"Firefly" was a show on for a heartbeat a few years ago. It was a cross-genre sci-fi work of genius by "Buffy" and "Angel" creator Joss Whedon. If you haven't seen the DVD-ified episodes, you should get a-hold of them, pronto.
An episode of Firefly ran for an hour, and was broken up into three acts, with a teaser act at the beginning, after which the theme music would play before cutting to a commercial and resuming with the first act. The characters from Firefly are some of my very favorite in all of television.
My monkey "story" is actually a screenplay. Or part of one, rather; it's the teaser act for an episode of Firefly. It's written with the annotation and format common to most screenplays, at least as I understand them.
And I'm sorry, Aharon... I couldn't resist. ; )
...
TEASER
EXT. RUN DOWN TAVERN
The edge of nowhere, a run-down town in the distance, many stars shining overhead. The tavern’s lights are on, and you can hear some music and merrymaking inside. This is a dive bar, on a dive planet.
INT. TAVERN
The place is crowded, the clientele not dressed for a formal dance. ZOE, JAYNE, WASH, SIMON and KAYLEE sitting around a large table, having a drink, decompressing. Many empty bottles around the table. They are clearly HAMMERED. They are drinking, laughing loudly, and blowing off steam. WASH is telling a joke.
WASH
( pantomiming, very much into the joke he's finishing though clearly hammered. )
...The daughter gets off the ship, along side a huge naked man with tribal scars and a bone through is nose. Her father slaps his head and yells at her “You idiot! I said you should marry a –rich- doctor!"
Everyone LAUGHS, a bit too loud and long at the ancient joke. Feeling bold, SIMON tries his hand, improvising. Gathering his focus and wading in…
SIMON
A Captain and a Companion walk…
( a beat )
SIMON
…into a temple…
A Pause as SIMON looks confused; he had the joke, but now he lost it. After a heartbeat they all BURST OUT laughing, definitely –at- him, not with him. SIMON looks lost.
KAYLEE
( recovering for SIMON )
The Captain and Inara ought to make a shiny contact here for future work-
JAYNE
( dismissively )
We need work –now- We ain’t been paid in a fort-night.
No one agrees with JAYNE, but they clearly don’t disagree either. JAYNE’s scowl disappears with another swig of “beer”.
ANGLE ON WASH, as he’s looking OC beyond the table, towards the door of the TAVERN.
WASH
Okay. A smoking monkey walks into a bar…
JAYNE
( laughing, drinking )
Ooooooo I love this joke…
Some YELLING where WASH is looking. CUT TO see ANDREW the ape STANDING in the tavern doorway, looking very much worse for wear, afraid to enter, but held there by desperation. Old brown shirt in tatters, and he has a lit cigarette dangling from a HUGE HAND. Some LOCALS are yelling at him to shoo, to go away.
ZOE sees ANDREW and gets up immediately, for some reason concerned. She moves to ANDREW and kneels, a long look on her face. She GESUTRES to JAYNE to keep the crowd back, and he does with a MENACE and a GROWL, but he’s clearly not liking the look of ANDREW, or ZOE being so close to him.
The crew is SHOCKED when ZOE starts using hand signs with ANDREW, and the ape seems to understand.
ZOE
( nodding, then to the crew )
We’re leaving
ZOE takes ANDREW’S arm around her shoulders and helps him limp out, the rest of the group files out, confused. JAYNE is in a foul mood
JAYNE
This ain’t how that joke’s supposed to go
JAYNE makes a last FEINT at a LOCAL who looks like he might interfere, and the LOCAL backs off.
EXT. night in a pasture, Serenity landed, interior lights on
INT. Serenity cargo hold
KAYLEE
( a bit clearer, now )
How exactly is Zoe talking to a monkey?
SIMON
( focusing, hard, somewhat lucid )
He’s an ape, actually., and it’s a form of sign language. The Alliance had a program years ago where they “elevated” some of the more complex primates with genetic therapy in vitro. Smart as some men, when they matured. They were be trained for various functions-
As he talks, RIVER pokes her head in the crowd, perfectly mimicking ANDREW’S expression and going nose-to-nose with him
ZOE
( cutting in )
Alliance trained ‘em for war. As scouts, to flush out snipers, to look for mines. Heel work they didn’t see fit for a man. Slave labor.
KAYLEE
Oooooh… that’s terrible
SIMON
( continuing )
The program was discontinued. At least that’s what they told us in medical school.
SIMON starts to sign to Andy, apparently knowing the rudiments of the language, and the ape shakes his head “No”.
ZOE
Surely. It wasn’t something they shouted about. Some of the Independents took kindly to them, The Elevated; they never wanted to fight in the first place, and as the Alliance surely didn’t treat them with kindness. We’d look after the ones that straggled, as best we could.
ZOE
( signing, enunciating )
What’s your name? “unit,-name”?
ANDREW
( signs back, looking sad, pointing to his tattered brown coveralls )
ZOE
( nodding )
ANDREW escaped. Ran from the fighting. But where to? Years, since the war…
O.C. BOOK
There’s an Alliance facility up in the hills, here.
CUT TO BOOK , just entering crowd
BOOK
( disdainful )
Very hush hush, Not on any map. Maybe they kept him there, for some reason.
ANDREW
( nodding, yes )
JAYNE
You know the strangest stuff for a Shepherd, Shepherd
SIMON
( signing )
His mate’s still there…
KAYLEE
( shocked, then in Chinese )
Ounnn gin reh my dae yu!? [How could they do that!?] That’s awful!
RIVER is entranced, now signing herself
KAYLEE looks to the others
Well, we gotta go get her
JAYNE
( agitated )
I don’t see the percentage in –that-.
( SIMON signs, questioning, then SIMON, ZOE and RIVER speak at once
SIMON, ZOE, RIVER
Shiny rock.
WASH
( looking to them )
That means there’s gold? In them there hills?
They all nod, in unison, SIMON and ZOE looking at ANDY, RIVER looking at WASH.
JAYNE
Mal’ll never go for this
ZOE
I say he will. Capn’n me both fought along side of Elevated. He’d do right by him.
JAYNE
Maybe he’s lyin’.
WASH
( incredulous )
That’s right. The injured, escaped, talking monkey is lying to us.
JAYNE
He ain’t talking-
SIMON
He’s not a monkey-
ZOE
We help him, and that’s that.
They all look on hapless ANDREW, who looks back, silently.
WASH
( after a beat, as if reciting a joke )
A monkey walks onto the ship, offers us a job…
JAYNE upset
I don’t much like that joke.
END OF TEASER
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6 comments:
Pete, I have no idea why you're apologizing. I love firefly, and I love monkeys [apes]. and if there were [was] an elevated ape on firefly... I think that is exactly the way things would go... I give it and A. A-SHARP. Loved it
And so suitably named. ;) ... just kidding Aharon...
I like it, Pete. You captured the characters (especially Jayne and Simon) really well and fit the monkey in extremely well. No easy task, as I think is the group consensus. Knowing the series (thanks to you!) I wouldn't have been surprised by this at all.
Well done!
I agree with A and T. This teaser captured the spirit and feel of the show extraordinarily well. I felt as though I could hear the characters speaking and watch their reactions.
However, I must confess that the characters' interaction and dialogue feel like a duplication of past shows. It is almost as if you followed a "Firefly" teaser template in that if I popped in a "Firefly" episode/s I would see Wash tell a joke, Simon look awkward, Jane act greedily, and Zoe make an observation of Book's strange areas of knowledge. Arguably, the reason the scene feels duplicated may be that you captured the essence so accurately, but I am not quite sure.
Back to the positives, the monkey insertion succeeded on two levels. First, you avoided the inherent sore thumb-aspect of a smoking monkey. Second, you found a way a to include a smoking monkey in a way that Whedon might have actually done had he decided to do so.
Finally, I really enjoyed reading this story in that it reminded me of the characters I loved so dearly.
Most people have said it all already, great job, I could picture the show perfectly in my head as I read through it. While I though it was interesting that you wrote it in the style of a screen play, I found that more times than not, it took away from the story and distracted me as I had to think through some of the jargon that was a bit unfamiliar to me. Otherwise I thought the story was great and that you implemented the smoking monkey very well and successfully.
Characterization: perfect.
Story: damn good. I got a little confused on my first read-through about two-thirds of the way, with Simon attempting to sign or some
Dialogue: perfect.
Format was pretty solid, but it's okay to use fully-formed english grammar for descriptive blocks. :D The trick with getting them right is that you don't need to say things the audience isn't going to be aware of, or that isn't going to be represented on the screen (notable example: 'decompressing' is not only jargon-y, but it's not something that even remotely makes sense for tv. It's just one word here, though, so it's not particularly important).
Favorite part:
["WASH
( after a beat, as if reciting a
joke) A monkey walks onto the ship, offers us a job…"]
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