My latest screenplay concerns a showdown between peaceful residents of a Old West town and three menacing strangers. They offer "protection," but at a price.
11:59 from Prescott (pdf, 11 pages) by Glenn Campbell
It's a commentary on law and government, in the guise of a Western shootout.
Excerpt...
FADE IN:
EXT. -- FRONTIER TOWN, ARIZONA TERRITORY -- LATE 1800s
We find ourselves in a classic sagebrush boomtown in the Old West, approaching high noon. The town has a short Main Street lined with the typical wooden storefronts of a Wild West settlement, including a saloon, livery stables, mercantile store, blacksmith shop, a rooming house and a church. Main Street ends at the railway station. The town is well-kept but appears nearly deserted. A tumbleweed blows across Main Street in the wind.
Two local COWBOYS walk slowly down Main Street, side-by-side, heading toward the train station. An undefined tension hangs in the air, and they nervously finger the guns on their hips. As they scan the buildings along Main Street, we see there are other men hidden along the street. One man is inside an open window of the blacksmith shop; another is hunched down on a rooftop, and a third is on the second floor of the rooming house behind half-drawn curtains. Other men are positioned in various hidden and partially exposed places along Main Street, each with a gun at the ready. The two cowboys exchange nods with each of the men they pass, as if to say, “Are you ready?”
Posted from Las Vegas. Also see my other screen stories at Love, Strangely.com
