Thursday, August 28, 2008

You've Just Crossed Over Into...

The Bearded Zone

PLAY VIDEO



FADE IN:

EXT. EMPIRE STATE BUILDING - NIGHT

An ELEVATOR full of TOURISTS makes its daily and normally routine ride up to the OBSERVATION DECK.

CLOSE-UP - BRYAN'S BEARD

BRYAN'S FINGERS run through his BEARD. Something is wrong. The ELEVATOR SERVICE LIGHTS come up as the lift goes dim. Bryan wonders aloud if this has anything to do with trimming his beard earlier than the bet was intended for.

WIDE-SHOT - ELEVATOR

All the lights suddenly grow dim, except for a weird, peculiar light SHINING on Bryan. The ELEVATOR DOORS slowly CREAK their way open. There is nobody left on the elevator, and where the doors open it is surely not the present.

There is an old SEPIA TONED NEWSPAPER on the FLOOR, suggesting that the year is no longer 2008. An OLD, WRINKLED BELL BOY emerges from the END OF THE HALL.

BELL BOY (quietly, under his breath)
"We've been expecting your arrival, Mr. Geraghty. We always knew you wouldn't play fair. You're right on time."

FREEZE FRAME on Bryan.

WHIP-PAN TO:

ROD SERLING - calmly smoking a cigarette as he stands atop the observation deck.


SERLING
Submitted for your consideration: a man in an elevator, barreling up a shaft of concrete and steel and fun. Bryan Geraghty has just won a bet by growing his beard for a full year, and is cashing in his prize in glamorous, glitzy New York City. But in a moment this fantasy will fizzle; somehow others know of his devious and deceptive fraud. In a moment a man, whose only intention was to complete a silly bet, will turn a corner and come face to face with his worst nightmare: thematic incongruity. He's about to discover it's 1988, a year when gas was 91 cents a gallon, inflation was at 4%, Michael Jackson was singing about a whore in Dirty Diana, and the answer to "Will Dustin Hoffman Win Best Actor in Rain Man?" could only be found in... the Twilight Zone.

FADE TO BLACK.









Did Bryan really trim his beard? Will Bryan ever find his way out of the creepy, bizarro, alternate universe that he's trapped in? Who was the Bell Boy talking about as in 'we?' Answers to this and the following will be answered during the second and third week of September. Stay tuned..

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