A canned fire siren screams. Some inaccurate-looking yellow-faced Asians in firefighter suits come running toward the car with some extremely accurate-looking axes. But the plastic-hatted "firemen" use the axes only to chop open car's plywood doors so the "clowns" can squeeze out. They come brandishing seltzer bottles. The "clowns" immediately spray the "firemen" with their "seltzer." (The word "seltzer" placed in quotes because the “firefighters” plastic coats, once sprayed, begin to bubble.) The "car" gets quotes now too, for the oblong, tail-finned, and suspiciously atomic-looking metal blimp-like object roped in lopsided square knots to its roof.
The crowd has grown somehow quieter. And the performers circle one another, though they don't appear to feel quite secure enough in their assumed identities to actually split into teams. From outside the tent, a fireman, his comically oversized badge identifying him as "Fire Marshal," and a sour-faced older clown dressed in a sparkling sequined top hat and floral-print muumuu wheel in the apparent show stopper: a large, unnervingly authentic-looking confetti cannon. The performers in charge of wheeling the cannon out look tense, and it's probably the sweat on the old drag queen's hardened brow that first clues us in that the confetti cannon is in fact a "confetti" cannon pointed straight at the object on the clown car's roof. The string – which will, it's implied, fire the "confetti" payload – is for the moment in the hands of the "fire marshal." But then a “seltzer” stream arcs across the screen, and it becomes apparent that: 1) the change has been made to slo-mo, and 2) someone's finger slipped. Perhaps the ludicrously slow speed at which this "seltzer" travels is intended to allow us each (as audience members) time to contemplate the large-scale consequences of espionage-driven acts of international warfare – and ultimately our own personal, non-fictional demise. When the "seltzer" hits of course – this time a full-on face shot – the "fire marshal" staggers backward screaming, and the film speeds up as he pulls the string.
The subsequent burst of multicolored paper is at once relieving and not a little disappointing. Apparently someone – "firefighter," clown firefighter” or "clown" – accidentally, purposefully or purposefully accidentally loaded the "confetti" cannon with actual confetti.
And, that's the previously agreed-upon cue for A1C O'Rion. Guns are drawn when he enters, and most of the audience is on its feet, headed for the ring. We cut now to the small audience keeping its seat, a single, very pregnant redhead. Offscreen, the engine growls.
The shot cuts back to O'Rion now doing laps, herding the agents and Kamikazes by threat of tire treading to the ring's outer edge, momentarily opening a space large enough for takeoff. Maybe it's foreshadowing when the popped wheelie jerks artificially, or the bike's supporting wires momentarily glimmer. Once airborne, instead of taking the expected direct route toward Ms. Billings, though, he performs the standard routine, circular laps expanding then contracting around the tent. Suspicious, especially after a facial close-up reveals the panic on O'Rion's face when he finally picks Billings out of the crowd. The agents and Kamikazes, thanks to this impotent gaze, shift their focus to her. Now side by side and nearly indistinguishable, they mumble to one another the standard Hollywood-crowd-rabble filler word "rutabaga." Strangely, the screenwriter's notes not only specify that the spies mutter "rutabaga," the parentheticals call for the crowd noise to gradually increase from a murmur to an unmistakable, intelligible chant. “Rutabaga, rutabaga, rutabaga…”
The motorcycle maintains the same height and trajectory, though, making lap after lap without ever coming closer Billings' eager outstretched hands. Out of frustration she casts eyes upward. So we finally see it – the yellow and industrial-looking object hanging over a hole in the tent's ceiling: the crane suspending O'Rion's "flying" motorcycle on its guide wires. And it's then we realize just how irredeemably fucked he is.
[…]
INT. BALDWIN HILLS PUBLIC LIBRARY – DUSK
A medium shot of a stall door in the library's men's room. The door opens and JM, book in hand, emerges after a brief testicular damage check, looking triumphant but pale.
The camera follows JM toward the restroom's exit. He stops briefly at the mirror and sink area, already occupied by a hairy, shirtless MAN. The Man is scrubbing himself red with a rough, hand-soap-saturated paper towel, though underneath the foam, his skin seems to have a permanent layer of imbedded black dirt. His face's reflection is covered with either shaving cream or thickly lathered handsoap, which noiselessly pops and fizzles while it dries on the mirror's surface.
JEREMY MARTIN
I think the library's closing soon, mister.
The Man holds a rusty straight razor. He scrapes the blade across the mirror's surface - a squeak you feel in your teeth.
MAN
(unintelligible grunt)
[…]
When the lens comes unsmeared, we get a rehash of the earlier takeoff scene. A1C J. Manshadow wrestles his modified bike into the air, seemingly defying the laws of physics by willpower alone. Exactly as before, the flight begins clumsy and jerky – Manshadow’s never controlled the bike in the air, after all. But he gets some altitude, and the turbulence cools. O’Rion watches from the ground, looking delighted. But then those handsome features twist and expand in horror, and the shot cuts quick to Manshadow’s motorcycle, more than one mile above the earth now and starting to shake.
When the propeller snaps free, Manshadow actually reaches up for it as if he might reattach it, mid-flight. It pinwheels offscreen. Then the front wheel tips forward, and he grabs the handlebars, throwing himself backward, still hoping to glide to safety. The handlebars don't budge, though, and Manshadow’s shoulders pop audibly (the struggling engine has at this point already sputtered dead). He throws his head back with enough force to lose his glasses, and we know for certain when we see those black-frames plummet. The slow-motion drop through the frame's bottom while Manshadow squints but never screams seems almost redundant.
[…]
EXT. BALDWIN HILLS PUBLIC LIBRARY – DUSK
We have time for a quick establishing shot of the now-closed public library before the front door slams open, and JM - backpack forgotten inside, but still white-knuckling that book - limps toward the bike rack. Cut to a close-up of him popping open a padlock on the for-now unboltcuttered bike security chain, followed by a mid-angle of him pedaling down the road, leaning forward, ass off the seat.
SFX: The stiff cards snap audibly in the spokes.
The camera speeds past the bike along JM's future path to show a nasty patch of sidewalk broken up by tree roots and raised about four inches.
JM's legs pump faster as he approaches, oblivious, the front tire of his bike now dangerously close.
SFX: The snapping card sound grows into a deep growl.
The front-tire grows bigger, and its tread pattern becomes more detailed. The bike is ostensibly moments away from a tire-bursting, jeans-ripping collision. But as center-screen is filled with high-traction rubber, the tire comes up off the ground. JM pops a wheelie.
The rear tire, looking extremely wide for a bicycle, rises, too, sooner than the first had.
SFX: The growling gets louder.
We cut to a mid-range shot of JM straddling a circa-WWII military-issue motorcycle outfitted with a propeller and a pair of gawky wings. He's up off the ground and revving the engine, peeling out into the sky. The camera swings around behind as the bike banks into the chemical-burned sunset. All the chrome parts, polished shiny, shimmer in the pink-and-orange glow.
The bike shrinks to a speck, then dissolves into nothing. For all anyone knows, it may never come down.
And, after a few beats of steady blank sky, you can't be sure it was ever really there at all.
[Note: The theme of this story is loneliness.]
this book with friends
Don't Bother Page 7
