Concussion Page #7

SULLIVAN:

You’re going to pay for them

yourself.

BENNET:

Please proceed, Gracie, thank you.

(and as he exits, slipping

off his smock)

And proceeds up the stairs-

BENNET (CONT’D)

(to himself; prayerful; he

does that)

He is a child of God, like you. You

are here because other people

fought your battles for you. And

you are still here.

(and enters--)

INT. WECHT’S OFFICE - ALLEGHENY COUNTY CORONER

Bennet stands in front of Wecht’s desk. Wecht, in a suit now,

doing up a tie, reading Bennet’s test orders. (We get a

glimpse at the list: Tau -- Beta-Amyloid -- TDP-43 protein --

Ubiquitin -- Alpha-synuclein -- silver staining -)

CHERRY PAGES 1.21.15 31A.

WECHT:

In forty years, I’ve never

requested a panel of tests like

this. What are you looking for?

BENNET:

There isn’t a case, in a book or in

life, where a man that healthy,

went that crazy that young, with no

visible abnormalities of the brain.

(MORE)

CHERRY PAGES 1.21.15 32.

BENNET (CONT'D)

(then)

I don’t know. What I’m looking for.

WECHT:

I can tell. It’s going to cost you

a fortune.

(then, relenting)

If you have to play hero, just make

sure we both come out okay.

And there it is. Bennet’s on his own. And-

47 INT. BENNET’S CONDO - DAY

Prema at the TV. She has new clothes. Jeans, t-shirt.

American. She’s watching a special on Webster’s career.

Narration of hand-to-hand combats UNDER an elegiac score.

Studying all this. Webster. Football. America.

(Domestic touches have appeared. Pillows on the couch.

Flowers for the table.)

Prema crosses to the refrigerator. Actual food in there now.

Reaches for a Tupperware. Peels the lid, and--

Inside, a bisected half brain. Gray, sinewy. Floating in a

pool of formalin. Label says “Michael Lewis Webster”.

She glances to the TV, to A TIGHT of Webster’s face. Black

helmet. “52”. Fierce eyes behind the cage.

DAUGHTER (PRE-LAP)

Mom, dad’s sitting outside again.

48 INT./EXT. STRZELCZYK HOME - PITTSBURGH SUBURBS - DAY

Keana tidying her daughter’s bathroom. Pauses by a window.

Sees Strzelczyk sitting in the rain, in the yard.

KEANA STRZELCZYK

Justin you weirdo. You keep doing

that-

She heads down. Stops by the front door. Post-its on the

wall:
“The people are Evil. God speaks to me. He says we have

to get to higher ground--”

SON:

(coming up behind her)

Daddy made these pictures for me-

CHERRY PAGES 1.21.15 33.

And hands Keana a stack of crayon drawings. Dark forest.

Chaotic sky. Inspired, but apocalyptic. What the f***? And-

She heads out there. We STAY LONG, from the doorway, as Keana

heads toward her husband. RECEDING IN FRAME until she gets to

him. Their daughter steps into view, watching, as--

She reaches him, and we don’t hear what she says, it can’t

have been much. Then his massive arm lifts toward her. Stops.

He turns his head toward her. The look on his face. What he

screams.

She stumbles back, what she’s seen, slipping drops like she’s

been shot, and as she scrambles away from him, we cut to-

49 INT. AUTOPSY CHAMBER - ALLEGHENY COUNTY CORONER - NIGHT

Bennet at a dissection table, meticulous, measuring. Alone

with a half dozen bodies waiting to be dissembled and solved.

Clock says 1 AM. In his ear phones-

DONNIE MCCLURKIN/CD (OVER)

(”We Fall Down”)

For a saint is just a sinner who

fell down/But we couldn’t stay

there/And got up-

Suddenly, Bennet shuts off the music. Turns to listen, as if

to someone speaking--

The bodies are dermal shells. Open eyes vacant.

BENNET:

I apologize.

And slips the cover over the microscope. Graveyard shift Tech

waves him down.

GRAVEYARD TECH:

You got something today. Left it on

your desk.

50 OMIT

A51 INT. CITY BUS (MOVING) - NIGHT

Prema sits bundled in hat and scarf. One of three passengers

left (one of them asleep). Near the end of the line.

CHERRY PAGES 1.21.15 34.

51 EXT. STREETS AROUND BENNET’S CONDO - NIGHT

Bennet’s car turns a corner as his POV sees Prema step offthe bus across the street.

He pulls over, opens the passenger side door. (A lab/slidetray in the seat; he picks it up, makes room.)

BENNET:

(calls out to her)

Hi. It’s very late-PREMA

I have a shift now. At a home.

Changing old people. Feeding them.

(and as she shrugs, it’sher work-)

BENNET:

Let me take you home.

(and she spots the tray ofslides on his lap--)

PREMA:

What’s that?

BENNET:

Mike Webster.

(and now we find--)

52 INT. BENNET’S CONDO - 30 MIN LATER

Bennet standing over the kitchen table. Over the microscope.

The Webster tray before him. Amidst his medical journals andbooks. He’s still in his coat. Tapping the books back intoplace. Looks back to--

Prema. Sitting on the floor, who has turned on the TV and iswatching football clips on ESPN. Bennet, moderately annoyed,

still not used to another live body in his space.

BENNET:

Do you need me to get you a TV foryour room?

PREMA:

No, this one will be fine.

The books and journals-BENNET

You were reading these?

*

*

*

*

*

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*

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*

CHERRY PAGES 1.21.15 34A.

She nods, Uh huh. Nonplussed. She has one of them on her lap. *

Occasionally glancing at football. This confuses him. *

BENNET (CONT’D) *

Prema. What are you doing? *

PREMA *

I am studying. *

But what she’s really doing is waiting. And giving him space. *

She feels his anxiety. (She feels everything about him.) His *

anxiety is her anxiety. *

CHERRY PAGES 1.21.15 35.

Now Bennet opens the sleeve o slides. Stares at the them. *

Focused.

PREMA (CONT’D)

(nervous herself) *

What does Iron Mike say?

BENNET:

I don’t know.

PREMA *

I can’t tell what you are more

afraid of. What you will find, or

what you won’t.

Bennet looks at her. Understands. *

He turns to the microscope. Wipes a slide on his sleeve. *

Loads it. Peers. Goes still--*

His fingers calibrating the foci like pianist’s fingers, like

delicate multi-jointed spider legs.

But he’s not seeing much. Wipes another. Loads it. Not

getting anything he gets up. Stands, thinking. Sits, wipes,

loads another. This one particular slide.

We find Prema studying Bennet now. She’s turned off the TV. *

She’s waiting, as--*

We’re TIGHT ON BENNET’S HANDS. They are now gripping the *

dissection table. He has seen something.*

Another slide. Another. Back to the first. He stands. Sits. *

BENNET:

Oh my god.

(half standing now)

Oh my god what is this? What the

hell is this?

(then)

This is the brain of an 85-year

old.

PREMA:

Iron Mike was 50. Please, can I

see?

BENNET:

(loads a different slide

and steps aside--)

This is what your brain looks like-(

she puts her face to the

microscope and sees--)

CHERRY PAGES 1.21.15 35A.

A white snowy field. PUSH IN CLOSER: shapes appear. Cells,

neurons. Faint, clean, pristine. Like snowflakes.

CHERRY PAGES 1.21.15 36.

BENNET (CONT’D)

This is Mike Webster.

(loads the other, and--)

We see ugly reddish-brown splotches bleeding across thepristine snow-field, drowning the snowflakes alive.

BENNET (CONT’D)

That brown stuff is tau. It’s a

protein that moves in clumps calledneurofibrillary tangles. Thetangles strangle the neurons frominside out.

(how to explain)

Think of it like pouring wetconcrete down kitchen pipes. That’swhat it does in the brain. Chokes

it.

PREMA:

What does that do?

BENNET:

It turns you into someone else.

Someone you don’t know.

(--)

I’ve never seen a brain like this

in a man this young. I’ve neverheard of a brain this damaged in

any man.

Bennet goes to the fridge. Pulls the container of brain. Ahalf loaf left. As he cuts a thin slice-*

PREMA:

What are you doing?

*

*

BENNET:

Testing it again. I have to besure. I have to be completely sure-*

*

*

AND NOW START AN EXTENDED FAST-MOVING SEQUENCE OF CUTS AND

DISSOLVES, starting in--

*

53 BENNET’S CONDO - ACCELERATED TIME

With Bennet bent over books and journals which grow andchange. Bennet doesn’t move, as “Bennet” returns with anotherbox. Then two more. Books and journals multiplying.

“Multiple traumatic cerebral hemorrhages, 1924” --

“Observations on the pathology of insidious dementiafollowing head injury, 1959”-

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