For example: JOB HUNTING, FINISH QUAKE 4, TRIP TO MARTIN MERE, DEDICATED GYM etc. The one which has re-energised my writing though is: RE-START BERLIN SCRIPT.
Lou Reed's 'Berlin' album is one of the greatest, harshest, vivid, beautiful, haunting albums EVER!! It was written in direct response to the commercial success of the album 'Transformer' which contained the hits Walk On The Wild Side, Satellite Of Love and Perfect Day, and is fuelled by that albums success and the need to create the flip side of it. It's 2 main characters, Jim and Caroline, are tragic and sorry figures and the album takes us through their lives and the world they live in. It is stunning in its story, its gorgeous in its music and its brave in its subject matter...an absolute classic that really needs to be heard.
Anyway, it is one of my favourites and I have always wondered what it would be like as an actual book. First I discussed turning it into a graphic novel with a friend but that idea fizzled out so I thought, why not turn it into a script? So I have. I have scripted the entire album and then some because there is a point in the story where Caroline has her children taken away and I thought about their story so decided to continue the script and create a new original story focused around the children. Roughly around half way through at this stage, I have pushed my own limits in storytelling by delving into the darkest corners of what can happen to children and the depraved actions of some adults trusted with the care of such children.
So, as a little teaser, I have attached parts of my script to Berlin and beyond:
Act Seven
Bare,
let the actions tell the story
Jim finishes his attack and slumps down in the corner, his
vision returning to normal. We now focus
on Caroline who gets up off the floor. We see the hotel room dissolve into a
snow landscape, but with the furniture still there, all brilliant white,
Caroline’s breath visible, Jim’s not.
When Caroline puts her hand through the windowpane and we see blood, it
drips onto the snow and we slowly fade back into the hotel room.Caroline
‘Why is it that you beat me, it isn’t any fun’
She slowly moves over to a dressing table, which has a mirror on it and we watch as she begins to make up her eye.
Caroline
‘You ought to learn more about yourself, think more than just I’
She stands up and walks over to Jim who is still slumped in the corner. She then reaches into his pocket and finds the tablets of speed he took just as he retaliates and pushes her over before banging the back of his head on the wall repeatedly a few times. Again Caroline gets up off the floor.
Caroline
‘You can hit me all you want, but I don’t love you anymore’
She bites her lip and moves over to the window.
Caroline
‘Life is meant to be more than this, and this is a bum trip’
She takes the tablet of speed munching on it and we hear whispers of voices asking ‘what is in her mind?’. Caroline suddenly laughs and puts her hand through the windowpane.
ACT ONE
We open in a wonderful
universe. Stars, planets, explosions,
comets, black holes – a wondrous scene is taking place and we are being pulled
backwards through it. We slow down, we
speed up, supernovas decimate the screen, and intense fire rips through this
galaxy. We pull back and come out of a
human eye and linger on it as tears stream out of it. We slowly pull back some more and see a young
girl Chloe(under 20) sat on the floor.
She is holding a razor at her wrists and staring directly at us. We see on the wall behind her, 2 painted
wings either side of her shoulders and begin to pan around the room she is
in. Everything is smashed, destroyed,
books are on the floor, posters are ripped and the bed covers are on fire. The door to this room is full of locks and
padlocks and bolts – most of which have been battered and are swinging
loose. The scene is just pure chaos as
we finish panning all the way around and end up back facing this young
girl. We move very slowly towards her
again until all we can see is her face and shoulders – everything is silent and
suddenly still. She makes a slight move
with her shoulders and a spray of blood shoots up and strikes her face.Everything fades out apart from the spray of blood which just crawls and morphs into more streaming tears coming from Chloe but 10 years younger as she is being carried off, arms stretched out towards us and screaming ‘Mummy’ as loud as possible. We pull back to see her mummy being held back by a man in a suit as she desperately tries to break free and get to her children as we can now see a young boy being carried off as well. We move round to behind mummy and watch as the children are taken out of sight, we can hear the man in the suit screaming for Caroline to calm down. Caroline continues to struggle as she focuses her anger on a man curled up in the corner screaming for Jim to do something. The children disappear behind a slammed door which stops the entire scene entirely…before Caroline screams at the top of her voice ‘NO!!’
We are now outside as the children are put into separate vans, their little faces pressed up to the windows of the vans facing each other, tears still streaming, fists banging on the glass the 2 vans drive off and go opposite ways.
