BEDROOM EXIT/INTO LIVING ROOM
HER: Would you mind telling me where you’ve hidden my shoes?
HER SISTER: What? Moi? I did nothing. No clue what shoes you’re even talking about. [Heavy laugh here, put it in front of mix, so it pops.]
HER: I have a flame thrower in a storage unit in Reno. When you play your witless beige pablum of pranks on me, I get a hot taste of metal and electricity in my mouth. My sweat starts to smell like cat piss and gasoline. I’m suddenly ravaged with a hunger for the unthinkable. So just tell me where you’ve hidden my shoes. It’s not even funny when you do it.
SEATED TWO-SHOT AT CORNER GROUP/COUCH
HIM: We need to text my parents and tell them we can’t make it tonight. I mean, they didn’t like it when we were dating, so they’re really going to lose it when we tell them we’re getting married.
HER: We can’t cancel. But I have an idea. Something I saw in a movie.
HIM: Well, dinner is in an hour. So, I hope it’s a fast idea. [Medium to heavy laugh.]
HER: We find a filthy ranch, the kind of place that was used for filming westerns in the 1970s. We live in the abandoned buildings there and lose our minds; acid, no food, and sweltering heat all conspire to put us in a place of heightened awareness, sleep-deprived madness, that kind of shit. We have no interest in sex; we’re edgy, broken, glitching. And we’re expanding your parents’ definition of anything relative to their life, man, don’t you see? Their definition is linear. They’re counting to ten over and over again, and the world is powered by ones and zeroes now. It’s the same sun burning in the sky but it’s powering cars and scrambling brains now; this is the twenty-first century. Bob and Sharon can’t look at our relationship as they define it, man. They have to look at the gesture of our getting married, on a global scale. We come out of the buildings on the ranch, we greet them, but more than that we TEACH them. So that they see the marriage as all of us, an entire world of enemies and lovers, ones and zeroes, cradle to grave. That’s the place Bob and Sharon’s heads need to be.
HIM: Uh, were you listening when I said the idea had to be fast? [Heavy laugh, and long crossfade to acid-inspired GFX over footage of dilapidated shacks in desert heat.]
CAFÉ SCENE, SHE’S TALKING TO BARISTA
BARISTA: The usual?
HER: No. I’m tired of the usual. Oh, I… I don’t know what to do. I’m too old to be single and too tired to be dating. [Medium laugh here, mixed “Aww.”]
BARISTA: Mepormak klep.
HER: Taum deney honkom.
BARISTA: The stones, stirred.
HER: A language, unearthed.
[Same two-shot, but move in, we’re tighter now. The story we’re telling with the camera move is: We’re in their world now, and it’s shit we cannot know, but here we are, free to infer what connection has been foisted up these two by The Powers.]
BARISTA: Bring now skies asunder, grab the world, set it on fire.
HER: Teemo Konali.
BARISTA: Konali. I am all ancients.
HER: The teachings commence. Where is your coworker today, the cute guy I’ve had a crush on forever?
BARISTA: Consumed, taken by pahmpanna.
IN UNISON: Pahmpanna, pahmpanna, pahmpanna.
[We notice now that the cups on top of the espresso machine are shaking and hovering.]
[Rest of the café scene plays as it was written, including joke about coffee being better than sex.]