900 Miles

By James Lockhart Perry

Rachel Blaustein is an attractive but lonely old woman living in a hotel in Geneva, Switzerland. She is estranged from her daughter and an unknown quantity to her grandchildren. She discovers that she is going to die and realizes that she first needs to make peace with her daughter Marnie.

The ensuing reunion is anything but peaceful. Marnie is the mirror image of her mother, with the same blend of passion and cold steel. They hate the loss of each other, but the issues that divide them remain huge. And those issues boil down to what happened to Rachel in the war.

In 1940, Rachel, a Viennese Jew, walked 900 miles with her mother and brother from Bruxelles, Belgium, to Geneva, Switzerland, to escape from the Nazis. Along the way, Rachel stumbled into the Dunkirk evacuation, was lost, imprisoned, and released, shot at by soldiers and fighter pilots, nearly executed as a looter, and almost killed in a truck wreck. And all before her fifteenth birthday.

The deprivations that wore down her mother and brother transformed the girl Rachel into a young woman of astonishing strength -- and hardness. The final betrayal at the Swiss border forever changed her relationship with the brother she once idolized and sent her rocketing inevitably into a thirty-year collision course with her daughter.

Rachel understands that the only way into her daughter's heart lies through the children Jake and Allie. Yet those children, naïve and sheltered though they might be, have as much to teach their mother and grandmother as they have to learn about who they are and where they come from.

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Lockhart Perry
• Release date: Oct 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465711410

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

900 Miles

An Original Screenplay

by

James Lockhart Perry

Copyright 2011 James Lockhart Perry

Smashwords Edition

Licensing

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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.).

FADE IN:

A BLACK SCREEN

The cultured, deliberate, German-accented VOICE-OVER of RACHEL BLAUSTEIN, aged 76.

OLDER RACHEL NARRATION (V.O.)

My name is Rachel Blaustein Henziger. I was born in 1925 in Vienna, Austria. I am recording this at the end of my life in Geneva, Switzerland, in the year 2003.

(beat)

This is the story of three walks I took with my mother Hannah and brother Jakob between 1939 and 1941. I was fourteen years old when we started. Everything is as true as I can remember.

(beat)

This is my story.

Several beats. Just as the audience eases into their seats...

INT. BRUXELLES (1940) - BLAUSTEIN APARTMENT/BEDROOM - NIGHT

A door smashes open. HANNAH BLAUSTEIN’s shoes clatter into the room on a wooden floor.

HANNAH

Wake up! Wake up!

The naked bulb in the ceiling bursts on.

A bare, tiny room with two beds. In the beds JAKOB BLAUSTEIN, 16, and his diminutive sister RACHEL BLAUSTEIN, 14, lie asleep in their clothes.

Hannah, a beautiful, panic-stricken 42, rushes between the beds to rouse her drowsy, irritable Children. Their overcoats hang off her arm.

HANNAH

Children! Wake up!

JAKOB

What is it?

Hannah throws the overcoats onto the beds and shakes Rachel.

RACHEL

Leave me alone!

HANNAH

Come! We go for a walk!

JAKOB

For a walk? What’s the matter with you?

Hannah rushes about the room, gathering their few belongings into a pair of valises.

RACHEL

Leave me alone!

HANNAH

Wake up I say! We go for a nice little walk!

Jakob rouses himself, perplexed.

JAKOB

It’s the middle of the night!

Jakob focuses on his overcoat and fingers the lining. He glances up at his mother, alarmed.

JAKOB

What have you sewn into my coat?

HANNAH

Never mind that! Go to the toilet and dress. We have a long walk ahead of--

RACHEL

But I don’t want to walk!

Jakob rouses himself out of bed, fearful.

JAKOB

Do what she says, Rachel.

RACHEL

No!

Rachel buries her head in her pillow. Hannah rips the blanket off her bed. She shoves Jakob out of the room.

HANNAH

Do what your brother tells you, child! Get dressed! We leave in five minutes!

Hannah follows Jakob out.

EXT. BRUXELLES - STREET

Hannah, Jakob, and Rachel exit from the tenement building into a dark, drizzly, claustrophobic street. Jakob carries the valises. Hannah finishes buttoning Rachel’s coat as they rush off.

RACHEL

Where are we going? My feet hurt!

JAKOB

Be quiet, little nightcrawler. We aren’t even started.

HANNAH

Jakob! Don’t talk to your sister like that. We are going for a walk by the train station.

JAKOB

But it’s back the other way.

RACHEL

I want Papa!

HANNAH

And you shall have him.

JAKOB

We’re going to Marseille? You know we can’t get on the trains.

HANNAH

Stop that! We are Austrians!

JAKOB

Austrian Jews!

RACHEL

Why did we come to Belgium in the first place? Why didn’t we just stay in Austria?

Hannah stops, exasperated.

HANNAH

I promised your father we would go to England when the Germans invaded, and we shall! As soon as he can leave Marseille, he will join us. Understand?

JAKOB

So the French hate us for being Austrians and the Germans hate us for being Jews.

HANNAH

No one hates anyone! We just need to go see Herr Engelmann and pick up our passports. Then we can leave this war behind forever.

They turn a corner and stop, alarmed.

EXT. NEXT STREET

An official German car and a line of covered troop trucks wait on the other side of the street.

In and around the first uncovered truck lounge a trio of OFFICERS and a company of SOLDIERS. They wear the green uniforms of the German occupation Ordnungspolizei. They are staging for a raid.

HANNAH

(sotto voce)

Gotteswillen...

JAKOB

What do we do? They’ve seen us!

HANNAH

Quiet! Remember what I told you.

Hannah swallows hard, takes Rachel’s hand, and starts past the bored, sleepy troops.

The elderly Rachel’s narration:

OLDER RACHEL NARRATION (V.O.)

My mother was famous in our family for what we called her intuitions. Unfortunately, they always seemed to come to her in the middle of the night. Three times she took my brother Jakob and me for a walk. The first time in Vienna we missed the Gestapo by less than fifteen minutes. This second time in Bruxelles she miscalculated. I could have slept the rest of the night and into the next morning.

(chuckles)

But I never held it against her.

EXT. GENEVA (2003) – UPSCALE LAKESIDE HOTEL/VERANDA - DAY

The elderly Rachel sits in a rocking chair with her friend BEATRICE STEIGER, 78, and her grandchildren JAKE HOLLOWAY, 16, and ALLIE HOLLOWAY, 14. The two elderly Women are elegant and European. The grandchildren are casual and American.

BEATRICE

Maybe just a little?

They laugh. The grandchildren stare at them, perplexed.

RACHEL

Maybe a little.

(to the children)

All I wanted to do at your age was sing, dance, and sleep.

BEATRICE

That was all