8mm Page #11

WELLES:

Well, there's the thing; you're not

gonna know anything about what I'm

doing, but you can make some money.

MAX:

How much?

WELLES:

How much do you make now?

MAX:

Four hundred a week, off the books.

WELLES:

Okay, let's pretend I live in the

same fantasy world where you make

four hundred a week in that dump.

I'll give you six hundred for a few

days.

MAX:

Sounds good, pops.

WELLES:

Here's my number if you need it...

(writes on scrap paper)

When can you start?

MAX:

Tomorrow night, I get off at eight.

WELLES:

See you then. Oh, and, don't call

me "pops."

Welles walks away.

INT. WELLES ROOM -- NIGHT

Welles sleeps, despite the stead SOUND of TRAFFIC racing by

his window. The PHONE RINGS, waking him. Welles looks at

the clock radio, 2:23am, reaches to answer the phone...

WELLES:

(into phone)

... Hello... ?

MAX (V.O.)

(from phone)

Wake up, pops. Your education

begins tonight.

EXT. DOWNTOWN -- NIGHT

Against the backdrop of downtown LA's bright skyscrapers,

Welles' rental car heads into the lower bowels of the city,

smaller, older, darker buildings...

EXT. DOWNTOWN STREETS -- NIGHT

The only people on the street are HOMELESS and SHADY

CHARACTERS. Welles' car makes its way to a big deserted

PARKING LOT. There are a few cars parked in one corner.

Welles parks near the other cars and gets out. Max stands

against a chain link fence. Welles goes to meet him.

MAX:

Come on.

Max leads the way, across the lot, towards dark alleyways.

EXT. DOWNTOWN ALLEYWAY -- NIGHT

Max and Welles move through this filth strewn alley between

decaying brink buildings. They cone to a STAIRWELL leading

down to pitch dark...

INT. OLD BUILDING -- NIGHT

Max enters through a crooked door, heads into a narrow,

labyrinth hallway lit by bare bulbs. Welles follows.

They come to another STAIRWAY leading down. At the bottom,

a thick-necked GOON stands guarding double doors.

GOON:

Are you a law enforcement agent or

in any way affiliated with law

enforcement?

MAX:

F*** you, Larry.

Max heads to the double doors, waits for Welles.

GOON:

(to Welles)

Are you a law enforcement... ?

WELLES:

No.

INT. BASEMENT -- NIGHT

Max and Welles enter through the double doors, into a kind

of small, underground porn flea market. It's incredibly

quiet. About fifteen CARD TABLES are set up in rows. The

MEN behind the tables and the thirty or so "CUSTOMERS"

looking through the merchandise make those in the previous

porn shops look like high society.

These are MIDDLE-AGED MEN, most balding, some with pot

bellies, in shorts and tube socks, in sweatpants and Members

Only jackets:
plain men, but with a look of desperation in

their eyes, glancing around nervously, greasy and afraid.

ONE DEALER:

We're shutting down in fifteen

minutes. Fifteen minutes.

Welles makes his way to the tables, wary. One table is

covered in dirty cardboard boxes, filled with HUNDREDS of

PHOTOS of young children, mostly boys, naked. Each photo is

wrapped in plastic, censored by masking tape.

Welles swallows back disgust.

The next table is piled high with used pornographic

MAGAZINES. There are baggies with COLORFUL PILLS laid out.

X-rated Polaroids wrapped in rubberbands.

Max follows behind, unaffected, smokes a cigarette.

Another table offers VIDEO TAPES with no identifying marks

other than hand written labels with numbers written out,

"two," "sixteen," "five." And many bootleg VIDEOS with

grainy, homemade labels showing WOMEN in extreme BONDAGE.

Welles watches out the corner of his eye as the PLUMP MAN

beside him pays for a thick stack of kiddie porn pictures.

Welles waits till the man moves on, addresses the angry

looking DEALER who's counting money.

WELLES:

(points to numbered videos)

What are these?

ANGRY DEALER:

Mixed hard bondage. Rape films.

Sick sh*t. Buy five, get one free.

Welles looks around, wipes sweat off his top lip.

WELLES:

Anything harder?

ANGRY DEALER:

There's nothing harder.

WELLES:

Snuff?

ANGRY DEALER:

What you see is what I got, mister.

WELLES:

You know where I can get it? I have

a lot of money to spend.

ANGRY DEALER:

There ain't no such thing as snuff.

Why don't you f*** off?

The dealer sits and keeps counting cash.

Welles moves on Beyond the tables there's a CURTAINED

DOORWAY. Welles walks to it, enters...

INSIDE THE CURTAIN

Folding chairs face a SCREEN. A PROJECTOR shows a silent

movie; a BUXOM WOMAN in nurses uniform prepares an enema bag

and tube. A hairy, overweight MAN lays face down on an

examination table, naked, arms tied behind his back.

In the darkness, a MAN shifts in his chair, grunting,

obviously masturbating. A few chairs away, a man is bent

over, moving his head in the lap of SOMEONE in a BLONDE WIG.

A LARGE MAN approaches Welles from the dark.

LARGE MAN:

You have to pay to come in here.

Welles backs away, shuts the curtain.

INT. ALL-NIGHT COFFEE SHOP -- NIGHT

Not many people in the place. Welles drinks coffee. Max

eats a huge breakfast.

MAX:

You've got Penthouse, Playboy,

Hustler, etc. Nobody even considers

them pornography anymore. Then,

there's mainstream hardcore. Triple

X. The difference is penetration.

That's hardcore. That whole

industry's up in the valley.

Writers, directors, porn stars.

They're celebrities, or they think

they are. They pump out 150 videos

a week. A week. They've even got

a porno Academy Awards. America

loves pornography. Anybody tells

you they never use pornography,

they're lying. Somebody's buying

those videos. Somebody's out there

spending 900 million dollars a year

on phone sex. Know what else? It's

only gonna get worse. More and more

you'll see perverse hardcore coming

into the mainstream, because that's

evolution. Desensitization. Oh my

God, Elvis Presley's wiggling his

hips, how offensive! Nowadays,

Mtv's showing girls dancing around

in thong bikinis with their asses

hanging out. Know what I mean? For

the porn-addict, big tits aren't big

enough after a while. They have to

be the biggest tits ever. Some porn

chicks are putting in breast

implants bigger than your head,

literally. Soon, Playboy is gonna be

Penthouse, Penthouse'll be Hustler,

Hustler'll be hardcore, and hardcore

films'll be medical films.

People'll be jerking off to women

laying around with open wounds.

There's nowhere else for it to go.

WELLES:

Interesting theory.

MAX:

What you saw tonight, we're not

talking about a video some dentist

takes home over the weekend. We're

talking about stuff where people get

hurt. Specialty product.

WELLES:

Child pornography.

MAX:

There's two kinds of specialty

product; legal and illegal. Foot

fetish, sh*t films, watersports,

bondage, spanking, fisting, she-

males, hemaphrodites... it's beyond

hardcore, but legal. This is the

kind of hardcore where one guy's

going to look at it and throw up,

another guy looks at it and falls in

love. Now, with some of the S+M and

bondage films, they straddle the

line. How are you supposed to tell

if the person tied up with the ball

gag in their mouth is a consenting

or not? Step over that line, you're

into kiddie porn. Rape films, but

there aren't many. I've never seen

one.

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