"Park City Slickers"
The Film Scouts Interactive Screenplay III

SCENE ONE:

As their 1978 maroon Cutlass chugs along the Ventura Freeway, Arturo and Seamus are mired in an intense discussion.

"York!" Arturo exclaims in between bites of his greasy fast-food tamale.

Seamus shoots back. "Don't give me that Dick York crap. I'm telling you, Dick Sargent was the superior Darren Stephens, no two ways about it!"

"Just drive the car, will you?" an irritated Arturo retorts as he loads the ammunition into his .57 magnum, preparing for the duo's next assignment. "You can't deny that Dick York had a much better rapport with Mrs. Kravitz."

Meanwhile, inside a Winnebago in Bakersfield, Claudette downs the last drops of a malt liquor 40-ouncer. She is pacing back and forth, recounting the dizzying recent events in her head. Wanted by the police as a material witness to murder and fearing for her life, she had abandoned a promising modeling career, run out on her drug-dealing artist boyfriend, and fallen in love with an older man she met in a roadside Denny's - who turned out to be her long-lost stepfather. Now she is living a secluded life on the lam with "dad", but she fears someone is going to find her.

She hears her ceramic teddy-bear wind chimes jingling outside. There is a knock at the door.

--R. S., Chicago, IL

SCENE TWO:

Screenplay Continued: She opens the door and there is no one there. She then slams the door shut with a loud thud and locks it. Why can't anything be right except love these days, she mutters under her breath while brushing her blonde hair to the side.

Again a knock at the door and the wind chimes now have stopped and a dreary silence invades the room. The knock persists and she stands up again from her broken chair with her right hand shaking. And again there is a knock at the door.

--M. L., New York City

SCENE THREE: EXTERIOR, BAKERSFIELD CITY DUMP, DAY

Ex-pro football player turned hired killer Cleavon 'Meat-Cleaver' Chaykovski sits on a small mound of garbage, flicking letters one-by-one from a meaty hand. Birds swirl around the mountains of garbage around him. Dressed in the blue uniform of the dead mail-carrier sticking out of a rusted trashed freezer nearby, he squints through his mirror-glazed sunglasses at the letters. He suddenly stops, grunts, holds a letter up... CLAUDETTE JONES, SUNNY PALMS TRAILER PARK, BAKERSFIELD, CA.... Meat-Cleaver stands, grins, revealing a ruined, once-perfect smile - his four front teeth, two uppers, two lowers, are missing, lost long ago in the tundra of a Chicago football field.

--M. K. S., Texas

SCENE FOUR: SALT AND POTATOES

Claudette scratched her head feverishly as dandruff collected between bits of false fingernails painted red, flaking over a ruffled nightgown until finally resting atop her false smile reflecting off the coffee table mirror.

"It's like sprinkled salt over mashed potatoes." She squeezed her teeth together, she stabbed at her sloppy smile. Time played around her emptiness and meant nothing. She would stay there staring at her reflection for hours, pulling at her hair, pulling at the clear ugliness of her face, under the cover of talk shows between sips of beer, and if there was to be no beer she could simply pour herself into a glass and swallow complete, over and over again. But that dog needs to go out, and... her thoughts were lost to the sound of the doorbell.

--M.A., Los Angeles, CA

SCENE FIVE: TRANCE

Those sounds putting her into a trance, she falls asleep. Having not a care in the world, she lies there as though she were dead. Sunk into a relaxed state of mind, she's too relaxed to stop her soul from jumping out of her. As it floats there it views its cold dead body trying to be revived by the dog.

--K.D., Centrereach, NY