GALAXY MICHAEL
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 VI
"November Rain"
FADE IN
BLACK SCREEN WITH TITLE
MUSIC: "November Rain" by Guns N' Roses-- an epic ballad of whimsical, noble gentleness that goes on and on, practically becoming "bogged down" in its baroque symphony of feeling. Very much like the psyche of MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS at the time, it is blocky and heady and overwrought though the intention is beautiful. The video is somewhat pompous, and has wedding scenes in a cathedral, and then sweeping helicopter shots of a clapboard Protestant church out in the middle of the windswept prairies. The average young scamp would think it was "a little much" and really wouldn't understand. The song is meant to suggest that MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS hasn't really "changed with the times" or "gone with the flow", but is still as stately and butt-headed as ever.
INT. Michael's Third Floor Lair, '94 or '95, Pre-Dawn
As the chords of "November Rain" announce themselves gently with the synthesized violins in the background, THE BOOM-BOX in the other room turns itself on with the alarm function at 4:55 AM and wakes 14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS out of bed with a swelling volume, amplifying the song. He runs over from the bedroom and turns it down, sitting there on the zebra-striped couch and tasting his mouth in the dim lamplight-- looking sleepy and contented.
This is his third-floor suite, his "hang out" area, where he does all his reflecting. He listens to music here while doing homework and plays the SUPER NINTENDO hooked up to an OLD-SCHOOL T.V. You can call this place, "The Walled Garden" which will be explained later but you can consider it like "a womb" of personal growth where the boy slowly becomes a man, no matter how misguided.
MUSIC still plays.
INT. Mom's Kitchen, '94 or '95, Pre-Dawn
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS prepares breakfast, spreading cream cheese on bagels. He takes THE RECHARGEABLE BATTERIES out of the CHARGER plugged into the wall, and puts them into the yellow SONY WALKMAN.
MUSIC still plays.
EXT. Suburban Street, '94 or '95, Dawn
14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS, now with long hair, is walking down the street to the music with his headphones on, deep in reflective concentration, carrying "THE WALKMAN" as always. Time has passed. He appears a lot more personally secure and hopeful as a progressive young man.
MUSIC still plays, demonstrating the utter hypnosis of his swirling thoughts.
INT. Bally's Gym Front Desk, '94 or '95, Dawn.
14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS arrives at the gym where his card is swiped through the machine by a portly black woman behind the counter with platinum curls greeting him with fine cheer.
MUSIC still plays, an absurd slow-motion rhythm as we cut to--
INT. Bally's Gym "Killing Floor", '94 or '95, Dawn
Fitness enthusiasts are "working out" blindly, heaving for the life of them on the treadmills and bikes, hypnotized by their pain, like oxen in a yoke.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
Whatever you want to say about what I had seen and heard, over time I learned that we need revolutions to be reminded of their futility.
MUSIC still plays.
CUT TO
Picture
of busted pasteboard wall and a sign that reads, "LET THIS SERVE AS A WARNING: There is a time and a place to practice
secret ninja skills. The basement isn't it"
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.) And if it's something I also figured out from camp with
those fine women, if you want good things you have to work for them
honorably instead of looking around for "the cheap fuck" which
you're not going to get anyway. So give up looking for it, imagining
that it actually exists somewhere. [CUT TO COVER of Adam Sandler Comedy CD, "They're
All Going to Laugh at You"-- the cover where he's putting on a
world-weary expression like a real "bad-ass" "in-the-know". Then there's
the inside sleeve when he's putting on a goofy, mean-spirited expression
like "a real dirt-bag". As the scene focuses on this latter shot, an
audio clip plays when he voices an obnoxious Mexican buffoon exclaiming,
"FUCKIN' SHIT!"]
[THIS IS DIRECTLY CONTRASTED BY A PICTURE of a bare-chested Teutonic Viking chick standing at a flaming altar, suggesting the Elluysian mysteries and occult yearning as the narration continues. . . . . obviously there's a huge difference between what is happening on the outside and how MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS sees things]
But yet in its own strange way, there can be a secret desire for movement, for change, for "the philosopher's stone" that grants eternal life. . . . . the impulse for magic and mysticism that pops up between the cracks in the sidewalk, "that which just won't die" by embracing death.
[CUT TO PICTURE of "Vanitas" Painting by an unknown artist from the 17th century, meant to suggest alchemy and the scientific revolution and uncanny potential in the air]
I was a mystic, a Kabbalist, an esoteric, an ascetic, and quietly held on to the belief that the dawn of a new era was coming within my generation-- just as certainly as every batch of humans throughout all of history were convinced that they were living in "the end times", that "the circle would be completed", rooted in this need to have some kind of closure or answer in our lives as we waited around for "the day that never comes".
[CUT TO SHOT OF A METEOR STREAKING ACROSS THE NIGHTTIME SKY]How else do you make sense of the awkward, frustrated life you lead?
[CUT TO PICTURE, a cover from "The Saturday Evening Post" drawn by Norman Rockwell that shows a rotund, middle-aged couple dancing a holiday jig under the mistletoe]
[THE CAMERA DOES A CLOSE-UP on the painting and shows a fat, horny devil about "to move in for the kill", relative to the confines of his time]
Revolution without risk. . . . It's the reason why a kid like me grew long hair, or had a subscription to "Rolling Stone" magazine, or settled on a kind of muddled socialism in his politics and figured that he would grow up to become a social worker or something. Not "a great man", but "a good man".
That seemed like the safest ticket!
[CUT TO PICTURE of an middle-aged woman slipping into elderliness who looks like an ineffectual, spongy social democrat-- so much this way, that she's REVOLTING-- and a little "chipmunk voice" comes on that squeaks, "We'll fight for change!"]
MUSIC DIES DOWN AS WE ENTER:
EXT. St. Louis Mid-County Library, Night, '94 or '95
This is a formidable, low-slung old building constructed in the 1950's in the heart of downtown Clayton, a wealthy business district full of lawyers and investment counselors that work in high-rise office buildings which merges seamlessly with the shops & restaurants & old suburban houses.
INT. St. Louis Mid-County Library, Night. '94 or '95
Here is the library, cleanly yet "old-school" and "on top of things" with a dim yellow glow. The atmosphere implies "good citizenship" and children's books that have an image of a little puppy pulling along a toy wagon in its teeth.
INT. St. Louis Mid-County Library Tables, Night. '94 or '95
14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS works at a desk, books and binders all spread out in an orderly fashion. He is quite the studious young man, all but dipping a quill in an ink pot.
The camera captures the stillness of the library, the librarians, the patrons sitting in a chair and pompously reading a book. Above it all, the skylights that shine with the white-wash glare of the windows and the black level of night outside in the nippy air.
As a throwback to the movie, "A Christmas Carol" with George C. Scott. there is THE SOUND OF A POCKET-WATCH from the movie. OUR HERO looks up and beholds that it is 8:45 and that the library will be closing soon.
He gathers up his things in an orderly manner, and puts them in his leather satchel bag.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
Ah, the romance of the scholar. The idea that history is reasonable and is climbing upward, that we were standing on the peak of all striving and progress in the world.
However, there seemed to be no romance in my life. . . . .
That a girl would come along-- a nice, perky, elfin girl who would listen and understand me-- my need to be wild (-- within limits) and to bop around to "thrash metal".
INT. St. Louis Mid-County Library Night. '94 or '95
As OUR HERO grabs a drink at a drinking fountain in the hallway by the exits, A GIRL appears faintly, like a ghost. A figment of his imagination. A young, cute redhead with a page-like haircut and big brown eyes who can't be any more than 14 years old, his age.
They walk arm-in-arm out of the library. She shivers because it's cold, and he removes HIS FLANNEL COAT and helps her put it on. Then they walk home through the night with the quiet sounds of passing traffic.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.) The cold, clammy shawl of autumn has a way of bringing
out pagan attitudes that would thought disappeared once we left "The Old
World". Halloween "haunted house" attractions, this annual autumn
"homecoming" out in a cornfield that welcomes the coming November rains
when it begins to get chilly and look especially "medieval" with St.
Louis' long tradition of church and university spire.
CUT TO: NIGHTTIME PICTURES of local St. Louis Basicalla and the main Washington University Hall in the absolute stillness, a hush in the air.
EXT: Silo-X Haunted House Attraction, '94 or '95
This is an asphalt area outside "the horror show" full of teenagers standing around in self-conscious cliques with bursts of shrill laughter. Backward caps, heavy metal and grunge rock t-shirts with skulls and muffled teenaged angst, the wretchedness of the condition, as girls in jean shorts and flannel shirts cross their arms and look around, trying to appear occupied. A long line snakes up to a wall where sits the entrance, whence they let in kids a few at a time. Meanwhile, television monitors are mounted up on poles and lead people in with a televised intro that hardly anyone is paying attention to.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.) Adrenaline, girls, candy wrappers, puke in the parking
lot, and mock-death-- now that's what plays up to this night of the
young! Where you shrug and can't really do much for your neighbor, with
you
yourself desperate to "fit in". . . . . not to stand out as a teenaged "freakazoid"
and that pointing & laughter of "the geek show".
CUT TO: MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS & WINONA RYDER'S YEARBOOK PHOTOS
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
But this is our holiday, our youth carnival before matters get too frosty and serious-- before school really begins to grind down like a tractor combine in a field of corn, or even the harvesting of wild things before the wheat is separated from the chaff and sold to market, the inferior materials burned to ashes.
Before the good times are taken away. . . . . before we have to grow up, the lot of us stranded across this "no man's land" of adolescence that no one can seem to explain.
EXT.
Close-Up of a Television Monitor
A nervous reporter interviews a sector commander in military fatigues. The sergeant denies rumors about mutants, ghosts, and interdimensional rifts on this particular military research site, even as otherworldly groans shudder in the background. The lid of "disinformation" and "cover-up" can't hold the truth in check as gunshots are fired off-screen and the camera pans back on the reporter closing out the broadcast. The image fades, only to resurrect itself on video.
EXT. Silo-X Haunted House Attraction, '94 or '95
From directly the camera's point of view, the line moves forward-- the level of laughter getting more shrill because of the nervousness, like kids waiting outside the dentist's office-- then forward again-- into the mouth "of the beast", a giant painted mouth with demonic eyes painted on carnival plywood. It's too late to back out now!
A man in his late '30s, perhaps a little bit old for something like "Silo X" with his greasy hair, a bald spot, "mutton chop" whiskers, and eyes sticking out over the rim of his eyelids, goes on about "how great this is going to be". He goes on about he's a veteran of Monster Truck rallies and Metallica concerts, and how he comes out here every year.
INT. Silo-X Haunted House Attraction, '94 or '95
Inside, the goers shriek & laugh, crook their arms, and lean back from masked assailants-- their giddy expressions caught in tenths-of-a-second poses from the strobe lights. The black kids move away with particularly elastic, guffawing expressions and a few make a motion as if to sucker-punch the grim-reaper with a chainsaw.
The camera is running around like crazy, and sees lots of neat, nifty things.
But one thing of interest is a wooden bridge-- rolling logs lashed together-- and reeds waving morosely from a fetid pond. And there, lit in red, is a phantom helicopter full of grinning skeleton Air Force men an audio recording of splashing and exploding mortars sends 14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS scurrying away.
EXT. Silo-X Haunted House Attraction, '94 or '95
Kids are stumbling out the back door, looking bewildered and exhilarated like they came out the other side of a roller coaster ride.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
Here in the mid '90s all the "terror" out here was confined to entertainment and teenaged conundrums. But what it was worth, it sure seemed real.
INT. Johnny Brock's Halloween Store '94 or '95
14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS, 10 YEAR OLD JESSE, and DAD push through the glass doors and are browsing through this rather tasteless Halloween store full of cruddy merchandise open all year. JESSE picks up AN "OLD MAN" MASK and juts his chin forward, waving his arms.
14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS picks up AN "OLD LADY" MASK, greenish brown just like the "Old Man" with wispy, gray fake hair and does batter.
14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS
Raymond, I'm your ex-wife! Why did you "leave the seat up"? You're trying to declare me dead so you can collect my insurance!
10 YEAR-OLD JESSE half-dares to laugh with the inappropriateness of this gag while DAD has his hands on his hips, smiling yet cringing like a man who has been skunked by a bad joke.
They push toward the back of the store where a sign says "B 18+ or B Gone unless accompanied by parent or legal guardian". This is a separate room with beads hanging on the door. Going in, they behold "the gory merchandise". Severed hands and feet and stumps of legs and ugly heads in jars. Why, there's even a cheap replica of H.R. Giger's "Alien" standing there and a coffin of a gruesome vampire with a stake through its heart. They're all looking around, suitably appalled, and 14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS cracks a joke about how all this stuff would look cool in a Metallica video from the '80s.
14 YEAR-OLD
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS remarks about the time DAD took them to the flea market
and wouldn't buy him a Metallica shirt.
CUT TO
FLASHBACK
EXT. Outdoor Flea Market Stalls, Autumn of 1993
An assortment of gory Metallica shirts hang up on the rack and there the proprietor sits-- a jaundiced, shaky, gray-skinned "feller" who looks like a grave-digger. He's chewing tobacco and spitting into A DIRTY LIGHT BLUE WASTE CAN, filled with leaves and crud.
12 YEAR OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS pulls on his Dad's arm and says he'll pay him back "with Christmas money" if he buys him that shirt, featured the mummified stump of a skeleton wrapped in bandages, covered in cobwebs, and dripping blood with its brain exposed, because "it's so cool".
DAD sighs, looks down, shakes his head, overwhelmed, a social worker overcome with the image of his sheltered son becoming a neo-Nazi teenaged Satanist sacrificing animals up to "the horned one".
DAD Michael, as a responsible parent I'm not going to buy
you a heavy metal t-shirt. You need Metallica like you need "a hole
in the head".
(Seriously, in lecture tone)
12 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS
But I have several "holes in my head"! Two ears, two eyes, and a mouth that tells you I see it and I want it!
DAD
No, Michael.
12 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS
Pleeeaze?!
DAD
I said "no".
12 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS
What can I do to get you to say "yes"?
DAD
Nothing, but if you're nice to me and behave I'll buy you a used Nintendo game.
12 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS
Alright, alright, alright. So that means I can't have this flag?
12 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS points toward a grisly looking CONFEDERATE FLAG ("SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT") with a grinning skull wearing a cowboy hat that has red, glowing eyes.
FLASHBACK ENDS
Back to Johnny Brock's
INT. Johnny Brock's Halloween Store '94 or '95
14 YEAR-OLD
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS
(Facetiously)
Really, why didn't you buy me the shirt?
DAD
(Resting his hand on the boy's shoulder)
If you have to ask, you'll never know-- my son.
14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS
But it was supposed to be for my Halloween costume! I wanted to go as an "MTV junkie"!
10 YEAR-OLD JESSE
You mean like that old ad in Dad's pile of magazines?
CUT TO PICTURE of "MTV junkie" ad from 1988.
14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS
(Half-angry, half-joking)
You little punk!
DAD intercedes, breaking off the mock scuffle.
DAD
Knock it off, knock it off.
14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS
No, I wanted to walk around with that Metallica shirt, leather jacket, and MTV hat-- holding up a boom-box and blaring heavy metal.
Mom said she would drive me out to the flea market and buy the shirt, but she never got around to it so I had to wear a pure black shirt and carry around my tape player.
DAD
That was a way "to wear out" a perfectly good tape-player. . . . .
SOUND OF DOORBELL
FLASHBACK
Ext. Trick or Treating, 1993.
An ELDERLY JEWISH COUPLE open the door and 12 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS says "trick or treat". Mr. Feuval, in a thick Yiddish accent, supposes that he would like to see "the trick".
THE BOY nods, reaches down and presses "Play" on THE TAPE-PLAYER. . . . . blaring "Fight Fire with Fire" by Metallica, a punishing thrash metal number suggesting the cold finger of death probing your blackened heart. The lead guitar makes a whammy-bar dive, mimicking the downward pull of gravity, then there's the sound of a nuclear bomb rumbling as the song rat-a-tats to an abrupt conclusion.
As he holds up THE BOOM-BOX like an animal control officer duly doing his duty, the YIDDISH couple merely look stunned, not really comprehending.
Mr. Feuval
What else you got up your sleeve?
12 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS
Human sacrifice.
Mr. Feuval
That's nice. . . . .
His wife of 50 years agrees.
They dump TWO FULL-SIZED "SNICKERS" CANDY BARS into my bag, the wife warning me "not to get a tummy-ache".
CUT TO
CAMCORDER FOOTAGE of 12 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS "goofing off" in front of the camera on Halloween night, singing the "Beastie Boys" chorus from "Brass Monkey" while making "the sign of the devil". His AUNT NANCY laughs off-camera, clueless at this petty, pubescent rebellion and insufferableness, egging him on cutely while only a silly friend-of-the-family can.
BACK TO JOHNNY BROCK'S
Ext. Johnny Brock's Halloween Store '94 or '95
As THE FAMILY is walking out, DAD remarks that MICHAEL probably looks like that picture of the heavy metal kid playing "air guitar"-- another ad out of Dad's old stack of magazines.
CUT TO PICTURE of "Explosive Car Audio"
They snicker uproariously then walk to the car.
14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS
Is there still time to go to the Lemp "haunted brewery"?
EXT. Lemp Brewery Courtyard
This is a classic historical landmark of grubby St. Louis German-Catholic beer-glugging history from the 19th century
that gave its all, dropped, and died, your bones ground into dust by the miller's stone. It's alleged that suicides happened in the family and that the grounds are haunted. Maybe it was not enough to put St. Louis on the map, but it's a local story just the same, like gangster lore and other scuzzy things dredged up like an old muddy boot from the Mississippi or even "the stink of the grave".[PART OF THIS DESCRIPTION, WITH PICTURES, WOULD MAKE A GREAT ON-SITE NARRATION]
DAD, 10 YEAR OLD JESSE, and 14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS behold THE TICKET-TAKER BOOTH set up like a snow-cone stand and a sign that says:
$10/Ticket
NO REFUNDS
They ask ourselves "what this is about" and DAD parts with the money from his OLD, SCUFFED-UP WALLET. The HEAVY-SET GOTH LADY stamps their hands with a pumpkin, and security waves them through. Once THE FAMILY turns the corner, they behold a long line snaking endlessly around the courtyard, past the walls-- on and on and on with no telling with how long the wait will be.
Time passes.
THE FAMILY makes aimless small talk, lead on by 14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS making obnoxious suppositions who has an antsy fear of looking out-of-place and socially self-conscious among this aimless rabble. They joke about their old Atari video game system, how they had 200 games, and how most of them stunk. Then how there was the big video game crash of 1983 that nearly buried the industry, all because of "E.T. The Extraterrestrial" and how it was rumored that 100,000 cartridges were plowed under in the desert so the company would never have to look at them again, or perhaps drive up the price.
As 14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS looks over in the distance, he sees a familiar figure shadowed under the orange sodium-arc lights. It's a man dressed up like BEETLEGEUSE from the movie, a title that has a slightly simpler spelling ("Beetlejuice"). He's been paid to work the crowd as "comic relief" from the tedium of waiting, and is making his way around like a redneck mime-- taking a few sneaky steps, then halting, and clowning around. People are looking at him with wide grins, grateful for anything to pass the time.
14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS
Cool, Beetlegeuse!
Time passes. The line advances.
Finally, "BEETLGEGEUSE" makes his way to their part of the line. The man in character asks "if anyone wants to be a hot t.v.", pretends to hear their answer with the whole of his body, cupping his hand to his ear, then slinks around. THE BOYS are laughing, half out of humor and the rest out of self-consciousness for being "singled out". He knows his audience well! Then he makes his way down the line and that's the last we see of him.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
Other than little moments like this, life seemed stripped-down-- without many frills in this time of lunk-headed, mid '90s constipation.
CUT TO "Poster of 'Tommy Boy'".
MUSIC: "November Rain" starts up again.
INT. Crossroads Literature Room, '94 or '95
This is a homey room which almost exclusively caters to the "middle-school crowd". Blankets and beanbag chairs and all sorts of books gathering dust on the shelves. For instance, you might fight 40 paperbacks of a single work of short stories, one that was used to teach a lesson. Marjay teaches-- a rotund, joyous woman who looks like a cross between a union organizer and a blue-collar PTA mom. The emphasis is on a "New-Left" education, the literature of classic 1930's-through-1960's Americana suggesting the romance of progress through history that ignores the crud and degeneration of succeeding generations and overall worthlessness of "the new breed" as students screw around in class. The notion of some kind of continuity with the greatness of past American culture is laughable, but here 14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS is-- a true believer because there's nothing better to believe in.
[THIS DESCRIPTION can play into the narration]
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
To me Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" was a very beautiful play even though the doofuses and dweebs in my grade didn't much know the difference.
As the class frolics, there's 14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS studying the play, somewhat removed.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
"The beauty, the pathos, the ordinariness of everyday life in wholesome, small-town America as we lived out our tiny lives. The earnestness of feeling, how everyone worked together as a community yet had to pull their own weight. No slackers, no 'gold bricks', no poseurs, no pretenders. Just real honest-to-god Americans. "Our Town", the great American play. America; ideal of greatness in simplicity. Believe in wholesome things, and salute the flag. That was its own quiet transcendence, and a true initiation into adulthood. That was truth, that was beauty, and the truth shall set you free!"
CUT TO PICTURE of a hokey HARRY TRUMAN playing the piano at a USO show, a leggy woman leaning on the piano seductively.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.) I knew that we're all differently-abled,
that some are more capable of looking out for our own common interests
than others. Who would look out for them? He would, naturally. The gift
of public service. Not a great man, but a good man. Shy too.
Liberalism-- the faith in the human condition-- that was his
transcendence.
"Getting by, and getting by, and getting by. . . . ."
INT. David Jay's House '94 or '95, Day
14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS is sitting around the computer with his geeky friend, DAVID who's totally into all things "Microsoft". He is the kind of ineffectual young man who would have his nose stuck
in Alexis de Toqueville, caught up in the prestige of the work but not absorbing its cynical lessons about humanity, all while having no idea what is going on around him-- running around with tacky clothes and unruly hair as a kid who's long on ideas, but short on the concept of personal appearance or how others would appraise him.He lives in "The Central West End"
. . . . . San Francisco on the Mississippi. Caught between the rotting vise of north and south St. Louis, this location is the prime gentrified area of the city where all the money sits like honey in a jar, sickly sweet with buzzing cultural events and other frippery. Where the intelligensia lives. Where the politics are liberal. Where the residents see the world through a silken gay pride rainbow veil, or at least a gay-friendly veil, of what's pleasant and high-minded to believe "like a happy little European village" of chocolate-makers and highly-specialized university science at the local Barnes-Jewish hospital.[THESE DESCRIPTIONS can play into the narration]
CUT TO CLIP of old cartoon show, "The Smurfs"
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
Rather like that old cartoon show, "The Smurfs" where you had a bunch of happy, equalitarian sky-blue little men who live in a socialist village off in the forest with white, sack-cloth little hats. They dwell in little mushroom houses by a purling brook under the guidance of "Papa Smurf", a bearded Swiss elder who offers wise guidance as they farm and play and sip honey and ride snails in namby-pamby fraternal bliss. And when someone trendy like Barack Obama comes along, there they are happily leap-frogging and whistling on the flute and painting and skipping and composing love poetry and not getting any work done and not growing out of their infantile lovesick habits. And at night, they sleep-- tightly nestled, metaphorically speaking-- two to a bed and snore softly with their little white sack-cloth hats on as always. ZZZZZZZZZ. What I'm trying to tell you through this allegory, is that these liberals have no dicks. Just like the Smurfs.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
Or behind closed doors, they're on the internet message boards hopping up and down on their thumbs while squawking how much they love Winona Ryder in a big ring behind their computers, the communal "personality fuck" of the modern simulacrum era where the Christian god has no home. If only that actress could get them to proselytize in a multi-level marketing scheme, she could become a savvy trillionaire.
[CUT TO PICTURE of Winona Ryder in a black turtle-neck jacket with her collar wrapped up high above her face, covering her nose with her eyes "bugged out" dramatically]
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
(So long as she doesn't have to shake hands. . . . .)
[CUT TO VARIOUS PICTURES of geeky things subcultures of computer nerds would be into in the mid-90's. A "hot" model with a "come-hither" pout, a screenshot of "DOOM" when the player is up against various beasts from hell, jpegs of dorky aliens from "Star Trek", a screen-saver of macaroni doing "The Macarana Dance", a Pac-Man like video game that has Bill Clinton's head chasing after cheeseburgers, pursued by Republican "pigs". This is the crud n' slime of humanity, laid out bare without a filter!]
To whatever god, gods, or goddesses which we choose to kneel upon the face of this mysterious earth-ball, perhaps we know a whole lot less than we think we do. Yes, guffawing at the grasping tentacles of Microsoft and Lord Bill Gates that controls 95% of the computing market and is mostly oblivious to the cries of its subjects-- kind of like the evil empire out of the "Star Wars" movies. What is headquarters up in Seattle but "The Death-star" and its overworked employees "Micro-serfs" that slave like peasants on the manor?
[CUT TO PICTURE of Bill Gates as "Darth Vader", looking like an uber-nerd]
Yes, as we weigh unlike essences in the public square like amateur pop culture philosophers who think themselves clever and profound despite the pressing silence of the cosmos that has no answer to this foolishness, just the shrieking of pestiferous starlings who mess the cyber sidewalks. This, as we lecture on like "little professors" as tremors of the great, unknown earth rumble beneath the lectern, practically spilling the water glass as we go on obliviously.
[CUT TO SCENE of University Seminar room and a junior professor lecturing in a bow-tie, looking very geeky and self-satisfied as he laughs with cutesy jokes. The room shakes, and his water glass nearly spills]
[CUT TO SHOT of 14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS staring deep into the computer screen]
I found myself becoming drawn in by the interface of Microsoft-DOS computing. Whole worlds were represented in that operating system, built on the moldy "hack/slash" bones of the early 1980's-- the scratched out lines of text from 100 million plugged into an online grid and devoted to game cheats, jokes, and poetic doggerel. The evidence of human concerns, lordly and base-- of loneliness, awkwardness, and obsessive-compulsion-- gathered out there in the anonymous electronic ether like gunk collected beneath the fingernails when you scraped an index finger beneath the windowsill of a church rectory, the inhabitants of the electronic cathedral either looking at pornography or gazing up at the stars.
What existed out there was one big cry for "meaning", for some kind of "answer", but could not be given in a cut-and-dried revelation at the passive, chair-bound, ass-end of the 20th century where tax protesting was "big talk", good taste was questionable, and lock-picking was best left to those with nerve. Like some kind of "poor man's James Bond", a gawky little creep holding up a hand of $100 bills with a sly, secret smile as a daydreamin' figment of someone "who beat the system" before gliding off arm-in-arm with Vanna White like swans.
[CUT TO PICTURE of "little creep"]
[CUT TO PICTURE of "Mastering Pac-Man paperback from 1982]
It's like a paperback book from 1982 entitled "Mastering Pac-Man" that "lets you in" on a secret world of beating video games, brought to you by the same type of individual who wrote a book about outfoxing the Keno dealers at Vegas with card-counting tricks that only work for mentally-gifted man-monkeys with super-fast reflexes. Or even beating the world of stocks on electronic trading networks back in another time, another place lost to the mists of crisp, up-to-date history. Who knows what happened to the author since? But I have an image of him standing around in a white polyester suit honking nasally after a cocktail waitress and "getting nowhere fast".
[CUT TO SHOT of LITTLE GEEK honking after a cocktail waitress in a modern casino, but failing miserably]
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
Collective underground fantasy aside, the solution to the world's problems was evidently the rational answer found in democratic liberalism and FDR-style "big government"-- my friend and I mulling on "The Rights of Man" and all but lacking the powdered wigs and buckled shoes at the 18th century Constitutional Convention and nodding at the righteous necessity of internationalism to fight Hitler as we played strategy games on the P.C. that broke down warfare into digital units, boxed history into a gung-ho CGI cartoon swooping around with unnatural movements, and ignored the infinite primacy and calculus of the human soul that defies a programmer's orderly algorithms.
[CUT TO SHOT of gung-ho World War II fighter pilot video game animation]
Pathetically enough, as the average purview of the internet citizens (-- or "netziens"!) kept getting cruder and more degraded, trading in bestiality jpegs and offering up praises to Kevin Smith movies like slime and mold and filth breaking out on the Lincoln Memorial. The quality of a democracy will always depend on the moral quality and sense of high purpose found inside the hearts of its people. My friend would respond by logic-chopping away the idea of morality and any kind of upward-coursing purpose in the universe until standards became meaningless, asides from pure logic.
I really didn't know what to say to that at the time, only somehow hoping that the world would merge into some kind of "metaphysical completeness" and all contradictions would be magically smoothed out with "the end of history" which I was convinced was "right around the corner".
[CUT TO PICTURE of Garrison Keillor looking gravely concerned in a comical way, suggesting the flimsiness of the human materials on which I was "putting down my chips"]
MUSIC ON: Metallica's "Orion"
INT. Michael's Third Floor Lair, '94 or '95, Sunset
The room is suffused with smoky, yellow lamplight. Very wistful and atmospheric with the song that suggests a wounded man on the hunt, on a journey through the woods. With a wound in his side, he lays down to camp and looks up at the stars in the sky with the constellations. It plays into notions of myth, destiny, and "the good little hunter or soldier" pondering his place in the cosmos.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
You could have never understood unless you were here with me. This was my "3rd
Floor Lair", my walled garden where I got away perhaps to think too much, where
my personality grew and consolidated, like roots deep in the wet earth. It was
the most secret and sensitive side of my personality that I showed to absolutely
nobody, a very strange period that I straddled the line between self-indulgence
and honesty as I struggled to become a man. Time to be alone and "think", to
eternally sort out my thoughts and feelings and perhaps "over-calculate" the
rudiments of life like a young Jedi knight mediating in a cave, an unknown
quantity wondering what he'd do in real life should "life" ever really become
"real".
CUT TO CLIP of Luke Skywalker meditating in a cave from "The Empire Strikes Back", trying to levitate the crashed space-ship out of the stinking, primeval swamp as "Yoda", perhaps, looks on and tells him to concentrate and "Use the Force".
INT. Crossroads Hallway '94 or '95, Day
A girl named LEANNE walks down past the lockers in slow motion past the grunge and punk and goth kids, if not developmentally-disordered cretins-- a classically-beautiful blonde girl about 17 or 18 years old who looks like a more WASPy version of "Taylor Swift", the home-grown, impossibly-beautiful country star but only with straight hair. She has the bearing of the movie actress, Jennifer Connelly-- which is to say, completely professional, completely aware of how desirable she is. If life is a "caste system", she doesn't question why she's on top and others struggle down in the gnarled, twisted, primeval swamp of self-analysis and second-guessing. The string of her soul vibrates cleanly in the cosmic ether-- utterly uncomplicated compared to the fractal musings of an overly-intense young man who dreams about her in a mystical tableau.
[PART OF THIS DESCRIPTION can possibly go into the narration]
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
My heart was with Leanne that winter break. . . . . the thought of her apparently angelic nature kept me thawed. As it would for what seemed like an ice age up on my lonely third floor.
INT. Crossroads Basement Storage Area, '94 or '95
LEANNE and 14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS are rummaging through boxes in the school basement storage area, a charming enough conversation when she calls over her shoulder how she "wants to be a social worker or something".
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
We worked together in "year book", the idea of "go-go" good-time memories that eulogized the less-than-stellar course of events in a cheese-flake caricature and you wondered if this cheery representation of reality would ever match the real thing. . . . .
While others pouted and slacked and flaunted their perversions, Leanne was the 'can-do' volunteer on top of things-- the golden girl who duly formatted everything on "Adobe Pagemaker", a figurative sombrero draped over the computer in an easy, 1-2-3 user-friendly application of personal computing. Happy as a siesta or a tech geek smiling over his nifty, magical gadgets and how a demonstration might actually impress a pretty girl with the press of a button.
INT. Questioning Chamber/Interview Room, Present Day, Time Unknown
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS once again faces the camera in the old familiar position, his folded in front of him, lifting his thumbs occasionally for emphasis.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
What you have to understand is that one-sided young love is like a Ouija board of intense ideals, and so long as you kept your feelings to yourself you can't lose. . . . .
INT. Crossroads History/Geography Room, '94 or '95, Day
The room sits in a corner of the school, near the brick wall and glass doors. One enters through a set of doors and then sees this classroom through a window. It is very close to the wide, waiting world as a teacher named JUDY lectures. A white-haired, middle-aged woman who oftentimes goes on "Ms. Magazine" rants about how women usually have to "hold up everything", from households and earning an income to the natural world where lionesses do all the hunting while the alpha male sleeps all day with the right to mate, and that's about it. She hopes that with all of her haranguing lectures, holding her palms out, asking for a little bit of common sense, that the lesson will be imparted down to the next generation.
Meanwhile the grunge, punk, and goth kids simply sit around and agree-- whatever will get them out of doing work. Then LEANNE comes through the door gracefully, like pure triumph.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
The room seemed bathed in a golden light when she came inside, so much glory above so much grime. The less she said, the more perfect and mysterious she appeared. And how I would keep my feelings to myself for a very, very long time.
INT. Michael's Third Floor Bedroom, '94 or'95
Here 14 YEAR OLD "MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS sits in his spare, neat bedroom. It is kept meticulous to match his drive toward "perfection", but yet a lingering depression remains-- a lack of "fullness". Like a man trying to get through an obstacle course, but not quite "making it".
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
The pathos of time, the shawl of late autumn weather, how nothing really changes with the cycle of expectation and humanity's pitiful offering. It was the afternoon when school ended and winter break started that the phone rang. I didn't pick it up, because I didn't think it was for me in a million years. . . . .
The orange phone rings, and 14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS just looks down at it, non-affected.
INT. Third Floor Hallway, '94 or '95
There is the shot of the narrow hallway, padded with gray carpet, and the sound of MOTHER'S voice calling up the steps.
MOTHER
MI
CHAEL! PHONE!
14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS
WHO IS IT?
MOTHER
A GIRL!
INT. Third Floor Hallway, '94 or '95
There is a moment when the lad looks completely surprised; this is all coming so fast, as if he has "a date with destiny". He gulps and picks up the orange receiver, the buttons glowing a fluorescent yellow-green in the darkening gray that sweeps over his room.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
It was "The Lady-Bug", a girl in my grade, inviting me to her ice skating party. It was her 15th birthday, and she was calling up the whole grade. In my deep, reflective mood, I was touched-- the fact that I was finally part of things.
INT. Clayton Ice Skating Rink "Lacing-Up" Room, '94 or '95
14 YEAR OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS walks into the spare, tiled room with a long bench to see THE LADY-BUG surrounded by her friends. She is a short, stocky, pretty girl wearing a stocking cap and mittens. Perhaps one is reminded a little bit of "The Charlie Brown Christmas Special" with the jazz music that plays with Cold War-era existentialist pathos when you live your life within limits, here in our sparse mid '90s economy. The camera focuses in on them in slow motion, and what is captured is the sadness of this moment.
[Part of this description can play into the narration]
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
I didn't know what to do or say. I could have cried, she was so beautiful. And
here I was, a young knight once again on some kind of strange adventure
"where he didn't really fit in".
I held out $15 and chivalrously told her to "go buy some Metallica CD's". . . .
. it was the only thing I could think to say.
[THE NARRATOR SAYS "go buy some Metallica CD's" in exaggerated Kingston English
while 14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS holds out the money like a combination
between an aristocrat, a heavy metal road manager, and a total shitbag]
THE LADY-BUG accepts the money, not really understanding the joke, and
goes back to her friends. EXT. Clayton Ice Skating Rink, '94 or '95 Kids are gliding along the ice skating rink with ease,
laughing-- evidently a skill they have mastered while I plod after them
clumsily, holding on to the railing but getting nowhere fast. MUSIC FIRES UP AFTER AN INTERVAL, "November Rain" by Guns N'
Roses taking on where it left off
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
There they went, laughing, gliding along with ease-- while I struggled along the
best I could. The fact was, this analogy rung true for a lot of things. But I
was always more comfortable, gliding with ease, up in my head. CUT TO CLIP of "November Rain" video, wherever the song may be
at that point with its gracefully-shot footage. The video is a veritable
symphony, the band playing in a great hall. Wedding scenes. Stately dances. The
knightly, chivalric archetype that is perhaps a little bit too cerebral for its
own good.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
Life seemed like a symphony made just for me, and it was such a beautiful thing. EXT. Moving Scene, Christmas Season, 1995. Into one house and into another, setting up furniture onto the
rug with artwork hanging on the walls and MOTHER putting on a sheepish,
embarrassed, half-laughing expression that she wants all the couches moved again
because the rug is "off" by a quarter of an inch. Begrudgingly, DAD and 14
YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS do it for this temperamentally-flaky woman. In
the meantime, 10 YEAR-OLD JESSE watches "Star Trek" in the other room. In another scene a long, striped green couch is hoisted through
the second-story window by crane as workman manage it below in white hard-hats. Then the workers wheel out MOTHER'S CRAZY $4000 SNOT-GREEN
STATUE and lay it down on the patio. Evidently, it's supposed to be an elderly
woman half-leaning up against a curling tree-branch like a bicycle wheel.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.)
We moved that season and I lost my sacred third floor lair. I had learned so
much up there, like Throreau at Waldon Pond.
But what you have to remember about that character, was that he was a child of
leisure and went into town every week to buy provisions! It's very easy to have
the luxury to feed off of abundance and to reflect all you want. . . . . usually
for the worse. EXT. "The Loop Shopping District", Christmas Season, 1995. This is like a little slice of New York City with the shops and
diverse crowd milling up. Every year the town pays a certain amount of money to
decorate this shopping strip with "holiday cheer"-- banners and lights. The
feeling is improvisational saxophone buskers and winos and hipsters and old
counterculture types, if not university students. INT. Maylee Maylow knick-knack shop, Christmas Season, 1995. This is a knick-knack or sort of toy shop that appeals to a
certain brand of silly, goofy female who probably grew up watching to much PBS.
14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS is browsing, because he's never been inside
before. He picks up a boxing Chinese Mandarin puppet, the kind of thing a 14
year-old girl would own-- and flexes the spring over his hand.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.) I went anywhere and everywhere, seeking higher
experience. 14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS looks at a "Magic 8"
fortune-telling ball with great gravity.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.) I silently asked this oracle of a fortune-teller if my
luck was about to change. . . . . The slot reads "MOST CERTAINLY". He smiles down secretly at the
results, a mystic to the end. He looks up, and sees two girls rummaging through
a bin.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.) It turned out to be "The Lady-Bug" and a friend. He goes over to talk to them. The two girls are fish-eyed and vague, as if they're slightly
imbalanced neurologically and uncomfortable inside of their own skin. In any
case, they're not quite "normal" and a little bit "off" which is why they go to
Crossroads in all liklihood. There the three are talking (-- with the sound turned off)
for 30 seconds, then 14 YEAR-OLD MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS turns around and
leaves, happy.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.) She was so adorable. And it hit me. . . . . . that she
could be the one. The one I could share my vast inner world with, show
her what I thought, what I've known. The ruins of what had gone by, like
a magnificent lost Aztec city in the jungle. And all the gold that was
hidden there, how I would give her all I had because I decided that I
loved her. EXT. Michael's New Bedroom, Christmas Season '95 OUR HERO is sitting in his room, staring at the orange
telephone. He halfway reaches out for it, but then draws back.
MICHAEL "LAWLESS" ADAMS (V.O.) I was not much of a small-talker. . . . . and I could
hardly pass for "Disco Charlie". And that's when the insanity started. .
. . .
-------------------
Click here for Part VII:
"The Prisoner"
(Back to the "Galaxy Michael" Index)
----------------------
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