’Ventriloquists’

An Original Short Script

FAM4040F

June 2017

INT. TOUR BUS – EARLY MORNING

The violent, misty green of the Colombian jungle blurs by

JOSIE’s window as the bus navigates a dirt road pass.

Her head is leant against the glass, her doleful eyes are

only half open. Her jet-black hair droops on her damp

shoulders.

She breathes deeply, then resumes a conversation with her

seat-mate.

                    JOSIE

          But he’s okay though. If I’m okay,

          he’s definitely okay. And I’m sure

          I’m okay, so it’s all alright, you

          know?

                    LUISA (O.S.)

          And where is he now, actually?

                    JOSIE

          Burgundy, I think. Or somewhere

          there. On a wine farm, picking and

          stomping the grapes. He says the

          fun of the stomping makes up for

          the exhaustion of the picking, so

          it’s not bad and it is a

          distraction. Just like this is my

          distraction.

                    LUISA (O.S.)

          Am I distracting you from your

          distraction?

                    JOSIE

          No, Luisa, not at all. I find if I

          don’t talk about Dev to someone for

          a while he starts to feel unreal

          and then I get into a panic because

          my boyfriend isn’t real anymore and

          we only just started everything,

          and then it just spirals down from

          there… Aghhh.

Josie’s head makes a little nervous shake.

Luisa offers her a sip from her water bottle, which she

gratefully takes.

Luisa is in her mid-twenties, Peruvian, with cropped brown

hair and a resting smile.

(CONTINUED) 

CONTINUED: 

2. 

                    JOSIE (CONT’D)

          But he’s such a dreamboat though.

          He is just a boat full of dreams,

          and he is a dream himself. He wants

          to make movies and he’s continually

          just inspired. He could make a

          scene out of our conversation

          without thinking about it.

                    LUISA

          And when will you see each other

          again? 

                    JOSIE

          Well I get back to Cape Town on

          October 10th, which is about a

          hundred days away, isn’t it? A

          hundred days.

                    LUISA

          My father told me not to worry

          about long waiting. He said since

          you get older the longer you wait,

          and the older you get the faster

          time passes, then eventually time

          will accelerate so the wait feels

          like nothing at all. I told him

          that wasn’t very reassuring though.

Josie laughs sincerely, but a couple of small tears can just

be seen tracing her eyes’ edges.

                    JOSIE

          That is so depressing, but helpful

          now too actually.

As Luisa reaches down to replace her water, Josie notices

the books stuffed in the side of her vast backpack.

                    JOSIE (CONT’D)

          Hey, whatchu reading?

                    LUISA 

          Um…

Luisa pulls out three of the books and passes them to her.

Josie looks them over tenderly. They’re small Spanish

pocketbook editions of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s ’One Hundred

Years of Solitude;, ’Love in the Time of Cholera’ and

’Living to Tell the Tale’.

(CONTINUED) 

CONTINUED: 

3. 

                    LUISA

          A little cliche but when in

          Colombia…

Josie smiles.

Then she digs in her own bag and pulls out her English

editions of the first two books and displays them proudly

with playful irony.

                    JOSIE

          It’s not too cliche not to need to

          take the opportunity, I guess.

She hands them over in turn, and they both study each

others’ editions for a time.

EXT. VINEYARD – AFTERNOON

DEVON and EMILE are vigorously stomping around in a vat of

deep purple grapes.

The dying sun spreads the pink hue of the French sky into

everything within sight.

                    DEVON

          So she left on the Saturday and

          she’s on that side of yonder…

He points at the sunset, one eye closed, his black curls

hanging lightly on his forehead. He still looks a little too

skinny to be a farm labourer but he’s clearly working on it.

                    DEVON (CONT’D)

          And Neil departed on the Sunday,

          and he’s now exactly opposite to

          her, teaching kids in South Korea.

He duly points towards the East.

                    DEVON (CONT’D)

          And here I am, Emile, slap-bang in

          the middle. We South Africans are

          franchising. Like a virus.

                    EMILE

          And, Neil, he also wants to be in

          Cinema? 

Emile is in his early thirties, sun-dried and rough-hewn,

wearing small earrings.

(CONTINUED) 

CONTINUED: 

4. 

                    DEVON

          He does, but he wants to be in the

          world first. And he’s having a

          magnificent time. I’m very scared

          of him enjoying it too much,

          actually.

                    EMILE

          No danger of that happening to you

          though? 

They’ve come to settle on sitting on the rim at opposite

ends of the vat.

                    DEVON

               (Grinning)

          No way in hell or high water,

          Emilio, but I could definitely come

          back maybe. What about you?

                    EMILE

          Oh, I have been doing this for

          years. All the wines are different,

          but the farms are much the same in

          the South.  But you are never

          trapped. It is easy money.

                    DEVON

          Yeah, that’s Neil’s thing too. By

          the end of the year he’ll have

          enough to make a masterpiece. And

          if he needs more he’ll just go back

          and teach again until he has too

          much.

A pause. The breeze brings in the slightest of chills.

Emile and Devon jump out of the vat and start cleaning their

feet with their towels.

                    DEVON (CONT’D)

          I do miss him though. Not morbidly.

          I miss Josie morbidly. But with him

          it’s just like two paths splitting

          off on different adventures, for

          who knows…

                    EMILE

          Yes, you might never see him again,

          true. Adventures are like that.

(CONTINUED) 

CONTINUED: 

5. 

                    DEVON

          Thanks for the consolation, man.

                    EMILE

          My pleasure.

EXT. SEOUL STREET – NIGHT

It’s quite as bright as day.

Foot- and car-traffic speeds along as if everyone in the

city has the night-shift.

Only the sharpness of the colours of the pervading neon is a

little dampened by the darkness.

NEIL and AMY have stopped on the corner of the pavement to

take photos with their battered cameras.

They each line up shots facing down long, perpendicular

streets.

He’s tall and chiseled with a thin moustache and goatee.

She’s petite, short-haired and wearing a mime-striped shirt.

Neil takes his picture, then studies it in the viewer with

some consternation.

Amy stays focused, taking five more after her first snap.

Then she too looks up.

                    NEIL

          I don’t know about mine. When

          Franki was in Hong Kong she took so

          many great street-scene pictures. I

          don’t know if here’s just less

          photogenic or…

                    AMY

          Oh ya, I remember, she sent me

          those too. She’s so, so talented,

          dude. Is she still there now?

                    NEIL

          Nah, she’s in Berlin actually. And

          then somehow apparently in

          Argentina soon. So she really gets

          around… literally.

Neil smiles at the thought before they start crossing the

road with a dozen other pedestrians.

(CONTINUED) 

CONTINUED: 

6. 

                    AMY

          That’s so crazy. I wish we’d been

          better friends now. In twenty years

          she’ll have been like absolutely

          everywhere and I’ll have just been

          here and Jo’burg.

They reach the other side and continue walking straight down

the pavement.

                    NEIL

          She never seemed at home to me

          anywhere though. Maybe it’s a bit

          cliche but I don’t think you can go

          everywhere without, like, not

          having a comfy world you’re

          thinking about to go back to

          eventually.

                    AMY

          Maybe, but she probably just feels

          at home everywhere though, dude.

          Like everyone could be her friend.

          It’s so the right attitude.

                    NEIL

          It’s so funny that like we might

          never see her or someone like her

          again in person, but we’ll probably

          always know what she’s up to. And

          she’ll keep up with us as well,

          probably.

                    AMY

          She could just get bored though. I

          unfollow people every day almost.

          It’s like just part of life now.

                    NEIL

          Hey-hey, check them out…

On the opposite pavement, a small shoal of tourists from

everywhere are being guided in the opposite direction.

All of them to a man have their phones out, filming the

street scene from all their perspectives.

Neil and Amy nearly chuckle, before picking up their own

cameras to capture them in turn.

INT. BERLIN ART GALLERY – AFTERNOON

A long, white, looping corridor frequented by a steady

trickle of (mostly) young visitors bearing wine glasses.

The showcased works are set at well-spaced intervals.

They’re part of a mixed-media series that works off one

fairly interesting gimmick: large hyper-realistic

photographs augmented by protruding fragments of sculpture.

So, for example, a young man reaches out a handshake to the

viewer in one shot and an uncanny sculpture of an arm

extends from the frame into the air for the gallery-goer to

touch. Variations of this continue endlessly down the

exhibit.

FRANKI and MAURICE arrive at the first in the series.

She is lithe, with short black hair and sympathetic

eyes. 

He is shorter, Chinese-Canadian, with a quizzical

expression.

                    MAURICE

          Are we allowed to…to fondle them?

          Or just like lightly touch?

                    FRANKI

          I think so, well they

          haven’t  kicked that guy out yet

          anyway…

Franki indicates an old man just down from them who’s

enraptured with stroking a protruding cat’s tail.

Maurice duly shakes the outsretched hand of the first piece.

                    FRANKI (CONT’D)

          I just realized Cameron would love

          this whole thing. We should totally

          bring him here when he gets here.

                    MAURICE

          When’s he coming again?

                    FRANKI

          In like three weeks or so. He’s

          really excited, he told me. He sent

          me a long, sweet e-mail yesterday,

          I forgot to tell you. He’s writing

          a big script and we’re the light at

          the end of the tunnel of his first

          draft, he said.

(CONTINUED) 

7. 

CONTINUED: 

8. 

                    MAURICE

          Oh that’s cool. What’s it about?

They stroll further on, hand in hand, considering which

pieces to touch next.

                    FRANKI

          He didn’t say, private anxiety I

          guess that he doesn’t want to tell

          too many people about it before he

          gets into it.

                    MAURICE

          I kinda got the impression when we

          saw him that he’s like in love with

          you a bit…

Franki laughs, then takes a beat to reply.

                    FRANKI

          Oh yeah, he might be, I don’t know.

          We’ve never had anything if you’re

          asking.

                    MAURICE

          I was wondering. He just seemed

          like he wanted more from you…

                    FRANKI

          He probably did, but only in terms

          of just not having seen me for ages

          and then not seeing me again for

          ages more.

They come to a pair of boots sticking out of a horizontal

shot of a dead soldier. They study it for a moment.

                    FRANKI (CONT’D)

          You’ll see when he gets here

          though. He’s actually really bad at

          hiding his feelings. And you’ll get

          to know him better too.

                    MAURICE

          Do you think this one’s staged or

          is this from like an actual battle?

                    FRANKI

          The point is probably that you’re

          not supposed to know, but maybe

          that’s overinterpreting. Makes me

          want to get a pair of Doc Martens

          more than anything when I think

          about it…

Maurice takes his turn to smile.

EXT. SEA POINT PROMENADE – DUSK

CAMERON and JONATHAN are leaning against the seaward

railings, bundled up against the cold and smoking rolled

cigarettes.

Fellow promenaders, dogwalkers and general residents pass

them by constantly without granting them much attention.

They’re two tall, skinny whiteboys – the former blond, the

latter brown-haired – wearing bad jackets and studying the

horizon.

                    CAMERON

          When I was a kid I always kind of

          thought you could swim between

          continents like swimming the

          English Channel. So if I just got

          in the water here and had enough

          energy, I thought, I’d probably end

          up in Argentina eventually…

                    JONATHAN

          Sounds like you were a pretty

          fuckin’ dumb kid, Cam.

                    CAMERON

          And you weren’t, Jono?

                    JONATHAN

          Nope, I was a genius, completely.

          And then I started going downhill

          somewhere…

They both take simultaneous drags.

                    CAMERON

          I just realized something cool. You

          know those tourist signpost things?

          Like ’Lagos: 3250 km’ this way and

          ’Moscow: 8500 km’ that way?

                   JONATHAN 

           Yeah? 

                    CAMERON

          Well I can kind of do that for so

          many friends right here, pointing

          everywhere to all their current

          places.

(CONTINUED) 

9. 

CONTINUED: 

10. 

                    JONATHAN

          Are you saying you feel left behind

          with me? ’Cause I can accept that

          but it still hurts my emotions.

                    CAMERON

          We’re not in a monogamous

          friendship, man. Who’d want that

          kind of deal anyway?

                    JONATHAN

          You’re right, whatever. Who’s the

          closest then, besides me?

                    CAMERON

          Um, Josie, I think. She’s in

          Colombia now, doing her like

          personal research trip thing.

Closing one eye, he points with his cigarette in a general

North-Westerly direction.

                    CAMERON (CONT’D)

          I miss her a weird amount. I think

          next year when I’m off too I’ll

          feel nothing but missing people.

          I’ll talk to no-one, just Facebook

          message forever and ever. Or that’s

          the fear, maybe.

                    JONATHAN

          Just do what everyone does, Cam,

          and let new people replace old

          people. Everyone who’s left over

          then is actually irreplaceable.

          You’ve never learnt that even

          friends are kind of transient.

                    CAMERON

          I don’t want to think of it that

          way, but you’re probably right. I

          just don’t want to lose my memories

          and such too quickly.

                    JONATHAN

          I feel sometimes like I’ve got

          early Alzheimer’s or something

          ’cause I’ve forgotten so fuckin’

          much.

                    CAMERON

          Yeah, I was about to say you’re my

          cautionary tale in this regard. I

                    (MORE)

(CONTINUED) 

CONTINUED: 

11. 

                    CAMERON (cont’d)

          just always wonder what they’re all

          up to? Like right now, what are

          people we know doing with their

          lives?

                    JONATHAN

          Cam, what are we doing with our

          lives? You’ve always got to answer

          that first, like putting on your

          oxygen mask before helping other

          passengers.

                    CAMERON

          We can get an ice cream or

          something?

He nods to the nearby vendor.

                    JONATHAN

          No thanks, I’m just gonna roll

          another ciggie for dessert.

                    CAMERON

          Suit yourself.

He duly goes off to get an ice cream.

Jonathan stubs out his rollie then turns back to face the

sea again.

He sighs, looks around a bit, then subtly starts pointing

his right hand out in various sucessive directions to chart

where his friends will be tonight.

The day fades further.