Imbalance
T V = Tom Verity
Py = Psychiatrist
Numbers are a key for the storyboard
1. T V (V.O): You know that film with Kevin spacey, the one where he’s talking about death and stuff and narrating his past year in the last few seconds of his life. Well if you think about it if all we have to live for in the end is our own life then most people aren’t living for much themselves. We drone on and on about heaven and hell but what if it’s a lie, one big conspiracy to pull the wool over our eyes and to hide the truth, made 3000 years ago by a few men who craved power and control, what if it still is. If you live in hope of something and it turns out to be all a hoax in the end, what do you do then? I hope Kevin spacey was right about the last few seconds thing. Personally I’m looking forward to looking back, all the things Id forgotten and lost … but I’m still afraid of the actual dying bit.
2. Py: (coughs) (acts Bored as if they have been there for a long time)
3. (Few seconds uncomfortable silence) (maybe flash backs)
4. T V: (calmly) I’m not mad
5. Py: (hands in head, annoyed) I never said you were.
6. T V: (laugh) come on. Why would you send me to a shrink unless I had problems? I mean really, am I just a child to you.
7. Py: Sorry bu…
8. T V: (interrupting, like a child) what is insanity?
9. Py: (sighing) we don’t label people like that anymore tom but it is defined in the oxford dictionary as the “the mental malfunction of a human being sufficient to explain their actions and to warrant commitment to a mental health hospital”(said as if he was reciting it maybe reading it)
10. T V: nice but I meant what makes you crazy what actions define you as mentally ill?
11. Py: I don’t have a definitive answer to that question
12. T V: oh come on you must have an idea. You are a psychiatrist. You deal with these people every day and all you can say is I don’t know
13. Py: (said in fragments as if he is making it up on the spot) well I suppose... if I had to say what thing defines people as mentally ill it would be... well... when they stop.. dwelling in the constraints of the average mind and step out of the box into a sea of pure imagination. I suppose a good analogy is that if you gaze into the abyss the abyss gazes into you meaning if you live outside the constraints of the conscious mind then even with all that you could achieve it will be difficult to return.
14. T V: (chuckles) fills me with confidence
15. Py: (quickly as if he has made a breakthrough, excited) so you admit you have a problem
16. T V: (scared, given to much away) I never said that
17. Py: (prying, interested) why do you think you are here?
18. T V: (Flash back of assault) (says as if he was a child hiding something) I don’t know
19. Py:(reading) It says here that ”you assaulted two young boys and beat them violently while screaming “why are you following me, Stop following me”.” why do you think they were following you.
20. T V: (more flashbacks) Because they were, I could hear them whispering.
21. Py: what about?
22. T V: (like a child denying knowledge) I don’t know, it sounded like… white noise or maybe a muffled microphone but it what definitely about me. Nothing else. Me.
23. Py: (trying to convince him) doesn’t it seem strange. Two boys you have never met before, both have no connection to you or anyone you are close to, decide to follow you and whisper behind your back with no motive or reason why they would do this. And despite your claims both the boys and the two witnesses say that they were not antagonizing or giving you any reason to lash out against them.
24. T V:(as if he was revealing a secret) its not just them, there was a man.
25. Py: go on
26. T V:(images over the top of the man being at home in the car and in the street) hes always there.. where-ever I go. At home... In the car.... even when I walk down the street he stalks me... haunts me... makes me scared of.... living my life.
27. Py: can you ever see his face
28. TV: he is always there
29. Py: but you can't see his face
30. T V: have you ever seen that film sunshine by Danny Boyle
31. Py: no,
32. T V:(said as if he is working it through in his head staring at nothing) anyway, in it you never see the bad guys face. He is either cowering in the shadows or his face is distorted by the camera... its like that, I never see his face... but he is always there, in the background, stalking me, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
33. Py: have you ever spoken to him
34. T V: (said in the same way but staring into his eyes) Well no... sort of. He always seems to be shouting something a warning maybe but I can never work it out its as if the sound never reaches me (chuckles) like an echo in the dark
35. Py: And you feel he is real
36. T V: (ignoring what he said, as if he is just piecing it all together) maybe he was trying to warn me, maybe of this. Tell me what was going to happen if I went to the hospital for help
37. Py:(interrupting slightly louder voice, trying to divert the conversation) yeah. I see you came in 2 months ago complaining of violent head aches and mood swings
38. T V: (laughs) you passed it of as “a mild case of depression” which, by the way, the drugs didn’t help. I mean you passed me off as you would a child yapping at your knees. It was disgraceful. You and all you stand for is a scam, a way keeping the normal people separate from, what you seem to think of as ... the diseased. Of making ill people into madmen
39. Py:(pressuring the point) I am sorry if you thought that but I am fundamentally only an analyst. If you feel like you have been condemned by the government that’s fine but that’s not me, I am just here to observe and to offer help if you need it.
40. T V:(realized he has touched a nerve, Py has doubts about his job and his right to condemn people) No your not (smiling). You are here to give the green light on throwing me into a corner and forgetting that I ever existed. To ultimately sign my life away to some idiot in a coat who will pick my brain to pieces while I’m left a hollow shell.
41. Py:(angry but frightened as he feels that part of what T V says is right) Right, I think I've heard enough if you would like to follow Luke here he will escort you to the next office
42. T V:(sarcasticly) so did I pass or fail
43. Py:(doesn’t realize sarcasm) I cannot say at this time but what do you feel is going to happen
44. T V:(final point feels as If this is his big speech) I feel... like it doesn’t matter what I've said, from the moment I walked in here I felt a condemned man, waiting for the moment the man in the white coat stamps me as defective and I'm left alone to rot in a monkeys cage, my only interaction being with the hand that feeds me
45. Py:(being dismissive) alright then bye tom
46. T V (V O): (Walking down the corridor in slow-mo close up in front of his face) I have done wrong things and hurt people. I have torn apart my own family and someone else’s, I have done things of which I am ashamed but I have never felt as alone as I do now. As if I am floating through a sea of faces, of people I have loved, lost and of people I have hurt. I still think that Kevin Spacey was right, but now, as I think about it all I want to do is forget what I’ve done and restart from the beginning.
No comments:
Post a Comment