Klondike

ACT ONE:

EXT. FROZEN WILDS - DAY

Camera looks skyward from under a frozen sheet of ice.

Tracking. Finding above: boots, legs, finally the whole of a

man. One BILL HASKELL, 20s. Bearded and freezing to death.

He’s lying prone atop a frozen river in the wickedest of

blizzards. Nothing but whiteness and death out there. His

breaths come slow. Near death. Calmly, in v.o.:

BILL (V.O.)

You’re looking at a rich man.

A long beat as his life starts to ebb before our eyes...

BILL (V.O.)

I wasn’t that once.

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. MIDDLE CLASS HOUSE - NIGHT

--young BILL HASKELL, 10. Middle class house. Standing before

a mirror in his bedroom, clad in Sunday’s finest. He’s

looking uncomfortably at himself as he holds a tie before his

throat. You get the impression the child’s never even seen a

tie before.

Chyron:
“Windham County, Vermont, 1887.”

Camera drifts over, reveals through the window, coming up the

driveway, a HORSE & CARRIAGE. Something unsettling about that

to young Bill...

INT. MIDDLE CLASS HOUSE / FOYER - CONTINUOUS

His father, BENJAMIN HASKELL, on the first floor, has an

entirely different response. He straightens his own tie, eyes

the coming buggy, calls anxiously to his WIFE:

BENJAMIN HASKELL

Look prim, Elizabeth. Is our boy

ready? First impressions are

everything. Everything dominoes

from that first impression. I want

him in a tie if he's not already-

(calling upstairs)

William!

ANGLE. WILLIAM. In his room. This all too much, too

officious...

ANGLE. FATHER. Surveying the glimmering appointments of the

buggy through the window:

BENJAMIN:

Good God, look at that buggy. What

do you think something like that

costs?

2.

ANGLE. BILL’S MOTHER--ELIZABETH--ascending the stairs,

calling out to Bill-

ELIZABETH HASKELL

William, Mr. Chandler's here-

Following her as she steps into Bill’s room. It’s empty.

ELIZABETH HASKELL (CONT’D)

William?

Her eyes falls across the window. It’s open...

EXT. VERMONT COUNTRYSIDE - NIGHT

FIND Young Bill, running off through the darkness. Sans tie.

Running. Running. Til he finds a familiar haven. A towering

oak over a river. He knows this tree well. Where the

footholds are. He climbs deftly.

Finds respite in the boughs. Sits there. Catches his breath.

We are with him for a beat. This place: his hideout, refuge.

And whatever was back there...was not what he wanted.

After a moment, he senses a presence. Someone else in the

tree. A few boughs up. Silhouetted there: another boy. Young

BYRON EPSTEIN, also 10.

They sit there in silence together. You get the sense they’ve

done this a lot over the years. Finally:

YOUNG BILL:

They're sending me to boarding

school. I didn't think they were

actually going to do it-

YOUNG EPSTEIN:

What's at boarding school?

YOUNG BILL:

They keep saying it's gonna get me

manners.

YOUNG EPSTEIN:

You got a sh*t-ton of manners.

YOUNG BILL:

They say it's gonna get me prepared

for preparatory school.

YOUNG EPSTEIN:

Isn't that what prep school's for?

To prepare you? For whatever it is

you're supposed to be prepared for?

YOUNG BILL:

College.

3.

YOUNG EPSTEIN (INCREDULOUS)

You're 10.

YOUNG BILL (SURVEYS RIVER)

Doesn't matter. Everyone's doing it

earlier and earlier now. And my

dad, if there's one thing he hates,

it's being left behind.

YOUNG EPSTEIN:

But it's not about him-

Bill gives him a knowing look.

YOUNG BILL:

It's not about me.

(considers the night)

Feel like I'm in a box. Locked up

in my own life. Without a key.

YOUNG EPSTEIN:

No way. Me and you...we're free.

Look at us. They can put you in

school for a bit, but that ends. Me

and you, the world can't hold us.

Anything we wanna do, anywhere we

wanna go...when we're older, we can

do it. Me and you.

YOUNG BILL:

Not anywhere...

YOUNG EPSTEIN:

Yes anywhere. Like there. We could

go there.

Said with a nod up at the full moon.

YOUNG BILL:

No we couldn't.

YOUNG EPSTEIN:

You just gotta think you can.

That's the point.

YOUNG BILL:

Even if there's no chance we could

ever get there. The moon.

YOUNG EPSTEIN:

Way I see it, if you aim for it,

and you don't get there...I bet you

still get somewhere interesting.

Somewhere you never woulda thought-

He’s interrupted by the appearance of a lantern, bouncing

toward them in the darkness-

BENJAMIN HASKELL

William! Get down here!

Bill eyes Epstein in the moonlight.

4.

YOUNG BILL (CRESTFALLEN)

Coming.

As he dutifully descends the tree--CUT TO-

EXT. VERMONT COUNTRYSIDE - MOMENTS LATER

Bill’s Father, hurriedly ushering him back toward the house.

Epstein follows at a small remove-

BENJAMIN HASKELL

I have saved every penny I have to

afford you this opportunity. You

will not embarrass your mother and

myself-

His eyes fall across MR. CHANDLER--the spitshined buggy

driver--in the yard.

BENJAMIN HASKELL (CONT’D)

Mr. Chandler! So sorry. A small

indiscretion. My profound apologies-

As he hastens forward to shake Chandler’s hand, camera

lingers behind with Bill & Epstein...

This is it. Goodbye time for best friends.

YOUNG EPSTEIN:

Me and you. We shoot for the moon.

Got it?

YOUNG BILL (DUBIOUS)

Even if we've got no chance of

getting there...

Epstein nods with a grin. Exactly the point.

YOUNG EPSTEIN:

Even if we've got no chance of

getting there.

A final wan smile between them. Then they separate, cutting

off toward their respective houses. Linger on Young Bill-

BILL (V.O.)

My whole life:
planned out for me.

Fast-tracked to get me to the

Promised Land. My father told me

not to complain, because guys like

Byron Epstein...didn’t have that

same sort of opportunity...

And we see:
Epstein’s house--as he moves for it--slightly

better than a hovel.

5.

INT. UNIVERSITY - DAY

Quick hits:
tracking from other students reading math texts,

business texts....to a COLLEGIATE BILL flipping through

“travel lit”, 1890’s-style--Bret Harte’s accounts of the

California Gold Rush, W.L. Stevenson’s south seas stories-

BILL (V.O.)

They prepared me, all right. For 10

years, I read every book under the

sky.

EXT. BIG CITY - DAY

Quick hits:
Epstein in the broad-shouldered industrial world

of American cities in the 1890s...

BILL (V.O.)

And while I was reading...Bill was

living. He saw the world. The

unvarnished one that was not in

books.

Epstein:
exiting a Loan Shop with a turn-of-the-century

version of a payday loan in hand--PROPRIETOR emerging behind

him, watching him go with the eyes of a shark...

BILL (V.O.)

The one filled with bank failures,

with families being tossed out of

homes, 4 million men wandering the

continent looking for work...

As Epstein stands in an impossibly long unemployment line:

BILL (V.O.)

This couldn’t be it. There was no

possibility in it. There had to be

more. A place where there was

nothing but possibility.

INT. BALLROOM - DAY

A banner fills frame: CONGRATULATIONS CLASS OF 1897! Camera

booms from this down to a coat-and-tie affair. A bit stiff,

if we may call a spade a spade. It’s “May 1, 1897.”

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