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 I
Pre-Opening Credits Jamboree
FADE IN:
BLACK SCREEN
A quote opens: "Today's extremism is tomorrow's cliché. . . . ."
The overture from "The Man of La Mancha" plays over the darkness-- a heroic, brassy, gallivanting show-tune from the 1960's meant to suggest absurd, misguided idealism of some damned moron off on an impossible quest. Adventure, gallantry, chivalry-- the high camp of a naive, happier time as Don Quixote gallops around on an old, clod-hopping horse with his lance and charges at windmills-- "dragons" only he can see as a puffed-up fool. In modern days, he would be locked up in a mental ward!
Next comes the sound of prison bars opening and closing with sternness, the judgment of society when your only answer is the echoing emptiness when they leave you alone to your thoughts.
INT. Questioning Chamber/Interview Room, Present Day, Time Unknown
There A STURDY, OVERWEIGHT MAN in his '20s sits with glasses, a Sheriff's hat with a little tin star in the brim, a red checkered flannel shirt, and a black "Free Winona" t-shirt. He cuts an eclectic figure there with his mustache and red sideburns, chewing a TOOTHPICK and looking right into the camera with an ornery expression. He smirks, then goes into a slow, carefree Southern voice like something out of "Deliverance".
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS My name is Michael "Lawless" Adams.
He spits out the TOOTHPICK, and leans forward on his elbows like a hardened con.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS And I'm in here because I'm a fan of Ms. Winona Ryder.
The breath of those words hang in the air, like the temptation of something lizard-like and evil like a man who crawls into a bottle. Sun-bleached and withered, as Clint Eastwood takes a drag off a hand-rolled cigarette in a spaghetti Western, or even something so dark and cancerous as his role in "The Unforgiven" when he gets booted in the ribs and grimaces at "Death's Door".
CUT TO PHOTO MONTAGE
Papparazi shots whipping by with a rushing sound, the ravage of our 24/7 media hounding the lives of celebrities caught out in the open at parties, outside of clubs and premiers on the red-carpeted streets-- particularly the life of one (1) WINONA RYDER. The final one catches this lovely actress with her eyes with an expression of a deer looking hunted (-- this one from her shoplifting trial), and the IMAGE shatters into pieces like a broken mirror and falls down off screen with a tinkling sound.
MUSIC: ("Man of La Mancha" still plays. . . . .)
BACK TO:
INT. Questioning Chamber/Interview Room, Present Day, Time Unknown
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS I was always a "bad boy", wanted what I wanted-- did as I pleased.
CUT TO FLASHBACK:
INT. Dad's Apartment, 1991, Day
A FAT, FROZY BOY around ten years old is playing an ancient Atari deck with his younger, thinner brother in a cluttered living room of assorted, cruddy antiques from India and Arabia with a fine film of dust covering everything. The two are wearing cheap, striped, early '80s shirts with arching white collars the ole' man picked up in yard-sales. Truly, these poor, misbegotten bastards will never be a part of that world of "Umbro" shorts, Nerf footballs, or "Capri Sun" fruit drinks that come in the silver, shiny pouches of the late '80s "Space Age" where white, streamlined space shuttles make smooth landings with up-to-date, modern gear.
10 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS sips an off-brand fruit punch as he plays the bargain-basement classic, "Chopper Command" with its wide expanse of 4-bit orange, desert landscapes as the WHITE CHOPPER blasts away with slow, methodical, punishing shots.
YOUNG JESSE begins to whine in a plaintive, kid-brother voice:
YOUNG JESSE Hey, it's MY TURN!
10 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS frowns in irritation, then punches YOUNG JESSE in the gut with pout-joweled brutality. He yelps, as brother number uno picks up the pace of his meaty blows-- mirroring the cadence and rhythm of that punishing FAT, WHITE CHOPPER'S PUNISHING FIREPOWER.
Then DAD lumbers in from the kitchen, wearing only his underwear, angry and blustering at the noise-- not so much at the injustice being perpetrated, but the fact that the din is causing him to miss the news-- and "puts his foot down" with a fed-up stutter, his normally-placid faculties overloaded, now a big man taking over with "the wrath of Dad".
DAD STOP THIS, you kids. I'm trying to watch the morning news
shows! If you don't cut out this nonsense, I won't take you down
to the video arcade!
CUT TO:
THE FAT, WHITE CHOPPER on the screen implodes with a low-rumbled explosion that sounds more like a fat boy farting into his sweatpants. The analogy we draw is not flattering, but it is what it is!
(-- Butterball)
MUSIC: ("Man of La Mancha" still plays . . . . . )
CUT TO:
INT. Questioning Chamber/Interview Room, Present Day, Time Unknown
The seedy inmate MICHAEL "LAWLESS ADAMS is weaving his tale, but there is a definite difference between his marble-mouthed, slither-tongued southern boasting of the impression he fosters and what the flashbacks actually reveal. . . . .
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS I was a terror around women!
CUT TO FLASHBACK:
INT. Apartment Front Steps, 1991, Day
The 10 YEAR-OLD VERSION OF MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS is lumbering up the front apartment steps when YOUNG ASHLEY, a cute little blonde urchin, greets him. She is rail-thin, with a prominent overbite, and blonde hair in a pair of cute overalls. She is the ultimate Nintendo partner, who would make a boy so bashful while they're sitting there in matching beanbag chairs that he'd let her be "first player"-- she's "Mario" while he's "Luigi", and he doesn't even play his "best game" just to make sure that she gets a turn. In a perfect world of comic books, YOUNG ASHLEY would grow up to look kind of like this artist's representation once she got a little bit older (as envisioned in cherished fantasy)--
YOUNG ASHLEY HI, Michael!
10 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS scrunches up bashfully in front of her sunniness like a shy, creeping thing and mutters back a shy "hello" as much awkwardness hangs in the air, that he covers with a flurry of movement-- trying to pretend as if he's busy and occupied.
MUSIC: ("Man of La Mancha" still plays . . . . . )
CUT TO:
INT. Questioning Chamber/Interview Room, Present Day, Time Unknown
The seedy inmate MICHAEL "LAWLESS ADAMS is back in the interrogation room, "sliming it up" with his story like so much snake-bellied sin.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS My momma didn't love me!
CUT TO FLASHBACK:
INT. Mother's Living room, Christmas 1991, Day
Christmas
decorations hang all over MOTHER'S PLANTS in her well-furnished living room, a
hand-holding "talk-therapy" flaky sort who needs "beauty" in her life. Dianne Wiest would make a great fill-in! Her children's loot is piled on the crystal
glass table like so much sparkling, hand-wrapped potential sitting there with
the hushed promise of the split secular Jewish yuletide season that never raised
its kids in any kind of firm, religious tradition. Pictures of naked people
droop in pathetic, sagging mortality, along with stone cats and New Mexico pottery.
Tastefully silly.
YOUNG JESSE and 10 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS come down and are slavering to open their presents. JESSE hands MOTHER her gift. MOTHER is buoyant with the occasion, next putting her hands on her hips with a loaded voice and expecting a fruitful answer to her following question to her first-born.
MOTHER So. . . . . what did you get me for Christmas, Mr. Michael?
10 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS holds out A PENCIL and snickers, bugging out his eyes. MOTHER exclaims her disproval with shock, hurt, and yet amusement like she has opened up a bag of shit or worse.
MOTHER WHAT?!
CUT TO:
INT. Questioning Chamber/Interview Room, Present Day, Time Unknown
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS is now drumming his fingers on the table with an expression on his face "like a fox in a hen-house".
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS I was a deprived child.
CUT TO FLASHBACK:
INT. DAIRY QUEEN, 1991, Night
10 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS is greedily eating a tiny little ICE CREAM CONE like a fat, gruesome goblin.
CUT TO:
INT. Questioning Chamber/Interview Room, Time Unknown
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS is now looking on, head cocked and half-smiling.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS That. . . . . shall we put it, MATCHLESS
childhood would give me the indomitable will to chase after what I
wanted in life. You can just call me. . . . . the Don Quixote of the 21st century.
MUSIC: ("Man of La Mancha" still plays . . . . . )
CUT TO:
INT. Home Office, present day, Night
This "Home Office from Hell" is where our hero makes his home-- a fractal, hallucinogenic, yet insanely cluttered mess of books, posters, clippings, CD's, and computer equipment jammed into all-too-small of a space. A pack-rat's nest where what is called to mind in the story of those people who hoard so much "junk", that it eventually falls over and kills them. Then the fire department has to "fish out the body" while clearing away the death-trap avalanche of stock-piled "treasures".
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS twists around with his arm on a chair and smirks at all the depravity, welcoming the viewer to "his lair".
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS I always got my idea of how life should be from the movies!
CUT
TO:
Clip from "Beetlejuice" where MICHAEL KEATON, playing "The Ghost With the Most", has a wild moment and his head is spinning around in manic, madcap glee while he's howling like the devil. ALEC BALDWIN and GEENA DAVIS who play "the straight couple" to this screwball, stare on in shock and horror.
Clip continues as MICHAEL KEATON continues to caper around, only having the effect of running off the conventional.
SCENE CHANGES
MUSIC: ("Man of La Mancha" still plays . . . . . )
CUT TO FLASHBACK:
INT. Aisles of K-Mart, 1991, Night
TIRED DRUDGES are pushing around red shopping carts-- the cloud-eyed, flab-chinned, emotionally-stunted nature of the unsophisticated waddling from side to side, staring down at their tattered shoes and shaking their head at their lot in life.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.) Folks never cared about my unique point of view!
10 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS and YOUNG JESSE are checking out the Halloween costumes "on clearance", and spy a grotesque heavy metal "KISS" MASK. It droops defeated, like a sad, deflated balloon of something that was once proud, obnoxious, and evil. It has a tongue that droops down 12 inches, and wispy, fake black hair that coursed out into a mullet like something from the Middle Ages. It is grotesque, nasty-- the kind of thing a rapist would wear as he lunges out at a woman at a 1970's night-time park with his wiener sticking out of his fly-- like a flapping vampire bat. THE TWO BROTHERS are laughing about this, and tug on their MOTHER'S SLEEVE.
10 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS"
ADAMS Hey, ma-- can I have this for Christmas? I'll be a good kid!
MOTHER breaks out in a snort of laughter that we've picked up such an inappropriate item, immediately "foo-fooing" that idea.
MOTHER No, honey. You already had your Halloween.
10 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS"
ADAMS But I wanna jump out and scare the neighbors! Give Mrs. Disney a
heart-attack!
MOTHER'S eyes rubber around the store uncomfortably. MOM & SON haggle back and forth, but she won't give ground.
10 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS and YOUNG JESSE walk back toward the costume aisle with the "KISS" MASK, when we spot A DISPLAY OF HOLIDAY POPCORN TINS, full of sleigh-bells and wintry trees and Christmas greetings. We mount the "KISS" MASK up on a POPCORN TIN so it looks like a severed head. THE THING sags gruesomely, like either a bad prank or something rotted.
Then THE BROTHERS wander down the main aisle to a benign looking PUMPKIN SCARECROW DISPLAY heralding discount blue-jeans. 10 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS slips the "KISS" MASK over the head of the PUMPKIN SCARECROW and gives it an entirely new, grotesque look that would remind one of the ghoulish local meth epidemic in these parts, seeing that the damn thing is dressed in kid's overalls. THE BOYS snicker wildly, their eyes bulging out of their heads, even as tired drudges pass by, bent over their shopping carts as syrupy Muzak plays somewhere in the closed-circulation ether and a voice comes on, announcing "ATTENTION, K-MART SHOPPERS!".
MUSIC: ("Man of La Mancha" still plays . . . . . )
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.) I was always on my own planet!
CUT TO:
Clip of grainy satellite shots, rings of SATURN-- making a close-up with a clicking sound of scientific analysis.
SCENE CHANGES
CUT TO:
INT. Insane asylum corridor, Present Day, Day
Michael "Lawless" Adams walks down insane asylum corridor in a strait-jacket, legs shackled together and dragging a BALL N' CHAIN.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.) And my peers didn't know what to make of me. . . . .
SCENE CHANGES
CUT TO:
Clip of BABOONS making hellacious racket in a jungle clearing, swatting with their paws and baring their fangs at this unwelcome intrusion on their territory.
SCENE CHANGES
CUT TO:
INT. Questioning Chamber/Interview Room, Present Day, Time Unknown
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS is now looking head on with a PIPE betwixt his fingers, with his eyebrows raised in absurdity.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS Well, for the record-- no one knew what to make of Winona either.
SCENE CHANGES
CUT TO:
Clip of WINONA RYDER at the end of "Beetlejuice" dancing and than levitating by supernatural power by a spooky, haunted staircase as the inverted "Addams's Family" "It" girl under a spotlight.
CUT TO:
A clip when she utters the words, "I myself am strange & unusual"
SCENE CHANGES
CUT TO:
CLIP: Now the BABOONS are going even more apeshit, waving their hairy arms in the air and screeching with wild whoops.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.) It seemed like a match made in heaven. . . . .
CUT TO:
A big fat QUESTION MARK appears with a little dinging sound, like either a note of caution or the tap of a spoon on a milkshake glass.
SCENE CHANGES
MUSIC: "Themes from T.V. Dinners", otherwise known as super-happy, super-kitschy 1950's motivation music suggesting something of the "squeaky-clean".
CUT TO:
EXT. Right-Wing Paramilitary Training Camp, Present Day, Day
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS, in red-checkered flannel and a Ted Nugent camouflage hat, blows away PUMPKINS with a crude print-out of Bill & Hillary Clinton's faces taped up on them. Next, he charges at a DUMMY with a BAYONET. He runs across the property clutching a rifle to his chest like a jihadi. Next, an old abandoned CAR up on blocks is blown up in the woods with taped explosives. This feller is a one-man army! (-- so it seems!)
Scene Changes
CUT TO:
Clip of Winona Ryder from "Reality Bites" up on an urban roof-top with her hip, 1994 Generation-X friends turning her head away in disgust, like discussion of such a prospect of ending up together is even beyond dignifying with a response as the scene is textured with the sound of automatic gunfire and explosions.
CUT TO:
Map of The United States with an exaggerated caricature of the color-coded political divisions, as shown on television newsroom visuals.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.) But then again, maybe it was just that red state/blue state divide!
Scene Changes
CUT TO FLASHBACK:
EXT. St. Louis Mississippi Riverfront, 1991, Day
Down by "The Arch" on a gray day, DAD, YOUNG JESSE, and 10 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS are stepping on a riverboat during the holiday season, here to see Santa Claus as advertised in the paper.
INT. Riverboat Restaurant, 1991, Day
The family follows the cut-rate velvet ropes, past the lone attendant dressed up in server's epaulets clearing away glasses from a table, and come into a large, empty restaurant with cotton snow on the floor. There SPLOTCH-FACED SANTA sits on a mock-throne, red-faced and cheery, surrounded by empty presents piled on the floor in striped wrapping paper.
On closer inspection, SPLOTCH-FACED SANTA is drunk. He wheezes, laughs, and coughs with his bad breath and yellow teeth bared like a grinning mule's and reaches down for a whiskey bottle as he listens to the CREDULOUS BROTHERS' Christmas list in amusement, ticking off more details than he or any adult can really be expected to follow or understand. As 10 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS gets off his lap and goes back toward his waiting DAD, who looks on in perfect understanding with his chin tucked down with behumbled amusement, SPLOTCHY-FACED SANTA winks over at the female server and calls out:
SPLOTCHY-FACED SANTA Hey, why don't ask for a cute little elf instead?
CUT TO:
Picture of a young Winona, who looks like a pubescent 1980's "elf"
CUT TO: BOYS & DAD lumbering out of the restaurant and into the gray, overcast afternoon.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.) If that I could ask. You see, boys at that age weren't supposed to be
into "that mushy stuff". Our mothers would never let us live it
down! THIS is what we're comfortable around:
SCENE CHANGES
CUT TO:
Clip of the wrestler known as "THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR" bellowing his ripped, wild-maned, steroid-driven speech into the microphone backstage at Wrestlemania VI where he vows to "take down" Hulk Hogan with all the intensity of "The Warrior Nation", his fan base of 10 year-old kids.
SCENE CHANGES
CUT TO:
Clip of movie "No Holds Barred" when HULK HOGAN explodes out of the roof of a car with a massive explosion, and starts the kicking the behinds of tough guys rushing him in a shadowed parking garage as soulful, late '80s rock n' roll boogies in the background with a pile-drivin' beat.
Scene Changes
Background Music: "I Drink Alone" by George Thorogood & The Destroyers, a mean blusey drinkin' song with the ka-CHUNK of chords and a saxophone.
EXT. Prairie Game Ranch, Present Day, Day
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS mounts one leg up on a slaughtered BUFFALO CARCASS, an AK-47 rifle slung across his neck like an axe-handle as flies buzz around the stink of death, elemental and natural.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS Yup, vast cultural differences existed. Maybe it was that hippie-dippie
family of hers. Them thar counter-culture San Franciscan intellectuals.
SCENE BRIEFLY CHANGES:
Cut to still photographic shots of whacked-out "drug experience" library with strange, psychedelic magazines and books and posters.
SCENE CHANGES BACK TO:
EXT. Prairie Game Ranch, Present Day, Day
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS hocks and spits, as if that's his sum opinion of San Francisco.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS The only culture I ever knew grew on moldy bread at the day-old bread
store!
SCENE CHANGES
EXT. Day-Old Bread Store, Present Day, Day
The building is a tiny cinder-block shack in the poor side of town that rises up in a dirty, cracked parking lot. Cut-rate posters hang everywhere in an explosive yellow starburst: "49¢ Bread!"
INT. Day-Old Bread Store, Present Day, Day
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS gathers up spilling armfuls of Twinkies and snack-cakes, pays for them, and lumbers out the door.
EXT. Day-Old Bread Store Curb, Present Day, Day
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS sits on the curb like a hobo from "The Great Depression", and proceeds to rip into a large, yellow POUND CAKE. He talks between bites, like a bum out in the street explaining his "way of life".
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS Intellectual?
He holds up the cheap, starchy pound cake for emphasis.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS My I.Q. ain't above room temperature, take your pick of Farenheight
or Celsius. . . . . On a hot day IN HELL, that is!
SCENE CHANGES
INT: Psychiatrist's Office, Present Day, Day
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS sits at a table, trying to solve a PUZZLE with his head in his hands in great concentration, great stress.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O. Real
Ornery) I hate I.Q. tests. . . . .
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS flips over THE PUZZLE in a rage, sending the pieces flying.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O. Real
Ornery) They insult my intelligence!
SCENE CHANGES
CUT TO
Clip of JAMES HETFIELD of the vulgar heavy metal act, METALLICA in a live concert video shouting into the microphone, the audience shouting back: "SHIT!" "FUCK!" "CUNT!" "FAG!" "SLUT!" "YOUR MOMMA!".
SCENE CHANGES
EXT: Arena Liquor, Present Day, Sunset
This is a booze emporium where all the underage kids go to buy their beer from the small, dark-skinned Pakastani immigrants. Many a drunken night our hero has tipped his hat to "Goopta", the kind of lizard-eyed character who keeps knives and brass knuckles under the counter just in case anyone ever gives him or his relatives trouble.
Outside, MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS stand in the parking lot of the local haunt, holding a large 32 ounce CAN of MILLER HIGH-LIFE. He pops it open and drinks it with deep, guzzling draughts and partially crushes it in his hand and grins. What is this-- "Heavy Metal Parking Lot"?
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (Bragging) It's cool being a low-life! In & out of trouble since I was ten years
old. . . . .
SCENE CHANGES
CUT TO FLASHBACK
EXT. Apartment Terrace 1991, Day
A mean, fussy old MARGINAL GRANDMA hobbles outside of her first floor apartment and up to 10 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS and YOUNG JESSE bouncing a BASKETBALL and crabs at them like a marginal, social security-collecting old witch.
Music comes on: 1930's "Newsreel" ambience
MARGINAL OLD GRANDMA I want you kids to listen to me.
They listen on attentively, always taught to respect adults-- even this one, whose eyes are rolling around like an old dog's as she gets more and more "worked up" and agitated.
MARGINAL OLD GRANDMA If any of you bash a ball through my window, I'll call
the police, In the name of Jack Robinson, I swear I will! I pay my rent
here, trying to get by, and today's kids are entirely out-of-control!
They used to show respect! Why, when I was a girl. . . (BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH)
THE BOYS look to each other as she goes on and on, like a "Crime Does Not Pay" movie sponsored by the FBI and pushed in movie theaters in the 1930's.
Finally, THE OLD CRONE hobbles back into the apartment.
THE BOYS start kicking THE BASKETBALL carefully, but as time passes they get more wild and reckless. 10 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS drop-kicks THE BASKETBALL; YOUNG JESSE leaps for it and misses, and the two look on in horror as THE BASKETBALL sails inexorably toward the MEAN OLD GRANDMA'S WINDOW and shatters it with a deafening crash, causing THE BLINDS to roll up with a ferocious slapping sound.
THE BOYS pick up the ball and run for cover as dogs bark, running up the back exit like a shaky, running tracking shot out of "Raising Arizona".
10 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS hides under a sleeping bag and blubbers, convinced that he's going to jail. YOUNG JESSE goes and gets DAD, who explains that "these things happen" and he'll go down and talk to her and pay for the window. Sniffing, wiping his nose, the big bully pleads for YOUNG JESSE to bring him some fruit drinks. They're handed to him, pathetically enough, and he sips with great contentment.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.) I was a menace. . . . .
CUT TO FLASHBACK:
EXT. Glenridge Corner Store, 1991, Day
A humble, yet well-to-do convenience store in a part of an established township where the impression is of slate gray stone and the green of freshly-mown grass and not too far from the WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY COLLEGE CAMPUS. Classy, "Ye Olde English" style with the stained glass of the rising spire, yet THE HIRED HELP on this "entry level" track idling around. Young guys in t-shirts and caps who aren't exactly going anywhere, yet sidle up to the prestige like "footmen" reading comic books in between "the call of duty".
INT. Glendridge Corner Store, 1991, Day
10 year-old MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS walks in and buys a carton of chocolate milk like "a young chap about town". With change in his pudgy little hand, he notices THE CANDY BIN that reads "2 for 10¢".
He pays a dime, then reaches down into THE BUCKET and grabs three candies.
AN ADULT HAND grabs his wrist down in THE BUCKET.
HEAD CLERK
Well, well. . . . . look what we got here. Huh, huh, huh.
The other clerk looks up from his comic book, and joins in the laughter.
The boy's face is frozen at that instant-- terrified, mortified, caught in the act like a spotlight shined on a frightened kitten walking across a fence for the first time.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.) I reasoned that because they were small pieces, it all "evened out"
somehow. But I didn't have the words to explain it to these two guys
sippin' Slurpees.
10 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS turns around on his heel and leaves with a pinched, uptight expression-- like he has a broom up his ass as the clerks' laughter follows him out the "dinging" automatic doors.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.) Shit. Never cared much for school. . . . .
CUT TO FLASHBACK
INT. Mother's Living Room, 1991, Day
His mother sits in her posh living room, and smiles over his 4th grade REPORT CARD. A close up of the teacher's remarks comments that "Michael is very attentive and studious in his work and is a delight to have in class".
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
All I wanted to do was read "Mad" magazine and watch movies!
SCENE CHANGES
CUT TO:
Clip from "Beetlejuice" when Michael Keaton uses a stick to life up Geena Davis' dress and marvel with a low-down whistling sound, a real horny devil.
SCENE CHANGES
CUT TO FLASHBACK:
EXT. Apartment Terrace, 1991, Day
YOUNG ASHLEY and 10 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS sit on the apartment stoop, eating ice cream out of the cheap white paper as the clang of the ice cream truck sounds in the distance with prerecorded "Pop Goes the Weasel" music. The boy looks at her furtively from time to time-- sweet, young, one-sided love.
SCENE CHANGES
INT. Questioning Chamber/Interview Room, Present Day, Time Unknown
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS stares slightly off-camera, as if deep in thought, before he slurs off with this profundity like Nick Nolte in "The Prince of Tides".
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS
And I was a tangled wire of contradictions. . . . . never really sure of where I fit in, caught where the roads met of an in-between time, an in-between place like the boy who sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads, trying to get out of an honest day's work! All I knew was that acting "middle-class" and "tame" was boring!
SCENE CHANGES
CUT TO:
Clip of CHRIS HOLMES in "The Decline of Western Civilization Part II, The Metal Years" floating drunk in his pool chair, cracking self-loathing alcoholic jokes about how far astray his life has gone as his mother looks on poolside uncomfortably, pours Vodka all over himself, dodges questions like a "train-wreck in denial", then sinks in the pool like a smashed dive-bomber.
CUT TO:
Clip of angelic children singing in pristine, Anglican choir-- their heavenly voices contrasted by--
CUT TO:
A clip of rough n' tumble country folk guffawing around an old "Space Invaders" machine at a truck stop.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
I wanted to grow up to have fun for a living. . . . .
SCENE CHANGES
CUT TO FLASHBACK:
EXT, Apartment Hallway, 1991, Day
10 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS hears noise out in the hall, opens the door a crack, and beholds YOUNG ASHLEY and HER MOTHER bring home an armful of groceries before they let themselves in. He comes out slowly, half-hesitates to knock on the door to ask the girl to play, gulps, but then goes back inside in broken defeat, holding his fists up to his brow in failure.
SCENE CHANGES
CUT TO:
The scene in "Beetlejuice" where Winona Ryder asks the demon "bad boy" who he is, and he replies-- "I'm the ghost with the most, babe".
SCENE CHANGES
CUT TO:
INT. Questioning Chamber/Interview Room, Present Day, Time Unknown
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS, hands in handcuffs, lifts his hands up for deliverance.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS
So you have the filmmaker before you today!
OPENING CREDITS ROLL
(It rips off the credit sequence of Penolope Spheeris' "Decline of Western Civilization, Part II: The Metal Years" when it shows the crowd reveling in the pit, waiting outside the concern in line and mooning the camera in anti-socialness. Motorhead's "Cradle to Grave" plays, pure guttural revelry and a fist-full of meaty entertainment thrust in the audience's faces!)
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Click here for Part II:
"Little Lord
Flauntelroy"
(Back to the "Galaxy Michael" Index)
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