Script-Doctor Three-Thousand and Two!
This is a comic book script I am working on. It’s not finished…I wrote it on the plane ride out of LA to Beijing, and I was just getting to the good stuff when I just got to sleepy to concentrate.
Not exactly your traditional comic book, but I’ve been reading a good deal of Stephen King lately, so it’s horror that’s in my mind.
Any comments on format or anything at all from anyone more knowledable than me would be great.
INSTRUCTIONS : There are four frames a page, unless specified otherwise. They run in a clockwise fashion, Frame one being the top left frame, Frame Two being top right, Frame Three bottom left, and Frame Four bottom right.
PAGE ONE
FULL PAGE - The office of a young executive. It is reasonably large and well furnished, though not extravagently so. He has not hit the big time quite yet, though he is well on his way. The young executive (Adam Macadre) is standing with his back to the reader. He is of average height, with his blonde hair slicked back. He is hunched over, leaning on his desk. Trying to recover from a stressful, but ultimately, hopefully, good chain of events. A whiskey glass is sitting on the desk near his hand. It has a clear liquor in it, along with two cubes of ice. It is less than half full.
On the floor, behind Adam Macadre and between the reader and his back, filling half the frame, is body of a aging young woman in her late twenties. She is pregnant, and does not look the part of the “executive spouse”. Her hair is longish and straight, brunette with a touch of punk red highlights. She is Adam Macadre’s wife, Celeste. There is wire around her neck, and around that is a very small pool of dark blood.
Without a conversation or thought bubble, “She can’t hold me back…” (keep the quotes)
Subtitle box at the bottom of the page: “Adam and Celeste Macadre were such a happy couple, a promising young businessman and a freethinking pretty girl. But any man with two loves in his life has to choose one…”
PAGE TWO
FRAME ONE - Celeste is alive and about ten years younger. She is in a bar, making eyes at a younger Adam Macadre (out of frame), now a business student at UTA’s college for business.
FRAME TWO (divided in half by a vertical line) - First half, Adam’s face(profile, unaware of Celeste). Second half, notices her (three quarters front, notices Celeste looking at him…happy nervous look…Macadre has not had luck with women in the past).
FRAME THREE - From the back, Adam and Celeste both in view, sitting at opposite sides of the bar., Adam is dressed far more casually in this frame than on page one, but is still over dressed for the type of bar he is in. His hair is not slicked back yet. Over all, he has a less conservative, less corporate look. Celeste is dressed in a raverish attire. Have fun with it, but don’t go wild. She has the punk red streaks in her hair.
FRAME FOUR - (divided in half by a horizontal line) TOP : Adam moving closer. BOTTOM: Adam sitting down next to Celeste.
PAGE THREE
FRAME ONE AND THREE- (these are joined as one frame) a low birds eye view…think of a 3/4th angle in the vertical direction, Adam as the young executive is looking back on his dead wife, who should be at the bottom on the frame lying on the floor motionless.
FRAME TWO - Adam in a tuxedo. Celeste in her wedding dress. They both look happy, Celeste more so than Adam. Celeste still has the bright red hair, freshly dyed for the occasion.
FRAME FOUR - Close up on old Adams face, he is sipping the drink. His nerves are steady now. Subtitle Box hanging somewhere in the frame, or at the bottom: “No offense, but she looks like a…”
PAGE FOUR
FRAME ONE - Adam, as a young man once again. He is starting to take that more conservative appearance. That slicked back look is starting to appear in his hair. He looks dumbfounded at what has been said….in the state of disbelief that precedes insult - “I’m sorry?”
FRAME TWO - Side view. An older man, well dressed, is leaning over Adams desk. Adam listens in disbelief, but respect. The older man holds alot of rank, and pulls alot of strings. This is the man that decides who makes it. He decides who gets the corner office, and who spends his life in a cubible. “She looks like a whore.” New conversation bubble, “Listen, I don’t mean offense. But Trimble Corp. is a family company. We pride ourselves on that. And, when we hire our executives, we hire the whole family.”
FRAME THREE - Close up, old man. “Your potential at Trimble Corp is great, as is your responsibility to the Trimble Corporation…to the family. And the family can’t have women ‘like that’ coming to the annual picnic.” New bubble, “Don’t be offended. Put some thought into it. Talk to your wife. See if we can’t make you, and her, a valuable, and valued, part of the family. You’ll make the right choice.”
FRAME FOUR - bubble from out of frame - “Do you understand what I’m saying?” Adam looks like a deer in the headlights.
PAGE FIVE
FULL PAGE - Adam is looking at his desk. He is angry, offended, and conflicted. Success is important. So is his wife and his pride. He answers : “Yes sir.” The old man is already walking away, through the busy office cubicles of the old, who failed to get ahead, and the young, like him, who would slit throats for a chance to be spared the same fate. The old man - “Good call.”
PAGE SIX
FRAME ONE - Adam is standing in the door way, leaning against the frame, in the BG. His tie has been loosened, there is the slightest hint of stubble on his chin. The whiskey glass is in his hand…two ice cubes. It is almost empty. In the foreground is his wife, Celeste, who still has the punk red streaks in her hair. She is wearing only a towel, and is typing away on the computer. The office around her is messy. There are manuscripts on every surface, alot of it crumbled up, and artwork, unfinished, hanging everywhere. She speaks to him without even looking at him - “Welcome home, love. It’s a little late.” It’s not a berating or nagging question, just geniune curiousity.
FRAME TWO - Just Adam. “Yeah.” new bubble…a pause while he builds up the courage (something the alcohol was supposed to help with) “How long are you going to keep your hair like that?”
FRAME THREE - Same angle as frame one, except she is smiling, “I thought you liked my hair this way. It’s been like this for ages. Since I was fifteen, I think.” new bubble “Maybe I should do it blue. What do you think?” Adam, who is practically shaking in his boots, with enough sense to know that what he is about to say is really stupid, but too drunk to stop himself, “I think…I think it makes you look like a whore.”
FRAME FOUR - Close up, Celeste’s fingers. They have abruptly stopped typing. “WHAT?”
PAGE SEVEN
FRAME ONE - Adam’s alcohol is really sinking in, “Yeah. I mean, Old Man Wallace was talking, and maybe he’s right! Trimble is a family company, and it hurts my chances of making it up the ladder if everytime I go to a company dinner with my wife, it looks like I hired a cheap escort.”
FRAME TWO - Celeste cloes up, doesn’t say anything, just a stunned look.
FRAME THREE - Celeste close up, bitter expression.
FRAME FOUR - Celeste walking past Adam, out the door of her office. The viewer is inside the office, watching her back as she leaves. Adam watches her with a drunken, indignent expression. Celeste: “You can go sleep with Old Man Wallace tonight, if that’s how it is.”
PAGE EIGHT
FRAME ONE - Older Adam, carrying to large duffle bags down a city street late in the evening.
FRAME TWO - Older Adam, stops by a dumpster, looking around.
FRAME THREE - Up they go, into the dumpster.
FRAME FOUR - A smirk.
PAGE NINE
FRAME ONE - Older Adam is smoking a cigarette. There is a police man’s face in profile off the side of the frame. Adam : “I don’t know where she’s gone. She didn’t tell me anything…We had something of an argument not to long ago. I hope she just got upset and took off for awhile.”
FRAME TWO - Policeman’s face in close up, quirked eyebrow. He’s suspicious.
FRAME THREE -
( PAGES 7 - 24 : The argument with Celeste, her murder, Adam begins moving up the corporate ladder, until he hires his new secretary…April….with that distant, cold look, those knowing eyes, and her pet rats with a taste for a certain zesty young exec…)
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