Proposal for a preview for a film that will help end the anxiety of America's descent from Empire to sideshow curiosity by reminding audiences that, Christ-like, my generation already totally felt this angst a long long time ago, when the decline became inevitable and we were all just waiting for the end of the world, really. The film will be called: Torn Tretorns, Wet Flannel, I Hear They've Got a Good Scene Down There.
The preview opens with a tracking shot showing a battered maroon BMW slowly advancing down a city street. It's a pluvial, gray gloaming, and both sides of the street are full of neon signs for pawn shops, liquor stores, and record shops. The sidewalks are full of stumblebums and college kids and it's hard to tell them apart, and hard for them to tell each other apart, and for just a second you see a girl on the sidewalk turn to a guy she thinks is her boyfriend, realize he's a homeless guy, react in disgust and then run forward to catch up with her group. There is a girl driving the BMW and she's alone, wearing a Jawbreaker shirt and a cardigan and she's silently mouthing the words to REM's Camera as it plays on the radio (i fell by your bed once i didn't want to tell you.... i should keep myself between the pages....)and then she stops at the red light. At the red light, the camera finds a businessman walk past a girl holding out a coffee cup. He drops in a quarter and she yells "Hey asshole that Frappuccino cost me four bucks" and flips him off and he looks back in mild confusion but keeps walking.*
Smash cut to a barren supermarket parking lot on the same rainy night at roughly the same time. There are few cars in the lot, and the way they're parked (at seemingly random intervals, like the drivers showed up when the place was busy and were still hanging around) implies they mostly belong to night employees. A kid with a mohawk, covering his supermarket issued button down logo shirt with a stained and torn navy surplus jacket, is in the parking lot wrangling stray carts. He looks moody, brooding, maybe a little confused and his mohawk is sad and sodden in the rain. The camera goes in the front door of the supermarket, down an aisle of breakfast cereal, under maddening fluorescent lighting, and finds two girls (wrist tattoos, hemp necklaces, obviously stoners) stocking shelves. One says "Where's Kieran?" The other replies "Probably doing ordering slash inventory" and rolls her eyes and they both laugh.
Cut to a back office where a girl, Kieran, is covertly getting stoned. She's dressed for success--khakis, white buttondown shirt, navy vest, and clearly honestly believes nobody knows what she does when she is ostensibly doing ordering/inventory. She's in a chair, not looking at a green on black computer screen and it is pretty clear that, with a couple of quick adjustments, she could be doing a good impression of someone doing work just in case she should hear unexpected footfalls in the hallway. What she's really doing is paying attention to a boombox. A cassette case that obviously contains a breakup mix tape from an ex (the case has something like "goodbye kieran" with a broken heart next to it) lies beside the boombox, and a song from her ex's band is playing. It sounds like a pretty standard DC Indie Anthem (even though the story takes place somewhere in the Midwest) and it's basically the polysyllabic language of entitlement sung in a quavering voice over mathy drone rock. I haven't had time to think too much about this song, especially since I'm not really making this movie and have no budget, but it should be good enough that the viewer could plausibly believe people would show up to see the band play.** The camera pans over Kieran, who is gently weeping, face held in her expressive hands, and finds the slightly incongruous pair of battered, torn, red on white Tretorns she wears to work.
One final smash cut, this time to a bowling alley. Kieran's ex's band is playing there, that same night, while her sister drives her maroon BMW up and down the street and while Kieran herself "does inventory" in a well ventilated back room. The marquee outside reads "1 Nite Only: We Could Streak The Sky Like Comets". In the parking lot, more college kids and homeless people are trying to buy pot from each other. The bowling alley is poorly lit and the crowd is pressed tight into what is usually the game room, while league play takes place on the last two lanes. The crowd is drunkening, swaying with the music, and Kieran's ex's voice drones just above the instruments. He's wearing battered K Swiss, torn jeans, a Pram tee shirt with a flannel shirt over it, a pair of Wayfarers, and his hair is short and messy and he's clearly just doing the best he can, pinned wriggling and flailing in the uneasy interregnum between two eras. The song ends but the feedback keeps droning, and he says "This is for a girl who didn't come here tonight. It's called 'Your Torn Tretorns'...." The last shot is of the drummer, already out of time as the song is beginning. As, let's face it, were we all.
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* Later we find out the businessman is in the same accounting firm as the girl in the used BMW's father.
** Having spent more than my fair share of time in coffee house basements, church basements, dive bars just off campuses, and indie book stores that were for some reason willing to rearrange their shelving afterhours every so often to accommodate 17 member bands with 157 pieces of equipment and their 9 or 10 sullen, mostly motionless, fans, I can honestly say the song wouldn't need to be that good to do the trick. It should be noted that this is not to disparage some of those old DC Indie bands I still love, like Smart Went Crazy and Jawbox. Just saying, we'd show up for basically anything with a colorful flier.
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