a tail at - savyra.com treatment_tail-at-the-mall.pdfa stupor, inspiring sheena to zombify him...

1

A Tail at The Mall

| Savyra Meyer-Lippold | [email protected] | www.savyra.com | +27(0)721944409

Feature film: 100 min Animated comedyTweens, 8 - 11 yrs

After a DNA bomb kills every human, mutant animals and

machines take over a shopping mall, some with good intentions.

ONE-PAGE SYNOPSIS:In a world where the humans have destroyed themselves, the surviving animals and insects start to mutate. This story is about SCRIBBLE, a squirrel born with no tail and immediately rejected by his father HUGO.

His mother leaves him with the other mutants at the Old Zoo. Two years later, inventor DRAKANICK arrives from The Mall. She’s already fixed his buddy, a witless owl now called COGS with a big wheel driving his brain.

Scribble promises his bright blue girlfriend AQUA VELVET that he’ll come back for her once he’s ‘normal-with-a-tail’, to begin a new life togeth-er. He leaves with Drakanick. Once installed at the Mall, Scribble becomes an ecstatic super-consumer, losing all interest in being Drakanick’s project.

But when he’s reminded of the lost humans, depression nails him to his couch, eating and watching music DVDs. Cogs blames Drakanick for this problem - Scribble has become much too heavy to take back to the Zoo.

Hiding her disappointment in Scribble, Drakanick brings a laundry iron to life instead. Cogs helps. Scribble interrupts, dressed as Lady Gaga. They sneer at him for being an imitator and not a real artist and shame him for forgetting Aqua Velvet.

Just then the iron comes alive as SHEENA ORION: Scribble’s wannabe new manager and nemesis. He flees from her into a bar and drinks himself into a stupor, inspiring Sheena to zombify him completely as her slave/pet. Cogs calls Drakanick from his ear-chip but after she saves Scribble from Sheena’s lobotomy, he falls onto the escalator and almost dies, but for Cogs and Drakanick who pull off a last-second rescue.

Scribble has a change of heart - with Drakanick’s Pedalocopter, he is soon lean and mean again and imprisons Sheena in the laundry forever, using trickery and charm, by fooling her into accepting a fake award.

Scribble now keeps his promise to Aqua, and heads for the Zoo with Cogs and Drakanick. They are welcomed, but Aqua won’t leave her permaculture business, beehives or her weekly farmer’s market. Scribble makes a most moving proposal, and says both the Mall and he cannot live without her. Let others carry on her legacy at the Zoo. When he’s almost given up, she finally accepts. They return to the Mall with Cogs and Drakanick.

On the way, Scribble and Aqua each recite alternative lines of the poem Kubla Khan by Coleridge. This becomes a rap-song voice-over as their vision comes alive. The Mall with its glass ceiling is a greenhouse bursting with life, with happy, (unenhanced) mutants and their babies. In the middle of it all are the four of them, contented and hard at work. /END

A TAIL AT

Movie Outline - A Tail at The Mall.indd 1 11 Sep 2016 23:33:04

2

A Tail at The Mall


A Tail at The Mall (WGAE No I285737)

A mutant squirrel born with no tail joins a genius dragonfly in her mall to be re-tailed, and to make a new home for his ladylove; instead, he becomes a super-consumer, forgetting his plans. Until the Frankenstein iron makes him a part of hers.

ACT 1: (Opening sequence): In a kitchen in Cape Town, some months after the DNABigBoom® has reduced all humans to ash: A tiny squirrel, SCRIBBLE plays on the linoleum kitchen floor with his toy acorn, OAKIE. Throwing it under the sink, he shouts, ‘Now you stay there and shuddup!’ - slamming the door shut, and sticking a wooden spoon through the handles to make sure of his prisoner. Born without a tail, Scribble is one of many oddities after The Bomb. At the table having tea, his mother AMELIA’s sister AGNES lambasts her for not ‘getting rid of’ him when all the weird babies appeared. Amelia murmurs that HUGO is due home any minute. A key turns in the front door. Scribble whips the wooden spoon out, opens the cupboard door, joins Oakie and closes the door. Then it opens again and a tiny paw flashes out to fetch in the wooden spoon. The door is quickly, softly shut. Agnes gets up as footsteps clump down the passage, grunting ‘I’ll leave you to it.’

Scene 2: That evening Amelia (plaster on cheek-bone)and Agnes walk through the sun-set to the ruined zoo near Rhodes Memorial outside Cape Town, Amelia holding Scribble by the paw. He carries Oakie and wears a Superman cape over his ‘deformed’ butt. They approach the rim of the amphi-theatre-like viewing spot, above the lion enclosure. At the back are barred arches leading to the cages. Some odd-looking animals play, sleep, quarrel, but generally seem content.

Amelia suggests a quick game of hide-and-seek before the sun goes down. Scrib-ble counts with his eyes covered and Amelia looks about frantically to hide the toy acorn, finally tucking it very gently under the outsize ear of a snoring rabbit with three front teeth. The two scamper off, stopping only at the top of the Rhodes Memorial steps. Ame-lia sits down, sobbing into her tail; Agnes clumsily consoles her. Finally they dart down the moonlit steps, the city shining below. Scene 3: Two years later: The Old Zoo A chicken-sized, bionically-enhanced dragonfly, DRAKANICK, clatters down out of the bright green sky and lands next to Scribble and his girlfriend Aqua Velvet, a cobalt-blue squirrel while Scribble is busy plaiting Aqua’s long ear-hair. One side is done. They gaze at Drakanick in solemn shock as her rotors retract and she transforms. After introductions, Drakanick offers to ‘fix’ Scribble and change his life for-ever. He’d need to come to The Mall with her. But he doesn’t want to leave Aqua Velvet. He has a fear of heights. Nor does he want to go anywhere without his ‘wheels’. Also, this is a girl pilot.


3

A Tail at The Mall


But the lure of a new tail, computer games, food and ‘the chance to make it big’ proves too strong, so finally he agrees and zooms off to fetch Oakie and his old Superman cape. He tells Aqua that he’ll be back for her when he’s ‘made it’. She looks at him, says ‘You’ll need this’ slip-ping a sewing kit into the bundle. It includes her photo.

After Scribble argues about his wheels in vain; suffers com-plicated moves with a hook and harness; and shouts pledges to Aqua (she’s stalked off); Drakanick whisks him up into

the sky and heads south, her blades flashing. Aqua Velvet slinks back out, staring up with her mouth open, one plait still only a blue-green cascade. As camera zooms out, Amelia turns away at the top of the amphitheatre. Camera zooms out more, showing the wide vista of the moun-tainside. Far away, Drakanick and Scribble become a sparkly speck.

Act 2, Scene 1 (Plot point 1) Drakanick and Scribble fly above a scenic road through a national park. A hawk swoops down to attack, and a great air-battle ensues. Drakanick finally sends the hawk spinning down towards Old Cape Road on which an eternal traffic jam still rusts away among masses of mutated flowers swaying on the mountainside. Scribble leans out so far to gape that he falls, and Drakanick has to do some acrobatic flying to catch him - but he slides off her highly polished claws and feet again after some desperate clinging, and lands in the ‘fynbos’ shrubs on the mountain in clouds of pollen. After a strong talking-to, she scoops him back up into the harness by which time the wind has come up and rain starts. His wrapped-up travel bundle had dropped straight through a rusty car roof but only Drakanick saw this. With no more time to waste, they continue on until they see the Mall twinkling through the rain, its solar panels gleaming. With the storm now howling, they land at The Mall soaking and bedraggled, Drakanick’s blades drooping. But COGS, a squat brown owl with a stationary wheel in his head, bars their way. Cogs is once more in his own reality and only Drakanick can fix that. Distracting, bribing and threaten-ing, she outwits him. They enter. Drakanick ascends again, still carrying Scribble, his head swivelling left and right. They enter a furniture shop, and hover above a cluster of couches. He struggles, falls out, lands in dusty cushions and falls asleep. Drakanick smiles to herself and leaves.

2 Scribble’s rejection by Cogs; loneliness, horror at humans’ fate Next day: Drakanick retrieves Cogs’ mind by plugging some memory chips into the sockets behind his head. Scribble’s ignorance about the bomb blast appals Cogs, when he’s once more himself. Scribble feels rejected and bewildered but most of all horrified to hear of the lost humans. He finds dusty plastic wreaths at the florist to lay at the feet of all the mannequins. Looking for further comfort, he raids the supermarket shelves to forget his troubles, singing ‘If they could see me now’, and spitting crumbs as he skips along in full cry at the very top of the stacked aisles. He does a dance-rou-tine in a dazzling fantasy sequence: big-band sound, coloured lights, ending with a standing ovation from his zoo-buddies and Aqua. In mid-bow, he loses his balance and falls into a hollow point-of-sale con-tainer. He is trapped, yelling in the dark for hours till Cogs, hunting mice, hears him and crossly calls Drakanick to extricate him. 3 Scribble becomes morbidly obese Scribble grows fatter and fatter in a sequence of daily scenes from their communal life. Rejecting Drakanick’s designs, he finds a skateboard from the toyshop and soon depends on this to scud around slowly, with a Peruvian knitted hat pulled over his butt, sleeping wherever he stops or vice-versa. The cinema’s on the top floor; the skateboard can’t cope with


4

A Tail at The Mall


the escalator and the only attempt ended with mercurochrome and bandag-es. So the skateboard and couch (with small ramp by Drakanick) are his home now. He watches old music DVDs of Lady Gaga which he finds riveting.

4 Scribble’s behaviour loses him Drakanick’s friendship Inspired Lady Gaga music DVDs, Scribble raids a cosmetic counter and costume-hire shop, then visits Drakanick to show off his outlandish outfit and heavy make-up. But Drakanick is very unimpressed, remarking that the new look proves how he fritters away his time, unlike her, busy with yet another proj-ect: the transformation of a laundry iron into a living doll or at least a sentient being. Proud Cogs is the scrub nurse. Components from dolls and other toys cover the table as the iron becomes SHEENA ORION, the ‘Stylist to the Stars’. The iron leaps into life and is immediate-ly Queen of the Mall; oblivious to anyone else’s needs or opinions, she demands to manage Scribble and his career in future - ‘He’s born to per-form!’ she shrieks, arms aloft, whirling about. A comical power-struggle now begins; Sheena tries to rule the Mall; Scribble wants Cogs and Drakanick’s respect and/or friendship. The two antagonists try to rope in the other two as allies. Sometimes this works. 5 Drakanick retrieves Scribble’s lost ‘luggage’. Back in the bar she finds him killing time and pain with creative mixes. Drakanick hands him his things. The photo undoes him. Drakanick idly wonders aloud if Aqua would like his make-over? She leaves him sobbing there, pouring steadily worse-looking cocktails. This fits nicely into the plans of Sheena.

Act 3 Scene 1 Scribble almost loses his life (Plot Point 2)Sheena plans to lobotomise Scribble in Drakanick’s workshop and make him her pet zombie or at least court jester, while Drakanick is fixing the escalator. She persuades Cogs to seize and bring him to the work-shop. And no, it won’t hurt - he’ll be much happier afterwards. They’d be helping him. Cogs soon finds him. Snatched up by his silver bra-strap, the utterly bewildered Scribble drops Aqua’s photo in a puddle of beer. Cogs zig-zags back into the workshop with Scribble’s head bumping on the ground and the odd doorpost, while Scribble pukes a long, vivid trail of colours.

Cogs dons his scrub-nurse outfit again and plugs his memory chip into his cranium. Scribble is prone on the table, strait-jacketed now, bandaged up to his eyebrows, his tearful eyes hidden but wetting the dressings. Two blobs of black mascara ooze through after a while. Sheena grabs secateurs to trim Scribble’s ears - they prevent his electrode-stud-ded head from fitting into the tin can she found for his lobotomy/shock treatment. His bandaged head twists back and forth.

Then Drakanick enters with a thunderous clatter. With his memory chip plugged in, Cogs had sent her a text from the side of his head before changing into his scrubs, he now proudly tells Sheena, fluffing out his feathers.

As Queen of the Mall, Sheena is not fazed by Drakanick or Cogs. She in-vites Drakanick to assist, but Drakanick swoops down, grabs Scribble and clatters off, not realising she’s gripping only his bandage; he falls to the floor, spinning and unravelling. Drakanick flies up the downward-mov-ing escalator, unaware. Sheena’s not letting go either. She steams off after them, but stops at the bottom, watching as he bumps up the esca-lator. She just manages to grasp the end of the bandage just as Cogs pulls her back by her plug. With a last big stretch she stuffs her end of the bandage into the escalator teeth and they take over, munching the


5

A Tail at The Mall


bandage down slowly but relentlessly with Scribble spinning and bump-ing halfway up, his eyes huge over thinning bandages. There are muffled screams from him and an ‘Oops!’ from Sheena who notices her plastic ‘Barbie -style’ hand gone.

Cogs eventually alerts Drakanick, flapping in front of her visette just as the teeth of the escalator start to chew atScribble’s ear. It bleeds as Drakanick yanks him out in the nick of time. He faints.

Rest of Act 3With a new armour-plated foot-powered Pedalocopter from Drakanick, Scribble travels around too fast to be threatened any longer. He de-stroys Sheena’s plans with some creative street-wisdom, and strands her in her old place in the laundry, by staging a fake award ceremony ‘For Services Rendered to the Mall’. She is trapped on a washing machine from where she was going to make her acceptance speech, plugged firmly into the wall (for her own safety): an iron hissing with ideas but no way of carrying them out. Peace reigns. But Scribble’s life is empty without Aqua and he decides to fetch her with the help of Drakanick and Cogs who are so grateful that the Sheena problem has been resolved that they will do anything for him.

They arrive at the Zoo, and are welcomed. But Aqua has changed beyond recognition. She chairs the Zoo Corps now, so she’s not keen to leave the gardens, beehives, fruit trees or the weekly market she runs. Amelia and Agnes are at the zoo too. Amelia is with Toothree, the rabbit from Act 1. All are happy with no plans to leave. The sisters apologise for ruining his life and beg him to stay; mysteries are cleared up; he for-gives them.

After a sumptuous banquet from the gardens, Scribble proposes to Aqua with a box of Cheerios - more wedding bands than she needs - ‘But the Mall needs fresh food too. And you. And so do I. Need you.’ She laughs. And thinks how he always made her laugh. She agrees to return with them and the happy couple leave the Zoo to start their new life in the Mall. They soon transform it into a massive greenhouse, a living version of the Kubla Khan poem by Coleridge which is heard as a rap song during their flight to their new home there. EPILOGUE: Drakanick continues as a happy singleton. When Cogs is ‘not quite there’, Sheena never stops trying to persuade him to free her, so she can once more reign as Queen of the Mall.

Cogs and Drakanick eventually become godparents to Aqua and Scribble’s new blue and untailed arrival, Skyla. One day she enters the laundry to hear Sheena singing old show tunes... and then meets Granpa Hugo in there, also mesmerised by Sheena. That’s another story. /THE END


6

A Tail at The Mall


Cast of A Tail at the Mall scribble

Scribble, a mutant squirrel born with no tail, changes his life drastically when he agrees to let Drak take him to The Mall to be ‘technically enhanced’.

His abandonment happens early in the story at the old disused zoo near the Rhodes Memorial, Cape Town, where his mother Amelia leaves him the paws of similarly outcast/rejected mutant animals. His Aunt Agnes bullies her harrowed sister into this drastic action with the best of intentions, trying to save Amelia from imminent murder by her abusive husband, Hugene. But she really blames little Scribble for it all.

Scribble grows up and becomes a survivor at the zoo. He meets and falls in love with Aqua Velvet, a cobalt blue squirrel with long hair growing out of her ears. But their parting upsets and angers Aqua, but she would like to believe his promises and good intentions. But her faith is misplaced - after his arrival at The Mall, with all its glittery seduc-tions, he forgets all about Aqua and the Zoo. Charming and street-wise, he has a serious case of entitlement and no gratitude for anything after the first over-awed weeks there. He becomes the poster-child for consumerism and ignores Drakanick’s intended enhancement project of a prosthetic tail.

Drakanick is gobsmacked by what she sees as this odd new persona who dresses up as Lady Gaga and other inspiring figures from old music DVDs and she wonders if she made a mistake by bringing him to the Mall, and whether there are some situations she can’t ever ‘fix’. Cogs notes grimly that Scribble is too fat to be carried back to the Zoo. They’re stuck with him.

However, after Drakanick inadvertently creates a monster from a laundry iron out of pure frustrated creativity, our snarky little spoilt hero has to recall his useful skills learned at the zoo - (apart from shedding a vast amount of flab) to be-come someone who eventually conquers the formida-ble Sheena Orion for his own survival, much to the relief of Drakanick and Cogs, earning their respect and gratitude.

After that, he is equipped and supported to take on – if not the world, then at least responsibility for his own happiness and that of Aqua Velvet. But will she accept him back?

Conflict happens between Scribble and:m Cogs: because Cogs thinks he’s a lazy, badly brought-up and ignorant little (bleep); m Drak: because he appreciates nothing she does for him, and never takes advice; m Sheena: he won’t be dominated by her and almost undergoes a lobotomy at her pretty little pink plastic doll hands.


7

A Tail at The Mall


Cast of A Tail at the Mall

AQUA VELVETAqua Velvet, love of Scribble’s life, is abandoned by him at the beginning of the story with her ear-hair half plaited. Due to his absence, she becomes her own squirrel, taking more and more responsibili-ty at the Zoo, and no longer putting up with the sexism she had experienced there before from the older male inmates.

By the end of the story, she’s emerged as a leader, running the communal organic gardens on Permaculture principles, keeping bees and organising a farmers’ market every weekend, which also brings in the ‘normal’ animals from outside the Zoo, forming respectful new connections and acceptance for the mutants.

Aqua herself is transformed into something like an African princess at the reunion, completely comfortable in her new authority and doubtful whether they still belong to-gether.

Building something magnificent from the ru-ins of the Old Zoo is what defines how she now sees herself. She’s the Queen of the Zoo in a sense in contrast to Sheena, the top-pled Queen of the Mall. Both Aqua and Scrib-ble are at a new level when they meet up again, and return to the Mall in triumph to transform it into a massive greenhouse. The vision at the end of the story reflects the many new mutants and ‘normals’ living and working in the Zone as the complex comes to be called.

There is already a movement on Facebook of

‘Dead Mall Enthusiasts’. There is also a growing trend to convert dead malls into living spaces.


8

A Tail at The Mall



DRAKANICKDrakanick lives in the bead shop. She instinctively loves the bright, sparkly prettiness of the place.

It is her one concession to femininity; normally she’s in the hardware shop, fix-ing and inventing. Every tool imaginable to an ambitious inventor/surgeon is close at hand. She’s built herself a small han-gar where she might be found snoring in the middle of the day among her works in progress. (She keeps late hours when she’s ‘onto something.’)

Drak fixes everyone’s mechanical faults in-cluding her own. She’s a genius with ma-chinery and high-tech equipment of every kind, including computers, from where she acquires ever more knowledge.

She likes her own company because she has low boundaries. If someone asks for help she feels obliged to drop everything and help them straight away, not yet having learned that sometimes it’s okay to say ‘not right now’. This is her task during the story, to find more of a balance. She’s very sensitive and introverted, with few social skills but innately kind. Scrib-ble will arrive and offer to do her a make-over. Naturally Drak takes this the wrong way. Her mandibles can’t really support lipstick for instance. She doesn’t wear make-up and feels criticised. So she goes off and hammers away and makes new, ever more fantastical armour for herself like a one-girl Maker-movement, with Rammstein tracks pounding in her head and new inven-tions blossoming. She’s a mix of Tank Girl and Tesla with an exoskeleton.

Tough and tender by turns, Drakanick is still finding herself. If she was a human, she’d be a 18-year old IT genius. Cogs tries to help but constantly loses the thread. Sheena treats her with caution be-cause she knows Drakanick made her what she is and what Drakanick gives, Drakanick can take away. Sheena’s greatest fear is that Drakanick will one day realise that.

Conflict happens between Drak and:m Cogs: because Cogs keeps undoing Drakanick’s ‘good work’ and losing his chips;

m Scribble: because he appreciates nothing she does for him, and never takes advice;

m Sheena because she’s so bossy and Drakanick just doesn’t have the skills to deal with her.


9

A Tail at The Mall



SheenaSheena is based partly on Mr Brittas, the offensively oblivious manager of a British gym in The Brittas Empire, (popular British sitcom from the Nineties), and partly on an overbearing woman I met brief-ly, who was a combination of deep insecu-rity and a huge grandiose presence. There was no logic to what this woman said as she happily laid waste to the feelings of everyone she encountered, and I found her completely fascinating and horrifying.

Sheena is a Walter Mitty figure, in that her inner vision has little relation to reality. Unlike Walter Mitty she stream-rolls everyone in her path, mainly because she’s found it works. Her role in the story demonstrates that, very often, people will judge you according to your own estimation of yourself, even when they secretly wonder at the truth of it all.

Sheena hankers for a life of glitz and glamour. Back in the day, she was part of back-stage life, ironing costumes for the stars – a far cry from where Drakan-ick found her in the laundrette, tired and steamed-off with being among the ‘ordinary’ irons and one of the older ones at that. She borrows extensively from her Life in the ‘The-aatah’ and to listen to her one could almost believe she was actually one of the stars, with her ‘inside knowledge’ of what goes on in Hollywood, gleaned from gossip amongst the performers.

The doll from Toy Story provided great inspiration for this monster of cobbled- together bits and pieces. In trying to source a pic to identify this horror, I found a make-your-own-nasty-doll site. Conflicts:m Drakanick whom she orders around (but fairly cautiously, she is aware of Drakanick’s power even though Drakanick herself tends to forget) and then has to deal with Draka nick’s passive-aggressive ‘forget ting’ to follow her instructions or locking herself away with her work and ‘just not getting to it’;

m Cogs because she is impatient with his erratic mind but needs his support – trouble is, he sometimes forgets his place at really inconvenient moments; and m Scribble because he is the only rebel who won’t kow-tow to her.


10

A Tail at The Mall


Cogs is short for Cogmission, which is what Drakanick called him after realising how forgetful he is. This she sorts out with memory chips, (like the SimStim chips from William Gibson’s book Neuromancer et al. ‘Short-term’ and ‘long term’ chips plug into the back of his head. Most of them have little to do with his own experiences, but are rather like movie downloads from the net.

Although Cogs doesn’t seem all that clever, he is oddly wise and is seen as a shaman and healer. So he’s a ‘holy fool’ as exem-plified by Chance the gardener, Peter Sell-ers’ character in ‘Being There’.

Unlike Drakanick who is more of a feet-on-the-ground, logical scientist, too busy to listen to anyone, Cogs is seen as someone who heals by listening carefully and nev-er interrupting. This is because sometimes he’s mulling over lost info about events in the Mall or he’s asleep or in a deep medi-tation. Most of the time he’s old-school, grumpy and brusque, like Mr Carson in Down-ton Abbey – deeply suspicious of the others whom he suspects of laughing at him behind his back. Sometimes with reason.

Respecting power of any kind, he grudgingly cedes power to Sheena when she seizes con-trol of the Mall, which was previously his undisputed domain, and becomes her more or less innocent collaborator. He doesn’t know that his original half-wit-ted brain is powering Sheena’s motor func-tions after residing in another container till it was needed...

Conflict happens between Cogs and:m Scribble: because Cogs thinks he’s a badly brought-up little (bleep) and ignorant with it – if only Scribble realised it, then he shouldn’t be quite so brash and confident around his ‘betters’;m Drakanick: because he takes her help for granted, often forgetting how much she does; and because she has to keep an eye on his cog to see whether he’s still present. Some times the chips itch and he takes them out…m Sheena because there is a wary acceptance of her coup in the Mall which was previously his domain. But this lapses when he forgets he’s no longer in charge.


Cogs


11

A Tail at The Mall


Settings from A Tail at the Mall

(Top) The Old Zoo near the Rhodes Memorial on the slopes of Table Mountain is a slightly eerie setting, perfect to house abandoned mutants.

(Top centre) Drakanick appears in the life of Scribble, to change it forever.

(Above right) The chairs in the restaurants are out of scale for our characters; they have to leap, fly, crawl or haul themselves up to sit in spaces that were designed for other bodies, no longer here. No longer here is a recurring theme, stated sublimi- nally, almost as an ongoing poignant joke as the characters try to fit themselves into and among all these monuments to the lost species. (Left)Drakanick and Scribble arrive at the Mall, jealously guarded by Cogs.


a tail at - savyra.com treatment_tail-at-the-mall.pdfa stupor, inspiring sheena to zombify him...

Documents