[Scene: A darkened room, with soft, indirect lighting. The room is bare, save for a lone human figure lying on the floor. The person, a young man, lays calmly on his back, eyes closed as if asleep. His stomach protrudes grotesquely, as though the abdomen was but a large tub of some noxious "goo". To his immediate left is a half-chewed drumstick; there is a slight trace of potato on his collar. The camera begins to rotate around the individual...]
FOLEY ARTIST: Strains of eerie music blend softly from the background silence.
VOICEOVER 1 [male]: "Wow, what happened here?"
[Camera dips low; horizontal shot.]
In the distance, a television set appears behind the young man, approximately one simptoparsec away. The television comes to life, displays static and slowly moves toward the sleeping person. Music continues.
[Swoop to extreme low shot. Television appears to "hover" over young man.]
Television "snaps" to focus. Scenes of happy, carefree young people who pay remarkably-low rent for living in a popular Hollywood suburb appear on the television. Music continues.
VOICEOVER 2 [female]: "How odd. A turkey drumstick and a comatose figure suggesting a Latter-day Niflheim. Strong evidence of some orgy of caloric consumption, yet blatant indication that said action was not completed. A peripheral television displaying a litany of images; a McLuhan-ish maternal figure gazing lovingly over the slumbering waif. I wonder what is going on?"
[Camera pull up and back.]
VOICEOVER 1: "Look! There's a dog!"
From nowhere, a German Shepherd slinks onto set, pauses for a second to lick/drool on the young man's face, then takes the drumstick away. Young man stoically resists the urge to gag. Music continues.
VOICEOVER 2: "Perhaps it has something to do with the dog. Perhaps the dog taking the bone is an allegory for life; Sisyphus' eternal quest to seize the brass ring and ascend to the summit, yet when the moment arrives it is forever lost. A contemporary Cerberus guarding the edges of technological Hades. Perhaps, as Albert Camus elegantly stated, 'the struggle to reach the top is itself enough to fulfill the heart of man; one must believe that Sisyphus is happy.' Could this single scene denote life's underlying philosophy?
[Camera "fly" over young man. Zoom in on head-and- shoulders shot.]
A pen and sheaf of papers can be seen tucked under the young man's arm. Music continues.
VOICEOVER 1: "Wow! A pen and some paper."
[Camera pull around young man, counterclockwise. Pull back to full stop with television, young man and pen/papers in field. Focus on young man.]
VOICEOVER 2: "Iconic forms for freedom of expression, the desire to articulate the angst and pathos of daily existence through a written medium; symbolically renouncing the oral traditions in favour of tools. Yet the young man's eyes remain closed, perhaps to warn of the Medusan effects of technology on modern society. He is our Tiresias, an indirect reference to Oedipus and his Freudian hell..."
[Camera quick-zoom into television, macro-zoom to onscreen character's eye. Cut to close-up of human eye, pull back to straight down shot on young man, still lying prone and expressionless with his eyes open. Camera slowly rotates.]
VOICEOVER 1: "I'll bet this document costs a fortune."
Music continues.
FOLEY ARTIST: Cue in distant/faint sounds of dog eating a drumstick.
VOICEOVER 2: "Thanksgiving. A young man. The dog. A pen. The sheaf of paper. A television. The Show. A Place. The Time. A bone. The Update. Darkness."
[Camera zoom-in to papers, brushing the fringes of a paper revealing "Melr---"
VOICEOVER 1: "I wonder what it's called..."
[Cut to shiny Melrose Place Update logo medallion on polished black background. A hand slowly wipes a white dustcloth across it.] [Pause.] [Fade to black...]
Ex cathedra
- Ian
(c) 1992 Ian Ferrell. The Melrose Place Update is produced weekly using Microsoft Word for Macintosh and Microsoft Mail. Each article contains a summary of that week's Melrose Place episode with analysis and commentary.
Send subscription requests/cancellations to ianf@microsoft.com.