a film about television
by Jim Burge
See final page for list of characters
Part I - ORIGINS
Scene 1
EXT. EVENING LIBERIAN COUNTRYSIDE, AFRICA MALEMBE
Open countryside in
Liberia. It is a beautiful evening, the sky is reddening in the
west.
MALEMBE, a Liberian in
his mid-fifties, stands alone by some clear ground. He is very
poorly dressed. He is not in the advanced stages of malnutrition,
but he is emaciated. He is carrying, incongruously, a Sportsac.
He is watching a light
aircraft approach. He looks intently and impassively, in CU his
face is sad and old.. As it comes nearer we stay on
MALEMBEs face and do not see the aircraft but we hear its
engine whine, obviously in trouble, and then the sound of it
crashing.
MALEMBE remains still
for a second then starts off towards the wreckage, which we now
see, at a quick but dignified walk.
But it is too late, the
wreckage explodes in a fireball and MALEMBE stops.
We push in to his face
and hear his thoughts in voice over (English accent, a rough,
regional voice)
MALEMBE (V/O)
He said he was going to
make me famous, and now the fuckers dead.
Scene 2
INT. NIGHT
CUTTING ROOM LONDON HENRY .
Sound:
Cutting room noise of various soundtracks in other rooms and a
Steenbeck being rewound.
HENRY BRIEN, a staff
documentary producer, mid/early thirties, is alone in the cutting
room, sorting through some papers and files on the shelf.
It is evening and people
are going home. From the corridor we hear goodnights and other
pleasantries and see people walking by outside the door.
A computer disk falls
out of one of the files HENRY is holding. He picks it up and we
see the words "NEEDLE: SCRIPT" scrawled on it. He
crosses the room, puts it into a computer, clicks a bit and the
text appears on the screen, it reads:
THE
NEEDLE
PRELIMINARY
SCRIPT
Presenter
to camera: This evening I am going to do
something which, although it is done for the best
of motives, will make many of you hate me.
There is nothing more on
the screen
HENRY looks puzzled and
reads to himself:
HENRY
"I am going to do
something which, although it is done for the best
of motives, will make many of you hate me".
Eh?
Scene 3
EXT. DAY WESTMINSTER
ABBEY, WEST DOOR
Establisher of people
entering the abbey for DENBEIGHs memorial service.
HERZOGs address begins in voice over (see next scene).
Scene 4
INT. DAY WESTMINSTER
ABBEY HERZOG, GUS, HENRY, FLOSSIE,
MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR
FRANCIS DENBEIGH
The Pulpit. TONY HERZOG,
(Managing Director Television) boyish, early forties, full of
self-consciously youthful energy but slightly nervy, is giving
the address. We see the distressed and serious faces in he
congregation.
HERZOG
... The world of
television mourns an original and exceptional man
in Francis Denbeigh. He cared about film making
with a seriousness that was almost frightening. I
remember when, a few years ago, he made the
decision to stand down from his job in the
television hierarchy and go back to programme
making, I asked him what was the real reason for
this backward step. He smiled, and then he said
that it was because he still felt he had one more
thing to do with a television programme. Most of
us would have said, and say now, that over the
nearly four decades of his career, he had already
done enough things with television programmes to
allow himself a rest. But he wouldnt have
agreed, he knew he had more to do and he carried
on making programmes. He died, too early for a
man like him, but perhaps fittingly, making his
latest documentary in Africa. I know that we who
loved him and loved his work must finish that
film for him now - we will finish it. We can give
him no greater monument. ..... (speech
continues)
GUSTAV (GUS) THOMELY,
Head of Factual Programmes, late forties, podgy and effete, has
been sitting in the congregation, staring down at his hands.
On hearing about the
plan to finish the programme GUS looks up sharply and stares at
HERZOG. He is horrified, he begins to shake his head almost
imperceptibly.
FLOSSIE BENTHAM, veteran
PA, is sitting a few rows behind GUS and watches his reaction.
HENRY is seated behind
her. He leans forward and whispers to FLOSSIE
HENRY
You had better give this
to Gustav.
He hands her the disk
with "Script" written on it. She looks at it and turns.
FLOSSIE
(Mouthing voicelessly)
Well done.
Pulpit. Herzog is
concluding.
HERZOG
... many of us have lost a
friend, but more importantly an inspiration. The
knowledge that he is gone will diminish us all.
Scene 5
INT. DAY
GUSS OFFICE GUS, HERZOG, 2 MINDERS, FLOSSIE
It is after the memorial
service. Ties are loosened and a drinks cabinet is visible, open
in the background
HERZOG
What do you mean you have
no idea what he was doing?
GUS
Well he wasnt always
exactly communicative.
HERZOG
Gussie - he had already
spent thousands of your departments pounds.
He went on a lengthy recce to Africa. Most days
he had that death trap of a plane on hire. Had he
done any shooting?
GUS
A few rolls. The rushes
will be arriving tomorrow apparently.
He looks at Flossie who
is holding some papers and a large file.
HERZOG
It also turns out that he
had some massive outside broadcast booked.
Archive film has been ordered from all over the
world and a cutting room is on standby. And his
head of department doesnt know what it was
about.
GUS looks miserable,
looks at Flossie
FLOSSIE
There is this Tony
She hold the disk with
"NEEDLE: SCRIPT" on it
FLOSSIE
Henry Brien found it last
night in the cutting room
On a nod from GUS, she
goes to the computer, puts it in and starts loading it etc. As
she does all this they continue talking.
HERZOG
(To FLOSSIE)
Werent you meant to be working with him?
FLOSSIE
Well actually, I was
working on Savonarola, not this thing. Apart from
that I hadnt worked with him for years.
HERZOG
Savonarola? Sounds like a
deodorant.
GUS
He had two projects.
Savonarola which was going to be a drama about an
Italian monk and this other one - the Needle?
HERZOG
Two projects?
MINDER 1
You did approve them both,
Tony.
HERZOG
How much has been spent on
the deodorant?
FLOSSIE
It was just research.
Henry Brien and I had done a week on it.
HERZOG
Well in that case
its pulled.
MINDER 1 goes to say
something but thinks better of it
At this moment the
script finally appears on the computer screen.
All gather round to
look. Even the MINDERS show interest.
FLOSSIE
(Nervously)
Thats all there is.
MINDER 1 is so
interested that he, almost involuntarily, reads the last sentence
aloud.
MINDER 1
(Reading) "something which, although it is done for
the best of motives, will make many of you hate
me"
HERZOG was looking
puzzled but, as MINDER 1 reads, he flicks a slightly contemptuous
glance at him and snaps into dynamic mode.
HERZOG
Gussie, I want this
programme completed with the minimum of fuss. You
can have half the budget for Savonarola, the rest
comes back to me.
HERZOG glances at MINDER
2, who makes a note of it.
HERZOG contd.
Were going to have a
Francis Denbeigh week in ...
MINDER 1
October
HERZOG
.. The "new DENBEIGH
documentary" is going to be my big publicity
getter. If it works, it will be a big help; it
will make us all look good - (boyish smile)
even you.
HERZOG and the two
MINDERS exit.
GUS looks at the
computer, then at FLOSSIE. He is very angry.
Scene 6
INT. DAY CUTTING ROOM
JOHN TADLEY, ASSISTANT EDITOR,
(later) HENRY, TERESA,
FLOSSIE
The cutting room. It is
not over large and very cluttered. In the background the
ASSISTANT is synching up rushes. JOHN TADLEY, film editor, is
seated at the Steenbeck, noisily rewinding and lacing. He is
large mid-fifties, has a shaven head, probably gay. He responds
to something we have not heard without looking away from the
screen :
JOHN T
What?
HENRY enters the room.
HENRY
I said I was completing
the Francis Denbeigh film.
JOHN T
Oh, are you really?
HENRY
You worked with him a lot
didnt you?
JOHN continues working
at the Steenbeck
JOHN T
Yes
HENRY
Well its quite hard
to sort out what this film was meant to be about.
I was just starting to work on Savonarola - I
dont know anything about this one and
no-one seems to be able to help. What are the
rushes like?
JOHN T
Ive no idea what
they are like - young Pete is synching them up -
then theyll be rubber numbered - then you
can have a look at them. You can even have a
cassette if you like.
HENRY can see the film
winding at speed on the Steenbeck but decides not to push he
matter
HENRY
All I know is that Tony
Herzog is insisting that it be finished -
hes making a lot of fuss about it - he must
have really admired Denbiegh.
JOHN T
No he didnt! He
thought he was a jumped up little ex film editor
with daft ideas, just like all the rest of them
did. They only tolerated him because he had
managed to get his name known as a film maker,
and even that only happened because he went and
lived as a down-and-out for two months. That sort
of thing made documentary film maker famous in
the sixties. Its probably normal now, haha.
Herzog just wants to make a big fuss about the
great old days of TV, thats all. Francis
annoyed him - he liked doing that.
JOHNs reminiscing
is interrupted by the violent slamming of a door across the way,
then its being opened again, then a womans voice yelling
down the corridor.
It is the voice of
TERESA TREWELL, producer/presenter of Table Talk, early fifties,
tall with a piercing look and matching voice. She is over-dressed
for a cutting room because she is also a presenter
From inside the cutting
room we see TERESA, leaning out of the door across the corridor,
yelling after some unseen person.
TERESA
And for Christs sake
stop whingeing about short notice - I am fed up
with hearing that phrase - just get of the
fucking phone and fucking speak to him. And if
the answers no, dont bother to come
back, you little wanker.
She walks across the
corridor and enters the cutting room without asking
TERESA contd.
Hello darlings. Bit of a
crisis on Table Talk; no guest for tomorrow
nights show. Ill look a complete
fucking idiot sitting there by myself
interviewing the waiters, wont I? Are you
using this chair?
TERESA grabs the chair
and begins to wheel it out of the room.
HENRY
Which restaurant are you
going to?
TERESA
Le Chateau
Anglais in Bucks, know it? Hey, arent
you the one whos going to try to finish
Franciss film
She looks at HENRY with
amused hostility.
TERESA contd.
Theres somebody you
might be interested in. Hes a New Zealand
film maker called Ridley McKintyre, he knew
Francis and he has filmed in that part of Africa.
Might be a help - hes on Late Night
tonight. If you go to the studio they might let
you into hospitality afterwards. Good luck.
As she exits she meets
FLOSSIE entering the room. FLOSSIE deftly takes the chair from
TERESA.
FLOSSIE
Hi Terri, Im afraid
were going to need that. There are a lot of
people working on this production, you know.
TERESA is on the point
of creating a major row, but decides against it. FLOSSIE shuts
the door behind her.
FLOSSIE
Dreadful woman. I did
three months with her once. Nearly drove me mad.
JOHN T
You cant argue with
success though ... Her show gets the ratings.
Its a great idea - take somebody famous out
to dinner, get them pissed and then interview
them live on TV over the cheese. It works.
FLOSSIE
It works sometimes, and
the idea is not even new. (To Henry) No
more information on the OB. Like the old
fashioned old producer he was, he just did a lot
of booking, most of it provisional. He seemed to
be gearing up for some massive nighttime outside
broadcast. There were several provisional dates -
one of them was even tomorrow. But no information
about locations or subject matter: just the
bookings. He wasnt a typical old fashioned
producer in one way, though - he did his own
telephoning. He actually made the phone calls
himself . No help from a PA. Now thats
amazing
JOHN T
I expect dear Gussie was
keeping him short of staff. The big new idea is
to make editors work without assistants.
HENRY tries to take
command
HENRY
Well look, cant we
sort of infer what he was going to do from what
he had shot so far?
From now on, to the end
of the scene, on the Steenbeck screen we see a roll of rushes
running backwards slowly. The rushes show MALEMBE: he is holding
a dirty brown bowl of watery maize broth, talking to camera and
stirring it occasionally with dirty fingers. The camera pans down
to the bowl as he indicates it, then back up to him as he
continues speaking. There are many takes of this and we see them
backwards, slates and all. No-one pays any attention to the
screen.
JOHN T is annoyed
We track gently in to
him as the diatribe continues.
JOHN T
Infer what he was going to
be put in? Well yes we might, in the sort of
television programme where economists are always
seen with bookcases behind them, where every
inner-city street has its own kid playing in the
gutter and where as soon as anyone says Paris you
see a shot of the Eiffel tower. In that kind of
programme you probably only have to see half the
shots to know what the other half are.
But nature has been kind
to our medium. For every berk of a journalist,
the height of whose visual ambitions is to do a
piece to camera with the Houses of Parliament
over his left shoulder, there is a real film
maker somewhere to whom the juxtaposition of
sound a picture means something.
Pictures, music, and
words, laddie, you can put them together in an
infinity of different ways. And when you get it
right they speak from your soul. A piece of film
can say something that it would take you a
lifetime to say in words. A film breathes with a
will of its own; it isnt bound by the
convention that says you have to have an
establishing shot of the Ministry of Agriculture
Food and Fisheries followed by medium long shot
of the minister getting out of his car.
The problem we have about
inferring anything here is that, in a film, in a
real film, you can go anywhere and say anything.
In a real film, which was Francis was inclined to
make, in a real film laddie - you can cut to
whatever you fucking want.
Scene 7
EXT. DAY
LIBERIA DUTCH JOURNALIST, MALEMBE, AFRICAN CROWD
We cut to a DUTCH
JOURNALIST in Liberia giving a news report in Dutch to camera.
She is shot so that she cuts as the reverse of JOHN T in the
previous scene (so it looks at first as if it is a conversation).
DUTCH JOURNALIST
(GIVES REPORT IN DUTCH
ON UNFOLDING HUMANITARIAN DISASTER)
We find MALEMBE in the
crowd and begin to hear his voice-over as the sound of the real
world is dipped.
MALEMBE
This ones going
on a bit - Dutch they said. The German yesterday
had bigger tits. The one whos going to
replace him will be English - not that woman
though, she didnt know anything about it.
He said it had to be a secret. How can becoming
famous be a secret? Ill ask the next
English one. The English - you can smell
em.
Scene 8
INT.
NIGHT STUDIO GALLERY FLOSSIE, HENRY, GUSTAV, STUDIO FOLK
We pan over
the monitors in the gallery of the studiofor Late
Night, a daily chat show. The first shows
* * *
THIS SCENE
NOW COMES MUCH LATER IN THE SCRIPT
Scene 9
INT. DAY
CUTTING ROOM FLOSSIE, HENRY, JOHN T
FLOSSIE, HENRY, JOHN T
are watching the MALEMBE footage spinning fast on the Steenbeck.
They seem now to have taken an interest in it.
HENRY
Well he seems to have been
very interested in this guy. He is the same bloke
as in the other roll isnt he?
The three look at each
other for an instant, unwilling to confront the idea that all
starving black people look very similar.