I have been struggling with what Adam wants in the story, his specific desire. As David Mamet might say, what does he want?
The working hypothesis has been, Adam wants to save his sister. This raises the question, how do we know when he has saved her, does he get a prize? “Save” isn’t concrete enough to carry the audience through the various twists and turns of the story to the end.
I have thought of linking it to a location. If he gets her to a specific location has he saved her, perhaps, but it still seems a little nebulous.
His desire simply isn’t primal enough, it’s not a matter of life and death.
What is he saving her from, prohibition? He’s actually saving her from the physical manifestation of prohibition, drug eating insects.
We’ll know Adam has saved Christine if she is alive or dead at the end of the story.
Adam’s desire is to save Christine from becoming carrion.
What follows is the most recent stage in a page-one redraft of Carrion. Yesterday I submitted this treatment to the Euroscript Screen Story Competition 2012 primarily because it gave me a deadline. I like deadlines, they focus the mind, give me reason to make a decision, and stop exploring the myriad of options available when developing a character and their story. When my partner read it, she thought “it’s very pro-drugs”. I don’t disagree, but I think it’s less pro-drug, and more anti-prohibition.
Carrion is a science fiction thriller about the cruelty of prohibition.
The last few years have been tough on ADAM LEIGH. First his marriage disintegrates. Torn apart by the rigours of army life. Then his parents die in a car crash. Leaving him sole guardian of a teenage sister he hardly knows. He tries to take care of CHRISTINE. Buys himself out of the army. Moves back into the family home. Takes a job with the police. But when growing pains amplify Christine’s grief into rebellion. He struggles to cope.
Outraged by her drug use. He becomes increasingly self-righteous. Until she escapes his tyranny. Finds solace with boyfriend JOHN QUAYS. Things between Adam and Christine come to a head when Adam has to sell the family home. Christine is furious. They fight. Adam snaps. Arrests Christine and John for possession.
Six months later. The war on drugs escalates. Swarms of drug eating insects are released by the government.
Seemingly unconcerned Christine and John still visit their dealer. Stock-up for the weekend’s party. They’re planning a two-fingered salute to new “Code 10” laws that will bar drug-user access to healthcare.
Meanwhile Adam arrives at the house of policeman ANTHONY REINER. His daughter is dead. Needle junked in her vein. It looks like an overdose. But when Adam finds evidence of a struggle. Suspects foul play. He does his job. And arrests Reiner.
That night. While Christine and John deal to their friends. Enjoy a hedonistic mix of music and recreational drugs. Adam questions Reiner.
By morning. An unrepentant Reiner admits he killed his daughter. Expresses an evangelical wish to see all junkies’ dead. A wish that might come true. Because when Christine and John arrive home. Rack out a two line nightcap. A swarm of insects attack them.
As the swarm rips through the city. Christine and John drag each other to the local hospital. Only to be turned away. “Code 10” laws prohibit their treatment. Threaten their arrest.
Out of options the pair hole up. Self-medicate on what’s left of their stash. But when John starts to spit blood. A desperate Christine goes to Adam for help.
Still trying to maintain the status quo. Adam puts the law first. And cruelly turns her away. But his loyalty is not reciprocated. Because later that day. The CPS judge there is “no case to answer”. And discharge Reiner. The murderer’s release leaves Adam feeling betrayed. Gives him a galvanising glimpse of the hostilities to come.
So when John delivers news of Christine’s arrest. Guilt drives him to the station where she is being held. Fighting through the riotous crowd of users. He argues with belligerent colleagues. Until they take him to see Christine. Horrified by the abuse she has suffered. He orders a doctor. But his pleas are met with threats of arrest. So when the rioters storm the station. Adam takes his chance. And helps Christine escape.
Desperately in need of pain relief. Christine persuades Adam to drive them north to their supplier. But all they find when they get there is a dead dealer. An eaten stash. And a gang of vigilantes who what to kill them.
They barely escape with their lives. Only to have John succumb to his insect infestation. When the swarm explodes from his corpse. Adam struggle to save Christine. Drags her free. Manages to contain the swarm in the car.
Devastated by John’s death. Confronted by her fate. She is inconsolable. Adam is forced to dig deep. Marshal every bit of empathy he has. And probably for the first time ever. Connects with Christine.
Determined to keep her safe. Intent on escaping the embattled city. Adam steals a car. But when they run into a police checkpoint. He defies the law. Behaves like a criminal. And flees the scene.
Pursued by the police. Hemmed in. They abandon the vehicle. Escape on foot. Find refuge at the home of Christine’s friend. But when her friends turn on Adam. Blame him for their troubles. He confounds their expectations by volunteering to go for help.
Chasing rumours there is a territory controlled by dealers. Adam leaves Christine with her friends. And heads south. Moving fast. He dodges the police. Evades vigilantes. Hides from an army patrol. Only to be captured by a gang of insurgents.
Desperate to get Christine the help she needs. He supplicates himself. Asks a junkie for help. SEXTON takes pity. Follows Adam back to the house. But as his gang triage the household. Administer doses of smack to those who need it. A police snatch squad rolls up.
The fire-fight that follows threatens to kill them all. But when Adam sacrifices himself for Christine. Runs interference with Sexton. Christine and the others escape.
When the police finally raid the house. Reiner is first to breach the barricade. First to discover their escape. First to give chase. But when Adam takes a stand. And fights Reiner. Fights prohibition. He wins a minor victory. And takes Reiner hostage.
With Reiner in tow. Adam and Sexton rendezvous with the others. Head south. Find they’re cut off by military lines. And have to take refuge in the Leigh family home.
As they plan their route through. Christine’s condition worsens. The insects inside her start to gnaw their way out. Adam watches in horror as she vomits blood. He does his best to comfort her. But he’s helpless. All he can do is cradle her in his arms. And watch her die.
Broken hearted. He reacts violently when Reiner mocks her death. Grabs a syringe of smack from Sexton. And sends Reiner to hell. Stabs him with the shot. Leaves him for the swarm of insects that explode from her corpse.
Overwhelmed by grief. Adam refuses to move. Until screams draw him outside. A woman pleads for her life as soldiers tie a noose round her neck. Loop it over a lamp-post. Yank her into the air. Adam snaps. Picks up a gun. And attacks the soldiers. When the shooting’s over. The soldiers are dead. The woman is saved. And Adam is an insurgent.
Humbled by her gratitude. Accepting solace from a junkie. He follows Sexton south. Past a defiant slogan daubed on the wall. “THEY DON’T WANT US. THEY’RE TRYING TO KILL US. WE’RE FIGHTING BACK.”
I’ve been reading William Indick’s Psychology for Screenwriters. It offers an insight into the way psychology can be used to build the conflict within a screenplay.
Early in the book is a chapter about developmental psychologist Erik Erikson. Erikson was a neo-Freudian, best know for his theory on psychosocial development across the entire lifespan. Anyway, when thinking about a character’s identity crisis, Indick urges writers to “keep in mind the element of “moratorium”; the stage of actively searching that precedes identity achievement”.
The thing that interested me most about this notion, especially in relation to Carrion, is the element of “foreclosure” in Erikson’s model. Foreclosure is “the danger of ending the search too early and settling on an identity supplied by others rather than a personally meaningful identity achieved through self-discovery”.
I think Adam has a foreclosed identity.
Until his sister Christine was born in his late teens he was an only child. This meant he was the sole beneficiary of his parents emotional, physical, and financials resources. The affiliation he felt for his parents meant that he ended his search for identity too early, accepts their authority, and foreclosed on their’s. So when he joins the army a couple of years after Christine’s arrival, he was swapping one family dynamic for another.
Indick sights Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X” as an example of a story specifically about moratorium. Malcolm X is a story about one man’s “life-long search for a meaningful sense of personal identity”. Just as Adam submits himself to a career of service, first to the military, then to the police, “Malcolm submits himself completely to the Nation of Islam”.
Both men accept a foreclosed identity, identities “originating from without rather than from within”. It is only when Malcolm comes into conflict with the Nation of Islam, and Adam comes into conflict with the insects, prohibition, and the government, do they have to look into themselves to find an identity personal to them.
In the same way as Malcolm “must dig within his own soul and find a religion and philosophy that is personal to him as an individual”, Adam is forced to look within himself to find an identity that is less intolerant, allows for personal freedom, and accepts his sister.
To expand the idea a little, I also think if “society” were a personality, society might have accepted a foreclosed identity when it comes to drug use. The war on drugs is an identity supplied from without, rather than from within. Official institutions routinely repeat the mantra “drugs are dangerous” without considering they are no more or less dangerous than sanctioned drugs like alcohol.
Does this mean society has settled on a foreclosed identity? I don’t know, it certainly seems that way.
I am working on trying to understand Adam’s motivations. By the end of the story the war on drugs has escalated into civil war.
So what makes Adam go from policeman to rebel?
What is a rebel? An initial interpretation might focus on those individuals navigating the trials of adolescence, setting themselves in opposition to the values of parental authority. This understanding falls too closely to the unfocused rebellion epitomised by Marlon Brando in The Wild Ones. “Hey. Johnny. What are you rebelling against?” To wit Johnny relies. “What’ve you got?” It’s hard to see this as anything more than petulant defiance. Brando’s rebellion is the rebellion of the outsider, and possesses a nihilism that is an anathema to Adam.
His rebellion is the rebellion of someone standing in opposition to something. He becomes a participant in an insurrection, a violent uprising against the government, he’s a rebel as defined by his opposition to a specific set of values.
What forces this change? If Christopher Vogler (in The Writer’s Journey) is to be believed he must experience death. Only by experiencing death “is he able to return to ordinary life reborn as a new being with new insights”. So what’s dying?
To understand this I think we have to go back to his upbringing. Until he was fifteen Adam was an only child. Like Christine he was the sole beneficiary of his parents resources. Then his father lost his job, and they ended up living in a bed and breakfast. Despite their impoverished circumstance his parents did their best. He could see them doing their best, and reciprocated. Their attention meant he was an articulate child, reflecting their values, and exhibiting a strong sense of what is right and wrong, an obedience to social authority, and a sense of duty. That’s why he joined the army.
He didn’t want to get into the debt associated with obtaining a university education. He didn’t want to burden his parents, or his infant sister, by demanding financial assistance. The army was the logical choice. When his parents were killed in 2007, their values motivated him to buy himself out of the army, return to the family home, and take care of Christine.
Joining the police was a sideways move, that fitted his sense of duty. So what makes him reject the values he had lived by, and take up arms against the government, against the war on drugs?
It would have to be something that kills his understanding of the world as he knew it, and forces his rebirth. No single event could cause this, it has to be a series of events that build, ultimately reversing his understanding. There is a conflict between the sense of duty he feels towards authority, and the sense of duty he feels towards his sister.
What makes him rebel?
I think he comes to see the war on drugs as unfair, and all that word implies. He comes to understand that no matter what Christine and her peers have done, they do not deserve what is being done to them, they don’t deserve the plague of insect that are killing them.
Ultimately his rebellion is an attempt to right a wrong, and save his sister.
Christine Leigh is Adam’s younger sister. I settled on the name Christine for several reasons. The name comes from the Latin word Christianus, meaning follower of Christ.
Christ is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word “Messiah”. The messianic etymology of the name counterpoints the negative image that defines Christine’s status in Carrion as a drug user. It can also be shortened to Chris, giving her character a certain androgyny.
Born in 1995, she was two when her brother joined the army. In the years that followed she saw him occasionally. His absence from the family home meant she actually grew up an only child, the sole beneficiary of her parents emotional, physical, and financials resources.
The constant attention, lead to a strong willed girl, sensitive to disapproval. Denied competition from a sibling, she exhibits a certain possessiveness with her time, space, and belongings. Perfectly happy to spend time alone, fiercely loyal, she prefers the company of a few close friends, to the superficial connections exhibited by her extrovert peers.
Strongly dependant on her parents for emotional support, she is devastated by their deaths in 2007. This forced separation, that under normal circumstances would have been difficult enough, is even more traumatic. The resistance normally associated with early adolescence, jams up against the push for freedom, and propensity for conflict associated with middle adolescence. That in turn jams up against the need to try more adult activities associated with late adolescence.
Adam, who shared his sisters emotional proclivities, took the full force of the turmoil. Out of his depth, he found himself unable to offer her anything but the most material support. Her grief, coupled with her unrequited emotional needs, forces a distance, that manifested itself as anger. The growing pains of adolescence, compounded by her strong will, lead to escalating conflicts with Adam. They would argue, constantly, sometime over the most trivial things.
To escape the conflicts, she would go out, spend hours hunkered down with friends, wandering the streets, or hiding in her room, anything but deal with Adam, and what he represented, her dead parents.
By the time she was fifteen she had started drinking. By the time she was sixteen she was a regular in the local clubs. By the time she was seventeen recreational drug use was a regular part of her life. With hindsight her behaviour was was direct challenge to her brothers position as a police officer.
Suspecting she was using drugs, he searched her room, found the evidence he was looking for, and confronted her. The argument that followed escalated into violence, and she stormed out. By the time she was seventeen Christine was living independently. She lived for a while with some friends, got a job working in a shop.
Late in 2011 she met Stephen Joseph. Early 2012 they were living together. Supplementing what income they had from regular jobs, they supplied the pills and powders that fuelled their weekends to close friends.
Stephen’s dealing was small scale, never out in the open, never to strangers, but it was enough to attract the attention of drug eating insects.
Adam Leigh is a character in Carrion. His forename comes from early research. Adam is a colloquialism for MDMA or ecstasy. In the early seventies scientists researching MDMA’s use in psychotherapy nicknamed the drug “Adam”, referring to the state of “primal innocence” induced by the drug.
Adam’s surname is a derivation of the name Lee. William Lee was a pseudonym used by William S. Burroughs. I’m interested in his work, and took some inspiration from his first book Junkie. Leigh is an oblique reference to drugs.
Born in 1980, when Carrion starts Adam Leigh is in his early thirties. He’s old enough to have some understanding of the world, made some mistakes in life, have a weariness about him, but still young enough to be engaged, see the world differently.
As a younger man, unwilling to saddle himself with the debts associated with obtaining a university education, he went out to work. He’s known first-hand the damage debt can cause. In the financial collapse of the 1980’s his father was made redundant. Out of work, and unable to pay the mortgage, on the council house they had bought in Thatcher’s right to buy scheme, the bank repossessed.
As they had technically made themselves homeless, by defaulting on the mortgage, the council refused to rehouse them. They ended up living in bed and breakfast, until his father was able to get a job in a local supermarket. Adam watched the experience take its toll on his parents, and vowed never to put himself in that same position.
In his late teens, when his contemporaries were starting university, Adam joined the army. He thought whatever skills he learned in the service, would stand him in good stead when he returned to civilian life.
Early in 2002 he saw combat in Afghanistan, where he was wounded. An improvised explosive device detonated in close proximity, killed one his comrades, and left Adam with shrapnel scars across his back.
During his recovery, he met and married a local teacher Joan. Their marriage only lasted a couple of years. She was unable to deal with the rigours of life as an army wife. A tour of duty took him away for several months soon after their wedding, and when he returned, carrying the weight of post-traumatic-stress-disorder, his emotional distance pushed a wedge between them.
The final straw came when Adam transferred into the military police, and they were forced to relocate. Joan refused to follow him. They finally divorced in 2005.
Adam dedicated himself to his work, until 2007, when his parents were killed in a car crash.
Their death forced him to take guardianship of his baby sister Christine. Born in 1995, she was two years old when Adam joined up. She knew him only as an occasional visitor, and saw him more as a distant uncle than a brother.
In the months that followed Adam bought himself out of the army, moved back into the family home with Christine, and joined the Metropolitan Police. He tried to offer her stability, but the grief of loosing her parents, the tribulations of adolescents, and his dedication to his work, meant Adam found her difficult to deal with.
A growing resentment developed between them. The older she got, the more defiant she became, until finally, in the summer of 2012, she moved in with her drug dealing boyfriend.
Angry, Adam was left with an unresolved sense of guilt that he didn’t do better by her. A year later, and they’re on opposite sides of the war on drugs, no closer to resolving their differences, until drug eating insects attack Christine’s boyfriend.
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