Those of you following closely may recall a scene posted in late May when our script took a turn for the sordid.
In those pages, Rachel, who had been introduced earlier as a sexy nymph in a negligee and largely forgotten, wound up snorting coke in the backseat of a Bentley and making out with Sydney Pizer, a fat man old enough to be her grandfather.
The scene was penned by Mitch Paradise, who this week adds pages 97-101 to our script and becomes the latest in a small but growing coterie of two-time contributors to “Right of Way.”
Where others had given Sydney a complex code of honor that allowed him to reluctantly arrange for a friend’s murder, Mitch saw him as a lethally corrupt sybarite, who could inject some needed perversion into our story.
This week Mitch is at it again, creating a scene in which Rachel, apparently drugged by cult leader Duvane, is nearly raped and murdered in what Duvane hopes will look to his followers like a ritual sacrifice but is really something else.
For good measure, Mitch brings back his old pal Sydney, who ends up on the wrong end of an over-indulgent thrill-shooting by his incestuous lover and partner in crime, Celeste.
“I really enjoy writing Sydney as a character,” says Mitch, who admits to an appetite for lurid things such as dime-store pulp novels and Chicago Cubs baseball, the latter of which he portrayed on the small screen as a writer and producer of Showtime’s “Bleacher Bums.”
“I find him to be a character who brings out certain aspects of depravity that every good noir story needs.”
With our depravity quotient ramped up to full-bore, Mitch has Mayor Napolitano step in to save Rachel’s life, possibly at the expense of his own freedom.
“It was great to have the opportunity to come back in at a crucial time and help set up the script’s end-game,” he said.
Indeed, by my estimation, we’ve got only about three weeks of story-telling left here at the Script Project.
What’s more, I’ve decided to write the project’s final pages myself, and I’ve assigned the pages immediately preceding those to Michael Breiburg, a previous contributor who put a bug in my ear a few months ago about an ending I like.
That means only this coming week’s pages and possibly one more submission the week after that are up for grabs before Mike and I bring this story home.
In order to transition to the ending, I’ll post a rough outline in the next day or two, indicating where these next several pages must go.
If you’ve been planning to submit some wildly creative scene introducing new complications, well, sorry -- that train’s already left the station.
Then again, if plotting is not your strong suit but you’ve wanted to take a shot at writing some good action and dialog, this could be your weekend to shine.
Look for my rough story outline by Friday, and whip up a few pages over the weekend. It may be your last chance.
