screenplay draft 1

Herzog Screenplay

Riley Pittenger

     Open scene. Flip open to entire frame as circular view through a rifle’s scope. Ash drifts across the scopes view obscuring a grey landscape darkening with the onset of evening. The scope pans slowly across the nearest ridgeline. Slow breathing accompanied by a respirator’s click can be heard over the bleak view.

     The scope clicks closed.

     Black frame is broken as the flaps of a tarp let in the low light of the exterior. A man in heavy rubber and canvas pulls his rifle back from the slit in the blind and clips it shut darkening the frame again.

Herzog sighs into his respirator

     We hear a click and a buzz as dim lights flicker and reveal the cramped interior of the blind. The man wipes ash from his rifle and suit before turning around to descend the spiral staircase lit by the dim utility lights.

     The camera follows him down the spiral staircase for several steps before panning through the wall while still focused on the man in the suit as he descends. The frame alternates between the peeling exterior siding and greasy window frames smearing the image of the man through the windows descending around the bell tower. The frame slowly pans out to show a large and ash covered home with a tall bell-tower and traditional style framing. We pull back to see the entire house on the top of a hill swirled in ash with dilapidated fencing surrounding. The lights in the bell tower go out and the screen cuts to black.

     Frame is broken with the light of the antechamber breaks around the frame of a giant steel door as the man steps through. The only sound heard beyond the sliding door is the slow breathing and click of the respirator.

     As he crosses the threshold of the door halogen lights flicker on and illuminate an entryway with benches, hooks and lockers. He sets his rifle down and pulls an extendable hose from the ceiling and activates what sounds like an air compressor and uses the hose to spray air and chemicals across his containment suit, washing the ash to the floor where it pools around his heavy boots into a drain. The frame pulls out as he washes his suit.

     Slow cut to another chamber where the man is disrobing his suit and placing his gloves, jacket and pants onto hangers. Close up on thick, callused fingers untying worn laces on thick rubber boots.

     Cut to the view inside his respirator as it is jostled and pulled down facing a mirror. We see a young man’s face marked with deep scars across his right cheek. Sharp blue eyes and a stern brow look back from the mirror. His hair is greasy and a day’s stubble is smeared upon his chin.

     He stares blankly for a moment at himself before sighing slowly and turning from the mirror. The frame stays focused on the empty mirror, his jacket and respirator are hung on the wall in the reflection, their tassels still swaying. Until the motion lights switch off.

     The frame follows as the man walks through a series of rooms shedding garments into bins and walking into a shower. The water turns on and the frame pans across his feet and the water swirling into the drain.

     The frame cuts to the shower screen and the man pulls it back with one hand and rubbing his head with a towel with the other. The man passes from the sterile shower chamber into a bulkhead that seals loudly behind him. The motion lights cut out.

     We see the man’s bored face as the sterile lights of the elevator was his pale cheeks tilt slightly when the car comes to a halt.

    Cut to the back of his head as the white door opens with a pressurized squeal. The door opens to reveal a well-lit and comfortable foyer with large, thick carpets and vaulted ceilings carved in white concrete. He steps through the door and immediately the tension and boredom leaves his posture as he sighs deeply. Tossing the towel to the ground on his right he reaches back and reseals the elevator while the frame watches the door close.

     Cut to the dark shadow of a book on a crowded shelf that reveals his face when pulled out. He looks down at the cover and turns back the way he came.

     Cut to a long rectangular room filled floor to ceiling and wall to wall with large books and carpeted with a huge Persian rug, lit by huge soft globular chandeliers.

     Cut to the back of a large red-leather chair. Next to the chair is a side table with a cup of tea steaming. His hand reaches from the far side of the chair and grabs the cup to sip it before placing it back.

     Cut to the rim of his book, eyebrows barely visible over the ridge.

(The grandfather clock chimes ten.)

      The man’s eyes flick up from his page and he sighs before closing the book.

     Cut to another door opening and the motion lights flicker on in a room filled with weights and mats. The man walks in, now dressed in ghee.

     Various cuts of the man practicing marshal arts, stretching and lifting weights. The man lifts seemingly incredible amounts of weights as sweat beads on his brow and his ghee stretches across his arms.

    Cut to the man stretching and breathing deeply face down into the mats. He pushes off the mats and uses a rag to wipe his sweat from the floor.

     Cut to a shot from the back of his shoulders as he showers in an industrial looking locker room filled with his clothes on shelves.

     Cut to him in front of his clothing shelves putting on a white shirt, red pants and a red track jacket.

     Cut to the outside of yet another bulkhead being lit by more motion sensitive lights as the man steps across the threshold into a room filled with maps and cartography materials. Road atlases from 1963 are organized in neat rows on shelves.

     Pan a top-down shot of the map-room showing a sped-up time lapse of the man copying notes and shuffling maps, noting locations on huge pages of topography. Pan once from entrance of room to far wall following the man in his hurried research and then back as he shuffles seemingly hundreds of pages and notes before returning everything to its right place and exiting through the bulkhead. Lights go off.

     Cut to the inside of a medicine cabinet as the man opens it. The silhouettes of a straight razor and numerous toiletries block most of his face before he selects several and closes the cabinet and the frame.

     Close up on monotonous fluffing of lather in a small cup on the rim of the sink. Cut to the man’s reflection with an out-of focus over the shoulder profile framing the left side of the frame as he shaves. Smash cut to the straight razor slicing into scar tissue through the lather.

Herzog: sharp hiss with the intake of air.

     Smash cut to several specks of blood spattering off the rim of the sink.

     Smash cut to his eyes tracing the blood as it runs off the rounded rim of the sink.

     Top down view of his blood slowly running from the rim to drip onto the white tile.

     Flashback sequence.