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This is the screenplay for a video short I made in the summer of 1995.
We're looking at the sky, high-above the clouds. As Ken speaks, a flying saucer swoops quietly through the frame.
Ken: 'There are big big forces at work in the universe: life and death, Christmas and Coca-Cola.'
Oliver: 'Okay, I'm rolling.'
A flash of snow, and then we're tuned in to the view through Oliver's camcorder. As the story progresses, we move back and forth regularly from Oliver's viewpoint and an omniscient viewpoint.
Rex has just finished putting something in the trunk of his car.
Pause.
Rex: 'Oh! Ken...'
Ken: 'What's up, Rex?'
Rex: 'Nothing, nothing.'
Ken: 'Rex, this is my new friend Oliver. He's making a movie.'
Oliver: 'Hi.'
Rex: 'What about?'
Ken: 'Whatever happens when he's looking.'
Oliver: 'It's a work of shameless fiction.'
Ken: 'How true. What're you up to?'
Rex: 'I'm...driving up north.'
Ken: 'Mind if we come along?'
Rex: 'Um.'
Ken: 'This your shovel?'
Rex: 'Uh, yeah...'
Ken: 'I'll just throw it in the back then, eh?'
Title: 'COCA-COLA'
We are driving in the car.
Ken: 'You seem a bit preoccupied there little Rex. What's your trauma?'
Rex: 'Trauma? There's no trauma. How are you?'
Ken: 'Oh, same ol' same ol', Rex. You know what I mean.'
Rex: 'Yeah.'
Pause.
Rex: 'Do you ever worry about getting sick?'
Ken: 'Not really.'
Rex: 'I think I'm coming down with something. Feel my forehead.'
Pause.
Rex: 'How does it feel?'
Ken: 'Feels nice. You use Noxema?'
Rex: 'No.'
Ken: 'Oil of Olay?'
Rex: 'No, no. Do you think I have a fever?'
Oliver: 'You're sweating.'
Rex: 'I'm cold.'
Oliver: 'Maybe you have Lupus.'
Rex: 'Fuck...'
Ken: 'You know what you should do, Rex? Drink a Coke.'
Rex: 'A Cokeª ?'
Ken: 'It'll make you feel better.'
Rex: 'It will?'
Ken: 'Sure man. What makes everything all right like slugging back an ice-cold and cool Coca-Cola carbonated beverage?'
Rex: 'Well, nothing I guess...'
Ken: 'If you're good to them, they'll be good to you, man.'
Oliver: 'Who?'
Ken: 'Them. Coca-Cola. Somebody's in charge of this world -- somebody rewards and punishes, and you've got to acknowledge the powers that be.'
Rex: 'You mean God?'
Ken: 'God? What's that shit all about? I'm talking about the corporations. The corporations are bigger than God, man.'
Oliver: 'I don't believe in God.'
Ken: 'Maybe not, but you'd be an idiot not to believe in Coca-Cola. You're either for them or against them, and the people who're against them are on a countdown to disillusionment They'll take care of you man, if you let them know you're on their side.'
Oliver: 'Like karma.'
Ken: 'Those self-righteous X generation shitheads can whine forever in their plastic apathy for all I care. Human beings are about being adaptable, and the future is sugar-free and reflective.'
Pause.
Ken: 'Fording down this highway or in your Craftmaticª at night, they're watching. It's either consume or be consumed, man.'
Title: 'LITTLE GREEN MEN'
Ken: 'Where's Maya at, Rex?'
Rex: 'She...she's been feeling a little under the weather.'
Oliver: 'She's sick?'
Rex: 'I think so.'
Ken: 'What with?'
Rex: 'I have my suspicions.'
Pause.
Rex: 'What're you going to do with all this, anyway, Oliver?'
Oliver: 'With what?'
Rex: 'With all this footage...of us -- in the car.'
Ken: 'He studies them.'
Rex: 'For what.'
Oliver: 'Evidence.'
Rex: 'Evidence of what?'
Oliver: 'Them.'
Rex: 'Coca-Cola?'
Ken: 'Aliens.'
Pause.
Rex: 'Have you...seen any?'
Oliver: 'I have my suspicions.'
Pause.
Rex: 'Is this some kind of hobby?'
Ken: 'Oliver's doing important work.'
Oliver: 'People deserve to know the truth.'
Rex: 'The truth?'
Oliver: 'The greatest truth there is. Think about it: the wise men follow a glowing, traveling astral body to manger in Bethlehem? Some people try to write it off as a comet, but they're just part of the cover-up.'
Rex: 'The cover-up?'
Oliver: 'Finding out the truth about all of this will reveal the most important thing there is...what men have been seeking for centuries...'
Rex: 'Which is?'
Ken: 'The true meaning of Christmas.'
Title: 'EBOLA ZAIRE'
Rex: (coughs)
Ken: 'Do you want a Kleenex?'
Rex: 'Yeah, thanks. Do you have one?'
Ken: 'Yeah, in my purse.'
Rex: 'Wait -- is this used?'
Ken: 'No, I don't think so. I don't tend to keep soiled Kleenex.'
Rex: 'I just don't want to get any of your germs. Who knows where you've been. What you could have come in contact with...'
Oliver: 'He could've been handling bad pork.'
Ken: 'You never know.'
Pause.
Rex: 'Have you ever heard of Ebola Zaire?'
Oliver: 'African virus.'
Rex: 'That's right. It arrives inside you through the eyes, or the nose or the mouth, or the blood. It sets up shop in your cells, establishing factories to replicate more virus. As each cell fills, it explodes and floods your bloodstream with virus. It amplifies into every system until you become one massive virus superfactory, and as it does this your cells burst one by one until you begin to dissolve from the inside out, your organs liquifying into pure filovirus. It fills your brain and drives you mad. And when you're full, you explode, virus pouring out of every oriface in bloody, poisonous jets of melted meat.
'The Ebola virus is our last predator.
'The Ebola virus is our greatest ancestor.
'Ebola Civilisation is on the verge of forming a great empire, built on the backs of the civilisation of the greatest virus us all: us.'
Pause.
Ken: 'You're one weird cat, Rex.'
The car has now carried them well out of the city.
Rex: 'Oliver, do you think we might get diseases from the aliens?'
Oliver: 'They probably invented diseases.'
Ken: 'Thank God for Tylenol.'
Pause.
Ken: 'Say, could you pull over up there? I need some Players.'
Rex: 'Yeah, sure.'
Ken buys cigarettes, returning only to find that his friends have been kidnapped by aliens. Unfazed, however, he drinks a bottle of Coca-Cola.
Ken: 'Yeah, big big forces.'
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