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By Mark Mc Fadden
[EXTERIOR. NIGHT. DOC'S HOUSE]
Seen from above, the house is located in the canyons outside Los Angeles and is isolated from neighbors. An NRO DELTA TEAM is getting into position for an assault on DOC'S HOUSE. They are carrying silenced weapons.
POV tracks to front door and phases through the door to travel down the dark hallways to DOC who is poised in a dark doorway with a .45.
DOC'S VOICE: This is Uncle Doc saying "Good night kids!"
DOC swings out of the doorway and pops into Weaver stance. POV swings behind him to see his view. A NRO DELTA is uncovered while changing position and DOC gets him with a head shot.
DOC'S VOICE: "Good Ni-ight!"
DOC pivots to run down the hall.
DOC'S VOICE: "That outta hold the little bastards for a while."
DOC runs down hallway.
DOC'S VOICE: Note to self: work on tactics.
. and we see four more NRO DELTA TEAM members swing into the hallway and open fire.
From behind DOC we see eleven holes open in his back. With each hole DOC says:
DOC: Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.
DOC collapses on the floor.
DOC'S VOICE: Well, that didn't work out like I thought it would.
POV sinks through floor all the while focusing on DOC until the POV is below and looking up at DOC as if he is floating on the surface of a pool. We can see the hallway but everything else is featureless black.
DOC'S VOICE: Oh cool. I always wanted a pool.
JIM MORRISON'S VOICE:
The program for this evening
is not new. You have seen
This entertainment thru & thru.
You've seen your birth, your
life & death; you might recall
all of the rest -- (did you
have a good world when you
died?) -- enough to base
a movie on?
DOC'S VOICE: Huh?
DEATH: So-rry. I'm a little behind schedule. Joe Gideon just died on the operating table and he's making a big production number out of it. I hope I didn't have you on hold for long.
(She dimples adorably.)
DOC: (still floating) Do you live around here? Are you a Goth chick? What are you standing on?
DEATH: Sort of. No. The floor.
Why don't you come down here so I can talk to you without straining my neck?
(She bats her eyelashes and smiles)
DOC: (now standing next to DEATH) Whoa. That was weird.
Hi, I'm Doc, and you'd be.?
DEATH: Death.
(She gives an endearing gamin grin.)
DOC: "Beth?" Just like the Kiss song? Isn't that great. Well Beth, I'm certainly pleased to meet you.
DEATH: Doc, you're in denial.
DOC: What's that you say Beth? The Nile? I don't see any rivers around here.
Obviously, you are insane and I am very much alive. In fact, I feel great.
DEATH: Do-oooc.
(She's just so cute you could shit.)
DOC: (angrily) All right! So I'm dead. You got me.
(He begins to stomp around)
Whoo hoo! Everybody look! Dead man walking! I got shot in the back a dozen times..
DEATH: (perkily) Eleven.
DOC: ..eleven times and I'm a big dead guy. Bereft of life I rest in peace. I. Am. A. Dead. Doc.
Is that what you wanted?
DEATH: Hold that thought. I just got paged.
(She opens a door in the dark, which reveals a production number of 'Bye, Bye Life!' choreographed by Bob Fosse in progress.)
DOC: Oh, don't mind me. I'm dead!
(She shuts the door)
DOC: OK. Don't panic. There has got to be a way out of this.
(He begins to pace)
So, I'm ex-military, ex-FBI, ex-Delta Green. so I'm no dummy. No way was I dumb enough to take one shot and run up a hallway with my back exposed without an escape plan.
I just forgot what it was with the shock of death WHICH I anticipated. So all I have to do is work out what it was.
A hollow tooth. I have a hollow tooth with drugs that pop me into the Dreamlands. That's it! With a post-hypnotic suggestion to trigger the transition. Brilliant! Just the sort of thing I'd do if I do say so myself. And I do.
I used some Liao drug so I was able to fudge the time duration. Now we're cookin'.
Now I just have to convince the Goth chick that it's all been a big misunderstanding.
(A door opens in the dark and DEATH comes through. Now she looks like Jessica Lange in a wedding dress.)
DEATH: This is where you try to bargain with me.
(She gives a sultry look.)
DOC: Exactimundo. Let's deal.
I had an escape plan and I'm not really dead, this is just a transition phase.
DEATH: I'm afraid not.
(She looks at him from behind languidly lowered lashes. She smiles with intimate knowledge of his thoughts.)
DOC: OK. I hopped into the Dreamlands but I'm dead in the Waking world. I'll set up a practice in El A.
DEATH: Sorry. No.
DOC: I wear black clothes and makeup and fight crime in the mean streets as The Blackbird.
DEATH: Uh uh.
DOC: I host a series of occult and horror vignettes as a sort of Phantom Stranger-type guy?
DEATH: You bought the farm. All sales are final.
DOC: (depressed) This sucks.
What was the point to all of that? I might as well have never been born.
Everyone would probably be better off if I hadn't been involved.
DEATH: Done. You were never born.
DOC: What happened to my belly button?
DEATH: You don't need no steenkeen' button. You were never born.
DOC: Well, what do I contemplate now?
DEATH: How about what the world is like without you.
DOC: OK. Maria. Maria would definitely be worse off without me. I helped mend the poor girl when she cracked under the strain.
DEATH: Let's see.
(We see a montage of Maria drinking and eating and filling out.)
DOC: See? Definitely worse off.
(We see a montage of Maria quitting the FBI, quitting Delta Green, moving to Los Angeles and getting into exercise in a big way. She becomes a Fly Girl, then a Laker Girl, then a swimsuit model.)
DOC: Those extra pounds did some good things for her ass.
DEATH: What is it with you guys and her ass?
(She does an album, makes a movie, shows up at the Oscars with a dress open to the navel. She is romantically linked with Sean Connery, Clint Eastwood, Patrick Stewart, Gene Hackman and Al Pacino.)
DOC: I need a drink.
[INTERIOR. CALLAHAN'S.]
HARRY: Hey look, mister, we serve hard drinks in here for men who want to get drunk fast and we don't need any characters around to give the joint atmosphere. Is that clear or do I have to slip you my lip for a convincer?
(A GUNSHOT rings out.)
OTHER PATRONS: Hans!!!
HANS: I meant to do that.
DEATH: Every time a gun fires an angel gets his wings.
HARRY: (an American commando dressed as a Nazi Alpine trooper) Get me! I'm givin' out wings!
(fires two Schmeissers repeatedly at a cluster of gun fondlers, who scatter.)
DOC: Harry! Don't you know me? Don't you know who I am? I'm Doc, Harry! I'm Doc!
HARRY: That's it, out you two pixies go, through the door or out the window.
DEATH: We'll use the door, thank you.
(She opens doorway and they step through.)
DOC: OK, that was unaffected.
What about Lee? He'd be worse off without my help.
(We see a montage of LEE BURROUGHS on disability. He takes an uncoordinated walk on Sunset and Jesse and Fallon get into an ass-kicking contest in front of a crowd waiting outside of The Comedy Store. An agent spots him and signs him immediately. Soon LEE is doing the midnight show and the occasional gig on Letterman. We see LEE on the show thrusting his right index finger rapidly into his left fist.)
DAVID LETTERMAN: All right you two, get a room.
(The audience roars with laughter.)
DOC: What about my dogs? Certainly no one else would care for them like I did.
(We see montage of happy Akitas being adopted by a large, rich family and spoiled horribly. In the present they are retired on a farm with a lot of kids to play with.)
DOC: (really depressed) Wow.
(DEATH is now mute and dressed as a nun. She has a .45 in one hand and an envelope in the other. She hands DOC the envelope and begins to walk behind him as he opens it.)
DOC: (reading) "And the most dynamic and fascinating character in Delta Green fiction today is: Doc."
(DOC looks up, beaming)
DOC: They like me. They really, really like me.
(CLOSEUP to DOC'S face as he closes his eyes, smiling.)
DOC'S VOICE: I would like to accept this award with all due humility, and would like to thank my parents, and Alphonse, and Maria, and all the Daves I know, you know who you are.
(As POV pulls back from DOC'S face we see him again above us, facedown, as in the beginning. DEATH is still dressed as a nun and is walking along the phantom hallway that DOC is lying in. DOC is being rained on by rose petals floating up from behind POV.)
JIM MORRISON'S VOICE:
I touched her thigh, and Death smiled.
(DEATH morphs into NRO DELTA agent who shoots DOC in the back of the head.)
PHUT!
CUT TO
[BIKER BAR. NIGHT]
HELL'S ANGELS LEADER: (to new guy covered in beer and stuff) Come and get your wings, Clarence.
[BLACK]
FADE TO
CLOSEUP of DOC'S face from floor level. There is a pool of blood on the floor, but DOC is smiling. He is accepting and at peace.
DOC'S VOICE: I suppose I could be pissed off about what happened to me. But it's hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst. Or maybe that was just the Glasers.
FADE TO
[AERIAL VIEW of the house and road as the POV travels along the road looking down at the trees.]
DOC'S VOICE: You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry, you will someday.
FADE TO BLACK
Someone asked me to annotate these things from now on, so here's the
footnotes and guide to references.
1) This is Uncle Doc saying "Good night kids!"
"Good Ni-ight!"
"That outta hold the little bastards for a while."
**One of the more famous radio bloopers was the night they left the mike on
for kid's show host "Uncle Don" and everyone got to hear what he used to say
after "Good night."
2) POV sinks through floor all the while focusing on DOC until the POV is
below and looking up at DOC as if he is floating on the surface of a pool.
DOC'S VOICE:
Oh cool. I always wanted a pool.
**The opening of 'Sunset Boulevard', a movie narrated by the dead man shown
floating in a pool at the beginning.
3) JIM MORRISON'S VOICE:
The program for this evening
is not new. You have seen
This entertainment thru & thru.
You've seen your birth, your
life & death; you might recall
all of the rest -- (did you
have a good world when you
died?) -- enough to base
a movie on?
**From 'An American Prayer.'
4) DEATH:
So-rry. I'm a little behind schedule. Joe Gideon just died on the
operating
table and he's making a big production number out of it. I hope I didn't
have you on hold for long.
Joe Gideon was Roy Scheider's role in 'All That Jazz', a movie about death
and entertainment.
5) (She dimples adorably.)
**Death in the 'Sandman' comic series. She looks like a heartbreakingly
cute Goth chick.
6) (She opens a door in the dark, which reveals a production number of
'Bye,
Bye Life!' choreographed by Bob Fosse in progress.)
**That would be the big production number at the end of 'All That Jazz.'
7) (A door opens in the dark and DEATH comes through. Now she looks like
Jessica Lange in a wedding dress.)
**How Death appeared at the end of 'All That Jazz.'
8) DEATH:
This is where you try to bargain with me.
**Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross described Five Stages of Loss\Grieving:
(1) Denial
(2) Anger
(3) Bargaining
(4) Depression
(5) Acceptance
They featured prominently in the structure of 'All That Jazz', including a
Lenny Bruce-like stand-up routine about death.
9) (We see a montage of Maria quitting the FBI, quitting Delta Green,
moving
to Los Angeles and getting into exercise in a big way. She becomes a Fly
Girl, then a Laker Girl, then a swimsuit model.)
**Some have noted some resemblance between Maria and Jennifer Lopez.
OK, maybe I'm the only one who mentioned it.
10) DEATH:
What is it with you guys and her ass?
**What most of the women in the US are asking aloud about Jennifer's
beautiful bounteous bouncing booty.
11) She is romantically linked with Sean Connery, Clint Eastwood,
Patrick Stewart, Gene Hackman and Al Pacino.)
**Maria seems to like older men.
12) HARRY:
Hey look, mister, we serve hard drinks in here for men who want to get
drunk fast and we don't need any characters around to give the joint
atmosphere. Is that clear or do I have to slip you my lip for a convincer?
**All of Harry's dialogue is lifted directly from Martini the bartender in
'It's a Wonderful Life.'
13) DEATH:
Every time a gun fires an angel gets his wings.
**In 'It's a Wonderful Life' Clarence the angel says the same thing about
every time a bell rings.
14) HARRY: (an American commando dressed as a Nazi Alpine trooper)
**'Where Eagles Dare.'
15) DAVID LETTERMAN:
All right you two, get a room.
**Non-Merkins might not know that David Letterman is the hip host of a late
night talk show. He also made an appearance in 'The Dark Knight Returns.'
16) (DEATH is now mute and dressed as a nun. She has a .45 in one hand and
an
envelope in the other.
**'Ms. .45', the title character's name was Thana.
17) DOC:
They like me. They really, really like me.
**What Sally Field said when she won her second Oscar.
18) JIM MORRISON'S VOICE:
I touched her thigh, and Death smiled.
**'An American Prayer.'
19) HELL'S ANGELS LEADER: (to new guy covered in beer and stuff)
Come and get your wings, Clarence.
**"Getting your wings" is the Hell's Angels initiation, from the wings on
the Harley-Davidson Motorcycle emblem.
You don't want to know all of the steps involved in getting your wings.
20) DOC'S VOICE:
I suppose I could be pissed off about what happened to me. But it's hard to
stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like
I'm
seeing it all at once, and it's too much. My heart fills up like a balloon
that's about to burst. Or maybe that was just the Glasers.
**Just in case you haven't seen it, that's from 'American Beauty.' Except
for the Glasers. That was me.
And that's about it. There will be a test next week.
Mark McFadden
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