Original Songs

These Are The Walls

I played a sappy song, and people started pestering me with questions. Well, let’s try a the polar opposite and see what happens.

Visit my music page on the YouTube thing.

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Blog, On Fire, script

On Fire – Script Conversion 1

RYAN (V.O.)

I am two people.

INT./EXT. CHURCH VAN – COUNTRY ROAD – OVERCAST DAY

Unbroken stretches of Georgia pine. The van’s a billboard for WILMORE FIRST BAPTIST.

RYAN (30s), a lone disheveled man in the middle row, stares out the window in a daze. He mindlessly scratches the CAST on his forearm.

The DRIVER fiddles with the radio. LYNYRD SKYNYRD plays.

RYAN (V.O.)

I am now. And I am then.

INT./EXT. RYAN’S CAR – I75 – SUNNY DAY

That same Skynyrd TUNE, and Ryan sings along. He’s wearing a pressed shirt and a loose tie. He’s young. He’s excited.

Atlanta’s on the horizon

INT./EXT. CHURCH VAN – INSTITUTION GATE

The sign reads: WILMORE WELLNESS CENTER

The van comes to a stop as the GATE GUARD approaches, happy to see DRIVER.

GATE GUARD

Hey, Pete! How’s that boy of yours?

PETE (DRIVER)

Tom, I tell ya, I ain’t never

seen him throw this good.

TOM (GATE GUARD)

Amen to that, brother.

We’ll need him this year.

PETE

I hear ya. I’ll let him know

you’re rootin’ for him.

TOM

We’ll put him on the prayer list, too.

PETE

We could use all the help we can get.

TOM

Everybody could, ain’t that true?

(gesturing)

This the guy, I guess?

PETE

(undecipherable)

Ryan isn’t paying attention to the men anymore. He sees

CENTER GROUNDS

BALDY wearing a grey-blue jumpsuit. Baldy is standing at a side door, leaning and smoking, and staring across 30 yards straight into Ryan’s soul.

VAN

Ryan scratches his cast.

CENTER GROUNDS

The propped open door swings wide. ORDERLY 1, looking like an angry mountain, gestures to Baldy, who flicks his cigarette into the grass and heads inside.

VAN

The GATES open.

Fiction, Notes, On Fire

On Fire – plotting 1

I’m tired of keeping my notes in a notebook.

  1. Ryan talking to the doc
  2. Ryan meeting Traeger, his boss, for the first time
  3. Ryan at the institution, taken to his room after meeting the doc.
  4. Getting a sense for his roommate’s conspiracy theory brain through a secret note stuffed into his bedding – don’t take the triangle pill (illuminati)
  5. Putting on his institution uniform / putting on a suit that fits after his first paycheck
  6. Making his bed / his new apartment
  7. Falling asleep while he waits for someone to tell him where he’s supposed to be
  8. Dream 1 – cuts of late hours and late drinks and a blonde woman smiling, “I love you, dummy” with a laugh, and a flash of her lying dead in the middle of the street
  1. Awake with a start. Snoring roommate in eery halogen lighting from the parking lot. The moon is half full
  2. In the hallway, confusion with so many doors. He doesn’t remember which way, makes a guess
  3. More eery lighting, passing door after door, the buzz of every third overhead leading to an oasis nurse’s station with Shirley reading a Stephen King novel – Firestarter
  4. Their conversation, he takes his pills, and she teases him about not showing up for group last night. He didn’t know. No one said. They do that, she says.
  5. She feeds him his missed dinner. Meatloaf sandwich to go with his drugs. He doesn’t know how he’ll manage to get back to sleep, but the drugs are fast.
  6. On the way back to his room, creepier now that he’s dazed. Misses his door, there are more now. So may doors.
  7. Tina, his wife from he dream, calling to him from the end of the hall
  8. He goes to her. Tries. She’s farther and farther away u til she turns and disappears behind the corner. He picks up pace, calling for her
  9. Runs snack into a giant of a man in an orderly uniform.
  10. Brief exchange, the orderly shows him which door is Ryan’s