A comic-book script by Josh Wilson, inspired by Nate Orman’s comments about Western mythic storytelling. April 5, 2008, Van Ness Ave & Green St, San Francisco.
SCENE 1
A vast Western exterior. The kind of enormous landscape you see in Japanese or Chinese art, not for its Asian qualities, but rather in that the sole human figure is dwarfed by it.
Colors:
- Sunset/sunrise
- High towering clouds tinted by the sunlight
- Dun/sere earth
- Red rocks, mesas, buttes, arches
- Spring blooms and blossoms
Details — all of the human and his artifacts:
- A hand holding reins
- A horse’s hoof breaking the soil
- A shadow on a rock w/ a petroglyph inscribed on it
SCENE 2
Interior. Clearly a frontier cabin. Details abound: Silverware and cracked china, a lit candle in a glass flute, a fireplace w/ a fire, a rocking chair, a gingham dress, a collection of foreign coins, a collection of letters tied up in a ribbon, a Bible, a stack of magazines and books.
Two characters: A mother and a child. They are both silent.
- The mother is writing a letter. She is concentrated, considering words, crossing things out, writing new lines, deeply focused.
- The child is doodling and drawing happily. Five or six years old. One of the images looks almost exactly like the petroglyph we saw in Scene 1.
SCENE 3
This is another splash of the epic landscape, but combined with the intimate details of the domestic interior. It is the desert in its splendor; in the distance one can make out dwellings, people, constructions and activities. It is hundreds if not thousands of years ago. The landscape is more verdant. The details are of a thriving Anasazi cliff-dweller community. There are rivers and creeks, with gallery forests along the canyon floors, and crops.
Three characters — they will require some references and lots of inference to depict relatively accurately:
- A woman working with her friends/family/community. She is grinding maize and making flour. She is smiling and speaking easily. No word balloons are necessary.
- A child, playing nearby. She is making a tower of stones.
- A man — the father — in the distant desert. We see his sandaled foot, and a familiar clump of boulders… the same ones we saw in the first scene, but from a different angle, so you can’t see the petroglyph.
SCENE 4
A split sequence of action and images between the Anasazi and Frontier-era deserts.
- A pair of prospectors in the badlands — our first hero and one other. The pair are leading a horse laden with packs. They are grizzled and weary.
- A pair of Anasazi crossing the desert, traders or ambassadors bearing gifts. They are weary and seem overburdened.
- A rattlesnake
- The dry cracked lips of the Anasazi
- The snake’s buzzing tail
- A sandaled Anasazi foot stumbling
- The snake leaping forward and connecting with the lower leg of the other prospector
- The Anasazi stumbling further, onto one knee
- The prospector lurching forward
- A scattering of dust …
- … and confusion …
- The first Anasazi standing wearily by his fallen companion, who he has lain against a rock, open to the desert. His hand is just coming away from the petroglyph, freshly inscribed. He water jug is empty.
- The lone prospector riding away from a cairn built over his dead companion. It looks exactly like a scaled-up version of the rock tower the Anasazi child had made in Scene 3.
- The last image is of the surviving prospector, a close-up of his face; his lips are cracked and dry.
END