I have a friend who wants to direct, and she called me on Sunday in a panic that she needed a short story she could adapt to script so she could begin filming next week... was I busy?
Well ... I am, but I can't say no to her - I have known her since we were eleven years old, stuck in Catholic school together, her a new Polish student who was angry and suspicious, and me, an attitude ridden crazy person with an underdog complex.
So, now I am writing.
Here is a preview:
The red sweater was sitting on the bureau like a beacon to her. Slowly, her old bones creaking under the strain of movement, she rose from the soft pink chair and made her way, slowly and painfully, towards it. Her wispy white hair didn’t hang around her head so much as float around her sagged skin in puffs, as if what little hair she had left had been electrically charged, so that it stuck up at odd angles, in uneven bunches. Her wrinkled fingers were spotted with brown sunspots, from years of working in the garden, her once strong hands gripping weeds and pulling from the ground, feeling the tense strength of the roots give away to the former dexterity of her fingers. Those same hands looked different now – as if they belonged to someone else, but still she outstretched them with a practiced air, reaching for each milestone on her journey towards the red sweater.
Halfway there, she thought of the pain in her lower back. It throbbed, she knew, from decades of bending over ripened tomatoes and scrubbing stubborn floors. She knew also that its twin: the pain that throbbed in her upper back, was from years of sitting at the sewing machine, her shoulders curved downwards, her tired eyes straining in the half light to mend and stitch the expensive clothes of those who were far richer then she thought she could ever be.
Nearly there now. She thought, and felt the pull of a smile on her lips, but her gums were red and angry looking, so she rarely opened her mouth anymore, preferring to remember the days when they were pink and healthy, and coupled with two rows of strong white teeth.
The question is: Can this be the basis for a viable script?
What does the internets think?
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