The House We'll Destroy
Excerpt from a short-film script in development, co-written by Thomas Mozden.
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THOMAS finishes his food and coffee and heads out of the kitchen. He goes into his "study room", where he keeps his PHOTOGRAPHY EQUIPMENT. His room of joy outside all else. A DAY PLANNER with an 'X' for each day sticks on the larger wall, whilst FOLDERS are neatly stacked on the table, spines with Sharpied labels facing outward. He scans a small shelf of 5 LENSES, arranged according to size. Taking two, he puts one in his BAG, and attaches the other to the camera body. Clicks and clacks, the bag's velcro seals - ready to go. At the front door, the jingle of KEYS. SHANNON goes for a last goodbye:
THOMAS (CONT’D)
Goodbye love. I'll be back in a few. (Playfully himself) You behave yourself while I'm gone.
SHANNON
Nothing beyond the usual indecencies… the things I keep from you. You keep your own secrets, Thomas?
THOMAS
No. [Chuckles]. No, you'd need an interesting life to keep secrets in the first place.
SHANNON
Oh well, thanks very much.
THOMAS
Yeah, yeah. Love you.
The front door shuts, and SHANNON heads back to the kitchen. She sits down and drinks her coffee for a while, eyes gently to the table-top as silence occupies the room. She gets an idea, forgoing her two-handed grip on the cup, and reaches for a drawer near the sink. From which: she takes out a KEY.
She goes to the hallway, and to the door of the study, and unlocks the door with no trouble nor hesitation; she's done this before. Back in the kitchen: SHANNON resumes the page she was on last week. We get glimpses of the NOTEBOOK’s contents: words, words, words in neat order, but with quite a few scribbled redactions. Likewise, some rough sketches and diagrams. As she reads, she makes a smile here and there, in judgement and power over her husband's projections and documented thoughts, coffee cup in other hand again. A POLAROID PORTRAIT of her falls from the side of the journal, and she picks it up and places it back briskly. This has also happened before, and it didn't leave her pondering anything the first time round.
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EXT. BEACH - DAY.
THOMAS is walking the sand of one of the city's tourist traps. But there is an early spring chill which precludes the usual crowds to gather. He prowls for subjects to shoot, occasionally taking the odd filler shot of the shore. No luck today.
Cut to later, not far from where we've just seen him: THOMAS heading back to the car, still by the shore but now on the promenade. From afar, he spots a family by the incoming tide: A young mother and father, with a boy and a girl (3 and 5 years old respectively), and the man's father, old and slow. THOMAS starts taking shots, a lot and with great speed:
The children play chase with the tide; the boy gets tired and runs away; the father goes to him off-frame and brings him back by their side; the girl also tires of the game and starts vigorously digging the sand; the mother attends to her and asks, 'what are you trying to find?'; the grandfather paces around thinking about everything except the scene he's in; tide goes in and out; they leave.
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