An Original Screenplay
by
Michael "Lawless" Adams
Second Draft & 1.2
Registered by "Insufferable Industries"
In the year of our Lord, 2009
(God help us all!)
NOTE: VISUALS HAVE BEEN ADDED TO FACILITATE UNDERSTANDING OF JUST WHAT IN KINGDOM COME IS GOING ON HERE. . . . . MAY COME IN HANDY FOR THE CLUELESS AND TIME-PRESSED TURNING THIS WHACKED-OUT THING AROUND, AND THEN HOLDING IT UPSIDE DOWN BEFORE USING IT AS A FOOTSTOOL, PAPERWEIGHT, OR IMPROMPTU SOURCE OF "SNOT-RAGS". BE IDEALISTIC-- AND REALISTIC! "THAT'S MY MOTTO. . . . .".
Part IV
"Crucified by The Bell"
FADE IN
BLACK SCREEN WITH TITLE
SCENE OPENS TO:
Picture of "Saved by the Bell" advertisement from 1993 of happy, smiling young people with the fake sheen of corporate answers, their mouths open as if cheering for joy-- juxtaposed with the Satanic summoning of drums in the background. Howls of the damned come on, bestial howls, guttural and animal-like and petty, like a long-haired insane man in some dungeon pit rattling his demented chains, possessed by demons. It's the black metal song-- Venom's "Warhead" from the early '80s. The happy, healthy, slick answers are destroyed from the grime and filth below!
SCENE CHANGES
FADE IN
INT. Wydown Middle-School Classroom, 1993, Day
12 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS sits at a desk-- mouthing along, thrashing to the howls-- as a succession of teachers lay down piles and piles of assignments and pencils and rulers and protractors like French waiters serving up disinterested dishes of sorrow.
SCENE CHANGES
CUT TO
Text that reads with a question mark, "What Crueler Fate?"
SCENE CHANGES
Enter Music: Metallica's "For Whom the Bell Tolls"
EXT. Walking to School, 1993, Early Morning
12 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS sets out with his backpack on a gray, overcast September morning with his headphones on, carrying a YELLOW SONY WALKMAN as always. A song is playing, Metallica's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" that conjures the image of soldiers marching toward their existential doom, knowing not for what, the mighty roar of the black sky overhead threatening to suck them in. On he ambles, past houses-- past green scenery-- it's almost like a music video! This is contrasted when he draws close to school, seeing students passively walking toward their destination like geeks and nerds.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
Fools. . . . . what would they ever understand about "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and 1984 doom metal in the icy grip of the Reagan '80s? Indeed, it tolls for all we underage prisoners in "The Year of Our Lord", 1993. (Even though we have a saxophone-playing President with a cat named "Socks"!)
CUT TO:
Picture of smiling Bill Clinton portrait.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
Just what this soft, gelatinous "Information Age" economy was that required typing skills and an ability to navigate your way around a fancy-dancy computer, I didn't know-- but it was a far cry from the shuddering death of a decade previous, a time of rusted metal, lumpy coal, and desolate rubble.
CUT TO:
Picture of a shiftless and low-down looking "Metallica" hanging out in their low-fi digs circa 1984.
Sound Effect:
Grunting, growling sound-- like "the morning after", waking up in your own surly puke-- "EEEEAGHHH. . . . ."
SCENE CHANGES
ENTER MUSIC: Metallica's "The Thing That Should Not Be", meant to conjure up feelings of lost, forsaken sailors making their way around a grotesque hellish red ocean with whirling, gibing spirits-- and sea monsters a thousand feet tall rising from the depths to swallow them.
INT. Wydown 6th Grade Lockers, 1993, Morning
12 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS walks along the crammed hallway of lockers, almost like a submarine gangway on the basement floor where a feeding frenzy of cackling, obnoxious kids make their way around in slow motion-- faces distorted in grins and grimaces of the immature human condition like grotesque imps. Adult hall monitors move about, towering above everyone like "Barons of Hell", horned overseers from the popular P.C. game, "Doom" who are testy as bulls and have just about the same countenance & sympathy toward our young plight as these infernal monsters, throwing out detentions left and right like ripping fireballs of merciless wrath.
CUT TO:
Clip of "DOOM" where monster throws a fireball at a zombie humanoid and sends it exploding with a sickly splattering sound.
OUR YOUNG HERO passes a tragic glance up the stairwell to the sunlit "overworld".
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
(Dramatic, Occult Tone First)
To whatever gods or devils we pray to, whom could adequately explain this subterranean inferno where the laws of the universe are warped with intense churning pressures of earth, sea, and star?
(Rueful, Pathetic Teenage Voice Next)
Whatever it was, this was sure a far cry from "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" and "Super Mario Bros."!
CUT TO:
Clip of "Bill & Ted" looking singularly depressed and "shit-out-of-luck", uttering "Bogus. . . . ." in heavy metal mourning.
SCENE CHANGES
INT. Wydown 6th Grade Lockers, 1993, Morning
The bell rings, and 12 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS finds himself stranded out in the hall with his backpack. An adult hall-monitor catches him by his locker, and hands him a detention.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS
(Protesting)
But the lockers are double-stacked! I can't get down there to open it! My locker-partner kicks the shit of me!
ADULT HALL-MONITOR
(Indignant)
That's not my problem. You can't use that inappropriate language. You get another detention!
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS
(Voice quavering, half with boldness--
half with fear)
You're saying that "in the land of the free" and "the home of the brave" paid for by my own tax dollars I have to listen to you?
ADULT HALL-MONITOR
(Getting angry)
THAT'S INAPPROPRIATE! Two more detentions!
12 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS stares on defeated and aghast, hardly able to believe that he just got four after-school detentions.
ENTER SOUND EFFECT
Dual twin guitar leads from "Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey" meant to suggest over-the-top sorrow and "bogus" tragedy. Could life for a kid be ever more cartoonishly unrighteous?!
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
Those who are least prepared for conflict are those who certainly invite it!
CUT TO:
Clip of "Street Fighter 2" arcade game, ninjas jumping around in a flurry of tournament-style jumps and kicks, the fighters getting brutally slammed in the face.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
Whatever "hard lessons" adults tried to impart at this age-- you could always duck off into another secret pocket inside any one of the chambers found inside the electric heart of modern culture. "Catch a breather", and avoid responsibility for another hour or two. . . . .
SCENE CHANGES
CUT TO:
Clip of video game, "Mortal Kombat" where the screen flashes "FINISH HIM!" and a bruiser rips the still-beating heart out of an opponent.
SCENE CHANGES
EXT. Northwest Plaza Mall Video Arcade, 1993, Day
A giant video arcade in the basement level of a mall where young people gather around and play the games, clusters of kids gathered around the "Street Fighter 2" and "Mortal Kombat" machines six deep.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
God-damn, bustin' loose with flyin' ninja jump-kick magic! "The ultimate training", "the ultimate fist", "the ultimate infinity" that rises above the ultimate wretchedness of our lives that exists like a cosmic joke played on adolescents like shit on the end of a stick that you can't shake off, whackin' people with it.
SCENE CHANGES
EXT. Wydown Middle-School Field, 1993, Day
Kids are running around during recess, hanging out. Some are chasing a soccer ball by the goal posts. 12 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS stands around self-consciously, looking out-of-place. A little SEEDY PIP-SQUEAK of a 6th grader comes up out of nowhere, and with a jaundiced air tells him that he should go kill himself. Our hero looks shocked, surprised, ashamed that he's been singled out for this horrible abuse. The kid smirks and runs away. OUR HERO hangs his head and scuffs his shoes against the pavement.
SCENE CHANGES
CUT TO:
INT. Questioning Chamber/Interview Room, Present Day, Time Unknown
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS is talking to the camera head-on, trying to impart a grim truth about the world.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
I never squealed. . . . . but still that rotten motherfucker kept coming around like a mangy dog, nipping me in the shins and telling me that I should lay down my life to his sadism, the mad glitter in his eye.
There was this story I heard one time about an aid worker in a foreign land who had seen such horrible things, 600 one-legged children mewling around on crutches whom the enemy had mutilated, to strike fear in the hearts of the populace. He had to somehow feed these kids out of a crate of food in the middle of an African savannah.
This aid worker was pestered by this bothersome wild dog that kept coming around, nipping his shins. He tried driving the dog off, but it still kept trying to take a chunk out of him. He tried poisoning the dog, but that didn't work. Finally, he had to stab the dog to death because it was "either it or him".
SCENE CHANGES
CUT TO:
EXT. Wydown Middle-School Field, 1993, Day
12 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS punches THE SEEDY PIP-SQUEAK in the face, knocking the brat down to the ground and starts booting him in the ribs.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
You get the idea. . . . .
BACK TO WYDOWN FIELD.
Teacher comes along, and yanks OUR HERO along to the principal's office.
SCENE CHANGES
CUT TO:
INT. Principal's Office, 1993, Day
THE PRINCIPAL is an import from Texas, a soft, puffy man in his mid '30s with longish curly blond hair going down the back of his neck sitting behind his desk, prestigious gold trim and plants hanging everywhere to lend a good, moneyed impression in this young adolescent jail. His eyes are kind of half-closed, like a gelatinous "Huckleberry Hound" and you can tell he's a real petty shitbag with his designated authority-- like a podunk deputy "sitting in the catbird's seat".
THE PRINCIPAL
(Waving his hand in the air,
making a token grown-up speech)
Violence never solves anything. . . . .
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
Oh, really?
SCENE CHANGES
QUICK CUT TO:
INT. Wydown Gym, 1993, Day
A short, angry gym teacher with bristly hair and beady redneck eyes throws a folding chair against the brick wall and starts screaming at the class of 6th graders so to maintain order, looking like he's ready to tear any one of them "limb-from-limb" if they so much utter one consonant of resistance, strutting around like a 1970's football coach of national decline where strange, violent things could and did happen to those who disobeyed-- like getting their ass smacked around in a parking lot.
THE PRINCIPAL
(Disinterestedly handing down his verdict)
Five after-school detentions. . . . .
12 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS
That's bullshit!
THE PRINCIPAL
(Angrily)
What did you say, young man?!
12 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS
Nothing. Only that this place is run like a jail. I don't like it here.
THE PRINCIPAL
(Contemptuously, slapping
his hand down on the desk)
That's not my problem. You'll look back and thank us for this, someday. Then you'll understand. . . . .
SCENE CHANGES
CUT TO:
INT. Wydown Middle-School Classroom, 1993, Day
MUSIC ON: Intro to Metallica's "The Shortest Straw", a stark song with intricate drums and razor-sharp guitars that suggests early 20th century existential absurdity, "that the candle burns at both ends"
12 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS is sitting at his desk, a tightly standardized boxed-in affair that sets one to mind of cubicles, or ill-fitting pens in a slaughter-house, looking over a handed out copy of "Scholastic Kidz Newz Weekly".
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
I had a feeling "that not all was right" when they handed out our "Scholastic Kidz Newz Weekly", our filtered link to the outside world and official party organ of children's oppression everywhere.
What were all these pimple-cream ads? With beautiful girls, sure-- to excite the senses and stir the blood, but you had to think, were we just sitting ducks to some unholy influence?
For instance, there was the constant rotating promotion for the Disney live-action feature, "The Three Musketeers"-- a bland, sappy, calculated corporate offering, if any-- tied into our study guide like cheese jammed down a lab rat's throat.
And what could I say about the official theme song, the adult contemporary video, "All for One" with Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart, and Sting? Where was "the thrash", the energy, the hellfire that reflected real life down here in this pit where we tore each other apart like wild dogs?
CUT TO:
Clip of Beavis & Butthead dancing, waving their butts in front of the television to some kind of demented MTV video, Cypress Hill's "Insane in the Membrane"-- like an explosion of illicit, dubious pot-smoke and corporate greed leading the junior lemmings toward the cliff of petty criminality.
SCENE CHANGES
CUT TO:
INT. Wydown Middle-School Classroom, 1993, Day
Kids are flailing their hands mindlessly in the air, making gang signs while singing the refrain, "Insane in the Membrane!" like petty stoner "gangstas" dancin' along to a freaky synthesizer.
A black girl starts hooting and going crazy when she's showing off the "Rolling Stone" cover featuring Janet Jackson topless, a man's hands reaching behind around this soul singer to cup her breasts as she stares on earnestly like some kind of "valid artistic statement" pressing the outer bounds of free speech, if not good taste in an otherwise stultified, conservative America.
.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
What can you say when adults are not acting like grown-up's, and you're watching them "cross the line" as the kids look on, drawn to that helium high of excitement, that buzz that rose us out of the sad, slow course of things?
SCENE CHANGES
CUT TO:
INT. 7-Eleven Convenience Store, 1993, Night.
Men are in line, buying pornography. They flip through the pages of tits and ass and sultry expressions, apparently the meaty best of what America has to offer and what it means to be a low-brow man in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
12 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS is in line with a friend, buying Slurpees, and they're talking about the "Alien/Aliens" series with excitement, rumors that there's going to be an "Aliens vs. Predator" movie.
A bald man in his mid '30s with a scraggly beard, jeans, and a brown leather jacket, who has the air of a super-fan (-- for all intents and purposes we'll call him "SUPER-FAN") starts effusing psychedeliclly about the series in graphic detail, relishing in the disgusting fact in how the creatures gestate inside you then explode out of your chest.
MICHAEL & FRIEND nod on, pleased that an adult shares their enthusiasm but taken aback in this "SUPER-FAN'S" grubby, low-caliber degree of tastelessness. But we still think he's a pretty cool guy, and that maybe one day we'll grow up to be like him with a stack of Penthouse's and vintage Stan Lee comic books.
(What a winner!)
SCENE CHANGES
CUT TO:
Clip of Soul Asylum Video on MTV, Dave Pirner singing into the microphone with a jangling guitar like a moping snapping turtle. They're FUCKIN' TERRIBLE!
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
Back then, I couldn't tell you the first thing about how bands were discovered, or how acts were pushed, or why this stuff laid down in front of us seemed like some kind of "official answer" as the merchants of cool promised that elusive ether of "hip", pushing it into our living rooms, schools, and magazine stands like ruthless drug lords. Who knew how to balance fantasy-- this jiving hologram-- with the more terrifying truths that waited beyond these walls of illusionary safety?
SCENE CHANGES
CUT TO:
Clip of National News Morning Broadcast, announcing that a 12 year old girl, Polly Klass, is missing and has been abducted from her home and that the actress, Winona Ryder has gotten involved-- giving interviews and offering a $200,000 reward for information leading to her safe return. Winona makes a tearful, earnest plea for public cooperation.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
I couldn't even tell you who Polly Klass was, or even Winona Ryder, but all I knew was that it seemed as if all these 12 year-old girls went missing in the autumn of '93. . . . .
But we didn't care, too wrapped up in our own grotesque struggles in this corner of middle-school hell.
SCENE CHANGES
CUT TO:
INT. Wydown Middle-School Classroom, 1993, Day
The elderly, dove-like 6TH GRADE TEACHER makes a solemn announcement, that the 12 year-old girl who has gone missing for the last two weeks has been found dead, her body left in a dumpster.
THE CLASS breaks out in wild laughter-- first one half of the room, then the other, it's so grotesque and screwball-- like a smooshed cartoon squirrel run over by a fleet of dump-trucks then torn apart by wild dogs with a "RRRRRRRR".
THE 6TH GRADE TEACHER is horrified, and insists that it's not the least bit funny. But the more stiff this uptight maven gets, the more the class laughs, unable to help it.
SCENE CHANGES
CUT TO:
Clip of "Barney & Friends" where Barney the purple dinosaur is singing "I love you, you love me. . . . ." as children gather around and hug this fat-assed abomination.
SCENE CHANGES
CUT TO:
INT. Ghetto K-Mart Opening, 1993, Day
A pathetic drudge suits up in a "Barney" costume, wanders around the front of the K-Mart superstore on "Grand Opening" day and finds himself jumped by a gang of young, black teenage hooligans who might as well be "The Crypts", with their blue bandannas. Punched, kicked, and beaten as customers scream and move out of the way of the vicious chaos going down in this godless world.
SCENE CHANGES
CUT TO:
INT.& Ext. Dad's Car, 1993, Day
DAD is driving 12 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS home from school, with YOUNG JESSE in the backseat, and the boys are laughing wildly at the story of "Barney getting jumped by 'The Crypts'". DAD protests that it's not the least bit funny, that this poor guy could have been seriously hurt or even killed. But THE BOYS continue laughing anyway, because it's a wild, unpredictable occupation zone of anarchy where you can get wiped out in an instant-- better that it not be you, laughing at how "hell takes the hindmost", and how "at least it wasn't me".
SCENE CHANGES
INT. Questioning Chamber/Interview Room, Present Day, Time Unknown
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS talks into the camera, gives a little lecture with his hands in chains as he gives a miniature lecture on a small libertarian tenant, the rattling of his manacles in the background for effect.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS
You got to understand that because society can't control "the unmanageable", that government will end up inflicting more and more regulations on "the civilized" and "law-abiding", as if it will ever make a difference on that 20% you can't regulate.
And it's a drag when you get caught up in that system. . . . .
SCENE CHANGES
CUT TO:
INT. Wydown After-School Detention Room, 1993, Day
"THE PRISONERS" (6th, 7th, & 8th graders) are sitting in rows, slouching with incorrigibleness-- like one big ghetto party, a guffaw and coyote-low uttered "shit's" as they laugh and tilt back their heads. Either poor black kids, or wild, scruffy working-class, wasted white boys who mostly have no futures. They get a joke going, laughing about "Mortal Kombat" and shadow-boxing and talking about how "Sub-Zero" rips off his opponent's head and dangles his spinal cord in the air.
THE 9TH HOUR TEACHER firmly calls for silence, and gets it for about a minute or so, going back to reading his paper but then the boisterousness starts up again-- snickering and such-- and he starts hollering at the top of his lungs, pointing his finger and threatening to slap us around.
SCENE CHANGES
INT. Questioning Chamber/Interview Room, Present Day, Time Unknown
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS is back in the asylum, uttering more libertarian musings like an insane rebel, still continuing to rattle his chains as he raises his hands up and down for effect, like a snake-charmer.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS
Our government is a racket that says practices are unacceptable until they legitimize them and dress it up in a coat & tie. What's the financial system but a giant casino?
SOUND EFFECT
Slot machine bells.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS
Your tax collector but an extortionist, a brute in a black hood who will chop off your head if you get "too uppity" for your own good?
SOUND EFFECT
Axe whirling threw the air and the aural impression of a watermelon split in half.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS
Our jobs but a form of indentured servitude and sending kids off to school some form of slavery?
SOUND EFFECT
Cracking whip, twice.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS
Will I go to hell for asking these questions? For refusing to sing "Zippity Doo-Dah" in front of the same teachers, parents, administration, and society that dismisses my questions, doubts and fears as "inappropriate"?
CUT TO:
Clip from the movie, "Legend" where Satan is laughing with full-throated, Byronic laughter. Is this man truly "the devil's advocate"?
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
But they tried "to buy us off". If not with heavenly rewards, then with petty comforts. . . . .
SCENE CHANGES
INT. Wydown School Cafeteria, 1993, Day
THE ENTIRE 6TH GRADE CLASS is sitting on the floor, cross-legged, as THE PRINCIPAL speaks from a raised plinth on the floor about 3 or 4 inches off the floor.
He points out THE PEPSI MACHINE, from which you can drink soda only before school, during lunch hour, and after school, but not in class.
THE BOYS give a half-hearted cheer.
THE PRINCIPAL explains the cafeteria policy, how they serve "Taco Bell" tacos on Monday and Wednesday and "Pizza Hut" pizza on Tuesday's and Friday's. You can buy all you want so long as you got the cash and as supplies last.
THE BOYS cheer louder, and THE GIRLS somewhat.
THE PRINCIPAL asks if there are any questions. A kid raises his hand and asks the adult about his "AIR JORDAN" TIE that has a red silhouette of Michael Jordan flying through the air with his legs splayed, about to slam dunk a basketball with one hand. THE PRINCIPAL half-smiles, half-fluffs his "TIE" outward, and points his finger at the kid like one hip dude, like a southern talkin' honky-tonk man, like Bill Clinton when he ain't in front of the press corps.
THE WHOLE CLASS CHEERS.
All except for 12 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS, who looks around with a disgusted look on his face.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
I couldn't believe they were falling for it! Bought off with tacos, Pepsi only at appointed hours?! We were being ruled by an autocracy! And my outlook was becoming ever more increasingly bleak and nihilistic, like the great Russian writers Gogol or Bakaukin--
CUT TO:
Picture of slovenly 19th century Russian anarchist
CUT TO:
Clip of Metallica playing "Harvester of Sorrow" at the "Rock for Freedom" concert in Moscow in September, 1991-- a moody, atmospheric place and a harsh, astringent song with short, brisk chords as Slavic youth stare on, waving flags and Soviet military swing clubs to maintain order-- a grim dance with the reaper of authoritarianism that cuts down the masses like stalks of wheat across the frozen Eurasian plain. It's all about "state credibility", and "holding the line".
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
What would become of boys like me? What existential authority was there higher than the state, the hall monitor, the principal's office?
SCENE CHANGES
ENTER MUSIC, "Riders of Doom"-- an operatic interlude from "Conan the Barbarian" that at first suggests a peaceful village scene but then rises into fire, emergency, and searing crisis with opera singers as horsemen ride in to destroy this tranquil mountain forest pastoral.
CUT TO:
INT. & EXT, Various indoor and outdoor shots of WYDOWN MIDDLE-SCHOOL, DAY. The soccer fields, the computer lab, the classrooms, a placid scene where all is running smoothly to go along with the first 40 seconds of the "Conan" track
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
If neurotics build imaginary castles made out of thin air and psychotics live in them, then the state had me under siege. There was "a reckoning in the air". . . . .
CUT TO:
Picture of the classic French Revolution painting of Lady France, otherwise known as "Lady Liberty", bearing her breasts in commoner honesty while holding up the national flag and leading the people.
SCENE CHANGES
INT. Wydown School Cafeteria, 1993, Day
(The music continues, growing more urgent)
An uptight ADULT CAFETERIA MONITOR walks through this giant
crowded space with a YELLOW LEDGER BOOK OF NAMES, a close-up that reads
"After-School Detentions" in blue ink. He heads over to a disturbance where some
kids are acting rambunctiously at their table, hyper-ventilating with the
possibilities of youth. He sternly "takes down the names", their faces
crestfallen with this extreme punishment, "carpet-bombing" an entire table for
the crimes of two or three as the chained-together prisoners snarl at the
trouble-makers. Cruel, but effective. THE CAFETERIA MONITOR nods once, and walks
on like a robotic sentry of death.
12 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS is waiting in line by the exits to go to recess (-- as if we needed permission for such a thing) and the kids are complaining, looking at THE CLOCK which is past due. A large crowd, in fact, scuffing their shoes against the linoleom.
OUR HERO perks up with an idea, looks to see that no adult is watching, and ventures out into the hall to the snickers of his newfound friends. He holds out his hands, palms extended like "Alfred E. Neuman" to say "What me Worry?". Subconscious undercurrents of the mass mind slosh around, and pretty soon everyone is pushing up against each other and is charging down the hallway.
(The music grows more intense)
THE ADULT CAFETERIA MONITOR turns around in shock and horror at the sound of the commotion to see the kids charging out. Then ALL THE KIDS IN THE 6TH GRADE get up from their seats and go charging out too.
JANITORS look up from their mopping. LUNCH LADIES appear startled and bovinely from beneath their hairnets.
Chaos, pandemonium, adults trying to ride in like cowboys and stop the herd with lassos but they don't succeed. Why, an ADULT CAFETERIA MONITOR tries to slap some common sense into a boy, even, as the others stream past.
Out we burst through the double-doors as newfound brothers (-- and sisters) from a multiple of angles, running past the cameras in a riot.
The AMERICAN FLAG is lowered, burned, and up raises THE FLAG OF THE U.S.S.R.
Back in the CAFETERIA, THE PEPSI MACHINE is smashed in with A SLEDGE HAMMER-- the reverse of "The Fall of the Berlin Wall" 4 years before in 1989-- stickin' it to the triumph of "the corporate take-over in schools".
AND there 12 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS is, his arms up in the air like Spartacus and shouting in triumph out in the green as the opera score winds down.
(In "Conan the Barbarian", this is the part when the Cimmerian boy's father is pulled down by war dogs , mortally wounded and slowly giving up the fight as the motif fades out-- the village in flames)
But OUR HERO'S reveling continues. . . . . as this voice-over comes on:
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
Instigators jailed, harsher examples made, no recess for a month. Stricter patrols, the denial this event had ever occurred. But the kids have won today!
I was asked not to return. . . . .
SCENE CHANGES
CUT TO:
Clip from SAVED BY THE BELL, THE COLLEGE YEARS where everyone has a group hug as the coach, teacher, principal or whatever looks on approvingly and the major, wholesome, campy lesson of the show is "hit home" and everything "goes back to normal" in slick, 1993 NBC "Teen-ville".
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
If it ever was any kind of final vindication, proof of the rottenness of the system, it later turned out that our principal was a pedophile and had been molesting his flock.
(You can't win over too many 12 year-old boys with those "Air-Jordan" ties, you know!)
Click here for Part V:
"This is
Not an Alternative"
(Back to the "Galaxy Michael" Index)
----------------------
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