Painted Waters: an Original Screenplay

By Jon Foyt

In the year 2084, Native American artist Joseph Rhodes portrays a man with vision, drive and humility. Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Reilly likes what she sees. Cyberspace evangelist Reverend Reginald Reichard offers an unsettling apparition. Bring on the popcorn!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jon Foyt
• Release date: Aug 9, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452322339

Jon Foyt

Striving for new heights on the literary landscape, along with his late wife Lois, Jon Foyt began writing novels 20 years ago, following careers in radio, commercial banking, and real estate. He holds a degree in journalism and an MBA from Stanford and a second masters degree in historic preservation from the University of Georgia. An octogenarian prostate cancer survivor, Jon is a runner, hiker and political columnist in a large active adult retirement community near San Francisco.

Book preview

Painted Waters – an Original Screenplay

by

Lois Foyt and Jon Foyt

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2010 with Writers Guild of America, West Registration # 759433, by Lois Foyt and Jon Foyt

All characters in this original Screenplay are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons living or dead is coincidental.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This original Screenplay is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This original Screenplay may not be re-sold or given away to other people. Movie Producers who wish to obtain Production Rights to this Screenplay may contact the authors.

At Smashwords.com you can discover other works co-written by these authors.

PAINTED WATERS

FADE IN:

EXT. MANHATTAN – CENTRAL PARK – EARLY MORNING (2084)

MURAL

Painted on the side of a building in the Children’s Zoo is a mural, which shows a muscular Indian brave in loincloth running with his son along the banks of an American Southwest river. In the background is an ancient New Mexico multi-storied Anasazi Pueblo.

BUFFALO PEN

Adjacent to the building with the mural, in an outdoor pen, one male buffalo stands apart from five other buffalo and paws the ground.

LAGOON

At this water feature in the Park, weeping willows along the shore move gently in the breeze.

STONE BRIDGE

In the narrows of the lagoon, a white swan swims near the arch of a stone bridge.

WIDER VIEW

Takes in the tops of Central Park trees as the rising sun strikes the skyscrapers of the Manhattan skyline.

CUT TO:

STREET SCENE – GREENWICH VILLAGE

SFX – NOISY traffic passes in the street and pedestrians rush along the sidewalk in front of an old brick warehouse building converted to apartments.

CUT TO:

INT. KATHERINE REILLY’S LOFT APARTMENT

A large, pleasant, well-lit room is decorated in soft feminine colors. A Victorian fainting couch is on a raised platform. Sections of The Sunday New York Times litter the floor. A small bronze sculpture of a swan sits on a desk next to a computer.

JOSEPH RHODES

JOSEPH RHODES, a handsome fifty-year-old Native American male, in bluejeans and a turquoise fringed shirt, a rabbit-bone necklace, long black hair tied into a ponytail, stands before an easel with pallet and paintbrush in hand.

INDIAN POT

A small decorated Zuni Pueblo Indian pot holds brushes and sits among paint tubes and spotted rags on a paint-splattered folding tray table by Joseph’s side.

KATHERINE REILLY

KATHERINE REILLY, a woman in her thirties, lounges on the fainting couch. A red silk robe is draped across her nude body. She wears a ruby necklace. Her lustrous red hair catches the sun’s rays coming through a skylight.

JOSEPH

Joseph dabs his brush into one color and then another, creating a mixture on the pallet.

JOSEPH’S POV – KATHERINE

He studies Katherine, who blows a coquettish kiss to him.

JOSEPH

He smiles affectionately, lifts his brush, and then applies paint to the canvas.

JOSEPH

Have I thanked you for inviting me to come to you?

KATHERINE

She pivots, draws her knees up, covers them with her silk robe, and rests her chin.

KATHERINE

A thousand times. Now I want to hear again your mother’s story of the Maiden of the Yellow Rocks.

JOSEPH

Joseph paints as he tells his mother’s story.

JOSEPH

In the days of the ancients, there lived a beautiful young woman who possessed knowledge of all the animals – the bison, the deer, the rabbits.

KATHERINE

Listens intently.

JOSEPH (O.S.)

She charmed these creatures into following her to a high sacred place to spare them from hunters.

JOSEPH

Continues to paint.

JOSEPH

The animals honored her because she told them wonderful stories about her people’s past, their present, and foretold of their future. One day a petroglyphist, looking for sacred rocks to peck his images on, discovered the maiden’s animal haven.

PAINTING

Shows Joseph’s brush drawing Katherine’s eyes.

JOSEPH (O.S.)

Leading up to her corral, she had placed an aspen-pole ladder and tied to its rungs strings of hollow stalactites from a sacred cave, which sounded, when the wind blew, like little bells.

JOSEPH

With his brush, he dabs into the paint mixture on his pallet.

JOSEPH (CONT’D)

As the traveler placed his foot on the lowermost rung of the ladder, chi-la-li sang the bells.

KATHERINE

Katherine smiles like an impatient little girl wanting to tell the story, too.

JOSEPH (O.S.)

From the top, the maiden looked down and called out, Thou comest?

JOSEPH

Joseph smiles micheveously.

JOSEPH

And he replied, I come. Draw me in; by which expression he meant he had come to immortalize her.

KATHERINE (O.S.)

Thou hast come?

JOSEPH

Yes.

KATHERINE

Playfully she recites.

KATHERINE

Is it not customary for a visitor to say what is in his thoughts?

JOSEPH

He pretends to be serious.

JOSEPH

It is quite true. I come thinking of you. It has occurred to me that I might happily and without fear rest my thoughts and hopes on you; therefore I come.

KATHERINE

Holds up her hand.

KATHERINE

Stop Joseph! Don’t tell me the story’s ending.

DESK SFX

Telephone on desk RINGS.

KATHERINE

She jumps up, wraps herself in her silk robe, goes to her desk and picks up her telephone. Without saying a word, she listens. Her face lights up.

She looks at Joseph and her mouth opens in a silent scream of joy. Her eyes beg him to share the moment.

KATHERINE

I’ve won! I’ve won the Pulitzer Prize.

Katherine skips over to Joseph.

KATHERINE (CONT’D)

You knew I would, didn’t you?

JOSEPH AND KATHERINE

Joseph guards his emotions as he embraces her.

JOSEPH

Your investigative articles about our Zuni gambling casino - its beginnings, its operation today, and its prospects for the future - were beautifully written.

Turning pensive, Joseph looks at his paintbrush, which has many layers of old, dried paint.

KATHERINE

I’m sorry I had to cite your father’s horrific death in what everyone calls the Indian Casino Massacre of 2048. How tragic for your people to lose such a great leader.

Joseph is morose.

JOSEPH

Popé had only begun the Native American Renaissance.

KATHERINE

I think a small boy postponed his grief because others wanted a martyr.

JOSEPH’S POV – INDIAN POT

Joseph stares at his brush-holding Indian pot, which depicts a lightning and rain design.

CUT