The Slots

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Electricity

I wriggled a bit.  Threw my head back and grimaced so they could see the shock in my face.  Then I flung myself onto the ground and lay under the tower.   

They started calling my name.  Sean!  Sean!

Stupid bastards.  I’m sure they believed I’d been electrocuted.  That was the whole point of coming to the power station and daring to climb the tower.  I wanted to fake my own death.  Scare the shite out of them. 

I started to shake a little on the ground because I saw that once in a film just before someone was about to croak. 

I suddenly knew a great stinging feeling in my face. I’d landed in a big bunch of evil green nettles.  Fuck that. The grimace got real. 

I ceased writhing around and just lay there looking up at the sky and contemplating my senseless targets in life and complete lack of rational judgment on all manner of things.

After a wee while, I heard Mick shout, Go get someone! and I feared then my mam and dad might be called, so I got up, brushed off the nettles, and confidently declared 'I'M ALIVE!'

The Assassin of Optics Valley

Shopping Centres.  They present a challenge. The escalators stretch two storeys high, spitting out stair by stair the motorised design of my pursuit.  They are grim, grid-like stairs with a look of lassitude about them, fatigued by the relentless reel of station.  I flick my exhausted cigarette onto the stair before me.  It joins the hundreds of other butts this escalator will swallow today.  To my left, listless consumers float downwards away from my target.  What goes up, must come down, as has been said.  I will be going down soon too.  After.

There is one other climber of these escalators apart from me.  A girl.  Young, maybe in her early twenties.  But I can't tell for sure.  She stands about eight stairs in front.  We slowly move upwards together at the standard mechanical pace.  She is carrying a long umbrella and wears a bag on her back shaped like the shell of a turtle.   Her image sends a picture of past business to my brain.  Shadows of what went before.  Thought-forgotten figures and forms half-turning, half-seeing, and eventually falling.

And then the girl falls. I don't see it happen.  My eyes have turned away briefly and in that moment she seems to have slipped on the stairs.  All I see is her body flat down, her turtle shell to the air, as the stairs continue to ascend slowly.   It looks like a bad fall.  I experience a sudden reaction of concern.  She struggles messily to regain her post.  As she is doing so, she notices me on the stairs behind.  Her eyes convey the shame of a century.  The umbrella is so long that it gets wedged between the sides of the escalator aisle as she clambers shaking to her feet.  She unwedges it aggressively.

The girl reaches the next floor in an agitated manner.  She stops for a moment and rubs her right leg having obviously injured herself.  I watch as she fumbles around trying to adjust the turtle shell bag on her back and then as she hobbles away uneasily, first one way, then another, then the other way again.

When I reach the level of my target, I begin to ponder the poor girl's embarrassment.  I feel regret that I let her catch my eyes following the incident.  I should have looked away, feigned  an unawareness of her mishap.  That would have made her feel better.  Knowing that I hadn't seen.  That her uncomfortable accident had occurred without witness.  Even with my own impassive constitution, a scene such as that, if it had happened to me and was witnessed by another, would have pained and scarred me.  Public embarrassment is a dreadful thing, no matter who you are.  And in the age of mass media's love affair with the fleeting sneer, the deliberate decline of empathy within societies dampens my spirit.   After putting two bullets in my target's brain, I once more take to the escalators, this time going down, and still thinking about the scene with the girl.  I wish I hadn't witnessed the whole thing.  We are all one and the other in this shopping centre, passing hopefully unnoticed by pity, scorn, mockery, derision,  judgement.   A slight misstep may not draw too much attention, might forgive us shortly afterwards and return us to comfort, but a chaotic display of human shortcoming such as what happened to that poor girl always has an audience.  A willing wanting unshaken audience.  It makes me sad for this world.

Chinese Psycho Lady 3-D

This is the pitch I recently made for my forthcoming film Chinese Psycho Lady 3D. This is the typescript of the original presentation so it includes all comments and questions that were posed during the session and the responses that followed.

Chinese Psycho Lady 3D is both an unforgiving satire of modern dystopia and slasher pic with sex. Although China will form the background of much of the film, there will be no commentary on the modern Chinese situation, on governmental policies, or contemporary social issues. China will simply act as the springboard for a general comment on urban dissatisfaction. Being set in China, of course, specific Chinese elements may colour the scenes in certain ways, but I'm not out to ruffle any feathers with this one.

Good idea. We're up to our asses in edits and re-shoots these days. Continue.

So here it is. We start in Shanghai. We're in an enormous shopping complex. We see a few major international brand names dancing with numerous bright and artful Chinese characters in a dizzying zigzag of shopfronts and shopping bags. It's all hustle and bustle. No music on the soundtrack at this point. In fact, we just jump right into this hectic scene of consumerism. Emerging quietly from the crowd is our Psycho Lady. We know this from looking at her. I want to make no bones about it. She will look like a psycho. About 40. Eyeballs trying to escape her head. I can really see Lili Taylor filling the role well. I've seen her playing psychos before, and she's good at it.

But didn't you say she was a Chinese Psycho Lady? Wait, is Lili Taylor Chinese?

No. But this is what I think. It's been a while since we've had a Caucasian in the role of a Chinese in the movies. You know, political correctness pretty much put a lot of actors who could play Chinese out of business. But I'm not going for any racial stereotyping here. I want to turn political correctness on its head in a way. It'll be postmodern. Skewed and distorted. Just like the character actually. I want this psycho to seem almost unreal within an all too real reality for us all. A kind of ureal real in a really realistic unreality, you know what I mean? She's a psycho. And ,like I said, Lili does psycho well.

Interesting. Continue.

So she'll have this kind of Fu Manchu-as-an-unmarried-Shanghai-pariah look about her. Lili. She has white hair and is constantly decked out in all-white clothing. Kind of like she just broke out of an asylum. I want people to think that. We see her doing some normal things like standing in line at food stalls and at supermarket checkouts, but we never see her buy anything. Just standing in line as life goes on around her. Eventually we move outside and she's getting a taxi. The taxi driver says a few things, but she doesn't say anything for the whole trip. And then after a while, with a classic modern day pop hit playing on the car radio, we stop.

Could you get to the action? You paid for a 6 minute pitch, if I'm correct, not a goddamn garden party.

Okay. so the taxi driver stops, and suddenly the doors fly open and Lili is dragged out of the car by two men. The taxi driver has led her into a rape-trap. They drag her out, but she doesn't react in any way. Stone-cold expression in a flash close-up of her face. We see the taxi driver rubbing his hands together and laughing. The three men pull her into a kind of off-road ditch. We don't know what they will do to her. They could sell her body parts for a shared ipad for all we know.

Can you get Apple to agree to that product placement?

Sorry?

I'm saying Can-we- get-Apple-on-board-this-project?

eh, maybe. Anyway, there's a build-up of tension and we think we're about to have a horrific rape moment like in that French film. You know, the one with the garden gnomes. But then suddenly WHAM! Lili draws her sword from her underwear. WHAM! Arms off! WHAM! Dicks off! WHAM! Heads off! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! Thank you, ma'am! It's the bride with white hair and she's unhappy about her unmarried status. She's suddenly unbridled. That's where it kicks off. The killing spree. She'll kill anyone after that. Pharmacists, traffic wardens, beggars, choosers, botanists, anyone carrying an umbrella. The remainder of the film will be blood and guts and sex. Lots of tits, of course. And we could even have a song at the end. I've written one called 'Sing and Dance, Sociopath'.

I'm with you on the arms and heads coming off. But the dicks? Could be a problem.

I understand, but think of it this way. 3-D.

Hmm, yeah, 3-D.

3-D, man.

Hmm.

3-motherfucking-D.

Okay, yeah, 3-D.

3 flying dicks in 3 flying fucking dimensions.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

3-D.

Goddamnit, you got your 100 mil. Now get the fuck out of here.

Cheers, Steven.

And that was how I did it. That was how I got to make Chinese Psycho Lady 3-D. Watch the skies, my lovelies...

Many thanks to Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, George Orwell, George Michael, Deng Xiaoping