Monday, April 19, 2010

It doesn’t bother me

A guy leaves the party with a girl. They go for a drive. She’s on her phone texting a lot of the time, but still seems attracted to him. They drive to a nice spot up high on a hill- looking over the Northern Melbourne area. The guy’s intentions are clear. They sit there quietly for a while. They smile at each other. There is a great amount of sexual tension. They’re both too shy to make the first move. They make small talk: about the party; a film. There are several moments of silence. Several. The guy puts his hand up for a moment- contemplating making a move- but then puts it back down. The girl keeps texting on her phone.

The guy breaks the silence; saying ‘so…’ they both look at each other, the girl laughs then looks away. They talk about how there are so many lights in their view. She jokingly dares him to count them all. Then the guy comes up with an idea- he makes a bet with the girl: if he can count all the lights, she has to kiss him. She laughs for a moment and then agrees. The guy looks nervous. He starts counting quickly, making up the numbers- pretending to count. He laughs. ‘Uh, that’s eight hundred and… sixty ... seven.’ But he’s counted too quickly, the girl is unsatisfied: ‘what about that one over there? ... Did you get those ones there?’ The guy tries to make up for it, but the moment has gone. Silence returns.

Time passes. Then the guy is fed up. He asks her straight out: ‘do you want to kiss me?’ After a moment she responds: ‘it doesn’t bother me.’ This confuses the shit out of the guy. He doesn’t know what to say. After a moment he asks her what she means by that statement and she tells him that it doesn’t bother her. Bewilderment strikes the guy’s face.
He sits there for a moment. Then sighs, ‘alright.’ He turns the car back on. The girl is taken aback, but stays quiet. The guy is distraught. He releases the hand break and drives.

5 comments:

  1. i like the general notion of a film about a not so cool guy. a nervous guy. but change the situation. make it more interesting. but use him. he's good.

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  2. I like the counting of the lights. Maybe this should lead to quite an aggressive argument about how he didn't really count the lights because it's just impractical.
    I like the ambiguity of 'it doesn't bother me'. What's the deal with the chick though? Does she like him or not?
    Make sure they both are unique people with certain idiosyncracies to avoid the film becoming a cliche park on top of hollywood sign teen romance.

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  3. I like Alex's idea of turning that cute interaction into quite a heated argument and really showing another side of the male character. Maybe he's quite aggressive and really makes this more awkward in a different way.

    About halfway through your story my mind wanted to introduce disaster and chaos. Something horrible happened actually. In a real Coens sorta moment, another car smashed into theirs unexpectedly (like the end of No Country For Old Men). This probably isn't viable for a low budget production but hopefully I've inspired some ideas for you for a direction you could take this.

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  4. Echo @Alex, there's a good story to be had from making the characters a bit more edgy/well defined.
    Perfect situation.

    Is this a long way through the party or the start?
    Maybe the guy is smashed and he didn't tell the girl, maybe she wants him to fuck her and stop being a little pussy.

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