The Perfect Moment

By James Lockhart Perry

Alex is a writer whose mind see-saws through multiple levels of reality. When we first meet him, he is a grungy postal worker living in a ratty apartment and sending his literary characters out into an unforgiving world.

Alex loves his characters, but unfortunately, power corrupts, and Alex’s power over his creations corrupts absolutely. He forces them into clichés no self-respecting imaginary character would tolerate. But when they argue with him, they quickly find themselves choking on a chicken bone or the wrong end of his literary forty-five.

Alex has a sweet, tolerant girlfriend Sally who works with him at the post office and wants him to move in. But a Marlene Dietrich look-alike upsets everything by hiring him to find her husband’s murderer. Dietrich’s true goal is to seduce Alex. When he rebuffs her, she frames him for another murder and talks the police into shooting him full of holes.

Except that the next morning, Alex wakes up in a lunatic asylum.

Dietrich, as it happens, is Alex’s electroshock-happy psychiatrist. Her mission in life is to shock all this writer nonsense (and all of his characters) out of his head. Alex’s characters are mirrors of his fellow patients (read victims) in Dietrich’s hospital. Sally is the head nurse and yes, she has a thing for Alex, although he might have embellished it a bit.

As Dietrich shocks Alex’s characters one by one into oblivion, Alex begins to fight back. He realizes that his failure as an artist is responsible for his incarceration. That failure can only be redeemed by writing real people instead of the clichés of his past. But no sooner does Alex free his characters, than they start to behave unpredictably, negotiating their roles and bombarding him with unwelcome opinions.

Alex desperately needs their help, but has no idea how to soften his control-freak instincts with the insanity of real people. He flees to the only place where controlled insanity is a way of life, Hollywood. There, the Great Sayonara inspires him to once and for all let his characters go.

But Alex wakes up the next morning back in his cell, of course. And Dietrich, sensing that his creations are about to blossom, ups the ante to a full frontal lobotomy. Can Alex and his characters put together the perfect literary moment before Dietrich finishes sharpening her knife?

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Lockhart Perry
• Release date: Oct 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466093324

James Lockhart Perry

A note on the screenplays: Everything I ever learned about the craft came from reading screenplays generously uploaded to the internet by far more talented writers than me. So I am returning the favor here. But free of charge does not mean free. Please respect the licensing requirements. James Lockhart Perry was a Texan born on Valentine's Day in 1892 into the wilds and woolies of East Texas, yet he never worked the oilfields that erupted all around and became so potent a symbol of the brash, lawless state the rest of us recognize. Daddy Jim, as he came to be known, patiently farmed the rice fields, married the fine-looking Missouri-bred schoolteacher Dora Mae, and built a beautiful yellow house in the tiny hamlet of Markham for his three lovely daughters Adrienne Lavonne, Audrey Louvelle, and Anita Lorraine. He also built a legend in his lifetime for tireless inner strength and placid outer humility. So the author's use of Daddy Jim's name for a pseudonym serves as homage as much as anything to the towering gentle spirit of that pioneer and his brave people. The only historical connection Daddy Jim and the author share is that Daddy Jim died on the author's twelfth birthday, thirty-three days before John Fitzgerald Kennedy set off with Jackie of the pink pillbox hat for Dallas. And the fact that both author and rice farmer have loved Daddy Jim's granddaughter to distraction. The smartest thing the author ever did, apart from quite literally forcing the granddaughter to marry him, was to buy her a camera. Since then the couple has stretched the meandering, shutterbugging progression of their lives around the globe, until twenty years ago when they finally settled down on the beach south of Los Angeles, California. Where the surf rolls in with the same steady, timeless rhythm of the rice waving in the breeze of Daddy Jim's long vanished fields.

Book preview

The Perfect Moment

An Intermittent Comedy

An Original Screenplay

by

James Lockhart Perry

Copyright 2011 James Lockhart Perry

Smashwords Edition

Licensing

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

Author's Note

For the uninitiated, V.O. signifies Voice-Over, and O.S. signifies Off-Screen. The O.S. speaker is in the scene, just not visible on the screen. Who knows where the V.O. speaker is -- in your imagination? All scenes take place either inside (INT.) or outside (EXT.).

TITLE OVER A BLACK SCREEN:

psy·cho·sis (s -k s s)

Noun: A severe mental disorder, with or without organic damage, characterized by derangement of personality and loss of contact with reality and causing deterioration of normal social functioning.

FADE IN:

INT. WRITER’S APARTMENT - DAY

A ratty studio apartment with a bed in a corner. Books, laundry, coffee cups, ash trays strewn about. A crooked Che Guevara poster on one wall, a hole punched through another.

ALEX sits at the typewriter on the bare table in the center of the room, pummeling away at the keys. A satchel lies on the floor next to him.

Alex is an intense two-finger typist. He would catch your eye in a crowd, but he’d first need to take a shower. As he types, he speaks the words bitterly and to no one in particular.

(NOTE: Alex’s narration is NOT a voice-over, except where specifically indicated.)

ALEX

Writers can be mean, dangerous animals. Dangerous to themselves, dangerous to their loved ones, lethal to the innocent strangers who collide with their mean little worlds.

Alex slings the carriage return.

ALEX

(continued)

Writing itself sucks the creative juices out of you drop by drop and plasters them across an empty white sheet of paper. And why?

Alex ponders, then continues with a vengeance.

ALEX

(continued)

So when some talkative stranger slides into your cab, you can impress the shit out of him with the novel he would have read, if he wasn’t so busy being a hell of a lot richer than you.

Alex takes a break to light a cigarette. He turns and gazes at the corner of the room behind him.

In the corner cowers a bizarre collection of Characters -- a sleek MISTER UNIVERSE in a tuxedo, a half-naked blond BOMBSHELL, a GYPSY fortune teller, a JUNKIE SAX Player, a PRIVATE DICK, a BASKETBALL Player, a PRIM NURSE in hospital blues, a GEEK with a laptop, a MOBSTER HOODLUM, a LITTLE RED Riding Hood.

Universe gazes coolly back at Alex. The others share a cheesy, ass-kissing grin and a sheen of apprehension on their brows.

ALEX

The characters, now that’s another matter. They’re the only friends you’ve got. And no wonder they love you, since you can nail them anytime you feel like it, and there isn’t a damn thing they can do about it.

Bombshell and Private Dick both pitch Alex a private wink. He scowls and turns back to his typewriter.

INT. BROTHEL – NIGHT

The lobby of a rich, luxurious brothel. Sleek Alex sits in a tuxedo, a hand on Bombshell’s arm. She is decked out in condescending hooker heavenly and pulling away from him.

ALEX (V.O.)

Take the blonde, for instance. She cops an attitude, no problem -- bring on the old chicken bone.

Bombshell falls to the floor, choking. Sleek Alex laconically offers her a handkerchief.

ALEX (V.O.)

(continued)

She really gets out of line, add a couple of years.

Before our very eyes, Bombshell morphs into an apoplectic 70-year-old Madam.

EXT. NEW YORK STREET – 1930S - NIGHT

Junkie Sax sits on the steps of a tenement, screeching into his instrument. Basketball and Private Dick doze on their feet nearby.

Gypsy exits from the apartment, tossing her crystal ball into the air. Basketball turns suddenly and startles her. She slips up, the ball falls and shatters on the steps.

ALEX (V.O.)

A character really pisses you off, you do what you gotta do.

A saloon car careens along the street, Mobster Hoodlum at the wheel. Mobster Alex leans out the back window and lets loose with a tommy gun. The Characters shake and rattle theatrically with the bloodless fusillade of bullets.

ALEX (V.O.)

Sometimes, they don’t even have to piss you off.

Miraculously, Private Dick still has a few heartbeats left.

Mobster Alex approaches, sneer on face. He takes out a forty-five, savors the moment, and BANG! BANG! BANG!

INT. WRITER’S APARTMENT – DAY

Alex punches out the words, the cigarette hanging out of his mouth. His resuscitated Characters huddle in the corner.

ALEX

Now, screenwriting... Don’t get me started on screenwriting.

Alex stops, crushes the cigarette in the overflowing ash tray, and without turning points over his head to the apartment door.

Little Red detaches herself from the group and exits fearfully on tiptoe.

EXT. MOVIE STUDIO - CORRIDOR - DAY

Two doors marked Studio A