In A Car With Legion
This is a really strange experimental script I wrote about cinema and its audience. If you're not familiar with the biblical character Legion, he (or it) is a man possessed by many demons, and happens to be the center of this script. I'm not the most religious guy, but this character works perfectly for what I'm aiming at. I've been changing this around for over a day and I don't know if I'll ever be perfectly happy with it, but I think it's good enough to release at least.
We are situated in the passenger seat of a car, looking out the window towards the rural road at night. We hear a Man and as his voice fades in, we turn our attention from the window to him. We see that he is a younger, shady looking man with an unshaven face, talking directly to us.
MAN
“…leads me to your weird place in this world that I live in, where you…wait, wait I can see it in your eyes. There’s more of you paying attention now. That’s what’s so terrible about you Legion, there’s so many of you that I never know how many are actually paying attention. How many of you are there? Hundreds? Thousands? All I know is 'you are many'. Alright, well I don’t know where you all jumped in, so I’m going to just start over. My apologies to those of you who have been paying attention.
Alright, so I was talking about you actually. Or “y’all”, I dunno. I was wondering how you move your body around with all those minds inside you, because you’ve got all those individual outputs going into something with one input. It’d be nice if you just told me, but I really don’t see that happening. I figure though that just by showing up and paying attention, you’re each directing what happens here in some respect. You have expectations, and if they’re met you’ll keep an interest. If they’re not, then you zone out and one of you eventually pushes the rest on to something new. That’s where I’m not sure though: how do you decide what’s interesting? There’s only so many stories in this world, only so many things you can do. What is it then? The mindset? The context? Like here, watch this.”
Man pulls over to the side of the road, next to a pub. We see him reach over our lap to the glove compartment and pull a gun out of it. Upon stashing it in his jacket, he smirks and coolly walks into the bar. Seconds later we hear gunshots, and Man bursts out of the bar, sprinting to the car. He slams on the gas.
MAN
“Now I bet some of you are disgusted with this act, am I right? What was the point of that? But I know that some of you would’ve zoned out in the next minute if I hadn’t done that. And more than that, you’re used to this, right? You’ve been around- you’ve come to appreciate the finer aspects of human brutality. In fact I would wager that often, quite a few of you come back to this world just to see the screwed up things humanity is capable of. Is that the context I was talking about earlier?
It’s hard for me to say any of this with certainty because I’m an outsider looking in. You’ve got a lot more perspective on this than I do. I mean how do I come across to you? I just went into a bar with a gun, smiling I might add, and now I’m talking to…I don’t know. Do you even care? What if I died right now, would you care? Or would you savor it after that stunt I just pulled? I bet you just don’t care. Hell, even if YOU died right now, all of those minds inside would just wander away, looking for something new.
I wonder if you even have a moral compass. Or even of you do, whether this world applies to it. I mean if you followed someone around for a while, and say they die or end up broken and miserable or whatever, will you really care the next day? Will you, months later, think back on that person and think, ‘wow, I still can’t believe this person died’? Nope. I bet not.
And that leads me to your weird place in this world that I live in, where you… wait, wait I can see it in your eyes. There’s more of you paying attention now. That’s what’s so…"
FADE OUT
We are situated in the passenger seat of a car, looking out the window towards the rural road at night. We hear a Man and as his voice fades in, we turn our attention from the window to him. We see that he is a younger, shady looking man with an unshaven face, talking directly to us.
MAN
“…leads me to your weird place in this world that I live in, where you…wait, wait I can see it in your eyes. There’s more of you paying attention now. That’s what’s so terrible about you Legion, there’s so many of you that I never know how many are actually paying attention. How many of you are there? Hundreds? Thousands? All I know is 'you are many'. Alright, well I don’t know where you all jumped in, so I’m going to just start over. My apologies to those of you who have been paying attention.
Alright, so I was talking about you actually. Or “y’all”, I dunno. I was wondering how you move your body around with all those minds inside you, because you’ve got all those individual outputs going into something with one input. It’d be nice if you just told me, but I really don’t see that happening. I figure though that just by showing up and paying attention, you’re each directing what happens here in some respect. You have expectations, and if they’re met you’ll keep an interest. If they’re not, then you zone out and one of you eventually pushes the rest on to something new. That’s where I’m not sure though: how do you decide what’s interesting? There’s only so many stories in this world, only so many things you can do. What is it then? The mindset? The context? Like here, watch this.”
Man pulls over to the side of the road, next to a pub. We see him reach over our lap to the glove compartment and pull a gun out of it. Upon stashing it in his jacket, he smirks and coolly walks into the bar. Seconds later we hear gunshots, and Man bursts out of the bar, sprinting to the car. He slams on the gas.
MAN
“Now I bet some of you are disgusted with this act, am I right? What was the point of that? But I know that some of you would’ve zoned out in the next minute if I hadn’t done that. And more than that, you’re used to this, right? You’ve been around- you’ve come to appreciate the finer aspects of human brutality. In fact I would wager that often, quite a few of you come back to this world just to see the screwed up things humanity is capable of. Is that the context I was talking about earlier?
It’s hard for me to say any of this with certainty because I’m an outsider looking in. You’ve got a lot more perspective on this than I do. I mean how do I come across to you? I just went into a bar with a gun, smiling I might add, and now I’m talking to…I don’t know. Do you even care? What if I died right now, would you care? Or would you savor it after that stunt I just pulled? I bet you just don’t care. Hell, even if YOU died right now, all of those minds inside would just wander away, looking for something new.
I wonder if you even have a moral compass. Or even of you do, whether this world applies to it. I mean if you followed someone around for a while, and say they die or end up broken and miserable or whatever, will you really care the next day? Will you, months later, think back on that person and think, ‘wow, I still can’t believe this person died’? Nope. I bet not.
And that leads me to your weird place in this world that I live in, where you… wait, wait I can see it in your eyes. There’s more of you paying attention now. That’s what’s so…"
FADE OUT
