KS

Absence
By Adrian Young

Shot M.O.S. except for certain specific heightened sounds and is in brown tones.

Scene opens with a son and a father. Father is in his late forties or early fifty’s, is in decent shape and LOOKS all together normal. The son is in his twenties.

The movie opens with the father and son sitting in a small kitchen of an apartment . They are eating spaghetti. They are both sitting at opposite ends of the table in silence. It must be clear that there is a distance between the two of them . On a nearby counter there is a kettle starting to boil. (The kettle boiling will be the only sound heard in this entire scene.) The father breaks the silence in the room by stating something to do with religion.

“I was reading my bible today and I came across an interesting passage on husbands and wives.”

The son does not look up from his eating. So the father continues.

“It says that wives are only to divorce from their husbands if he is committing adultery, other than that or his death she will be committing a sin to divorce him.”

(The kettle is starting to boil in the back ground, it has a whistle top) The son has stopped eating and has put down his fork by the time the father has finished his sentence.

“And you believe that. That in it’s self is half the reason that mom left you in the first place. Your a narrow minded asshole with a god complex. Not only are you abbusive, but to top it all off you use your cult readings to convince yourself that you are right. What the hell happened to love and compassion.”

(the kettle whistle has come to its peak and is shrill and relentless) “Listen BOY, you watch your mouth. I don’t need to have you , my son, lecturing me on something that you aren’t even old enough to comprehend. I sired you and without me you would have nothing. “ And you children respect your fathers and .....”

“Enough. I don’t give two shits about your cultist, religious, bullshit. Stop living in your little bubble, pay a small amount of attention to the world around you , or get used to living alone.”

He storms out of the apartment slamming the door behind him. The door slam is an audible sound. It is loud and booming cutting off the sound of the tea kettle.

(End Scene One)

Scene two opens in the sons apartment. There is an opera playing audible to the viewer. During this scene the only other audible sounds are the turning of pages and the telephone. The son is sitting in a chair reading.The opera is playing and the pages can be heard turning. After fifteen to twenty seconds we hear the sound of a telephone ringing, it will ring for as long as it takes for the son to reach the phone on screen.(at the first ring all other sound stops and does not resume) The son goes to the telephone and answers it.

“hello............speaking........how is he?...........I will be right there.”

As he is talking the camera fades to black.

(End two)

Scene three opens with a black screen and the sound of a heart beat. The heart beat is the only sound in this entire scene. Black screen and the sound of a heart monitor. Fade into a hospital room. the father is in a bed unconscious. There is a heart monitor, I.V., and pulse regulators attached to him. The son is in a chair beside the bed. He has a magazine open on his lap and is asleep. A nurse enters replaces the IV bag, checks the monitor then wakes the son up.

“You really ought to go home. There is nothing you can do by sitting around here. Go get some rest . We will call you as soon as he wakes up.” (This is not heard)

The son gets up, puts on the jacket that he has been sitting on and leaves the room.

(End Three)

Scene four opens in the sons bed room he is laying in bed staring up at the ceiling. There is an open book discarded to on side and a couple of papers strewn around. The sound of the heart monitor is still heard in this scene. The son lies there for a long while and it seems as though he is listening to the sound of the monitor. The monitor beeps begin to grow softer and then disappear into a flat line. The flat line is continued to be heard for a while longer then a phone rings once and it goes to blackout.

The End

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Script by Adrian Young. Contact him at: froidianslip@hotmail.com