Hardcore

FADE IN:

CREDITS:

Credits are played over Currier and Ives-like winter scenes

from life in Grand Rapids. It's Christmas morning.

-- Two well-bundled youths shovel out a suburban driveway

while their father scrapes ice off the family car.

-- Youths pelter a passing car with snowballs. Others, more

daring companions, grab onto the car's rear bumper and hitch

a free ride across the icy roads and past a sign which reads

"Grand Rapids City Limits."

-- Christmas decorations hang from the lamp posts on Monroe

Avenue.

-- Children, dressed in bright parkas, and breathing steam,

compare their Christmas presents: sleds, skis and a toboggan.

In the b.g., other children speed down Richmond Park Hill.

-- A woman's distant voice sings an old hymn:

"Precious memories, unseen angels,

Sent from somewhere to my soul,

How they linger ever near me,

And the sacred past unfolds.

Precious memories, how they linger,

How they ever flood my soul,

In the stillness of the midnight,

Precious sacred scenes unfold.

Precious father, loving mother,

Fly across the lonely years,

And old home scenes of my childhood

In fond memories appear."

END CREDITS.

INT. VAN DORN HOUSE - KITCHEN - DAY

Four generations of the Van Dorn family have gathered at the

family home.

A long kitchen leads to the dining area, then to the spacious

living room.

The house is perhaps one hundred years old; deeply varnished

woodwork and patterned yellow wallpaper section off the walls.

Apart from several recent tasteless acquisitions (an E-Z Boy

lounge chair to replace the old Queen Anne which broke two

Easters ago), the house remains furnished in the style of

the previous century. The old dining room table, which

Grandfather Van Dorn built because he was too cheap to buy

one, has now become a priceless antique.

The rooms are littered with religious calendars, Bibles and

plaster-of-Paris plaques bearing such sentiments as "As For

Me and My House, We Will Serve the Lord." The oak buffet is

laden with similar religious knickknacks and chintz. Framed,

tinted photographs of the family patriarchs are

indiscriminately mixed with newer snapshots of proud fathers

and high school graduates.

The house radiates a sense of continuity. Generations come

and go; the family remains. All of life's "old home scenes"

have been played out here: births, deaths, romances,

blasphemies, betrayals. And now the air is again alive with

the sounds of playing children, busy housewives and bickering

uncles.

The kitchen is crowded with mothers, daughters and aunts.

Each has brought a special dish. ANNE DE JONG (nee Van Dorn),

thirty-five, supervises the final preparations. One aunt

shows another snapshots of her new grandchild.

JAKE VAN DORN, forty, and his brother JOE, fifty, sit at the

table watching the kitchen activity.

The house echoes with small talk:

AUNT:

...He got accepted at Grand Valley,

but he'd rather go to Michigan...

NEPHEW #1

...Get that pink rot...

NEPHEW #2

...No way Uncle Joe talk me into

cutting celery again this summer.

Rather work in the car wash.

As the CAMERA TRACKS THROUGH the dining room, it passes a

cluster of men standing near the buffet. WES DE JONG and

JOHN VAN DORN, both about forty, casually discuss a

theological point with GRANDFATHER VAN DORN. Across the table,

a young boy, about eleven, listens with rapt awe.

These are men of the soil. Their faces are sun-blotched and

weather-beaten. Wes has rolled up the sleeves of his white

shirt; John has switched to a more comfortable plaid.

JOHN:

...I still say that if a man has

committed the unpardonable sin, he

knows he has.

Grandfather nods head approvingly.

WES:

I don't know about that, John. It

don't seem to account much for God's

grace.

JOHN:

What kind of grace do you mean,

universal or specific...?

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. BASEMENT - DAY

A long line of folding tables have been set up in the

basement. A mixed assortment of chairs can accommodate thirty

or more persons. A pre-teen daughter helps her mother place

dishes and silverware on the tablecloths. Evergreen branches

and red candles decorate the tables.

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. DEN - DAY

Most of the teenagers have crowded into what was once called

the study, but is now the "television room." KRISTEN VAN

DORN, fourteen, and MARSHA DE JONG, fifteen, are scrunched

onto the sofa. Kristen has long blonde hair, a clean Dutch

complexion and an unaffected beauty. The girls' legs are

innocently wrapped around each other's.

JOE, forty-five, another of the Van Dorn brothers, and a

male cousin about nineteen, are also squeezed on the sofa.

Young children squat on the floor in front of them. All are

watching some inane Christmas variety show.

Joe, bored of this tripe, gets up and turns off the set. The

children wail in unison. "Aw, c'mon, Uncle Joe."

JOE:

I'm sick of watching this television

stuff. You know who makes it? All

the kids who couldn't get along here.

They go out to California and make

television. I didn't like 'em when

they were here, and I don't like 'em

out there.

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