Build god, then we'll talk
On the corner of 4th and Fremont. It’s night time. We open to a fish eye shot of the street corner, and a single car darts by the building in question: a substandard high rise motel, only appealing from the perspective that you would find it totally unappealing.
Match cut of the same shot but now it’s daytime.
We move to a few strangers walking down the adjecent sidewalk. Right next to the motel, there’s a catholic church. Across from the motel, a deli. The front door of the church opens and we follow one of the priests down the street and he looks at the dilapidated motel and completely scoffs. An eyesore to his religious practice. He walks into the deli and from the outside we see him ordering a sandwich. At the same time, out of the deli comes a patron, biting into a sandwich.
It’s a young-ish man, about 35, wearing a business suit and some thick-rimmed glasses. He looks put together, if not for the sloppy haste with which he flails about the crosswalk. More on him later. But for now, we take the long view on him, like we’re watching him cross from a perch above the street. It’s because we are: a long shot from the 5th floor of the motel situates us with one of the maids, cleaning a room. She sees the man and yells at the 3 other maids in the room with her.
“He’s coming back!!”
We’re on the inside of one of the rooms and “not too shabby” is one of the last ways you would describe this place. In fact, it is very shabby. The rooms have a hint of asbestos and maybe just a dash of formaldehyde. The maids, looking for any of the man’s loose belongings he might not miss, stop searching immediately and leave the room. One of them clutches a few bills in her hand as the rest do their best to make it seem like no one had ever been there. Not diffcult, since the room was already completely tore up with loose clothes and shaving cream bottles and paraphernalia all over the place. One of the most egregious decorations is the 3-day old sandwich just sitting on the nightstand: it’s made a habit of decomposing right before our very eyes.
The door flings open, almost cartoonishly. It’s the man in the suit. He hops on the bed, puts the sandwich he’s currenly eating on the nightstand, right next to the sandwich that’s already there. He starts texting furiously and then tosses his phone aside. Before long, he falls alseep and we frame his face from the side where the window light is coming from.
Match cut of the same shot but now it’s nighttime. He’s still asleep.
There’s a knock at the door. The man wakes up in a hurry, and flings the door open. Standing at the door is a woman with a long leather trenchcoat, smiling at him with seductive eyes.
“I’m here for the lawyer.”
He escorts her into the room and slams the door shut. He takes one look at her and tells her to do a 360.
“You must be the virgin.”
She smiles and then drops the leather coat. She’s wearing a nicely contrasted set of purple and black lingerie. Tucked in one part of the breast cup is a gold-plated rosary. She’s trembling but maintaining her confident facade. She walks up to him and kisses him on the neck.
He tosses her on the bed, they shed each other’s clothes off and they go at it for the next hour. There’s some role play involved, mostly to spare her moments to catch her breath. But for the most part, it’s straight to the point. A wonderful caricature of intimacy.
In the moments after, she lays on his bare chest. She looks up at him.
“You make sure you do what I asked.”
“Which was that again?”
“Fuck you. I need that job at the firm.”
“Hah. You got it. You’ll be in there by Monday.”
The phone rings and the caller ID says “The Mrs.” The lawyer answers and immediately puts on a jovial voice. His wife’s voice comes through muffled with the voice effect of a chipmunk, but we can tell she’s angry. The lawyer is poised, and answers all her questions with haste and confidence.
“Yes, of course…
Yes, of course…
I know…
Stop worrying…
Yes, it’s a woman…
Yup, she’s here with me. It’s strictly business. We just finished up.”
The voice coming out of the phone yells one last time and the layer holds the phone at a distance from his ear. The phone clicks. He looks over at the former virgin. And it’s at this moment, the moonlight streaming in from the window perfectly backlights his unknowable expression.
“I mean, it’s not like she’s leaving me or anything.”
What a wonderful caricature of intimacy.
The girl looks at him, ashamed. She watches as he slides on a bright gold rolex, and observes the fine italian cut of the suit laying there in a chair. This dude’s got money, and he knows it.
We move to a high angle of the room, like god’s security footage of the dilapidated room. In sped-up motion, like hitting fast foward on a VHS, the guy mozies around the room and put on his clothes. But: The girl stays in normal motion. She’s stuck in time, as the guy moves around her. We click him back into normal speed as he approaches the door. He steps out and winks at her on the way out.
She sighs.
Shaking her head, she pull out a compact mirror from her purse. She fixes her face when—
DMMM-DMM-DMM-DMMMMH!
There’s a loud knock at the door and the girl fumbles her purse and all her belongings fall out. She kneels down, but before she can pick up everything the door swings open. It’s not the lawyer: It’s a cop and he steps into the room, right up on her.
The girl trembles, looking up at him.
“Oh fuck.”
“Someone told me you were in here doing something unlawful. Something I wouldn't approve of.”
“Officer, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do.”
He walks even closer up to her.
“What’s stopping me from taking you to jail right now?”
“Officer, please.”
Their eyes meet and the angle of shots as we cut between them is extreme. We’re looking all the way up at him like his eyes are at the top of the mountain. And we’re looking down at her like her eyes are at the bottom of one.
He begins to unzip his pants. We’re close on her as she takes a deep breath, staying on her knees.
The camera flies past her face and through the window again and we peer out to the street level again. We see two cars: one turning prematurely, swipes another car. BAM! A terrible crash. One of the cars tumbles over several times.
But inside this motel room, the two people are totally unaware. Nothing from the outside world gets in, and nothing gets out. What a wonderful caricature of intimacy.
Hours laters, the motel room is empty. Our camera scans the room, in a series of shots. There are still moldy sandwiches, loose clothes and grime everywhere. It’s an ugly scene. None of anyone’s favorite things. There are certainly no raindrops on roses and girls in white dresses. The room steams with the stench of infidelity and bodily exchange. We go to a close up of the sheets, and there are stains everywhere…. and then track down beneath the bed. Roaches scurry everywhere across the floor.
Off in the corner, the TV is on. It flickers with a local news program as we pull out of the window to the room and settle back into the fish eye shot of the corner motel we started with.
Inside, what a wonderful caricature of intimacy.