Screenplay / Once Upon Scene 12 w/recap

INT. ROYAL APARTMENTS- DAY Tom shuts the door and locks it. He presses his back against the door and sighs, nervously. There’s no one in. Dave and Tony are probably on the bar. Tom switches the TV on. It’s an amateur pirate broadcast, probably made by students- a studio programme with dodgy lighting. Two people are being interviewed in front of an audience. Tom puts the Tracksuit top in a bin liner from under the sink. He pours some Jack Daniels and ice into a glass and sits, sipping it, in front of the TV. GUEST A They were detonated in places supposed to represent political problems. The probable motives being bandied about: I’m not prepared to believe them at the moment and I’m even less inclined to believe this theory about the attack in the sensor’s office. In fact I believe the opposite. If he hadn’t seen so many films, which is what the gentleman here is suggesting: If he didn’t have this apparent obsession with violent cinema, this terrible scene wouldn’t have happened in the first place. He would have had no need. PRESENTER Now the police received an anonymous phone call from a young man with a strong Lancashire accent claiming responsibility for the sensor’s office atrocity. We don’t know yet whether this person is the person in the photo fit image. The suggestion is that it was the fact that a particular film that this young man had seen- Presenter looks off-frame. PRESENTER (contd.) I’m being told not to mention the name- it was the fact that this film had been cut by the sensors that tipped this man over the edge. If these films had been left in their original form, this latest attack- Cheers from the studio audience. Presenter raises his voice over them. PRESENTER (contd.) Wouldn’t have happened and the workers in this sensor’s office would still be alive today. GUEST A But take a step back from this. It was this man’s obsession with violent cinema that- WHACK. An egg slams into guest A’s face, hard. He’s stunned. VOICE (O.S) Fuck you, you fucking nazi! I’m an adult, why don’t I get treated like one? Guest A is taking his eggy glasses off with shaky hands. GUEST A Why don’t you behave like one? Studio camera pans around. Amateur security is dragging a dreadlocked guy out. Tom switches the TV off. BLACK. A door slams. TONY’S VOICE Fuck fuck fuck… DAVE’S VOICE Lock it. TONY’S VOICE Right, I’m not fucking joking. Never again. NEVER again. No more coke. FADE UP TOM had gone back to bed, and he isn’t impressed with being woken up again. DAVE and TONY are in the corridor. TOM (V/O) If I weren’t so tired I’d have gone out there and beaten the shit out of both of them. But I suppose that’s a catch twenty-two situation. DAVE’S VOICE What have we got… Kitchen drawers rattle, he’s sifting through them, pulling metal things out. Tom gets out of bed wearing the bulletproof jacket and sticks on a dressing gown. Nothing will make him take that jacket off. TONY Tom! Man of the moment! Listen, you’ve gotta do a huge favour for me. TOM (Facetious) Have I? TONY You bought a gun, didn’t you? TOM Why? TONY Get it. Load it. FLASHBACK Tom is firing at the security services outside the sensor’s office. CUT TO FLASHBACK He’s sat in the car afterwards. No gun. TOM I lost it. (Pause) What have you done? DAVE This clown… (Points at Tony, who’s stressing out) DAVE (Cont) Only did a couple of lines. Then told a load of customers at the bar all sorts of shit. TOM What?! TONY Not about you, or the bombs. Just about Yan-yan and Devant. And us. TOM (Sarcastic) Oh, just them? Well… Tom mock-wipes his brow. TOM (cont) They’ll never find me now, will they? Fuck me… Wait a minute. What about Yan-Yan? Tony looks over at Dave. Dave nods. TONY She’s dead, Tom. Tom contemplates this. Tries to act like it doesn’t bother him. TOM I’m fucking sick of your secrets, Dave. I move out today. Dave ploughs on regardless. DAVE She was leaving business cards all over the place. FLASHBACK The card Tom found in Bar Code. DAVE (Cont.) She was seeking attention. There are certain people in that bar that you do NOT want to get on the wrong side of. And if those people had found out I’m head of a national piracy network, she’d have been deported, and I’d have gone to jail for all that shit. Dave points at the cupboard holding all the copying hardware. TOM You’re not the head of a “national piracy network”, you pretentious cunt. You’re a del boy. DAVE (Cont.) There was a job you didn’t do, Tom. The mail services are losing thousands of letters a year. Devant wanted us to sort them out. We did that when you were asleep. FLASHBACK The smoke Tom saw when he was handing out the packages. DAVE (Cont.) Not that many people died, so it hasn’t had much news coverage. We didn’t find out we had to do it ‘til we’d already had about four lines of coke. You were out cold. Dave looks over at Tony. DAVE (cont) And now thanks to NUMPTY over here, everyone in Code knows it was us. BANG BANG BANG. There’s someone at the door. They’re not very polite. CU-TOM FLASHBACKS Quick frames of the police all over Manchester. DAVE Out the window. Come on. TOM What?! Dave is already opening a window near the kitchen area. TOM We’re on the fourth floor, you knobhead! DAVE Shh! BANG BANG BANG. They’re not just knocking. They’re knocking it through. Dave roots through the kitchen drawers, shaking. We’ve never seen him nervous before. TONY There’s no way that’s the police. DAVE Fuck. Somebody at Bar Code shopped us. My guess? That dickhead manager. Tony! DAVE rugby-throws a large kitchen knife at Tony, cutting his arm. TONY Argh! You fucking prick! DAVE pulls an even bigger one out of the drawer. BAM! The door is put through. Four men charge into the room. They wear full black including balaclavas. One has a MiniDV camera. Two have crowbars. The cameraman wears a T-shirt saying GUNCHESTER. We’ve met him before. Moments after the men walk in, CALLUM enters, sporting a different Benneton jumper. Tom’s face slips from fear to despair when he recognises him. Tony picks up the knife and freezes. Dave steps forward, yelling, knife raised. Balaclava 1 tries to turn away, and Dave sinks the knife into his shoulder. Balaclava 1 screams. Dave is not backing down. Dave and Balaclava1 are shoved aside by the other intruders. 2 of them grab Tom by an arm each. Tom’s really mad. He’s pushing them together like he’s on the pec deck. They struggle, but manage to trip him and hold him down. He has to watch. A crowbar lands in Dave’s face. Blood goes all over the kitchen work surface and pristine utensils. He’s not handsome any more. As he’s knocked away he holds onto the knife, which rips a large fissure in Balaclava 1’s shoulder, but stays embedded. Tony has backed into a corner when the blows start raining down on his face and body. Tom, eyes scrunched closed, starts to open his eyes. He’s becoming accustomed to violence and death. The despair he felt when the bombs went off is a distant memory. But during this, Tom can hear footsteps. He turns to look away from the carnage. He glances to the broken door where these men came in. SLOW MOTION Executive shoes and black suit trousers, stepping forward. TOM’S FACE Oh no. TONY AND DAVE Almost dead, covered in blood, which is also splattered all over the flat. The blows keep raining down on them as the cameraman films. Dave and Tony become victims of the kind of material they peddled. Executive shoes and trousers walk closer. The balaclava-wearing men and Callum, all now drenched in blood, give Dave and Tony one last whack on the head. They’re dead. And in walks DEVANT, the same black suit and meaning business. He stands over Tom in this scene of carnage without a speck of blood on him, technically. But Devant, we now know, is the guiltiest man in the room. He glances at Callum, straight-faced. Callum smiles at Devant, sinister, proud of his latest killing. Devant pulls out a silenced Glock 17 and shoots Callum in the hand. He’s a good shot. Callum is shocked. He starts to cry. Tom is frozen stiff with fear, convinced he’s going to die. Balaclava 2 takes 2 tea towels twists one and offers it to Balaclava 1,who’s trying to shut out the pain. As he bites down, his Balaclava twists out of shape. DEVANT I expect you’ll want an explanation, Tom. Devant pulls out a DVD. He puts it in the drive. Balaclava 2 yanks the knife out quickly. Blood spurts all over him. Balaclava 1 SCREAMS. Balaclava 2 takes the other tea towel and ties it tight around the wound. The DVD shows CCTV footage from a police station. Callum is sat in a room talking to a technician on computer. The Tech is making a photo fit image of Tom. As Callum talks, the face changes shape, the hair shortens, and the image starts to look like Tom. The technician applies a mixed-race skin-tone. Now it really looks like Tom. After a few adjustments to the hairline and jaw line, it’s practically Tom’s image on screen. It becomes, we realise, Tom’s photo fit image from the news report. DEVANT I didn’t spend a million pounds of government funds solving this county’s problems just to have everything ruined by an unstable sixteen-year-old with a vendetta. What’s done is done Tom. And I can clear it up. I won’t have to clear your name because they will never find you- unless, of course, Callum walks out of this room. Callum is sobbing uncontrollably. DEVANT nods to the other men. They leave. DEVANT You’ll never have to kill again. You’ll never have to worry about money. FLASHBACKS The Job Centre exploding. The burned-out car. Firing at the police and security, chasing him outside the sensor’s office The clip from Apocalypse Now MARLON BRANDO’S VOICE The strength to do that… Tom looks Callum in the eye and shoots him in the head. A look of determination changes instantly to apathy. DEVANT Good choice, Tom. The worst is over. You’re still alive because you didn’t open the envelopes. You did as you were told. But Callum… He had issues. He liked his films too much. The two psychologists that I’d sent him to had no idea he was unstable as well as Aspergers. He’d had a hard day. His work colleagues were making his life difficult, he felt under pressure from breaking the law and the secrets he kept. Then he found out that his legitimate job and his work colleagues didn’t exist any more. And all he wanted was to go home, watch a film and forget about the world. But the film was edited for violence. Because of his disorder, that is one thing Callum could not tolerate. So he went behind my back, found out as much information about the sensors as he could, then made a plan to kill them all. But he needed a getaway driver and a scapegoat. So he stumbled across you… It didn’t really go to plan for him. But now all of this is over, you probably want to ask the same question that everyone drowning in self pity would ask. “Why me?” Devant pulls out a DVD from his coat pocket and carefully steps around the pools of blood on the floor. He puts the DVD in the lounge player and switches the TV on. CCTV Footage flickers to life. Tom, in his student days, is on the street at night. He has a girl on his arm. We’ve seen this event in the opening scene, but not from this angle. A tall man argues with Tom. The girl steps into the argument. BAM! Tall man punches the girl in the face, hard. Her head flies back. Tom SNAPS. He punches the man three times, throws a knee in that drops him, then Tom kicks him twice in the stomach and once in the face. The video cuts. The video now shows Tom working in the computer office. We saw some of this in the opening scene too, but it’s a continuation of this. At the edge of the shop floor, the manager’s office door flies open. Tom marches out, angered. Tom turns and shouts back into the office. We can lip read “Fuck you!” Tom walks out. A nicely aligned, 2-metre-high stack of printer paper has been constructed on the shop floor. Tom pushes it all over. Customers shit themselves. The Manager emerges, a little cautious, and glances to the camera. TOM You found all this out overnight? DEVANT No. We were watching you, Tom. We’ve been watching since you enrolled at university. Then we sent you the letter and hoped you’d turn up at the recruitment fair. It has taken me until now to get this campaign organised. Besides, how else would you get away with what you did? You broke that man’s eye socket and two of his ribs. Tom gets the shivers. Devant knows so much about him. DEVANT We knew you were perfectly applicable for the role. You’re intelligent and hard working, like a lot of graduates, but you are also resilient and strong-willed. We knew you wouldn’t fold under the pressure. TOM (Sarky) Not even when you put my photo fit image on national television! Have I made you proud? Devant leans on the doorway. At this moment he relaxes his business persona. DEVANT Tom… Getting a terrorist campaign passed through parliament would not be the easiest thing to do. So we didn’t even try to pass it. The government have been very… particular about terrorism since Guy Fawkes got caught. Not many MPs know that I orchestrated the events in Manchester yesterday. Some of the few that do didn’t agree with it. They wanted the campaign stopped. They must have a problem with developing public health and well-being Tom cuts him off. TOM Right, first off- that is bollocks. And it’s not about testing graduates abilities either. Tell me the truth or I will do nothing for you. DEVANT It’s all of those and more, Tom. There are people stopping this country developing, very influential businessmen- people in power who could very easily persuade members of parliament not to follow the Prime Minister’s plans. These people are afraid of change, even though everyone agrees- change is all that is needed. I borrowed, in total, one million pounds from them. I then spent this money recruiting 71 graduates who were looking for a challenge: a life-changing opportunity. Who wanted it so bad they’d approach a stranger at an unmarked stall at a recruitment event full of adverts. I wanted people who were proactive. I gave you no encouragement to talk to me. After we talked I found out you had a history of violence… TOM’S FACE- “Oh, come on…” DEVANT (Cont) And I figured you could handle it. Devant nods to the screen. Tom, more recently, suited and booted, walking into the job centre, about to hand over the package. Tom in the GUM clinic, package in hand. And from a distance, Tom walking into McD’s. Certifiable damning evidence of his guilt. It looks like Tom was walking into each place with full knowledge of what he was going to do. It looks like he was brainwashed from the start. His enthusiasm for the job looks like his enthusiasm for terrorism. DEVANT I had confirmation that all the people who were causing these problems died in the bombings. Your face was used because the other MP’s wanted the campaign stopped. You were the scapegoat. (Pause) Thankfully, as the government has at least some control over illegal immigration, we have a plentiful supply of scapegoats. It wasn’t difficult for our contacts to switch you over. Round about now the police will be killing an unknown foreigner who they will later accuse of the attacks. Now. You have a choice. Go to the police – I don’t think you want to know what would happen if you did, but I’m advising you against it- or stay on the payroll. There’ll be more money, more control, more power. That’s no choice. TOM What am I doing? DEVANT (off the cuff) You’ll have absolute control of all piracy in Manchester. All you have to do is find a legitimate cover job. Part time. TOM Not really a choice, is it… FADE OUT FADE UP INT.COMMUNITY CENTRE-DAY The building is housing a career guidance centre of sorts: like the job centre, but everybody in there is being designated a job whether they like it or not. It’s much more efficient. Employers stand in a group, looking for candidates. They don’t have stalls like in the recruitment fair. A sign on the wall states: EMPLOYMENT GUARANTEED! TOM (V.O) Looks like I’m back in admin again. The cycle repeats itself… I’d be quite happy to update customer details for the rest of my fucking life, just as long as I’m not opening the post for everyone. My CV’s not improved in months, but I’m not signing on- none of us are- and I know whatever job I get into I’m not going to be in it long. Because Devant needs me. The government needs me. What I’m about to take over is going to cause a lot of misery for a lot of people. But it’s not my misery. I’ve got a piracy network all to myself, not to mention a luxury city centre apartment. I know that I can handle this. I can handle whatever card I’m dealt, no matter how much ammonium nitrate it’s been dipped in. There is nothing that can hurt me now. ZOOM OUT Tom is just another jobseeker in a room full of jobseekers, joining a queue. FADE OUT END

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