Take One (Jan 1979)

Personal Effects This is a schematic of a screenplay. | wrote it as a bare plot—the characters, locations, and dramatic situations have little coloring, texture, or emotional development. What I’m looking for is a screenwriter who can take this dramatic framework and create a political thriller. The film should be set in Montreal, and the political context must be Canadian. Even though the plot resonates with past US political events, the film will be a metaphor. I want the screenwriter to create a believable Canadian analogy. This may mean altering certain elements of the treatment. The schematic shows the logic but not the feelings or emotions of the characters. I am _ especially interested in the development of the scenes between Jon and Kate. The screenwriter must involve the viewer in the lives of the characters. For instance, what kind of man becomes obsessed with sound effects. What kind of life does he lead, friends does he have? If the climax of the film is to work, the viewer (through Jon) must have a strong emotional investment in Kate. What feelings does she invoke in him? What kind of woman is she? These are just a few of the problems the screenwriter will have to solve in the submitted scenes. . —Brian DePalma 20 TAKE ONE /JANUARY 1979 Jon, a sound effects man, sits behind a 1 mixing console with a producer, a B director, an editor and a mixer. They are mixing a scene in a cheap sex/violence picture. In the scene, a woman sleeping alone in a country cottage is attacked, raped and killed. The scene is photographed through the trees outside her bedroom window. The producer dislikes the sound of the woman’s cries and the sound effects of the wind in the trees. He tells Jon to get some new effects—he’s sick of the same old sounds from Jon’s effects library. Jon promises he'll record some fresh effects. Later that night: Jon leaves his house carrying his recording equipment. @ He drives to a secluded wooded _area overlooking a narrow bridge. Under the bridge moves a turbulent river. Jon climbs to the top of the wooded hill, takes out his tape recorder, gun mike and earphones, and starts recording the wind rustling through the trees. Below him, on the road, a car careens around the corner heading for the bridge. Upon hearing the squealing tires, Jon turns around to face the speeding car. In the process, he bumps the gun mike into a tree, causing a loud pop in his earphones. Suddenly, from the clump of trees directly behind him comes the sound of a gunshot accompanied by a definite puff of white smoke. Below him, the’car’s tire collapses. The car swerves, out of control, crashing off the bridge and into the river. When Jon turns back toward the tree behind him, he sees the dissipating, white gun smoke and hears retreating footsteps. A woman cries out in the night. Jon looks around toward the river. The car sinks under the water. The woman screams again and pulls herself out of the window of the sinking car. Jon rushes down the hill. He drops his equipment in the road and leaps into the river. He reaches the floundering woman and drags her to safety. He rushes to the road, flags down a passing car, pushes her inside and tells the driver to take them both to the nearest hospital. Jon waits at the hospital. Finally the doctor lets him see the woman. She introduces herself as Kate and thanks Jon for saving her. She then tells him there was someone else in the car with her. “Who?” Jon asks. She tells him. Jon is shocked to learn it is a leading political Candidate, a man who was certain to unseat the incumbent head of state. Jon returns to his studio to work on the tape he has just recorded. He transfers the 1/4-inch recording to 35mm magnetic tape. He edits out the mike pop, tire squeal, gunshot, and car crash. He cuts the uninterrupted wind-through-the-trees effect into the sound track of the sex/violence picture. Jon watches a story on a television news program that details the Candi HM date’s tragic accident. The newscaster interviews a motion picture Photographer who saw and filmed the whole accident. The Photographer explains that he just happened to be at the bridge testing out a new high speed lens when the Candidate's car swerved into his camera view. After the car went into the river, the Photographer called the police. Jon stares at the TV screen, perplexed. He didn’t see the Photographer. And if he was there, why didn’t the Photographer rush to help Kate and the Candidate escape from the sinking car? Jon goes to the Photographer's apart ment. A cop is stationed outside. M Jon asks where the Photographer is. The cop asks Jon why he wants to know. Jon tells him thathe wants tosee the film the Photographer took of the accident. The cop says he wants the same thing. The next day, on his way to work, Jon stops by a magazine stand. There, on the cover of a_ national newsweekly, is a photograph of the Candidate’s car crashing off the bridge. Jon buys five copies and rushes to his studio. At his studio, Jon leafs through the magazine. In the article on the Candidate’s fatal accident is the Photographer’s film printed frame by frame. In one frame, Jon sees himself holding his microphone, standing on top of the hill with the trees behind him. But in the frame just before the blowout Jon does not see the puff of gun smoke. What happened to that? Why was it edited out? The article states that the front tire of the Candidate's car blew out, causing it to crash off the bridge. Jon is incredulous. He cuts the single frames out of the magazine and photographs them one by one, with a movie camera, to recreate the original motion picture. He shoots one frame of clear leader for the missing puff of smoke. He sends the film over to the lab to be developed and printed.