copyright 2009 by Adrienne D. Wilson, all rights reserved
Screenplay by Adrienne D. Wilson
copyright 2020 WordPress.com all rights reserved
for Walter Halsey Davis
of the Santa Barbara Writers Conference
CONT.
from a little trailer I made as Valentine Bonnaire in 2012 in youtube…..
EXT. DRIFTWOOD HUT. Bright SUN, MORNING
DEVLIN is squatting on a sand due (Padaro Lane location) DUNES watching as TEENIE leaves the HUT.
DEVLIN
(whispers)
I wonder what she did in there
Devlin walks casually toward the hut, playing the harmonica Grandpa Jess gave him. A gull, flying. Devlin spots a dead gull on the beach, plastic wrapped around it’s neck. It’s dead. He begins to bury it.
DEVLIN
(tears)
Too much plastic in the sea, it’s not good for you
A gull perches on top of the driftwood hut, flapping its wings. Devlin enters the hut and sees what Teenie left for him, under three stacked stones.
copyright 2009 by Adrienne D. Wilson, all rights reserved
Screenplay by Adrienne D. Wilson
copyright 2020 WordPress.com all rights reserved
for Walter Halsey Davis
of the Santa Barbara Writers Conference
CONT.
EXT. DRIFTWOOD HUT. BEACH MORNING PEARLED LIGHT
Teenie leaves Devlin a note, under three beach stones, she has walked beach, dreamlike, to gather them. Close in on her drawing him a heart surrounded by clouds, with “Who are you?” then a seal’s head pops up from the waves as she walks away, smiling.
EXT. MR. HONEYGARTEN’S HOUSE. BRIGHT SUN, DAY
Teenie parks her bike by the old fence. MELLOMAN his dog is so happy to see her, clowns at fence, wagging and jumping. Birdsounds, Bluejay with peanut, landing.
TEENIE
Mr. Honeygarten are you there?
HONEYGARTEN
Just a minute, dear, let me get my staff. Well, hello Teenie dear how very nice to see you again
TEENIE
Mr. Honeygarten, I was wondering if I might be able to have some of those apples on your trees. I want to make a pie
Mr. Honeygarten smiles dearly at Teenie and begins to pick some flowers for her. Close in on his aged face, smiling eyes and warm smile, as Teenie pets Melloman.
HONEYGARTEN
You do? I see. Well suppose you help me pick them, and of course you can. I seem to have plenty to spare this year.
TEENIE
I want to share it with you Mr. Honeygarten
HONEYGARTEN
Oh my, I haven’t had an apple pie for a very long time
TEENIE
Neither have I, not since Dad left
HONEYGARTEN
You must miss him very much Teenie
TEENIE
I do. Every single day.
HONEYGARTEN
(old hips aching, puzzles)
Well let me see, we’ll need a basket and the ladder. How about if you go around to the garden shed and collect those for us and I’ll meet you by the trees.
Melloman and Teenie meander through English garden style flowers to the old shed, Honeygarten limps with staff toward the trees- lilting music, uplift close in on her hands picking apples, while he watches, Mellowman by his side
MONTAGE FLASHBACK – ESTABLISHING
Close in on a FOR SALE sign, Teenie’s parents working for a newspaper, bustling business – The Village Crier. Teenie’s parents at work, secretary and reporter. Out of business signs along streets. Teenie’s old house FOR SALE SIGN. Teenie in beautiful bedroom, packing, overhears her parents
INT. NIGHT, TEENIE’S BEDROOM
JAX
They closed it, everything. Lock, stock and barrel.
Walter Halsey Davis taught me about sound in film. Let me play this one for you.
HEART OF CLOUDS
by Adrienne D. Wilson
copyright 2009 by Adrienne D. Wilson, all rights reserved
Screenplay by Adrienne D. Wilson
copyright 2020 WordPress.com all rights reserved
for Walter Halsey Davis
of the Santa Barbara Writers Conference
INT. BATHROOM. MORNING
Teenie stands in the bathroom in pajamas, brushing her teeth. It’s as if it is the first time she has really seen herself. Focus on her hair, trying a bun, a ponytail. Lipgloss.
CHRISTINA
(walks by catches her daughter at mirror, being girlish, sternly)
Pretty is as pretty does, Teenie. Don’t be vain.
TEENIE
(in silence looks at her mother’s face)
Close in on Teenie’s hands at her closet, choosing her favorite jeans and sweater, slipping her journal and pen into the pocket. At door, leaving, close in on her face
TEENIE
Bye, Mom. I’ll be back with the apples and then we can do the pie.
EXT. DRIFTWOOD HUT. TEENIE MORNING BEACH, PEARLED LIGHT
Teenie rides her bike through the village on the way down to the beach to get back to the driftwood hut.
INT. DRIFTWOOD HUT. BEACH, PEARLED LIGHT
Teenie falls to knees at the sight of her origami bird in the shell, looks around quizzically to see if someone else is there, suddenly she sees Devlin standing on the top of the dunes. Wind ruffles in his sandy blond hair. He bolts, she realizes he left the shell for her.
TEENIE
(softly)
He must have done this. He must have left this here for me.
novel copyright 2009 Adrienne D. Wilson all rights reserved
Screenplay copyright 2020 WordPress by Adrienne D. Wilson all rights reserved
INT. GRANDPA AND GRANDMA JESS KITCHEN. EARLY EVENING, GOLDEN LIGHT
The kitchen, in the old brown shingled Craftsman exudes a glow. The warmth and beauty of GRANDPA JESS (70’s) and GRANDMA JESS (70’s) beams like light rays. They are an old fashioned California couple who grew up together and married early, in the 1960’s. The kitchen walls are hung with old cast iron pans and copper cooking pots, there is whimsy, and homey charm, houseplants. Dinnertime, and Grandma is cooking, Devlin’s favorite meal, in simple style. Though they are both worried for the boy, they don’t show it. He is enfolded in their loving arms. They are his father’s parents.
GRANDPA JESS
(lounging on a comfy overstuffed sofa, inhaling the scents of the dinner, as his wife cooks, he watches her, smiling eyes)
What did you do today son?
DEVLIN
Worked on the hut
GRANDPA JESS
How’s it coming along?
DEVLIN
Almost done
GRANDPA JESS
Your father called, he wondered how you were getting along
DEVLIN
Tell him I’m fine
GRANDPA JESS
Are you Devlin?
Devlin busies himself helping his grandmother set the table, and tasting the baked beans and cornbread.
DEVLIN
I miss my mom
GRANDPA JESS
I know you do, son
Grandpa Jess reaches behind the sofa and pulls out an old ukulele he had hidden, starts to strum, then hands it to Devlin
DEVLIN
You played this?
GRANDPA JESS
(eyes twinkling)
I think that’s how I won your grandmother’s heart. That or my old harmonica.
GRANDMA JESS
(rich sounds of her warm laughter fill the room)
I really don’t think you need to give that boy any ideas, Jess
DEVLIN
(practices playing both instruments, smiles)
GRANDMA JESS
(pulls out a special cake made just for Devlin)
Practice makes perfect, and we all know that – the two of you ought to come have supper now.
DEVLIN
Sighs, smiling as he looks at the cake
GRANDMA JESS
No reason every day can’t be a celebration, Devlin
A simple pine coffin, with flowers. DEVLIN and his FATHER standing near it, his arm is around the boy, who stands in silence. Mute. Close in on father’s face, we see the streaks of tears. His father is a big city architect, now he is lost at the death of his wife. Devlin is to be sent to his grandparents in California. GRANDPA JESS and GRANDMA.
INT. DAY. AIRPLANE DEVLIN’S FLIGHT
DEVLIN is taking a plane alone. We see him in profile at a window seat, as the land moves away underneath him, giving way to the land below as it recedes, until clouds.
EXT. BEACH – DEVLIN – DRIFTWOOD HUT
Devlin has found an abalone shell to leave for Teenie, He scoops some sand at the rear of the structure and carefully places her little orgami bird inside it. Late afternoon in golden light.
EXT. VILLAGE – TEENIE – MR. HONEYGARTEN’S HOUSE (establishing)
Teenie walks home, and passes MR. HONEYGARTEN’S (90) old Victorian house, with a tangle of brambles and old roses along the picket fence. All his apple trees are laden with fruit, sound of birdsongs, in golden afternoon light.
INT. TEENIE’S HOUSE – LIVING ROOM
Teenie enters the grey light atmosphere, her mother Christina has not moved from the couch, TV droning on with the news. She wants to try and cheer her mother up.
TEENIE
Mom, remember that pie I made one time?
CHRISTINA
(wanly)
I do
TEENIE
Can I make another one someday?
CHRISTINA
Sure honey
TEENIE
MR. HONEYGARTEN’S garden has all kinds of apples, Mom. Maybe I could help him pick some?
CHRISTINA
Okay, but you be careful if you go up on the ladder
TEENIE
I could ask him Mom, tomorrow. We could share the pie with him.
As a member of the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, I expected the book to go through traditional channels in publishing, for instance a Literary Agent, but since that did not happen, the rewrite as a screenplay is in the live web. If you are interested, leave me a comment here. The book was just over 50,000 words, and won in NanoWrimo that year. It was a first novel.
The cover is an image of mine, a scene of clouds from Summerland Beach.
HEART OF CLOUDS – SCREENPLAY
by Adrienne D. Wilson
~
for Walter Halsey Davis
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
————————— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
LOGLINE: “Love, it’s the only thing that really matters.”
CAST OF CHARACTERS
TEENIE ALEXANDER – a girl of thirteen (seen as a child, then as adult)
DEVLIN UNDERWOOD – a boy of fourteen (seen as a child, then as an adult)
MR. HONEYGARTEN – a very old man, perhaps 90
GRANDPA JESS – Devlin’s Grandfather – perhaps age 70’s
CHRISTINA ALEXANDER (Teenie’s mother) a woman of 40’s
JAX ALEXANDER (Teenie’s father) a man – late 40’s
GRANDMA – Devlin’s Grandmother – perhaps age 70’s
CLAIRE – Mr. Honeygarten’s first love, the love of his life – she is seen as a young girl, and again as a ghost in his old age.
DEVLIN UNDERWOOD’s FATHER – a man 40’s
DEVLIN UNDERWOOD’s MOTHER – a woman 30’s
DOGS
MELLOMAN – a Golden Retriever (about six years old)
BROWNIE – a Chocolate Lab (puppy)
GENRE – DRAMA – This is a FAMILY FILM, the ratings would be G along that scale. It’s the story of a young boy and girl who meet on a beach one summer, maybe the worst summer of their lives. It’s a story of memory, and the sea, and the very first crush one has, and so it is a story of great innocence, for all ages. It has a happy Hollywood ending.
LOCATION – I wrote the film to be shot in a small village along the Pacific Coast, such as Summerland and Carpinteria, which retain the images of “villages” from another time. They are still old-fashioned enough to be timeless.
FADE IN
OPENING SCENE ONE EXT. BEACH. EARLY MORNING
The camera pans across the vastness of the sea, on a crisp morning, in the clear light of the Pacific, blue skies, shimmering waves. We see TEENIE ALEXANDER (age 13) running away, as if running from home down the empty beach, in glimmering light. A dolphin’s fin emerges, and it leaps – to the sound of classical oceanic sweeping music. Pan to a structure ahead of her, a sea hut made of driftwood like the kind that surfers build along the beaches here. It’s early Autumn, in the magic light along the Pacific. She sees the structure off in the distance and makes for it, In her pocket she carries a small journal embossed with flowers and a Waterman pen, both gifts from her father.
SCENE TWO INTERIOR NIGHT TEENIE’S ROOM (flashback)
Teenie is sitting on her bed trying to block out her parents JAX (40’s) and CHRISTINA (40’s). Their voices are getting louder and louder as another fight over money begins.
SUDDEN KNOCK
JAX
(Speaking softly)
Honey can I come in? I have something for you.
TEENIE
(nods her head, as door opens)
Dad…
JAX
(holding embossed journal and pen, her gift, squats down to hand them to his daughter, cups her face)
I have to leave tomorrow, honey. I wanted you to have these.
(PAUSE, then)
You have a heart made of clouds, you know that?
TEENIE
I do?
JAX
(gruffly, hugs her)
Never forget that okay? Never lose that little twinkle in your eye.
Working with this fabulous yarn from Scheepjes has taken my mind way into a land of special beauty.
But I am writing screenplay and I don’t understand why I got this message behind the scenes from WordPress? So I took a screenshot. I could crochet right now, or I could write. I am writing an adaptation of a novel I wrote back in 2009 in Nanowrimo that I worked very hard on. The rewrite to a screenplay is something I want to use my blog for?
I am not clear about Gutenberg?
Is this artificial intelligence?
I have never seen a message like this until the other day.
For writers WordPress is the best thing that was EVER invented. Not kidding.
I bought the premium version so I could write here?
In November I may write a novel here, when Nano starts again. I used my WP blog endlessly as my nom de plume Valentine Bonnaire, but this is the real me. I designed the book cover for Heart of Clouds myself, and the image is a shot of the clouds off Summerland Beach. WP would not allow me to link it from my old blog and I don’t know why!
This is what a screenplay looks like:
EXT. DAY. Summerland Beach
We see a giant thin cloud rolling across the sky, then a close up to a dolphin jumping.
That is what I was about to start writing.
I got this:
I have loved WP since 2007.
So I never mind talking to them right here in my blog.
xxoo!
Adrienne
here is a screenshot of behind the scenes just now:
It doesn’t want me to link to my OWN BOOK COVER. So I will crop it in Preview and try again. You know I love WordPress, because it has been so seamless since 2007. Everything was always easy and that is because of Ma.tt and all the people who work on this out of their hearts. Anyway tries again. What you are going to see is TEXT that I wrote, from a book I wrote in 2009, translated into what a screenplay looks like.
Hugs.
Here is what the book cover looks like.
I just went to check the news and took a screenshot and saw these. Just know I ❤ WordPress.
I also TRUST WORDPRESS more than any other site. I trust two companies. Firefox and WordPress. The others? Nope.
Hugs.
That is a portrait of my self, and my dog Odin. If you want to see the last thing I wrote in my blog Valentine Bonnaire, you can. I adopted him. These are the beaches we walk all the time and this is what SoCal looks like!
That is Summerland beach, the location for my novel Heart of Clouds.
So there you have it, you see?
Now I can retype the whole thing as I write the screenplay, or just photograph each page.
I’m debating putting a donate dealie on my page in here, and just yesterday I read about that? In the WP Reader. Because this is going to be one of the most beautiful books you have ever read, you see?
It is.
It will also be one of the most beautiful films EVER MADE.
How to even begin, with the world in this kind of state?
I would not know.
Except for one thing. I am furious with a ghost. It was my screenwriting teacher Walter Halsey Davis from the SB Writer’s Conference who passed away last summer not long after the Conference ended.
They say it isn’t right to speak ill of the dead, except, what he did to me was unfathomable, but not if you understand the kind of shit Hollywood can be made of. From 2006 until 2019 he was my teacher, and I waited. Twice when I was published under my nom de plume I handed him the books, so that he could see I was a published writer, so that he would take me seriously. Then I handed him my children’s book Heart of Clouds, which I wrote (as a Depth Psychologist from Pacifica Graduate Institute) to address core woundings and how to heal them. I was taken with his film “Do You Remember Love” that starred Joanne Woodward who is one of my faves as an actress, especially for her films like Rachel, Rachel and The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds. Are those links in youtube? They might be.
Never put all your eggs in one basket. That’s something my grandmother used to say, and I did.
The last thing I ever handed him was a copy of my play, Vanilla Suede.
One dirty trick he pulled on me?
At the last night dinner at the Conference the teachers hand out prizes to the writers who have been in the workshops. Well, I handed him the assignment, do a screenplay using cliches. It was a Rom Com, and funny as hell. I thought he actually meant it, as a teacher. I have had many many teachers in my life. He never said ONE WORD to me, about my writing. He never said ONE WORD about my screenplay. He never said ONE WORD about the book to go to film I wrote that was dedicated to him. Here is what he said in class. “Does anyone have something they want to pitch to me?” I was so in awe of him that it took me three years to work up to that.
What a mean, sorry piece of shit he was.
So here is the deal.
The last sentence he ever said to me was “Let’s go to France.” That was by the pool, when I bought him a drink at the Conference and got him a plate of food. “I need red berries,” he said. In two months he would be gone.
I still have a bad taste in my mouth from those berries.
Last summer I asked a priest at the Mission to bless the book, and I handed it to a bookstore owner here, to ask him what he thought. He loved it. He saw it as a film.
So here is what I am going to do. Right here, in WordPress, copyright to me, I am going to rewrite the book as a screenplay. I am finished with writing under noms, forever. The book has themes that are important to children in it. For survival. So you can help me out here if you want because I would love feedback from the global audience that reads WordPress. The kids need a feel good film. They and the audiences need to see HOPE, and I wrote that for them.
“Let it go,” my husband said. “Just let it go.”
He cannot possibly understand the level of hurt Walter inflicted on me. He can’t. Chalk it up to the men in Hollywood being Weinsteinesque.
They aren’t the only men in the world.
I’m still in a bad mood, and we are a summer past last year.
Good thing I have WordPress, huh?
I grew up on the finest films that ever came out of Hollywood. In fact both my uncle Spencer Crilly and my dad Don Brown were both filmmakers. Yeah, they were. You can see pictures of both of them over in FB. Heart of Clouds is a charmer of a story about two kids on a beach, one summer, like the kind of childhood I had, which was sweet and full of good people. I set the place as Summerland, here in California, and so in the book when I refer to “the village” that is the setting for the location.
End scene from the film Rachel, Rachel is here:
Here is the film Effect of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds
xxoo!
from Adrienne
(who can go back and even see the notes in my old blog from the years I wrote it, in Nanowrimo)
C.S. Lewis came to me in a dream the last few days of the writing of the novel. It was fab. As I wrote the scenes for the book I had favorite actors in mind for the parts. But there are lots of actors and people in Hollywood who can play them, no? So what I write are called character studies. Those are the kind of classic films about people my generation grew up on.
Who were the actors I had in mind as i wrote the book?
One of them lives here in town. Jeff Bridges. I had the part of Grandpa Jess in mind for him because when I was a little girl, just a teen, I saw one of my favorite films on earth, “The Last Picture Show.” Here it is from youtube:
I have seen nearly every film Jeff Bridges ever made. I wanted to write parts that can win an OSCAR. Walter, my teacher WON THE HUMANITAS PRIZE. It matters. But the really big part in the film goes to the character Mr. Honeygarten, because both these characters are seminal in the story. I was just a kid in High School here in Santa Barbara when I saw The Last Picture Show. I wanted the part of Mr. Honeygarten to go to Robert Duvall. These are two actors that I love, for all the years they have been in film. Both these guys are BELOVED. In fact last night on TCM I watched Duvall in Altman’s MASH. I never saw that as a kid, wow. It was on TV, but what a film. Altman’s “Short Cuts” is one of my all time favorites. So, what the kids are watching in 2020 does not have the innocent beauty of stories like we grew up on, or even films we saw. As kids we grew up on a very different Disney.
I went to school with the Bottoms Boys. In this film. I saw it the year it was made on the big, big screen. What a film. It just so happens I grew up in this town, where SBIFF is. So here is Jeff Bridges a few years ago. Walter should have taken me seriously.
Look what Jeff Bridges is up to!
The character of Grandpa Jess plays a stringed instrument. Check it out!