"INT./EXT.

"
by Declan Foley

Introduction:

“After all appearances are all we have, so we should treat them

with great care”

- E.L. Doctorow

The following treatment is a portrait of various people trapped by

their own ‘inadequate’ appearances in a world completely governed
by appearance. My ambition with it is to breath new life into the
desperately ill, formulaic, shallow and, above all, dull Romantic-
Comedy genre.

The year 2028. As the inevitable culmination of a society obsessed

with exterior appearance versus interior substance, society is now
divided into two rigid classes based on the viability of one’s
genes.

This shallow criteria now defines and controls nearly all aspects
of a persons existence: their job, their friends, their wealth,
their accommodation and most importantly: their mating habits.

As a consequence of this, romance as we know it is dead.

In a society where a partner is now something that is selected

with cold calculation, logic and rationality; where the positives
and negatives of a partner, how he or she will look on the person,
the impression that they will give to the world are weighed up
scrupulously as if one is picking out a new handbag or coat, love
is all but accepted to be an antiquated concept.

Love is not an inward thing between two people in this world;

rather it is something that two people project outwards to support
an image, an expression of their own self that they wish to
display to society.

What romance still exists is completely non-verbal. There is no

need for love songs or love poems, letters of love, courtship or
even conversation. All that matters is the appearance you give
out.

In such a world, society needs to force a rigid consensus upon

it’s inhabitants as to what is deemed to be a good appearance and
what is a bad appearance; what is beautiful and what is ugly.

The only way to come to such a uniform consensus as to what

quantifies such impressions is to apply an objective , scientific
criteria to them and so the viability of one’s genes: their
height, their cheekbones, the width of their shoulders, their hair
line, etc is used as such a method.
 2.

And our genes are something, tragically, which we cannot control

or change - despite the vague insinuations of advertisers and
adverts. (Herein lies the allure of the film. It exploits our
primal fears of being inadequate, of having no control over our
own lives).

The film will deploy an ensemble cast but the central story will
revolve around the efforts of one man from this lower gene pool: a
struggling (and comically bad) poet and fierce proponent of
courtly love who finds himself completely infatuated with a
celebrity from the upper tier of society.

His courtship of her: the literal poster girl of this entire

world, pits our protagonist up against a society and a city that
has abandoned all sense of inner values and worth. A city that
will pay it’s inhabitants little more than a glance, and a city
that has come to believe that if you cannot prove all of yourself
in this single, fleeting glance then it is probably not worth
knowing at all.

Quasi-eugenics has never been so funny.

30/04/2011

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Treatment:

A black screen. The muffled, thumping bass of a techno track

begins which will gradually increase in intensity and volume as
the scene builds also.

Three successive title cards tells us that it is: 10:45pm. Friday.

2028.

The following sequence is a montage of various people in a city

getting ready to attend the after-party for a wildly popular
reality TV show (modelled on ‘The Swan’) in which one lower-tier
woman who - after being totally taken apart and then reassembled
by plastic surgery to meet an ‘ideal’ appearance - is picked to be
accepted into the upper tier of society (a once-a-year event).

It should serve as an introduction to the fictional world that has

been created while also linking it to the present one that we
inhibit today.

A luxurious penthouse suite. It is sterile, almost too perfect.

Two impossibly tall and stunning women are chatting and attempting
(needlessly) to perfect their appearance in a mirror that takes up
the entire wall.

Their conversation is inane and empty, just typical shallow talk.

 3.

As one of the women walks away from the mirror to her bag we cut
to an identical apartment.

However, the change in hair color and voice of the woman walking
an identical route to her bag should be the only change from
anything in the previous scene. Even the same shallow, obnoxious
conversation we heard continues as if they we have not cut to a
different location with different people.

In this sequence we make several cuts to different apartments,

however, the actions of these various perfect men and women, their
apartments and even their dialogue all merges into one. The total
lack of individuality as a city prepares for a night on the town
shriek s out in a unite d cho rus. The s ame sh allow aims and
shallower ambitions for a night. Striking in its nothingness.

After a while the cameras attention turns towards a TV that is

playing in the background of one of these apartments. As the
camera slowly pans towards it we see that it is a ridiculously
overblown live studio show.

The presenter is, again, a stunningly beautiful, nearly perfect

specimen of the female gender. The camera pans in until the screen
takes up the entire frame. We see her announcing that they are
very close to announcing a winner for the show.

The camera now begins to slowly pull away from the tv screen and
we see that we are now in a radically different apartment. In many
ways it is the complete opposite to the sterile luxury we were
beginning to become accustomed with.

As the camera begins to spin around we s ee that this dingy

apartment is a veritable hive of activity, people buzzing to and
from but again these people are strikingly different to what came
before. Whereas previously the luxurious apartments were inhabited
by impossibly perfect and tailored models, in this setting the
people are noticeably less well-dressed, and seem to overall take
less of a concern in their appearance.

All this is going on in the background, however, as our attention

is drawn towards a single figure: noticeable for the sole fact
that he is the only person who is sat down and not moving around;
he is completely transfixed by what is happening on the screen. He
is also well-dressed in comparison to the others. He is in a late
stage of balding and is middle-aged. He is short and has a
noticeable pot-belly. He is our protagonist.

His transfixion from the screen is broken when somebody calls his
name telling him that he has to get ready. It almost appears as if
they are getting ready for a bank raid. Three men along with our
protagonist stand-out as they are dressed in tuxedos. Around them
crowds are desperately trying to perfect their appearance. We see
someone attach a line of hair to someone’s forehead to try and
disguise a receding hair-line. We see another person step into
normal looking shoes which add an extra 4 inches to the man’s
height. All of them are having make-up applied to them.
 4.

From an exchange of dialogue we learn that our protagonist is

going to drive the three men to an event (the after-party the TV
show) and we get the insinuation that they are not supposed to be
there. One of the men asks “what happens if they try to start a
conversation” to which an older man remarks “conversation?!
Whaddya think this is the 1950s”. A remark is also made about the
possibility of “side-effects” to one of these ‘improvements’ to
which the young man is reassured that nothing will go wrong.

We also get a sense from this exchange that our protagonist does
not consider himself an equal to his companions. This comes out in
his overall disposition; we get a sense throughout the film that
he believes because he has the manners and graces and pretensions
of the higher-class that he almost believes he should be one of
them. We also get the sense that he is intellectually a few levels
above his peers; at least in the classical sense.

Our protagonists attention drifts back towards the TV. We see a

woman in a long flowing dress, beauty pageant style. A person in
the room remarks “Betty Brook, who would have thought” “Guess we
won’t be seeing her anymore”. They used to know her.

She has just won the prize. A bouquet of flowers are in her hands,
the sparkles from pyrotechnics float down behind her bathing her
in a golden haze. Bu t she doesn’t look q uite right, almost
artificial. We see the arrogant nods of approval from upper-tiered
men in the audience. Somebody from the TV studio remarks that he
has never seen her looking as radiant as she does tonight. She
tries to smile as much as her new face will allow it. She looks
pretty good.

We cut from this image of her as seen through the TV cameras to an

actual image of her on the film camera in the studio it is being
broadcast from. The powerful studio lights are noticeable harsher.
She looks like a wax work, she is sweating and we can detect a in-
placeable expression on her face, certainly not one of real,
natural joy.

They go to an ad break. We stay here in the studio. We follow one

of them as they go backstage. Having already seen the dichotomy in
the appearance of TV to appearance in ‘reality’ we next see a
massive gap existing between their public (appearance) self and
their private self: i.e. Her acting like a complete bitch to
someone.

We cut back to the group of lower-tier people. Our protagonist is

driving them to the event. The car is crappy.
 5.

(He drives them there, we see he’s using the excuse so he can go
see a bilboard of his muse. (They’re going to the after party of
show).Protagonist sneaks in to talk to the new swan - he met her
once. She acts like she no longer belongs to his world. Because
she doesn’t. He wonders if he can get her to arrange a meeting
with this model. She laughs at him.
The scene builds in intensity until they are thrown out of the
after-party and

The dialogue of all these different people merges into one. The
total lack of individuality as a city prepares for a night on the
town sings out in a united chorus. The same shallow aims and
shallower ambitions for a night. Striking in its nothingness.

In a club we all look for a mate on appearance alone. No talking,

etc. Just primal wants and desires.

Attractiveness is not something that’s inextricably linked to

one’s looks. There are very few people in the world for whom they
could be described as ugly due to deformity or whatever. For the
rest of us we have just as much chance as any of being desirable.
It is disposition, more than anything that controls whether or not
you are attractive to others. For even someone who we would
typically describe as aesthetically pleasing if they drift through
life with a look of despair, nervousness, contempt on their face
they will not be considered attractive to many. In contrast for
so me o ne wh o i s n ot wh at we wo u ld t y pi c al l y de s cr i be as
aesthetically pleasing if they are able to stride through life
with energy, life, vitality, assuredness and confidence then they
will be desirable and thus attractive.
The problem comes when we consider that these sort of attitudes of
confidence, etc are usually connected to people who would normally
be considered as aesthetically attractive.
For the rest, conscious of the fact that they do not perfectly
meet the ‘ideal’ of beauty that society has created they lose
their natural vitality and so drift towards those other feelings,
cruelly spinning further down into a self-fulfilling circle of
despair and thus unattractiveness.
 6.

We can only control our reactions to life.

Why don’t we get rid of you? What would we do with ourselves? We’d
all be normal. Nobody is tall or small, rich or poor, beautiful or
ugly but by comparison to others.

Have a jump from protagonist watching a contestant on the tv

screen: somebody say’s I’ve never seen you looking as radiant as
you do tonight. And she does. Then we cut from the image through
the TV screen to the same image actually up-close to her where it
is being projected. She looks terrible. The studio lights are
causing her to sweat profusely, she looks like plastic.
We then follow some characters who will come again while they are
backstage. We see a massive gap existing between their public
(appearance) self and their private self.

There’s no greater j oy than to disconnec t oneself from the

travails and blinding emotion of everyday life and see things as
they truly are.