"This is not an 'Alternative'"

ENTER VIDEO MONTAGE

Goths, stoners, Woodstock '94, clips from "The Crow", the slackers from the Winona Ryder film "Reality Bites" acting world-weary and cynical, if not cuts from a bleak documentary about a gay drug-addicted boy prostitute with AIDS living like a feral rat in the streets of Austin as the camera films with disinterestedness. Dubious, mean-spirited expressions as a song plays-- "Sweet Young Thing Ain't Sweet No More" by Mudhoney-- a harsh, grating, bitter song dripping with alternative mean-spirited petulance.

As little "montage" segment leads on, "voice over" continues:

Here the youth were, living off the cream and abundance of our post-industrial society, now going rancid like "bad yogurt"-- and the kind of bacteria floating around could "double you over" with a bad stomachache.

 

MUSIC CONTINUES

Next enters an illustrative scene-- shot in black & white like a stark, '90s underground film with "scratches" running up & down the print. Incidentally, these sweet young things ain't no longer sweet either!

EXT. Dirt Cheap Liquor & Cigarettes, 1994, Day

DUNCAN and LAURA lean against the stark, white brick wall of the "Dirt Cheap" discount smoke shop. He is porky and ruddy and huge, with tousled brown hair and a lisp; she is slender, short, and delicate. Both are world-weary, bemused, and bored-- primed with the absurdity of life and smoking cigarettes with slow drags.

BLAKE walks up, his head shaved except for a top-knot tied into a ponytail, the poor-man's neo-Eastern style that only a profound-but-stupid kid would don. 1000 Lao-Tze aphorisms in this "Gnostic prison", but here he is-- bone skinny, somewhat sociopathic-looking, and wearing a "NINE INCH NAILS" t-shirt that scrolls down the message "god damn this noise inside my head" over and over. He leans up against the wall and slides down to conserve energy, tired like a post-industrial urban wolf who's been loping around the city for too long.

BLAKE speaks in a grave monotone, closing his eyes. . . . inmate of "Our Gnostic Prison" and looking quite like shit--

LAURA smiles in disbelief, laying on the irony.

BLAKE reaches out and takes the proffered cigarette. He rustles around for his BLACK LIGHTER and flicks it over and over again. Alas, the flint is worn down. He sniffs the sulfur smell. Fried electrolytes and dripping brain residues-- unreplenished. Whatever our solipsistic fantasies, we are prisoners to a bone-weary fatigue that can not be denied-- consciousness flickering like a bad light-bulb.

DUNCAN brings out his SILVER ZIPPO LIGHTER, a point of casual pride, and BLAKE nods.

SCENE CHANGES

CUT TO

INT: Crossroads School Art-Room, 1994, Day

An addled art teacher in a dirty white t-shirt and jeans who looks spacey and overwhelmed, looks at the project and writes down "A+" in a grade book while the class of '94 snickers.

BACK TO:

EXT. Dirt Cheap Liquor & Cigarettes, 1994

BLAKE cuts in, roused.

BLAKE is still sitting on his concrete soap-box, speaking in a grave monotone.

Duncan is dismayed. Such is life when you find yourself waking up on a desert island, not quite sure how you got there, only knowing your a prisoner for life

As this conversational interplay, ELLEN, MAURY, and ELIZA come walking into the still frame like the three Greek "Fates". Sixteen year-old's who stand off to the side, their arms crossed, but casually insinuating themselves into the older crowd. ELLEN is dressed up like a gypsy, half-Asian maybe, with milky skin and long red hair in a black gothic dress with glazed eyes. MAURY is wearing a trench coat and a black beret, the short one of the three looking like a free spirit a little bit more open to things as she frowns, struggling to understand. ELIZA'S head is shaved on one side, the hair hanging down greasily and her nose pierced with jewelry. Indicative of the ever souring tone of the '90s, she is wearing this bleak punk rock T-SHIRT that "says it all":

ELIZA cuts in, angrily, impatiently as her sisters stare on like lost waif-souls, all be it, with a certain amount of "liberal arts" street cred.

No one says anything as she smears an "Anarchy" symbol up on the wall with red lipstick.

Whatever the foibles of our economic system above this assortment of alternative ass-crud, TOMMY the "Dirt Cheap" employee comes around back from his lunch break. A cigarette tucked behind his ear, shaved head, a Corona beer cap, a Jack Daniels t-shirt, a dubious 26 year-old who sold the kids underage cigarettes at this marginal emporium of sin. He looks like a sick, jaundiced dog with a few character disorders but this is "who's culturally in" right now.

The teenagers hail him for his habit of covering a statue of the Virgin Mary with a necklace of his girlfriend's bloody tampons. Tommy holds his hands up in the air with mock defensiveness and laughs with a dry, "eh, eh".

THE GIRLS go in to buy cigarettes. DUNCAN and LAURA toss their butts absent-mindedly. BLAKE has fallen asleep, and they simply leave him there and walk off.

CUT TO:

EXT. "Dirt Cheap" front window, Day

Picture of "Turkish Jade Girl" hanging right in the display window, the cartoon cigarette mascot-- so depraved.

BACK TO:

EXT. Dirt Cheap Liquor & Cigarettes, 1994, Day

As a final gag, before the "filme" closes, A YOUNG BLACK HOODLUM runs over and picks BLAKE'S pocket before running off screen. Blake looks around with a puzzled expression, looks off screen, and gets up and chases THE PICK-POCKET with the sound of running footfalls. Such, such were the days. . . . .

Narration continues as--

SCENE CHANGES

EXT. Crossroads School, 1994, Day

DAD is dropping 12 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS off at school in the old, beat-up car, with all these ALTERNATIVE KIDS looking on when THE MUFFLER falls to the pavement with an obscene clatter, and then DAD is driving off with the hunk of junk dragging behind the car, shooting sparks. THE HIPSTERS stare at the commotion with hip, River Phoenix-like expressions.

SCENE CHANGES

A long-haired GOTH in mascara, head-tilted back, leans up against the wall and in a deep morbid voice announces:

SCENE CHANGES

EXT. Crossroads School Parking Lot, 1994, Day

Students are loading up on two buses, heading down to the local soccer dome for the all-school game. 12 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS takes his seat, and looks out self-consciously through the window as his bus drives away.

SCENE CHANGES

INT. Soccer Dome, 1994, Day

Kids are sitting in the bleachers, sipping soda as the action goes on out in the artificial turf. OUR HERO self-consciously stalks around behind the scenes, sitting at the bar like some kind of nervous cat, like Franz Kafka trying to look like a significant person with his fancy $130 brown leather jacket. Video games and pinball machines flash in the murk, and a "Red Hot Chili Peppers" video plays on the television monitor, "Give It Away" with the ridiculous tribal earnestness of modern-primitives hopping around in the desert, the television canted down at an angle. He gets up and leaves--

SCENE CHANGES

INT. Soccer Dome Men's Restroom, 1994, Day

12 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS stares hard in the mirror, trying to force himself to take an existential stand-- find the courage to live.

Me. Twelve-and-a-half-years-old. This was it, this was now, and how worthless I felt-- like I could not "rise to the occasion". Maybe at another time, another place, on another planet, but not here.

 

SCENE CHANGES

INT. Soccer Dome Field, 1994, Day

OUR HERO stands out in the soccer field, the wide expanse of green.

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Camera pans up to the ceiling, the blinding honeycomb lights

More shots of the soccer action.

CUT TO

Picture of 1994 Rolling Stone with Winona Ryder on the cover, dressed up like a spiky-haired, adrodgynous pixie in a pair of children's overalls.

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Photo of "Ernie" girl from the back of the Green Day "Dookie" album.

I lumped it all in with that photo of the girl on the back of that "Green Day" album holding up a "Ernie" children's puppet from "Sesame Street" and grinning like an idiot at a concert.

"Why?" "Where?" "What?" "How?". Who knew what this empty signage meant, "like cracking a secret code" of young snarkiness, but the marketers were hard at work feeding "this biggest nothing in history". Yes, with one goal in mind-- profit.

 

SCENE CHANGES

Enter Mock "MTV" Segment

EXT. Street Mural, 1994, Day

A blonde bimbo in a bandana, an obviously "fake" representative of an MTV-like television network, is cheerily reporting "from the front lines" of cutting edge street culture-- this segment brought to you by Altoids, "the curiously strong mints"-- and is talking to the radical young skateboarders, musicians, and artists standing around like fine-boned Neanderthals, for all the lack of mental sharpness-- because all they know is "what they do". The sponsors of this television spot know they can harness this "Just do it" attitude to effect movement and change, namely viewer traffic down to the local mall all across America, wherever MTV is beamed into homes and wherever "in" magazines are sold. Follow "The Pied Pipers" of these shiftless youths, who for a second apparently "have some kind of key to existence", stand on the other side of the line drawn in "the sands of cool" although "they sure are boneheaded".

The "newscaster" moves from kid to kid, all 18-24, until she comes to a certain 12 YEAR-OLD WHO SHALL NOT BE NAMED. He looks around, terrified, wide-eyed, mortified to be on camera, then holds up what he has to contribute to this "prepackaged" R.J.R. Nabisco event-- a very crude, very sloppy, very childish rendition of Metallica's "Master of Puppets" album cover done in black felt pen. It looks like something a disturbed 9-year old would draw in art class. In fact, 12 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS did draw this in art class, and was sent to the school psychologist back at Wydown, just to make sure he didn't find dead, decayed animals and eat them.

THE BOY goes on inarticulately about why Metallica is his favorite band, but this is not going along with the boxed-in corporate program. This album is from 1986 and is "old-hat", not geared toward selling the showroom's newest models and accessories for the newest, hipest, street-smart lifestyle. for The bimbo nods, pretends to care, and as 12 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS is yanked off screen by an adult arm with a "HEY!" she completes her insincere stand-up for MTV, "because the cutting edge is what matters and we're here to weed out the old and sick towards a trans-cultural millennium where the losers are thrown to the wolves".

SCENE CHANGES SUDDENLY

CUT TO:

Clip of fierce wolves approaching the camera and snarling like wild beasts

SCENE CHANGES

FADE IN

EXT. Colorado Summercamp, 1994 (Morning)

The camera opens on the hilltop of a Colorado camp, catching the spectacular view of the scrubland mountains

But can't we send him to a cheaper camp? When he came back last time from this place he was listening to heavy metal! We ought to send him to the YMCA and teach him some moral values!

 

Dad grunts in noncommittal

SCENE CHANGES

EXT. Boy's Cabin, Nearby Creek, 1994, Late Afternoon

Some older boys (15, 16, 17 years old) find a stinking old cow skull in a creek running by the cabins, wrap it in a blue bandanna, and mount it up on a stake. These are rough, rich, spoiled kids with limited, cynical horizons sent off to the military academies because of bad discipline problems, here at this pricey camp for 5 weeks in order to keep them off the parents' hands, nouveau rich stock-brokers from the Sunbelt and further west, California even. Problem children without much of a sense of humor, or purpose or destiny, even if it is all an absurd cartoon seen through a certain author's eyes. But these are the heavy metal youth, and this is no "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" but "Dillon & Dustin's Jail-House Sleepover".

SCENE CHANGES

INT. Maroon Bells (Older Boys') Cabin, Late Afternoon

The kids are sitting on their bunks, trading pornography and heavy metal tapes-- the most recent corporate offerings from Metallica, Megadeth, and Pantera as Danzig's "Mother" plays in the background on the counselor's boombox. The counselor in question, is a 6' 4" soldier from the Air Force base named BIFF who understands the reality of the REAL "Boy's Life" that you wouldn't find in the kids' magazine and lets it be.

SCENE CHANGES

INT. Shingle Peak (Next Oldest Boys') Cabin, Late Afternoon

This is the adjunct to "Maroon Bells", full of rotten 13 and 14 year-old's. YOUNG MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS is now a little bit older, his hair longer like his heavy metal heroes, and is included with this crowd. No less mean than the older kids, leaning back in their bunks with their hands clasped behind their heads, they tell stories about how their privileged neighborhoods sound like war zones of neglected youth up to no good. Drug dealers, paying bullies to break enemies' bones, a disturbed young man laying on the roof of his house and picking kids off their bikes with a bb gun. They talk about the twisted tale, fact mixed with legend, of the whole Kurt Cobain heroin/suicide nexus that's a far sight removed from an overweight boy who happens to take in to many Oreo cookies washed down with milk. All of this is extremely unhealthy, and they're "mean as snakes". I'm listening to this with rapt attention, like Forrest Gump taking it all in "as Gospel".

SCENE CHANGES

EXT. Camp Swimming Pool, 1994, Late Afternoon

Rude, wealthy, flitting, RICH GIRLS-- 14, 15, 16 years old-- are standing around the grass by the pool, hanging out, with their arms crossed-- talking about how much they related to Trent Reznor of "Nine Inch Nails" with such piteous, dramatic songs as "Happiness is Slavery", how they talked their best friend out of swallowing a jar of sleeping pills, how they were members of PETA-- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals-- and how River Phoenix was a member and cried the time his girlfriend ordered lobster salad at a Hollywood restaurant, and "wasn't it so tragic that he died outside the Viper Room on Halloween". How one of them knew a retarded boy who vowed to commit suicide at the age of 27 like Kurt Cobain and "wasn't that sad?".

(As they talk, CUT TO A MONTAGE of the various pathetic characters they're talking about, both icons and commoners and what this says about the woeful, dramatic culture we live in. . . . . across between "Max-X" extreme television, the super-market tabloids, and a Mark Twain sketch.

CUT TO:

Clip of "Forrest Gump" when the retarded southern man in a white-spat suit, in complete simple-hearted earnestness, like a blown feather, reckons "Life is like a box of chocolates. . . . . you never know what you're gonna get".

SCENE CHANGES

EXT. Camp Swimming Pool, 1994, Late Afternoon

The spoiled girls effuse that "Forrest Gump" is so moving, the simple-heartedness of a retarded man. The boys repeat that line over and over in order to impress them with their sincerity, making it so down-home and southern that it looses all connection from the movie. If something is worth doing once, it's worth doing a thousand times and the spoiled bitches think its great, having no sense of balance or reasonable proportion.

Then I tried mouthing that line-- wondering if some of the earnest nature of that gosh-dern magical retarded man would rub off on me!

 

OUR HERO starts in after the others, but they shake their heads and utter "shut-up" with absolute contempt as if he's spoiled "the magic" with his sense of off-timing.

Back to the swimming pool. A jaded older boy, as a calculated measure, announces "Sometimes I feel like, so suicidal". The girls cross their arms in trendy fashionable social concern and say, "Like, that's so sad".

SCENE CHANGES

EXT. Camp Swimming Pool, 1994, Night

12 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS is leaning over the pool at night in a suicidal depression, the moon reflected off the tranquil waters to the sound of crickets. He keeps leaning over, gradually-- transfixed, hypnotized by his own despair until he falls in. Commonsense prevails as he thrashes around in the water, uttering "IT'S COLD!" and swims over to the ladder in order to climb out, soaking wet and looking ridiculous as he pads off across the concrete and into the green grass.

SCENE CHANGES

ENTER "Searing Eyes of Vedder" Montage/Essay (Details will follow)

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PICTURE of "Let me Drown" from the cover artwork of Soundgarden's "Superunknown" album as "Black Hole Sun" plays, a warped Generation-X anthem that sums up the twistedness of the times, that feels like mold growing under a campus radiator in Seattle for its spirit of "little people" alternative liberation that can not be denied by conservative cultural forces. This is "their hour".

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Clips from "Black Hole Sun" video, when folks of a local disenchanted suburban community of cruddy conformity are warped by computer animation-- apparently some kind of million-dollar-selling "anti-corporate" statement rotating on MTV constantly.

CUT TO

Clip of groveling beggars in India taking whatever the Western cameramen and journalists will throw at them. Food, coins, clothing, anything they can spare as "white gods of plenty". Why, there are even "the shit dogs" on the streets-- the scavengers who eat the unthinkable, panting around with their tongues hanging out.

SCENE CHANGES

"Black Hole Sun" continues

CUT TO:

Clips of the office buildings and work stations in New York City where "Rolling Stone" magazine and MTV television is produced. What seems apparent is that this is just a smoothly running corporate operation that can't really answer one's yearning for meaning-- they're just a business. There's "spiritual man" who feels, then "economic man" who tinkers around inside the system and does not resonate with the quest for "soul" as strongly-- mostly missing the point when you try to talk about such things.

OUR HERO continues to speak, tightening his voice with the intensity of an explorer, a mystic, a young Indiana Jones disciple searching for "the crystal skull" on a quest to nowhere. (-- But it makes for high drama!)

I had the impression-- like the whispered mysteries in the Catholic Church-- that MTV and Rolling Stone headquarters and Hugh Hefner's "Playboy Mansion" was like a warehouse or something-- "The Secret Archives of the Vatican", almost-- where they kept "all the answers". The holy objects, the secret documents, the sacred parchments, and where that "hip, hot, happening party raging somewhere in the night" went on where all the cool, significant people in the world hung out.

As a media offering, every once-in-a-while they'd trot out someone-- a famous icon-- who'd make their pronouncements to be taken "as gospel", someone who had the license to speak over us because they had scaled the wall of fortune & fame and "had seen the other side of the mountain". For instance, could this "Rolling Stone" cover be taken as some kind of index of mystical, occult "truth"?

 

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Rolling Stone cover of goofy Drew Barrymore sticking out her tongue with her eyes rolled back in her head.

SOUND EFFECT: "Honking Goose". This is meant to underscore the ridiculousness of my young train of thought. . . . .

HONK! HONK!

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Picture of "Question Mark"

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Picture of Winona Ryder, very questionable-looking, from 1994 Rolling Stone Magazine as voice-over continues:

MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS

Yes!