in that diner and you've got a host of anti-soviet soundbites, lies about arms deals, new conservatism, deregulation.... plus you're still on the cusp of mathematical breakthroughs. It's a hot dry Arizona summer. Only a few years ago, a top of the line Tandy 9000 cost roughly $8000 US... lots to play with. Reagan actually told the UN that Star Wars (now MDS for GW) would aid in defending the planet from aliens. Strange times.
 
 
grant
12:42 / 22.06.01
Mmm. And mathematically, birth (in the popular mind, at least) of chaos maths.

How's this: the mathematician was a German brought over in Paperclip as a very young man, worked for the Department of Defense, and then quit during the witch-hunts (crisis involving close friend? a nervous breakdown? or just coincidental?)
Moved to Arizona, opened diner to "find the real world." Is now (in the 1980s) an old man.
Doesn't make enough to retire on, but makes enough to get by.
Occasionally rambles about waves and patterns, mad bastard that he is.

A lot of college kids come through the diner, which is a few miles outside a college town (the Phoenix/Tempe sprawl would work), but they come in waves -- spring break, beginning of summer break, beginning of school year, Christmas break.

It becomes like an exercise in fluid dynamics, analyzing the ebb and flow of young people.

I tried to post this earlier, too, but don't see it up: a mathematician in a diner would give you an excellent excuse to quote that long Godard shot of the coffee cup with the swirling, galactic milk and foam in it. (One or Two Things I Know About Her, I think.)
 
 
Whisky Priestess
14:37 / 22.06.01
Hope nobody minds if I use the nervous conman at a train station idea.
No?
Good. See you at the Oscars.
 
 
Anaconda Jones
19:50 / 22.06.01
quote:Originally posted by Mazarine:
place: An NYC TV studio.
profession: The host of an infomercial show where kitchen appliances and exercise equipment are lauded for an hour at a stretch.
mood: impending hysteria


And the kitchen appliances come to life and wreak their revenge on the host, their creator....
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
21:45 / 23.06.01
Okay. Here we go. A mathematician is working as a waitress in a diner. She believes individuals are manipulated or controlled some of the time by an external force. She is the only person she knows of who can tell the difference between ordinary behaviour and controlled behaviour.

Some people (not including her) seem to be immune. These she finds even more terrifying, for the most part, than ordinary humans.

Questions:

is she right?

why is this happening to her, specifically?

what is the external force, if it exists?

what actions do people under control perform that they would not otherwise?
 
 
Ellis
10:56 / 24.06.01
ooh ohh...

How about...

Computers or people from the future control her and others to do tasks and acts either to change or preserve the time line?

Under this control, people do terrorist type things against governements. When they are not being controlled, most of the people act eccentric.

It is happening to her specifically because she is instrumental is some big terrorist plot.

The people who are immune are those that are mentally ill whose brains don't recieve the brain-waves from the future.
 
 
Tom Coates
12:03 / 24.06.01
1950s / Marcarthyite America - roadside diner - somewhere hot and deserted - like Nevada. Lots of desert - hence much potential for concealed military bases / strange hallucinogenic or mystical trips / being lost and scared / scary-looking hicks [think U-turn/Breakdown/NBK feel]. She was studying some kind of high-level probability (combined with proto-chaos) math but had to return to her family to look after her ailing mother.

Nevada is suspicious of her because she is some kind of intellectual and hence a likely pinko - or is that REALLY the reason they're not keen on her? She gradually starts noticing regular coincidences and repeated behaviour patterns - the same objects turning up in people's houses, repeated bits of conversation as well (things that seem like people are involved in some kind of conspiracy) as well as larger coincidences - people who haven't met each other for years bump into each other in slightly implausible fashions. IS IT A COINCIDENCE OR IS IT CONSPIRACY?

She gradually becomes convinced that people around her aren't always behaving as individual chaotic elements, but according to higher-level collective unconscious processes - but is this the manifestation of some kind of collective hysteria (reds under the beds stuff) or is this emerging collective consciousness something else entirely? She's the only one who notices this stuff because she's a relatively recent arrival. People (including a male mathematician she knew from college) start arriving - apparently by coincidence - they dont share the same characteristics as the locals, but they refuse to acknowledge that anything strange is happening - are they innocents passing through, or involved in whatever is taking place? And what are those strange storms that fire up unexpectedly around Devil's Mesa?

____________________

why is this happening to her, specifically?

Because she's new to the area she is the only person who notices what's going on - whatever the distortion of probability that's going on also CAUSED her to return. The implausible is become commonplace...

is she right?

She's right that something is going on, but it's not what she thinks. She starts off believing it to be some weird government conspiracy, but gradually comes to believe that the world is unravelling - that consistency is collapsing, generating paranoia and confusion.

what is the external force, if it exists?
Some kind of reality virus or cancer - collapsing probability and then proliferating - but is it there for upgrade or corrosion?

what actions do people under control perform that they would not otherwise?

The same meal is served across the small community simultaneously in every home, people react in the same way to similar circumstances, down to the same facial tics and exact intonation of key phrases. The same news story appears in the paper on three subsequent days only written differently. It's happened to three different people in exactly the same way, but she's the only one who notices that.
 
 
ynh
17:47 / 24.06.01
Nickpicking:

The people who she perceives as exhibiting uncontrolled behavior can tell the difference, right?
 
  

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