cinesthetic
set aspect ratio to 2.29:1.
he squozen the last drop a shaving cream out the tube. taste a blud on his tongue, laffing at hisself w/his glinting gold crown tuth in the mirror. clammy amphetamine sweats glistening on his skin, head swimming to the point a vertigo. john gambler gone and found hisself a shithouse job operating a slitting machine on the factory production lines every day 7 a.m till 5. now gambler knows what it’s like to feel dead inside aged only 29.
sky a dishwater grey bleaching out morning sun. flashing lights of passing police car strobes interior of the bus he’s on. expressway shifting into a concrete city that’s ugly and stinks a human decay. john gambler no longer in low earth orbit. hitting baseline w/headphones on. (scenes moving past the winnder. ever thing filmed in cinemascope.) gambler watches dark-haired girl in black leather jacket sitting in front of him, pretty as a porcelain doll putting on rocket-red lipstick in little pocket mirror.
girl
(glancing back at gambler in mirror, sticking out her tongue)
take a picture why don’t you, it’ll last longer.
there was sumthing one time. sumthing john gambler could only call metaphysical that happened to him. sumthing that always stuck in his mind. he was taken by his mother to see this kid sumwhere on the east side a the city, maybe washwood heath but he wasn’t now sure, but over on the east side in any case. gambler had no idea how his mother had gotten to know this other kid’s mother but he was taken over to see this kid. must a bin back roundabout 1980.
kid was only 13 yrs old. he liked rock n roll and he was dying a cancer. sum kind a cancer behind the nose or sumthing so the kid talked funny. he was called elio or ezra or sumthing of that nature. in any case john gambler was taken over to see this kid elio or ezra and was asked to be his friend because the kid dint have any. the neighbourhood kids all med fun of him because he talked funny and he was weak and skinny as hell and was dying a cancer and it’s just like kids are sum real cruel bastards and don’t have no sense a mercy in them whatsoever.
so gambler was the kid’s friend just for a little short while. in the kid’s room, posters of elvis presley and eddie cochran all over the walls, gambler gave the kid link wray and robert gordon’s fresh fish special elpee and sat by his bed shooting the shit w/him, looking thru the music magazines that were piled up on the bedside table. but gambler never saw the kid elio or ezra again after that, he just lay down in his bed one day and died shortly after. they never told the kid his cancer was terminal and right up until the end he dint know he was gunna die. gambler often thought about that.
and now it was 1997 and john gambler sits on the number 63 w/his headphones on listening to jane’s addiction, thinking that ghosts don’t just haunt the corridors and staircases of old broken down houses. sum ghosts come to the derelict hearts a the living and gambler thought there’s got a be sum reason for it and it’s got to be a sign there’s sumthing more to life and how the dead can live on in the hearts a the living. and gambler felt a little bit better about hisself too because although he never really understood why life does what it does or what he really thought about it all, maybe when ever thing is said and done he’d got just a little bit more mercy born into him than sum other people.
gambler gets coffee and a pack a juicy fruit in digbeth bus station cafe. place is freezing cold. condensation running down the winnder panes. 6 o’clock in the morning. he sits at a table near the back. nobody’s waiting for buses. all the goddamned meth-heads are hanging round the joint, it’s where they all come to score. billy-boy in faded jeans and pink floyd tee-shirt stands around smoking newport cigrits, habitually blowing smoke rings in the air. greek cafe owner w/hair like sum kind a demented werewolf wearing a greasy apron stares at john gambler w/steady unblinking gaze thru the clouds a drifting cigrit smoke. (ever thing in black and white.) muted traffic noise. ephemeral conversations. john gambler at baseline now and nuthing is the same as it was, no sense of exhilaration running thru his veins no more. (these grainy scenes just moments in time caught in freeze frame, movie stills of ever body’s lives. feels like the whole wide world is seized in stark, motionless tableau.)
sum emaciated kid comes strolling in. the coca-dust has gotten to his face, got a big cankerous hole where his nose should a bin. it looks horrific. and nobody blinks an eye as he pulls a sawn-off 12g pump-action from under his coat sticks it in the belly of billy-boy and says he wants his fucking lolly. billy-boy just leans lethargically against the wall, casually lights a newport w/the one he’s just finished.
billy-boy
you ain’t even got the stones to do it, you pussy.
kid
(pumping the gun)
ow, i got the stones alright.
billy-boy
(tilting his head, blowing smoke rings in the kid’s face)
do it then, pussy.
billy-boy pushes his belly harder into the barrel a the gun. but the faggot with the big cankerous hole in his face don’t do jack shit, he just turns around and walks back out. gambler drains his cold coffee and puts a juicy fruit in his mouth. daft punk playing on the café’s transistor radio up on the shelf.
it’s a nondescript red brick building w/adjoining prefabricated blocks attached. sounds a construction emanating from within as they churn out more shit. a dumpster sits outside with deep philosophical sign on wall that says: EMPTY WHEN FULL. it’s a paradox. john gambler walks in chewing his gum for the sugar hit. ever body who works in the place dead-faced, dead-souled, waxen-skinned; on the skids. ever body bin suckered. gambler punches card in timeclock and drops it into the rack. call to work for each new changeover shift sounds like an air-raid siren. all the grilled winnders in the place so high up you can’t see out like a prison. at his machine, john gambler checks his day’s work detail. places the first a the plastic sheets on feeding platform. sets parameters and tightens guide screws. edges the sheets thru the metal coils... thumps start button. the machine grinds into action.
fade to black.
JOHN GAMBLER – JOHN MARCEL
O’LEARY GIRL ON BUS – KAT CARVELHO
BILLY-BOY - STEVE “SPEED” LAWRENCE
GUNMAN - MIDGE McGONIGAL
