FADE IN:
INT. GRANDMOTHER'S ROOM - DAY
A small, ordinary-looking room. A mauve recliner faces an entertainment center containing a television, cable box, and DVD player. A smattering of photographs hangs on the wall above a compact bed. Grandmother sits in the chair, holding some knitting, and speaks to an unseen listener. The cable must be out.
GRANDMOTHER
One day my brother Gustav went to Oslo to study. And there he met two strange men...
Grandmother continues to tell her story, but we only hear inaudible murmurs.
INT. A LIVING ROOM - LATE MORNING, OVER A YEAR AGO
We look through the lens of a film camera as THE ARTIST slowly comes into pristine focus. She sits on an ivory couch.
MALE VOICE (O.S.)
Ready?
THE ARTIST
Yes.
MALE VOICE
And . . .
(holds for effect)
. . . action.
THE ARTIST
We're filming, right?
MALE VOICE
Yes. Now tell us how you met the Professor.
THE ARTIST
My god. It feels like a lifetime ago. I was young and innocent back then, with so much of my life ahead of me. I was a pure thing. My artistic identity was still forming. I hadn't even participated in my first group show yet. How do I even begin?
THE ARTIST: hauntingly attractive, but not quite gorgeous: hair, shoulder-length, faintly wavy, red; tan skin, freckle-specked; face, symmetrical, with inviting lines; ocean blue eyes, flecked with brown; medium-toned arms and legs; tight black jeans; dark gray Mustache Lawyer T-shirt, nicely faded. She sits on a couch next to the Professor.
THE ARTIST
I was in the Algerian Desert. I had joined the French Foreign Legion on a whim. I wanted an authentic Joseph Beuys experience before I went to art school. We all do unfortunate things when we are young.
The Professor nuzzles The Artist and makes a near-human sound.
THE PROFESSOR (GRUNTING)
Rosebush.
THE ARTIST
They stuck me in an outpost called Fort Deleuze. The place was full of the damned and discarded: criminals, scoundrels, libertines, Conservative Party members, Swedish physics students, color-literate Remodernists, guileless hedge fund managers, visionary Found-footage film directors, Arielphile socialites, Sonic-despising shut-ins, Moomin indifferent juveniles, people who detest ABBA. Each and every one of them numbered among Pynchon's preterites. They were the most wonderful people I had ever met, and I couldn't stand any of them. My closest friend was an obese Belgian named Remy. He was a painter who made pictures of cats dressed as eighteenth-century Prussian nobility. His family had disowned him because he preferred painting in oils instead of watercolors. I loved him. He was the most annoying person I had ever met. The feeling was mutual. I think he tried to poison me a few times.
THE PROFESSOR (HOWLING)
Blanket.
THE ARTIST
But there were advantages. Life in the fort forced you to confront the banal emptiness of all existence. Sometimes a group of Tuareg Tribesmen appeared at our outpost. You might suspect they came to punish us for our colonial misdeeds, but most often, they only wanted to visit our snack bar for Cokes and pizza. But once a month, we went on strolls into the desert that would last for days. Most often, these trips were no more eventful than life in the fort, but they offered us the occasional opportunity to experience that delicious ultra-violence. I had been there for almost a year when it happened.
She pauses, looks to the left, and then back at the camera.
THE ARTIST
Twenty of us had been on patrol for four days and were just about to start back to Fort Deleuze when a hundred sand pirates rode out of the afternoon sun, defiling the desert with their war cry. They had been whipped into a religious frenzy by a desert prophet. We knew the prophet was a charlatan, a fraud, a facsimile. He was an anthropology graduate student who had run off into the desert. No one knew for sure why he had done this. Some thought it was to procrastinate working on his dissertation. Others believed it was a part of his studies. Either way, we assumed the sand pirates didn't understand who their leader was. But we later found out most of them were escaped grad students too, and they defended their sphere of influence to cope with their despair. We fought as hard as we could, but it was useless. We were days—
THE PROFESSOR
Owls—
THE ARTIST
—from the outpost. I fired until I ran out of bullets and then used my rifle—
THE PROFESSOR
—eat mice.
THE ARTIST
—as a club on the sand pirates. God, wood cracking a man's head is an exquisite noise. And then, I felt this pain in my leg, and I fell into a Chandleresque—
THE PROFESSOR
Detailed files.
THE ARTIST
—pool of black. Two days later, I woke up in a cave and saw the Professor's face looking down at me. He had been living in a tent in the desert for three months, doing research for a novel. He—
THE PROFESSOR
Waffle.
THE ARTIST
—had heard the screaming and the gunshots and ran as fast as he could to help. He had fought off four raiders before pulling me to safety. For a week, he treated my wounds, fed me, and watched over me. He didn't eat or sleep. He even stopped working on his novel. All that just to make sure that I made it. He did everything he could for me. And from that moment—
THE PROFESSOR
Blitzen's the one!
THE ARTIST
—we have never been apart, not even for a single day. And he is not at all—
THE PROFESSOR
Wuv you.
THE ARTIST
—like you would expect. He never digs holes in the yard or shits in the house, like most modern novelists have a tendency to do.
THE PROFESSOR
Waffle.
THE ARTIST
He's as cool as Bowie in his "Thin White Duke" phase.
She stops, looks down, turns away from the camera, and rubs her forehead.
THE PROFESSOR (HOWLING)
Waffle, waffle.
THE ARTIST
That's enough for today.
THE PROFESSOR (REALLY HOWLING)
It's more like scratch!
THE ARTIST
Turn off the camera.
FADE OUT:
Soft string music emerges from the dark. It gradually builds in intensity, increasing in speed and volume, transforming from melodic to dissonant. It reaches across the scales and holds on a high, tense note, testing the theater's sound system. It sustains it for a length of four measures, before breaking into shattered notes and chaos, before finally dissolving into pristine silence. The silence holds. And then, a voice surfaces, old and broken, with a texture like sandpaper. This voice belongs to our most esteemed Narrator.
NARRATOR (V.O.)
After filming ceased, she rushed him out, giving a long-forgotten rationale. He believed he had caught something special that day, but he was never sure. You see, she kept the footage from him. It was only the third time he had filmed her, but certain patterns had already started to show themselves.
EXT. THE STREETS OF OSLO - DAY
Under the narration, MAGNUS, a recently graduated film student in his early to mid-twenties. Magnus suspects his once-promising artistic potential is fading for reasons that will soon be made clear.
MONTAGE: MAGNUS WANDERING
-Magnus rides in a bus filled with other passengers. He stares straight ahead while most of the bus's other riders look at their phones.
-Magnus sits in front of the National Theatre. He stares blankly at the Henry Ibsen statue, who looks back at him.
-Magnus goes into a Narvesen convenience store, where he buys a candy bar and a new issue of the Donald Duck Comic book.
-Magnus stops in front of an electronics store and looks at a video camera in the display window.
-Magnus rides a tram. He is standing up and holding onto a grab rail.
-Magnus sits on a park bench and looks at his phone.
-Magnus walks down the street.
Over the montage, the Narrator rambles. He speaks in clichés and platitudes, each moment becoming more disconnected from the events on-screen. Gradually the narration devolves into a series of random words and then progresses into non-verbal sounds and whispers until, finally, fading into silence.
EXT. CINEMA THEATER - DAY
Magnus stops in front of the theater and considers the films that are currently playing.
I/E. TICKET BOOTH - CONTINUOUS
Magnus buys a ticket from an unseen clerk and enters the theater.
The Narrator rejoins us. He has recovered from the Montage.
NARRATOR (V.O.)
It wouldn't take him long to quit the project, less than a minute. After everything he had suffered, there was no way she could blame him. But she probably would anyway.
FADE TO:
INT. THE BODHISATTVA CAFE - EVENING
A trendy coffee shop in a medium-sized American City. Most of the tables are full, filled with people sitting alone, staring at screens of various kinds. The SOUND of shallow conversation and the clang of coffee cups mix with the generic folk music playing on the cafe's sound system.
CLOSE UP - A Hand
Lifts a cup of coffee to a mouth.
The hand, mouth, and coffee all belong to DAPHNE, a moderately attractive (by Hollywood Standards) girl in her late twenties, whose face might be familiar to you depending on the media you consume.
The Narrator fills us in.
NARRATOR (V.O.)
Our protagonist sits in the same booth as she had in the opening scene, where during their usual Friday night, coffee drinking gab session, and despite Jason's constant laughter, an annoying habit in even the best of circumstances, she reenacted her disastrous blind date with an I.T. guy who collects thimbles of all things, a fact that he had neglected to mention on his Love Magician Profile. The date had only ended fifty minutes before.
Daphne sets the coffee cup down on the table and stares at it. Slowly, her expression changes.
NARRATOR
It has happened. The realization that has been building over the first forty-seven minutes of running time has finally hit her, three scenes too late.
The camera zooms toward the coffee cup as the coffee cup starts shaking. There is the SOUND of female laughter.
INT. A DARKENED MOVIE THEATER
A quarter-filled movie theater. Magnus sits by himself, watching the film. Light dances on his face.
NARRATOR (V.O.)
Magnus told himself that he could almost feel the movement of the coffee cup. But he shouldn't even be in a utopian clean megaplex, sitting in a much too cushy seat, with his left hand rooting in the obscenely sized bucket of popcorn and his right hand hovering over the now approaching empty, extra-large cup of Cherry Vanilla Koala Cola.
Despite the narration's self-assured delivery, there is not any on-screen indication that Magnus is eating or drinking anything.
NARRATOR
He was supposed to be with his mother and Dagmar...
The SOUND of a passing airliner and inaudible air traffic control chatter obscures the next bit of the narration.
NARRATOR
...wasn't surprised that he wasn't coming.
INT. GRANDMOTHER'S ROOM - DAY - YEARS BEFORE
Grandmother sits on her chair, knitting a sweater while telling ten-year-old Magnus a story. There must be nothing worth watching on TV, at least for the next half hour.
GRANDMOTHER
When he returned from Oslo, his head was full of no end of crazy ideas about God. Gustav said that Jesus had come to an American in his room while he was trying to sleep. And Jesus gifted him a magic book of gold. Perhaps it was an apology for disturbing his rest. Of course, the American had to answer three riddles before he could receive the gift. He answered the riddles, and so the Great American Church began. Gustav loved such stories, and he became a religious sort. Before that, he had been a communist and had wanted to run off to fight in Spain. Gustav was always doing foolish things.
NARRATOR (V.O.)
His grandmother loved the story and had been telling this story for as long as Magnus could remember.
GRANDMOTHER
We told him what we thought of this religion, but our Gustav didn't listen. He was determined. He joined their church and went off to America. Not long after that, the war started...
JUMP CUT TO:
INT. GRANDMOTHER'S ROOM - YEARS LATER
Grandmother sits in the same chair, knitting a sweater, continuing the story without break or pause from the point
we left her. Magnus, now an adult, sits on a chair at the edge of the room and ignores her, preferring to read a Donald Duck comic book, but Dagmar listens closely.
GRANDMOTHER
- and you know who that went. Maybe he knew something we didn't. Gustav always did have that strange way about him. But he didn't forget us. When he heard what had happened here, he joined the—
The SOUND of an airliner flying interrupts the story.
Grandmother sits and listens, thinking how strange to hear that since they do not live near an airport.
GRANDMOTHER
Can you hear it, Dagmar?
Dagmar cocks her head, craning her ear towards the sound.
The camera pans up, through a now disappeared ceiling, right to the sky.
DAGMAR
Yes, yes! And the Ten-Thousand hear it too!
GRANDMOTHER
It's our Gustav! Our Gustav!
Magnus doesn't hear anything and continues to look at his comic. His phone buzzes, and he looks at it. It is a text message from her, the first in months. Unfortunately, the shot's framing obscures the message, and the viewer is held in a slight state of suspense.
INT. A DARKENED MOVIE THEATER
Profile shot of Magnus watching the screen. He slides his hand into his pocket, touches something, and then takes his hand out. Light jitters around him.
NARRATOR (V.O.)
The film was called Second Guessing. Despite its genre status, Magnus watched it closely, studying it, noting its aspect. It was a romantic comedy of medial quality starring Sioux Paige and Thurstone Spunk, both of whom Magnus knew by sight, voice, and persona, especially Sioux, although he would never admit it. The film also featured Melinda April, an actress best known for her role on the short-lived but fanatically beloved science fiction television program Destinus Nova. The film's plot resolves around the relationships among the main character, Daphne, an assistant producer at a local television station; Jason, her best friend since university; and Autumn, Daphne's university roommate. Daphne and Jason hang out every weekend, commiserating over their unfortunate love lives and making each other watch their favorite genre of film, even though the other hates it. Now after a ten-year absence, Autumn, along with her personal assistant, Aspen, has returned to town, not only to start a marketing firm with an emphasis on social media but also to take care of her niece and nephew, whose parents were recently killed by a grizzly bear while enjoying their third honeymoon in the wilds of Montana, turning the unfortunate children into classical orphans in the finest narrative tradition. All this information is revealed during the 'Welcome Back Autumn' scene, a pivotal early scene where Autumn and Jason become reacquainted with one another, rekindling Jason's university days fascination with her, a fascination which had never completely died.
Ignoring the rules of cinema, the Narrator drones on.
NARRATOR
Magnus tried to focus on Sioux and Melinda, their movements and mannerisms, and the sound of their voices. They were worlds unto themselves, prophets of new gods, sublime and mysterious. He imagined that they smelled of celluloid and strawberries. He wanted to write an art-house science fiction film for them, a film filled with long takes, empty spaces, haunting imagery, a film full of resonant meanings reaching for a truth beyond words, expressible only in pure cinema, a film more than the brooding atmosphere and clever dialogue of first-year philosophy students which so often passes for serious cinema.
The Narrator pauses, breathing in and out, as Magnus watches Jason enters Autumn's office as Aspen exits.
NARRATOR
In the wake of Melinda and Sioux, he didn't want to think of the phone in his pocket and the text message living inside it.
Autumn is talking on the phone as Jason comes into the office. He is there for their lunch date.
NARRATOR
After way too long, he had finally become reconciled to things as they were, resigned to the uselessness of her project, THE project, an unfinishable entry in his filmography.
Autumn continues to talk on the phone, looks at Jason, and holds up one finger, signaling she will be with him shortly.
NARRATOR
And most disturbing of all, he didn't even have any footage for a memento, nothing but his imperfect memory of pieces of dialogue and images reflected through the camera's viewfinder.
Autumn takes a sip of her signature black coffee.
NARRATOR
Now she wanted to resume things as though nothing had happened.
Autumn moves her hand as she talks. She is impatient for the call to end.
NARRATOR
Magnus knew he should just refuse her, and she couldn't blame him.
Beaming, Jason stands there, waiting for the call to end.
NARRATOR
But she would blame him and say something to convince him to return. She would dangle the promise of her father's financing.
Aspen enters the office with an important bit of news.
NARRATOR
She would tell Magnus was a genius filmmaker he was, and he would believe her. But there was more than that, wasn't there?
The call is finally winding down. Autumn walks to the window.
NARRATOR
The memory of her standing with the light touching her.
Autumn and Jason make eye contact. Aspen looks a little confused.
NARRATOR
The possibilities of that image.
The call ends. The lovers embrace. They walk out of the office on the way to lunch.
NARRATOR
And how in the fucking hell how she learned about the American in the first place?
Aspen follows them, telling them the important news. An important client has signed on. The business is going together. Everything is coming up Autumn.
INT. DAPHNE'S KITCHEN - NIGHT
Daphne hastily eats a tuna melt over a kitchen sink.
INT. THE JEALOUS HEDGEHOG BOUTIQUE - DAY
Autumn stands in front of a mirror, trying on a wedding dress, twisting and fidgeting, as Daphne and a clerk look on.
AUTUMN
What about this one?
DAPHNE
Looks good.
INT. A DARKENED MOVIE THEATER - CONTINUOUS
Magnus gets up from his seat. Scattered rays of light graze his face.
INT. THE THEATER'S LOBBY - MOMENTS LATER
Magnus sits on a cushioned bench, passing his phone nervously from one hand to another. A sense of indecision hangs over the scene. And then, he stops, letting the phone settle in his right hand. Finally, he turns it on and stares at it.
INSERT - THE PHONE BOOTS UP
The screen changes from black to his phone's wallpaper, a still from Our Lady of the Hungry Bullet.
NARRATOR
When Magnus started discussing the project with Freya, he suggested that the film should be completely silent. “Not even music,” she asked. "Yes, not even music.' Magnus said that the silence would make the documentary more haunting. She had disagreed. Perhaps that had been the start of the trouble. Eventually, his ambitions for the project became smaller and smaller until his only goal was to capture her in an unguarded moment. She would be listening to music, and for a moment, she would lose herself, closing her eyes, her body swaying. But with Freya, no such moments existed. He wished he could film her on Super-8.
He pulls up her text message on his phone and looks at it. The camera lingers on him from below. Voices chatter. Figures walk in and out of the frame. Laughter. He turns off the phone, puts it into his pocket, and walks back into the theater.
INT. THE BODHISATTVA CAFE - NIGHT
The cafe is quiet. Most of the other customers have all gone home. Empty coffee cups crowd over Daphne's table like extras in a Biblical epic. Daphne stares at a photo on her phone screen.
INSERT - A DIGITAL PHOTO
-of Daphne and Jason (both noticeably younger and wearing dated clothing) standing in her apartment, holding brown cardboard boxes with "blankets" and "DVDs" written on them.
NARRATOR (V.O.)
They had been happy in their communal misery.
She rubs the screen on her cheek and closes her eyes.
EXT. THE ROOSEVELT MEMORIAL PARK PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE - NIGHT
Daphne stands in the middle of the bridge, looking at the city and the darkness beyond.
NARRATOR (V.O.)
This was where, ten years before, Jason confessed to her how much he loved Autumn, which she already knew. They just stood there on the bridge in silence in their shared post-adolescent loneliness and became best friends without another word passing between them. She should've known it even then.
A chorus of fellow University students, roommates, and colleagues from Jason's time at university, now all full-fledged adults, some holding babies and toddlers in their arms, but still dressed in the clothes they wore in their University Days, picks up the narration where the Narrator has left off.
CHORUS (V.O.)
Everyone in the apartment building knew. It was apparent from the way he had been acting since the middle of the term. Autumn found the whole thing wonderfully amusing, taking a special delight in the series of pathetic love poems he had composed for her, reading all of them to Daphne in a bad French accent, stopping after each stanza for commentary and most predictable fits of uncontrolled giggling.
The chorus drifts away and is replaced by a middle-aged WOMAN in high-end clothing and overdone make-up, who is of unknown relationship to the narrative.
WOMAN (V.O.)
When Jason finished his confession, Daphne didn't know what to say to this lovestruck boy, who had become wallpaper-familiar to her but remained still no more than an acquaintance, so they just stood there on the bridge in silence. After a few moments of looking out into the night and sharing their post-adolescent loneliness, they became best friends without another word passing between them. She should've known it even then.
INT. A DARKENED MOVIE THEATER - CONTINUOUS
Magnus sits down in his seat. He looks up at the screen, but his face betrays nothing.
Finally, our negligent Narrator returns to the futile project of making nominal sense of these events.
NARRATOR (V.O.)
There was something strange about this film. Despite six years of formal training in constructing and deconstructing the cinematic arts, studying the lens choices, the angles, the editing, and compositions of the masters, trying to understand how their films worked on both banal and transcendent levels, despite his professed tastes for the films of Bresson, Dreyer, Voss, Kubrick, Welles, Lewton, Chapman, Bergman, and Malick, despite hating everything that contemporary Hollywood films stood for, this stupid, paint by numbers, written by committee, romantic comedy, had drawn him in and wouldn't let go. For that reason alone, this film would haunt him more than any of the images in Mauret's Archipelago Trilogy. At least, that was what he told himself as he wondered if SHE now took her coffee black, just like Autumn.
THE ARTIST
This is the sort of film that demands to be seen in theaters. Watching it on the small screen wouldn't be the same experience.
THE ARTIST sits in the seat next to him, which had been vacant the moment before.
NARRATOR (V.O.)
Just a few days ago, he had forgotten the sound of her voice. He felt happy for the loss.
THE ARTIST
Yes, you simply must see it on the big screen. And, of course, you need buckets of popcorn, candy bars, and an extra-large soda. The holy trinity of film. Did you know that whenever the Professor sees this movie, he cries? He can't help it. It is as though the filmmakers crafted every frame with him specifically in mind. Every image plays his tender emotions like that mood organ from the novel Blade Runner comes from. It doesn't even matter to him that the movie forgets those poor orphaned children halfway through.
He turns to respond, but she had disappeared.
INT. DAPHNE'S APARTMENT - LATER
Daphne sits down on her couch. She takes out her mobile, calls Jason, and the call is sent to voicemail.
DAPHNE
(leaving a
voicemail message)
Hi, Jason. Uh...
She stands up, walks to her window, and looks out onto her night-soaked neighborhood.
DAPHNE
I, uh, heard the news about you and—
She is unable to finish the message and hangs up the phone. She mouths the words, "When he hears it, he will know everything." From the street outside, there is the sound of rambunctious teenagers laughing and screaming with something close to joy. Her phone BUZZES with an incoming call.
INSERT - DAPHNE'S MOBILE PHONE SCREEN
-Jason's name paired with a candid photo of him about to bite into a candy bar.
Daphne shuffles about, momentarily hesitating, unsure of what to do. In the end, she ignores the call, and for a moment, it is as though she and the film have both stalled, giving up in the face of the unforgiving laws of hopeless love narratives. But then, after a moment of indecision, the film fades and seemingly burns away in the projector, it begins again, but its tone has changed. The colors are now garish. The film has escaped, mutating into something the director had never intended.
Daphne turns off her mobile and throws it in the rubbish bin.
DAPHNE
All done.
She smiles in bliss and searches through her pantry, looking for something to eat, finally choosing a can of pasta. She opens a drawer and pulls out a knife, trying to use it to open the can but only succeeding in cutting her hand. Blood drips to the floor. She turns on the faucet and puts her
hand in the sink.
CLOSE UP - THE KITCHEN BASIN
-fills with copper-colored water.
There is the SOUND of tiny footsteps.
Daphne turns around and sees a little girl dressed in a plain, white cotton, Victorian-era dress, standing most still and holding a bottle of kitchen cleaner.
NARRATOR (V.O.)
The child looks very much like Dagmar.
The Narrator's voice has changed, now sounding as though he is about to cry.
NARRATOR
The only difference is her hair is blond instead of red.
Magnus thinks this must be a dream sequence, but he can't deduce who is dreaming. The child kneels on the floor and wipes up the blood with the hem of her dress. The blood expands and grows until it covers it entirely. Then, the child begins to scoop up the blood with her hands. Daphne stumbles and stutters as she tries to say something to the child, and then, when the words finally come out, they are
in Basque instead of English. The child shakes her head and puts a blood-covered finger to her mouth.
THE CHILD
(in HER voice)
Bring that cousin of yours or whatever he is to my house tomorrow at 11:30. The Professor is very excited to meet him. You know how fond he is of Americans.
She winks at him, looking for a moment more like an emoji than a child.
CLOSE UP - THE CUT ON DAPHNE'S HAND
-closes and heals in front of our eyes.
Daphne looks up. Great-Uncle Gustav sits at the table, reading an issue of Time Magazine with Ronald Reagan on the cover.
GREAT UNCLE GUSTAV
Motherfucker. Fucker. Mindless-shits. How does something like this happen? I don't understand it! I went off looking for the American God, and I still don't understand it.
NARRATOR (V.O.)
If only he could tell Freya that it was over, that he was giving up, that it had all been a mistake. That he didn't need her or her father to make movies. If he could just tell her to go to hell. She couldn't blame him.
GREAT UNCLE GUSTAV
I would've been happier if I had gone to Spain and killed a Franco spy or two.
Great Uncle Gustav looks intently at the camera and tries to make sense of it all.
GREAT UNCLE GUSTAV
You might ask, how does something like this even begin? But things happen. Take my sister's grandson, Magnus. Now, filmmaking is a profession I would not wish on anyone, even a Franco spy. But this Freya and her project are a whole other level of frustration and futility. There are, of course, reasons that Magnus got mixed up with her, most of them full of self-deceit and lies, having nothing to do with artistic vision or the other things he would tell his fellow film students when they pretended to be listening to him. But here is the one that comes close. It is the one that Magnus likes to tell himself as he drifts off to sleep. It goes something like this.
Great Uncle Gustav drums his hands.
GREAT UNCLE GUSTAV
After the first interview finished and Magnus turned off the camera, Freya started searching for a book in her closet. Stuck by the moment, Magnus scrunched down on the floor as low as he could, touched his thumbs together, forming a frame with his hands, and looked through. She loomed in the space, flawlessly composed, mythic. Even with her back to the camera, she had so much fucking charisma. And then, the golden arrived. Everything clicked. Light came through the window, glazing the edge of her hair, back, and arms with warm reds. God. If only he had captured that moment. But it had escaped him. And he would do anything to finish the project, if only to see that perfect image projected through the darkness, falling onto the screen, aching at 24 per second. And if he waited, he would get another chance. He would get another chance. He would...
Magnus eats another handful of popcorn, feeling the eternal joy of the helpless.
CUT TO:
INT. THE KITCHEN
Magnus' mother, Anna, middle-aged, slender, and light-haired, dials Magnus' mobile and is sent to voicemail. She leaves a message.
ANNA
Hei. Hei. Dagmar and I are on the way to pick up your cousin from the airport. I hope you will be home soon to meet him and make him feel welcome. Could you go to McDonald's on the way home? Get the usual for Dagmar and a Double Quarter Pounder meal with Sprite for your Cousin. It has to be Sprite. He can't drink Coke. And get whatever you want for yourself.
NARRATOR
Of course, Magnus would do what she asked. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe some hope still remained for the project. All it needed was a new character.
Enjoying seeing all of these come together.