Cody Weber is Things

I wrote a script a few months ago for a FilmFight.  The idea was fairly simple.  You get one character alone in a universe.  I really liked the idea so I wrote something up.  It’s way too late to enter the film fight now but Canyon and I busted our asses all day today.

The film is about a guy that is convinced he is in a drug-induced coma after waking up one morning completely alone in the world.  His addiction spirals and the narrative shifts between the idea that he is in a coma and the possibility that he is not.  Because there are no human beings left, the main character (who is nameless as of now) fights loneliness and boredom by telling his life story to an old JVC VHS camcorder.  The film is heavily narrated (as I assume any movie with one actor would be), and the shots change from a first person to a third person perspective.  We shot a lot of coverage shots today and Canyon nailed the introduction monologue.  It’s the first film I’ve produced in years so I’m all kinds of excited about it.  

 Notes For Tomorrow:

• Reshoot the Breaking and Entering scene.  Light it better.
• Reshoot the scene about the protagonist’s relationship with neighborhood dogs.
  
  “It’s Tuesday already?  Fuck.
  
  Twice a week I steal food for a neighborhood stray, scraps mostly, but he eats just as well as I do most of the time.  That dog would be completely fucked without me and that makes me feel a lot better about this.  Tuesday is this dog’s best day every week…because of me.  
  
  You have to pick your battles, I guess. 
  
  I don’t even like dogs. Isn’t that kind of messed up?  I don’t like the dog that I personally adopted.  Animals make me mad for new reasons every day, but I’m not heartless.  I can’t just let a dog die, and he’s not a bad dog really.  Dumb as fuck maybe, I’ll concede to that, but he’s not bad.  There is a difference. 
  
  Twenty-six days. 
  
  I have not talked to a person in almost a month.  You want to know the weirdest thing?  I can’t tell if I’ve gone crazy because I miss people or because I just don’t.  I don’t know if I’m the only person left and I don’t know why the fuck it’s me either.
  
  I could steal any car I wanted to and I’d never get caught.  There’s nobody to even catch me!  (pause.)  I don’t even know if it’s stealing anymore.  How can you steal from somebody that doesn’t exist?  You can’t.  Did it ever really belong to them in the first place?  Who the fuck cares?  It all belongs to me now.
  
  Why does it still make me feel so shitty? I’m hurting no one.  There’s no one to hurt.
  
  (long pause.)  I will never drive.  Not ever.
  
   I have made peace with the fact that I’d rather be stuck in a familiar place forever than wander around and confirm my suspicions.
  
  I didn’t fucking ask for this, okay?  I shouldn’t feel guilty for not feeling something.  That’s ridiculous.  I didn’t ask for this.  
  
  That doesn’t mean I don’t want it, I guess.
  
   (long pause.)  For a while I was really scared about this bullshit but what do I really have to be scared about?  If anything I would call myself curious, it’s like I’m a kid all over again.  The world feels monstrous and scary and just…so fucking lonely and huge.  It feels the same way that it did in sixth grade when Melissa Vaughn put her hands down my pants.  I didn’t know what the fuck was going on then either…but I was curious.  
  
  I’m curious now too.  That’s probably the only healthy thing to me.  
  
  How did seven billion people just disappear overnight?  That’s what I can’t wrap my head around.   That’s what I can’t understand and it makes me feel so fucking stupid.  Where are the bodies!?  It doesn’t make any kind of sense to me in any way.
  
  Not one body!   Do you realize how unlikely that is?  SEVEN BILLION PEOPLE DIE INSTANTLY FROM MYSTERIOUS CAUSES AND NOT ONE BODY IS RECOVERED?!  That’s physically impossible.  It’s intellectually dishonest.
  
  (sighs audibly.) Anyway…it’s just fucked up, you know?  And I’m fucked up!  But that’s the beauty of it, or at least, that’s the lie I tell myself to keep me sated in an otherwise empty world.  The end product is the same.  The end product is always the same.
  
  How the fuck can I say what I’m about to say?   (long pause.)
  
  …Look, I know what’s going on.  I’m not stupid.  I’m wasted space, probably shitting his pants and embarrassing the fuck out everybody he knows.  This conversation that I am having with myself is as real as the fucking tooth fairy is.  I’ve never owned a camera in my life and suddenly I just know how to operate one?  People don’t just disa-fucking-ppear and I just don’t get that lucky.  I know what I am.  I know what I’ve done.  
  
  I know that my girlfriend probably found me.  I know that she was scared and did all the right things that any kind and gracious human would do.  The idea that I can even produce an original thought is a testimony to her strength.
  
  (long pause.)  I also hope I never see her again.  I’m fucked up!  I want the dream to last forever.
   
• Tomorrow’s objective:  ^ Shoot That ^