Script for:
Invaders from space (oh no, not again)
SCENE 1: Arrival
VISUALS: A shot of 1950s NYC as space craft moves towards it, followed by a shot of the harbor, and Dan getting off a ship to meet his son. They climb into a 1950s car and drive through the city streets.
DAN: VOICE OVER:
It took my wife’s dying to bring me home from the sea.
Word had reached me Mid Atlantic that my son would meet me when my ship docked.
He was almost a stranger.
And we drove through the city in silence even though I was to shortly put him on a train to Boston where he would live with his grandparents while I was at sea.
(Stops the car in front of a store)
DAN: (to boy) I need some smokes
BOY: Won’t we miss the train?
DAN: Relax. We have time.
(Dan exits the car and goes into the store)
Give me a pack of Lucky Strikes.
(He and the clerk fail to see the space ship slowly hovering over the car. So when Dan comes out, he finds the car door open and his son gone. Clearly in a panic, he looks around and sees a drunk lying among some trash cans)
Did you see where my boy went?
DRUNK: A space ship took him.
DAN: (voice over) a chill came over me, like the one I felt when the egg heads came on board my ship on a mission to rescue some alien life form near Cape Hope.
(Images of ship and the light-pulsating sack in a net)
I thought they were crazy, even though I helped them get what they came for.
(Then grabbing the drunk up by the collar)
You idiot!
The boy’s all I got left.
DRUNK: I ain’t lying mister. Look for yourself.
(the drunk points to a strange glitter on the car and the ground near it)
DAN: (Voice over)
I had seen those signs before with the egg heads
(To the drunk)
Come on.
We’ve got to talk to the police
SCENE 2: The police station
COP: When did you see the boy last?
DAN: I told you.
In the car.
When I got back, he was gone.
COP: Where is he likely to go?
DAN: I don’t know
COP: You have a witness?
DAN: Him
(indicates the Drunk on the bench)
He says my boy was taken up by a space ship
COP (laughs)
They used to see pink elephants.
Now they see space ships
DAN: This isn’t funny.
I’m not going to let my boy down the way I did his mother.
COP: We’ll do what we can.
Can’t promise anything though.
We’ll give you a call in a day or two.
DAN: A day or two?
What about the train?
COP: Looks like he’ll have to miss it.
Call us if you come up with anything else.
And take the drunk out with you.
SCENE 3 (in the car)
DRUNK: I need a drink
DAN: No way.
You’re not getting a drop until I find my kid
DRUNK: But I’m starting to see things.
DAN: Not more space ships?
DRUNK: I see lights, and a mountain and a train.
DAN: Let me know when you see my son.
DRUNK: Where are you taking me?
DAN: To see a doctor friend of mine
DRUNK: I don’t need a doctor
DAN: Maybe you don’t. But I do.
SCENE 4: the doctor’s lab
DAN: (voice over) At the doc’s, the drunk told a tale of a descending saucer, a blinding light, and a small boy-like creature crooking its finger for my boy to leave the car.
(to doc)
Well, Doc?
DOC: He seems to believe what he’s saying.
DAN: But space ships, Doc?
How do you expect me to accept that?
DOC: We saw some strange things when we were at sea – don’t you remember?
DAN: (voice over)
(images of ship, net with glowing creature, Doc and Dan bent over the net)
No moment at sea had seemed so strange at that moment when we struggled to keep whatever it was we found alive. I felt its desperation, its need to cling to life. I felt the Doc’s desperation as we helplessly watched its life force vanish.
News of my wife’s death didn’t feel as bad.
(To Doc)
Okay.
We’ve seen strange things.
How does that help get back my kid?
DOC: I think our friend here has clues we need.
(TO drunk)
What else have you been seeing?
DRUNK: I can’t.
It’s too horrible.
I need a drink.
DOC: What’s so horrible?
DRUNK: I see fire in my head, and hear people moaning, and I see those space ships
DOC: (to Dan) Hand me the phone, quick
DAN: What’s wrong, doc?
DOC: (Dialing)
I think maybe we’ve been invaded – from space
(into telephone)
I need some information, General.
Why shouldn’t I? Does the government have something to hide?
What news?
(Hangs up. To Dan)
Come on.
DAN: What’s happened?
DOC: Space ships just attacked a train in Secaucus.
SCENE 5 (in the car)
DOC: The cops got the road blocked.
DAN: What do we do now?
DOC: If there’s another way, I don’t know it.
DRUNK: (In a trance-like state) I know a way in
SCENE 6 (Climbing a mountain)
DAN: Do we know where we’re going?
DOC: Your friend says he does
DAN: But he’s a damned drunk – and maybe crazy, too.
DOC: He’s also the only hope you have a finding your son
DAN: Don’t I know it.
DOC: There’s a strange glow over the ridge
DRUNK: It’s them.
DAN: Who? The spacemen?
DRUNK: Yes
DOC: Will they attack us?
DRUNK: No, they mean no harm
DAN: Sure. That’s why they took my son and attacked the train.
DOC: We’ll get your son back, Dan
DAN: How? By sprouting wings and flying up to one of their space ships?
I’ve never felt so helpless.
When my wife died, I was miles out at sea and couldn’t reach her.
Here I can see the ships that took my kid and I still can’t at them.
DOC: We’ll find a way.
Come on.
(going down the mountain on the other side)
DRUNK: Hurry, hurry
DAN: What’s wrong with him, Doc.
He acts as if there’s a drink waiting for him down below.
DOC: I don’t know. But I feel a little light headed, too.
Maybe it’s the thin air.
DAN: This is Secaucus, for Christ’s sake. How thin can the air be?
DRUNK: Hurry,, they’re going to hurt them.
DOC: The aliens are hurting people down there?
DRUNK: No, no, it’s the other way around
DOC: (looking down at the disaster scene)
It’s the army. It’s shooting at the space ships.
DAN: My boy’s in one of them.
DRUNK: Make them stop. They’re not hurting anybody.
DOC: The general said they attacked the train.
DRUNK: They didn’t. They’re trying to help
DAN: Then we’d better get down there and tell the Army.
DOC: If we’re not too late
SCENE 7: (making their way to the crash site)
(gun fire from below explodes around the space ships that float over head as Dan, Doc, and the Drunk rush up to the general)
DOC: Stop it, General. Those aliens are helping us.
GENERAL: How do you know?
DAN: Our friend can talk to them.
GENERAL: if that’s true, then tell them to back off.
DOC: (to drunk) Can you do that?
DRUNK: I’ll try
(Grimaces as he tries to focus)
DAN: (Voice over)
The space ships hovered over us like angels, their delicate rays moving here and there, lifting moaning people out of the rubble and into the womb of the ships.
The activity eased when the drunk asked, and I watched each ship settle down into the meadows, giving up their burden to the army of human rescue workers who rushed to receive them.
Out from the darkness of their interior walked my son.
Only then, did I realize the truth – how if not for these strange beings grabbing my son when they did – he might have perished in the wreck on the train
(image fades from aliens at crash site back to Dan and Doc on the ship struggling to save the glowing alien in the net)
end