God Turns The Faucet-A Short Play

 

GOD TURNS THE FAUCET

A SHORT PLAY

 

INT: MOTEL BEDROOM

(We start in PITCH BLACK. No light, no sound, except for maybe the flicking of a magazine, indicating someone is reading. There is a LOUD KNOCK on the DOOR)

VOICE (MALE):

It’s me

(We hear small but audible FOOTSTEPS as someone lost in the inky blackness opens the door, before they do so, they SWITCH ON THE LIGHT.

As the room LIGHTS UP, we find it is a MURKY, UNORGANIZED  MESS. A SOFA in the center of the room has visible SPRINGS sticking out of it, with several pieces of DRENCHED CLOTHING spread over the back of it.

The person answering the door, a FEMALE, EARLY TWENTIES,  HAIR IN  A PONYTAIL, WEARING A PINK T-SHIRT AND TORN JEANS, greets a YOUNG MALE, ROUGHLY THE SAME AGE, wearing a BRIGHT BLUE BLAZER and RED SHORTS, he is DRENCHED, it is raining heavily outside)

FEMALE:

I told you to take the trenchcoat, look at you, you’re soaking

MALE:

It’s not my fault God turned the faucet on  before I got back

FEMALE:

I watch the weather for a reason

MALE:

Did you get the tickets?

FEMALE:

I got the autographs too

MALE:

You haven’t been out of this room, how’s that possible?

FEMALE:

Shopped online for ‘em

MALE:

I thought you wanted to get autographs in person?

FEMALE:

Yeah but, like you said, God turned the faucet on.

MALE:

You’d rather spend time and money cheating yourself out of a live experience because you don’t want to get your hair wet?

FEMALE:

I was just going to shower

MALE:

One of the deals we made is that if I got the tickets, we’d try to make the most out of the day and find opportunities to make a statement back home. We would have our chance to brag for once.

FEMALE:

Yeah, well maybe I’m up for bragging on my own time.

MALE:

You’re impossible.

FEMALE:

That’s very possible

(The man sits on the edge of the bed)

MALE:

That bed’s creaking an awful lot

FEMALE:

Yeah, I mean, we haven’t even started on it yet

MALE:

Excuse me?

FEMALE:

What?

MALE

I didn’t quite hear you there

FEMALE:

Well then get hearing aids

MALE:

What haven’t we started?

FEMALE:

Sex

MALE:

You want to have sex?

FEMALE:

Not yet, I was thinking after

MALE:

That’s a problem

FEMALE:

How so?

MALE

 I’m your buddy

FEMALE

Yeah, you are, that’s why I want to do this

MALE

You can’t just ask a friend to have sex with you, what if…

FEMALE

Yeah, ‘What If’

MALE

Huh?

(she sits down on the bed beside him, she holds his hands tight)

FEMALE:

My mother used to tell me IF was the most powerful word in the English language….so many possibilities, so many options, some of the best feelings, some of your worst, all come from asking a question to yourself…

MALE:

Doubting yourself?

FEMALE:

No, no silly, challenging yourself. To see how you measure up as a human being

MALE:

Having sex with your close friends is your idea of ‘measuring up?

FEMALE:

…You’re gonna say it…

MALE:

Say what?

FEMALE:

Keep going

MALE:

I’m thinking of repercussions…if…

FEMALE:

There you go

MALE:

If I hurt you…

FEMALE:

You won’t

MALE:

If I do…

FEMALE:

I’ll forgive you

MALE:

Like that?

FEMALE:

Like that

MALE:

I’d never fall out with you either. You mean too much to me.

FEMALE:

See? I’ve got nothing to be afraid of, and neither do you

MALE:

This is the part where I say ‘I love you’ and we snuggle a bit right?

FEMALE

We’re not lip locking

MALE:

Unfair

FEMALE:

Go with the Eskimo kisses.

MALE

Why? You feeling chilly? Like them?

FEMALE:

‘Course I’m chilly, so are you, God DID turn the faucet on

Doctor Who-Face The Raven

When I first tackled this edit in December of 2015, I had the interesting notion of cutting out Clara’s ‘final’ farewell to The Doctor, but in doing so, it left the story feeling slightly under-length. Not that there’s a problem with “shortening” Doctor Who episodes if you feel it makes for tighter pacing (or allow it to sync up with well with the length of traditional “classic” Who stories) , but I thought, for this second go-around, I would try to bump up the length so it was closer to that of a modern series episode.

How to achieve this without compromising my earlier ideas?  Look to none other than the very next episode, “Heaven Sent”
Inspired by a discussion I had with Whoflix (who had recently completed his own edit of Face the Raven, an edit which sadly no longer exists on his archives), I felt compelled to try and make the episode feel more like a two-parter, leading directly into Hell Bent without dragging out The Doctor’s struggle inside the confession dial too much…and the easiest solution was to simply use the last act of the episode focusing on The Doctor experiencing the loop time and again, which neatly condenses the events of Heaven Sent into a very manageable ten minutes and gets us to Gallifrey in no time at all

Also changed is the pre-credits, gone is Rigsy’s phone call to the TARDIS, and The Doctor telling Rigsy there’s no easy way to tell someone they’re going to die being where we hit the titles. Not much else of FTR has been changed other than that.

 

Click here to download

Wisdom’s Teeth Leave Scars

 

WISDOM’S TEETH LEAVE SCARS

Meet Harold. He is a sorcerer.  The land of Pompitope is where he hails from.

It looks like a pretty dull place to the trained and educated eye.

It’s a paradise to the naive.

All the up and coming sorcerers think this place is a stepping stone; it’s where they’ll take a step above.

Harold and his friends all have this big dream of being the most discussed, most debated of their kind in all of Pompitope.

They had heard stories though, that whenever the young and inspired come back from atop the summit of Mount Nuent, that they come back with but one thing.

Wisdom.

And it depressed them.

And no one questioned why. Noone was allowed to get a word in on the matter in fact; all the young Sorcerers just went back to work.

And work was all they considered it by this point. Not fun, not a hobby, just work. They considered this a way to making a living, they weren’t embracing it as a way of life; they were making it the means for which to pay the cost of living.

Harold and his friends had heard these whispers, but took no heed of their warnings. They would travel to Mount Nuent, and they vowed they would come back to their homeland with a zest for life, the means to take it head on and embrace its ups and downs.

This would be their greatest test, they diligently researched every spell they could learn, and even reminded themselves of the spells they had already practiced and mastered time and again, and they would journey to Nuent at the fourth setting of the suns that day.

When that moment came, ‘Harold’s Hoarde’ as the villagers called them, made their way to the mountain. As they ascended, the fearsome conditions, as predicted by them, provided the test of endurance.

Violent winds threatened to sweep them off their feet, but a wave of their wands made them lighter than air.

A treacherous and raging waterfall stood between them and the next stage of the path, but a wave of their wands forged a steep bridge connecting them to the other side of the mountain.

Howling masked banshees that clung to the sides of the cliffs reached out to tempt the men, but the Wizards set about unmasking each of them, and with a wave of their wands, they created mirrors for each of them. Transfixed by their own beauty, the banshees left the Wizards to ascend the remainder of the mountain.

Finally, they reached their destination, and were awarded with an audience with the wise Wizards of the land. Those fables had decreed to be so powerful, that they possessed the means to create life itself.

Harold and his friends asked if they could bring something to life, something with raw, potent emotion, a zest for life, and had flaws it would have to overcome.

The wise Wizards, excited, began discussing what the creature would look like. After a couple of hours, it became clear this was all they were discussing.

Nothing about what kind of flaws it would have, what conceptions of faith could challenge its belief in itself, what causes it could join to determine in its long life if it would serve a great good or evil. None of that, the wise Wizards wanted to know if it should have a fourth eye or a seventh sense.

Harold argued that the creature had to make sense.

The wise Wizards laughed at this, and replied “It’s magic, it doesn’t have to make sense”

Harold and his friends gritted their teeth, and opted to depart Nuent that night, and returned home earlier than scheduled. They put their wands away, they greeted their wives and kids with a warm embrace and from there sought out a job in the local paper, looking to make ends meet.

They had gained wisdom that evening, and learned their most bitter lesson.

Harold’s hoard would work hard to serve life rather than challenge it, they would pay the bills, they would raise the next generation, and they would give them a different kind of advice. They hoped that their wisdom would leave no trace of the scars their own epiphanies had provided.

Life had to make sense of itself, or all its creatures would lose all sense of it.

 

Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers-Return of the Green Ranger

Managed to cut down another Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers three-parter from season two down to just 29 minutes. This time it was “Return of the Green Ranger”. To acheive this I removed the entirety of the Dragonzord vs Tigerzord and Thunderzord clash, everything to do with present day Bulk and Skull (though retained their ancestors), and the sub-plot about Zedd wanting Rita to have a baby. I also reshuffled a few scenes.
The ending was very tricky to pull off, I had to make use of a “commercial fade” for the desired effect which was by no means perfect, but I think it still worked.

 

https://vimeo.com/174079587

Superman-Dawn of Justice Sneek Peeks

Spent the last day or so editing the Ultimate Edition of Batman v Superman in the hopes of reining in some of it, try to make it more Clark’s movie for at least the first half an hour, before focusing on Bruce. Also I’ve minimised Diana’s role in events considerably.

Here are just a few samples of what to expect when I’m done