The Lindsey Hodges Hospital Dream-Time Spectacular

AT RISE: A dream state, the lights are blue. A hospital room. A curtain masks one bed. A T.V. can be seen behind the curtain. The slow beeping of a heart monitor can be heard. NURSE 1 enters, checks on an I.V., checks the patients, moves a pot of flowers very slightly, and exits. Note: The NURSES should move gracefully, to the beat of the heart monitor, like the checking in on patients is some type of fluid dance.


MIKE
The main problem with being in the hospital is the passage of time. I mean, when you wake up in the morning, you can tell what time it is from the sun. And at night it gets dark, so you can feel the time moving by. I’ve been in this room for a while now, and I have no idea what time it is. Those windows? They don’t face east, or west.

NURSE 2 enters, and checks the same things the first nurse did, in the same way.

MIKE
Right before I got here, I had a dream I went to hell. It wasn’t like that cartoon hell either. It was this huge room, but it looked like I was floating in space. The walls looked like the pinpricks of stars, but I could see the edges of the room, like space was all of a sudden finite. So I’m floating, or standing, or whatever in this “universe room” and I see a smaller box in the center of the room. It’s hard to see cause it looks just like the rest of the room, with stars and crap all over it, but it’s right there in the middle of the floor. I walk over to it. And find the lid.

NURSE 3 enters, and performs the same dance the other NURSES did.

MIKE
(cont.)
I get in the box and close the top, and all the stars are gone. And its peaceful, and I sat there and thought. But I wanted to see the stars again, so I tried to find the lid. But its not there anymore, like it vanished! And I couldn’t find the hinges, or even the sides of the box. It’s all just blackness, nothingness, emptiness. And I scratch and claw and scream, but there’s nothing there. And all I want is out of this damn box.


All three NURSES enter. Together the perform “The Night Nurse Ballet” Which consists of the basic, graceful patient check, then becomes more elaborate.

NURSE 1
Next, on the O’Reilly Factor...!

NURSE 3
Is this man sane enough to lead the country?


NURSE 2
What’s the war really costing you?

NURSE 3
A special report from our correspondents in Kuwait!

NURSE 2
This is…

All NURSES
The O’Reilly Factor!

SCENE 2

Regular lights up. MIKE sits in the bed, the curtain is still drawn, MATT sits in a chair next to the bed.

MATT
So they treatin you okay?

MIKE
Yeah. I guess… Is that old guy still in the room?

MATT checks behind the curtain.

MATT
Nope.


MIKE
That piece of shit left FOX News on all freaking night, man!

MATT
For real?

MIKE
Yeah! They gave me my pills at like 9:45, and I was asleep in half an hour, and the only thing I dreamt about was Bill O’Reilly mauling a bear.

MATT
Wait, HE mauled the BEAR?

MIKE
Yeah. It was freaking crazy, he went after it like that tiger went after that little boy down the hall.

MATT
Tiger?

MIKE
Yeah, one of the nurses was talking about it. Some guy had a tiger chained up in a pen in his back yard. So his nephew comes over. Sees the tiger, and wants to pet it.

MATT
Right.

MIKE
So he reaches his arm through the chain link fence…

MATT
Right...

MIKE
And that tiger bites the kid’s arm right off!

MATT
Holy shit.

MIKE
Yeah rough huh? I heard they were able to reattach it. Survival of the fittest huh?

MATT
I guess.

MIKE
So where’s Dad?


MATT
He was gonna come, but he got tied up with the estate again.

MIKE
(Pissed)
Right.

MATT
Come on don’t be like that.

MIKE
Like what? Expectant that my Dad might come say “Hi” when I’m in the hospital? You’re right, how rude of me.

MATT
You know how he is, he hates hospitals.

MIKE
Matt. It’s not like I love em.

BEAT

MATT
I’ll get him to come down tomorrow.

BEAT

MATT
I got you something!

MATT looks under the bed, and pulls out a large sack, he hands it to MIKE

MATT
Open it.

MIKE pulls a large stuffed rabbit out of the sack.

MIKE
Is this, I mean is it really?

MATT
Mom found it. It’s Scamper. Remember?

The heart monitor beeps. MIKE clicks a button. The dream lights come up. MATT sits, without movement, in the chair.

MIKE
I burned his face off. Not on purpose, it was an accident. We were moving, and I found him in my closet. I wanted to keep him out, so I wouldn’t loose him again. Stupid right? I was 17, I really didn’t need my stuffed animal anymore, but I wanted him for some reason. I put him on the chandelier. I wanted Mom to see what I found when she got home. I kept packing, but I started to smell this weird stench. I looked for… like half an hour till I looked up. And there was Scamper, my best friend as a baby, having his face melted on a light bulb. It was weird, watching part of me melt away like that. When Matt brought him to my room, it meant nothing. Mom had fixed him I guess, but he wasn’t the same, or else, I wasn’t the same.

Lindsey Hodges

Cinema of the 70’s

Professor Van Hanken

10-24-07

Final Paper Thesis/Bibliography

One of the best ways to see the political issues that any society is dealing with is to look at the art of said society. With that being said, the rise of the auteur filmmaker in the 1970’s provided an outlet, through film, for the views and voices of a younger generation to be heard. The 1970’s were a time of great turmoil in this country, with one of the major divisions in opinion between the masses being the war in Vietnam. With the resources and funds available to create stunning pictures of war, and the effects of war on people, film returned to a genre that had served it well. The likes of John Wayne had no place in the films of the auteur director. These were times when blind patriotism was not enough. The films: M*A*S*H*, The Deer Hunter, and Apocalypse Now, are very different in style, and viewpoint, concerning how war was portrayed on film. M*A*S*H* satirizes war, but still manages to cause a sense of loss in the viewer at the end of the film. The Deer Hunter expresses the extremes put on man during war. It, and Apocalypse Now, are different than M*A*S*H* in that they are not funny, or satires. Additionally, Apocalypse Now differs from The Deer Hunter in viewpoint, and from a stylistic standpoint. All three films are extremely successful, and clearly different from one another. However, if one looks at the way the film is shot, and what the director thought of both the film, and politics in general, the evolution of the views on the Vietnam War, and the effects war has on the human psyche can be traced through the 1970’s.
Works Cited
Hooker, Richard MASH. New York: Pocket, 1968

By contrasting the original book with the film, one can deduce: The level to which the screenwriter was willing to go with the script, the concept which the director envisioned, and how much it differs from the books overall message and themes.

Heart of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse. Documentary. Dir. Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper. American Zoetrope. 1991

Looking at this documentary helps the understanding of what, during the shooting of the film, Coppola was thinking both privately and on the set of the film. The conclusions drawn from that knowledge would be useful in pinning down his ideas for the film.

The Deer Hunter. Screenplay by: Washburn, Deric. with: Cimino, Michael. Garfinkle, Louis. Redeker, Quinn K.


By looking at the screenwriters original words one can begin to draw conclusions as to how the director saw the film in his mind, and what, if any, other themes and thoughts he provoked in his vision of the film.

It's all about the money, Hodges

So as i write this, my dad is yammering on and on and on about how my mom is fucking up her life. They got divorced when I was 6 so... This conversation happens a lot. Just to let you know he is now going off on how my mom's brother is fat and an asshole. Somehow i have kept my mouth shut, and yet this conversation is still going, and has been going for a little over half an hour.

Like being drug behind a truck on a gravel road, this conversation just keeps getting more and more painful, and it will not stop.

"Its all about money Lindsey. That's all there is to it." I guess that explains Dad to you.

Monday Night Football was amazing. I have not seen a pro game go like that in 4 years.

I want to train a Great Dane to be onstage, then I could write a play about it, but a Great Dane won't listen to a director, or a writer. It makes me sad.

I Ruin Backgrounds

I have decided that I look best in the backgrounds of pictures. I was on Facebook, and i noticed that there were a crap load, seriously a CRAPLOAD, of pictures that I am in the background of. At first I was un-happy, but then I realized that from now on I can ruin every picture that happens near me just by being in the back ground of it. This new sense of power was freeing, and now I am laying in wait for the next chance I get to be in the background.

Secondly, I wrote this radio play outline for class, nothing special, but I guess Prairie Home Companion and I think a little too much alike. In front of the class I read my 1/2 page outline, and in front of the class Michael pointed out that my idea was being used by PHC. Not only that, but the bit is one of their best, and it has been a hit for years.

Rather than cry at this news, I was overjoyed by it. If I can, independently, come up with a radio premise that is that good while being insanely hung over, then i guess I'm gonna be pretty good at writing for the radio. Conversely, I hate the radio and think it is an outdated form of entertainment, but if it can make me some cash, why not?

So once a day for a year? Or somthing...

For real. This is the second time I've tried to do 365 posts in a row. Lets see how it goes. If I don't get too drunk it might work this time. So check back in.