"Your parents would know. Your parents would know. Your parents would know what?"
They weren't home but neither of them worked midday on Saturday. They were grocery shopping or running errands. Or plotting to ruin my life.
I opened Dad's computer and clicked on "Land of Movies."
"THE LAND OF MOVIES"
BY
ART MAGEE
698 AxelFoley Lane
Lindley, MI 49438
555-765-4565
artmageewrites@email.com
FADE IN:
EXT. MOPR TESTING FACILITY -- NIGHT
A BABY WAILS (O.S.) as rows of lights illuminate a modern laboratory. The CRIES are urgent and painful. The BABY is not hungry or tired or teething. Something is very much the matter. As the CRIES continue, the camera slowly ZOOMS OUT from the facility to STEADY on a rickety metal sign that looks to have only recently been installed: MOPR INDUSTRIES. The sign rocks in the breeze and then blows back and forth as a station wagon SCREAMS past it.
Supered below: 2000.
CUT TO:
INT. STATION WAGON -- NIGHT
DAVID GUNDERSON drives with clenched fists and thick glasses. He sports a mustache that looks more party store fake than real. SUZANNE GUNDERSON reaches behind her to the backseat where the source of the WAILS: a BABY already with a helmet of black hair. He's a mere months after newborn. His darkened eyes are red-rimmed and curious.
SUZANNE
This is worth it to you?
DAVID
The deadline is tonight. If she's not entered now--
SUZANNE
She lives a normal life.
DAVID
She'll still live a normal life.
SUZANNE
You can't know that. No one can know it.
DAVID
I know it. I know it!
He squeezes the wheel tighter. We FOCUS on the wheels of the station wagon ZOOMING closer to the FACILITY.
DAVID
(to himself)
I know it.
SUZANNE
And for what? Money? Fame?
DAVID
Comfort. Stability. Everything we don't have.
SUZANNE
(looking at the baby in the rear view)
Yet.
The car SQUEALS to a halt in front of a sign: VISITOR PARKING. Davis takes Suzanne's hand.
DAVID
Please. Trust me.
SUZANNE
Okay, Aladdin.
The baby WATCHES them.
CUT TO:
YOU ARE READING
Movieland
AdventureMax Magee just won a local contest she didn't enter. Her prize: testing out a virtual reality simulator that kidnaps her best friend Frankie in a movie-verse that spans the entire history of cinema. With the help of her girlfriend, a frenemy, a loca...
