little dark poet - script

Black screen. The words: "A bolexbrothers Film" fade up in red and white, and we hear a burst of nervous, hysterical laughter. The words fade to black. A moment later a rhomboid of white light flickers into being, thrown from a film projector out of shot. A stumpy figure slumbers in silhouette against the light, hunched over an arcane writing desk perched atop a slender twisted stem.

We hear a projector whirring up to speed and the title is projected, one word at a time, on scratched and dusty film behind the sleeping POET. The words are followed by a countdown from five to one, and then the screen goes black. An alarm clock rattles into life.

Cut to a mid shot looking across the top of the writing desk at the POET's

prostrate head and shoulders. A spiny, skeletal quill rattles in a battered copper inkwell, evidently causing the sound of the alarm clock. The POET sits up abruptly, blinking drowsily, and the quill shakes itself to a halt. We see the POET's face, an expressionless dome of purple clay studded with two large white eyes. He blinks several times, waking up. Finally alert, his gaze drops to the desk in front of him, and then slowly slides towards the inkwell.

The POET flexes his long, pointed, white-gloved fingers, reaches for the quill, and leans back with a flourish; a couple of quick cuts establish his location in some dark, bottomless cell, the rough walls streaked with moisture, a splash of moonlight thrown from an unseen window. The desk that he sits at seems to be carved from a thorny, bony limb that grows up out of the darkness, to which his chair has been nailed and bound with ropes and chains. His legs, clad in pale blue breeches and ending in dapper little shoes, hang limply over the edge of the seat. We get a couple of seconds to take all this in before we cut back to the mid shot across the desk.

The POET darts forward and begins writing. As the dry scratch of hasty

scribbling fills the soundtrack the camera pans slowly away from the poet to a flickering image projected onto one of the walls of the cell.

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The camera pan is echoed by a similar move within the film that we are now watching, transporting us seamlessly into a live action landscape. Filmed in black and white, but tinted with bright yellows and greens, a sunlit garden is revealed. The camera pans over a lawn surrounded by cedars and herbaceous borders until it comes to rest on a woman in a long Edwardian-style dress, a long way off. She has just picked a flower, and now straightens up again, moving in the jerky, double quick time of a silent movie. The soundtrack swells with the serene strains of a distant harpsichord and the merry sound of bird song, over which the scratching of the POET's quill can still be heard.

We cut in closer to the WOMAN, whose attention has been caught by something offscreen. Her hair and make up identify her as a 1900s movie starlet. Cutting to her POV, we see a MAN lean around the trunk of a tree to smile at her, before hiding again. She smiles shyly back. A hand taps her on the shoulder. She turns to find the MAN standing close by. He is dressed in a striped waistcoat identical to that of the POET, with starched collars and his hair slicked back. Like her, he is heavily made-up, Errol Flynn style. With an elegant flourish of his hands he produces an apple out of thin air. She seems delighted. He offers her the fruit, and she blushes and declines, but eventually accepts. Their eyes meet; the chemistry between them is obvious.

The sound of the scribbling quill stops suddenly, followed by the music, and the image flickers, freezes and fades as the camera whips away. It comes to rest on the POET at his desk, paused between stanzas. Tiny love hearts form themselves out of the clay of his forehead and melt back into his flesh in a blissful carousel. He looks down at his work, tears of happiness welling in his eyes. He wipes one away, raises his pen and returns to his writing.

The silent movie image flickers into life again. The MAN is gesturing at the landscaped beauty surrounding the couple, evidently waxing lyrical and seducing the WOMAN with unheard words. She gazes back at him, enraptured, but when he leans in to kiss her she turns away. We cut in closer as she smiles coyly, and the MAN moves into frame from behind her head, but his face has been transformed. For an instant we see him as a grotesque, theatrical Mr Hyde, leering maliciously; the film itself becomes scratched and stained with colour as a sinister musical chord shatters the mood.

The image flickers and we are back with the POET. For a second his head is a twisting, snarling mask of lasciviousness; then his hands come up and clamp it back into its previous expressionless form. He blinks. A long pause. He looks from side to side. Slowly he takes his hands away from his head. He looks back down at the desk, tentatively picks up his quill and resumes his work.

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Cut back to a shot of MAN and WOMAN together, his face back to normal. She smiles seductively at him and then runs out of shot. He watches her go. Cut to his POV as she turns back and beckons to him, before running off in the direction of a summer house. When he steps into shot to follow her it is as his monster self. Stooping and twisted, he paces after her, taloned hands raised in an overblown gesture of menace. Again, the music becomes threatening and the image corrupted by scratches and splashes of ink.

The POET's head writhes and contorts into shapes suggestive of lust and desperation, and he struggles to control his flesh, clutching at the clay and attempting to wrestle it into submission. He tears away a thick outer skin and for an instant regains his composure, before his head splits and swells with tumescent blisters and the camera whips back to the silent movie.

The demonic MAN is advancing on the WOMAN, who has just reached the summer house. As she turns the door handle she looks back over her shoulder, and her smile changes to an expression of shock. From her POV we see the MAN approaching her with outstretched claws. She backs away, hand to her mouth in a pantomime of terror. Close up of the MAN's distorted face as he passes through frame. Cut to a wide shot of the WOMAN, backed up against the brick wall of a 1900s movie studio, the MAN's shadow towering over her. She flings out her hand to warn him off. The camera zooms in towards her terrified face.

At the same time we pull back from the projected movie to reveal the POET in front of it, his head a mass of squirming tentacles, hands punching and clutching at the air as he loses control. The tentacles weave together and his original face is restored. On the screen behind him the MAN stops in his tracks; he turns to face the POET and leers in a conspiratorial fashion. The POET wrenches into another metamorphic spasm that lasts a couple of seconds, and the projection behind him cuts into fragments of barely-glimpsed imagery: the MAN pinning the WOMAN to the wall; his tongue running up her throat; his hand between her legs; him crouched at her feet, staring up like a scolded dog; her face, looking down on him, dominant; him licking her boot; the two of them locked in a loving embrace. When the spasm ends the WOMAN's face fills the projection screen, now looking more confused than fearful. She stares at the POET and he stares back. Another metamorphic eruption, similar cuts, and the MAN is back onscreen, the WOMAN in the background. They look between each other and the POET in a tense, three way stand off.

The MAN launches himself at the WOMAN. The POET reaches inside his waistcoat. The WOMAN screams silently. The POET's hand emerges holding a heart-shaped bronze watch case, which he flicks open. The core of an apple hangs inside, and a spindly wingless wasp clings to it, gorging on the little flesh that remains. It looks up with big round eyes, and blinks.

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The MAN and the WOMAN frozen in an embrace behind him, the POET shakes the wasp from his heart and onto the desk. It lands on the poem he has been writing and is about to scuttle away when the POET smashes a shoe down onto it, crushing it immediately. He smacks the insect with the shoe another half dozen times, then slumps back into his seat. The wasp's abdomen twitches, its head and thorax a black stain smeared across the unfinished verse.

The POET looks up from the desk. He touches his head gently with his fingers. His eyes swivel to one side and the camera pans slowly to follow his gaze.

Back in the silent movie, the camera pans slowly across the garden and finds the WOMAN in close up. She is looking offscreen, her face neutral. From her POV we see the MAN in his original form, slumped against the door of the summer house. His head is tilted back and his eyes stare blankly into the distance. The WOMAN looks down at him and smiles sadly. Close up on the MAN's expressionless face.

The crushed wasp on the desk twitches its last. The POET stares blankly down at it. The camera pulls back as behind him, the WOMAN kneels by the MAN's catatonic form and leans down to kiss him on his forehead. The POET looks up. the silent movie film runs out and goes black, and the POET blinks in the darkness.

Fade to black.

Impossibly upbeat cartoon type music, full of whizzes and honks and comedy

sound effects, plays over the end credits.