Channel 31 Goes ‘Free to Air’

A few years ago, I was lucky enough to spend my birthday on set while a short film I wrote, called Channel 31,  was being filmed. The script started out as a radio play which IRDP produced in London quite a few years ago.  Marja, Tim and Richard at IRDP started many things for me and I am always grateful.

I blogged about it at the time both here and here.  It was a wonderful edgy experience which I think may stay with me forever.

Now the director at Claddagh Films, Dermot Tynan, has put the film up on Vimeo for all to see.  You can click through to the site to see it or else I’ve embedded it just below… at least I hope I have.  Here's a direct link to the Vimeo site in case the embedding is not working for you.

I hope our efforts raise a smile


I always like that moment on The Academy Awards when they show the nominated screenplays and some of the script appears on screen at the same time as the filmed sequence.

So I thought it might be fun to include a little of the script here as well in case anyone wants to hold one up against the other, so to speak.  The formatting has gotten a bit lost in the transfer to this post but you'll get the idea.

INT. THE LIVING ROOM -- EVENING

COSMO is crouched, listlessly stoking the enormous fire in the large, severely under-furnished, room. It is immediately apparent from his velvet dressing gown and his wild wild hair that he is a true eccentric.

Above him, on the mantle, a framed snapshot gazes down at him - Cosmo, Emily and Felix, from the good old days.

EMILY
Cosmo?


Cosmo turns and there, in the doorway, stands EMILY. Prim and dapper as ever. Her luggage is as compact as only a true 'girl in control' can manage.

COSMO
Emily!


He gets up and strides over to meet her.

COSMO
How good of you to come, after all this time.

EMILY
'Good of me?' It's our brother's funeral...


She starts to blubber a little, trying to hold back.

EMILY
...not a bloody house party.


She drops her bag and runs to Cosmo's arms. Her crying becomes less restrained.

COSMO
No more drama, sis, no more pain. I'm overdosed on bloody platitudes as it is.


The embrace goes on a moment too long for Emily's comfort. She resists a little. Sensing the reticence, Felix holds her away from him and looks amusedly into her eyes.

COSMO
Besides, you're late, we buried him this morning.


Emily breaks away and moves towards the fire.

EMILY
The flight was delayed. There was nothing I could do.

COSMO
Don't worry, I don't think he noticed your absence.


He suppresses a laugh at his own little joke.

EMILY
Are you high?

COSMO
Just a little of Fraser's 'local anaesthetic. Want some?

EMILY
Later.

She walks nervously across the room

EMILY
Tell me about the funeral.


A burst of static noise catches Emily's attention. She turns to stare at the device which sits incongruously on the ancient dresser.

EMILY
What's that?

COSMO
The funeral, what to tell? It was wet... there were wreaths...


The static bursts in again. Emily, very curious now, goes right up to look.

The transmitter is silver-clad and hi-tech-looking in a '70's sort of way. A red L.E.D. display proudly blares the digits '11Æ and a large hand-held microphone is slung carelessly over the side and onto the floor.

EMILY
It's some kind of radio isn't it? What's it for? Cosmo... What is it?


Cosmo is back staring into his fire, remembering.

COSMO
There was a terrible storm, you know, ...the night he died.

CUT TO

INT. FELIX'S BEDROOM -- NIGHT

Only candles light the room.

FELIX, lying on his back, is wrapped up tightly in his huge four poster bed. His bed covers are flat and unruffled. He is so close to death, he cannot even toss the sheets. On a chair, beside the bed, sits Cosmo, his head slumped on the bed.

Wind crashes against the house, rattling naked branches against the window panes. The rain beats down in torrents and the thunder and lightning is fearsome. Felix is certainly going out with a bang.

When he speaks, Felix is completely still except, that is, for his eyes. His eyes dart unceasingly around every corner of the room, trying to see his death coming.

FELIX
(Weakly)
Promise me, promise me. Please, promise me.

COSMO
He'd been delirious for days. Whatever Fraser pumped into him had certainly done the trick.

FELIX
For pities sake, Cosmo, promise me!

CUT TO:

INT. THE LIVING ROOM -- EVENING


The fire casts demented patterns on Cosmo's face.

COSMO
He'd spent his last months in the library, studying that appalling old family history. He was obsessed, you know, about that business with Great-grandfather.

EMILY:
What 'business'

COSMO
Great-grandfather? You weren't told? They sorted his papers out two months after he died, 'found an express wish that all his medals be buried with him.

CUT TO:

EXT. THE GRAVEYARD (1889) -- MORNING


From a bird's eye POINT OF VIEW, a small group of black clad men stand around an expensive looking closed casket which has just been disinterred from an adjacent open grave.

There are patches of snow around and it is obviously bitterly cold. On a trestle-table, next to the grave, an impressive collection of war-medallions struggle to hold their place in the wind.

COSMO
They exhumed the old goat on New Years Day 1889.


Cosmo giggles but it quickly becomes a consumptive cough.

From a POINT OF VIEW within the coffin, blackness gives way to blinding light as the heavy lid is prised off.

As it is lifted away the bloodstained and torn silk inside the lid is apparent. The men lean over and stare into the coffin with an apprehension which turns immediately to horror.

CUT TO:

INT. THE LIVING ROOM -- EVENING

EMILY watches COSMO as he paces the room nervously.

EMILY
Cosmo?

COSMO
He'd woken up, Emily. He'd woken up and couldn't get out - Oh I know how it sounds... but the silk inside the lid of his coffin was in shreds. He'd torn his finger nails completely off with his scratching, scratching...scratching.

EMILY:
It's just a story.

COSMO:
Perhaps it is. Not for Felix though, Felix believed it.

CUT TO:

INT. FELIX'S BEDROOM -- NIGHT


FELIX is fighting the restraint of his sheets, trying to sit up. He needs to reach out to FELIX to drive home his last wish.

Outside the storm has reached new levels of frenzy.

FELIX
You must swear this for me Cosmo. Oh...oh...


His scream, when it comes, is high pitched, alien, and terrified.

CUT TO:

INT. THE LIVING ROOM -- EVENING


CLOSE UP of the radio transmitter, quietly exuding its innocuous white noise.

COSMO
And that's why the radio is here.

EMILY and COSMO are side by side now, staring at the radio.

EMILY
You don't mean...

COSMO
I promised. I'd had a few of Fraser's pills myself by that stage - wasn't too hard to convince. I swore I'd install a telephone line between his coffin and the house, in case he 'woke up' (Laughs) the girl at British Telecom thought I was off my bloody head! They wouldn't do it - no way.

EMILY
You surprise me.

COSMO
Our brother would have been planted ex-directory if it wasn't for Larch.

EMILY
Larch? The undertaker?

COSMO
The son. Old man Larch died - qualified for the staff discount - a few years ago. Son's a fat sod - we used to bung his head down the toilet in school. He kept asking after you. Do you remember him?

EMILY
Hardly.

COSMO
No. I knew he was a ham radio freak so I cut a little deal with him. Six hundred quid if he'd fix Felix up with a CB radio in his coffin. He was most obliging.

EMILY
Do you mean, this 'thing' is connected to Felix's grave?

CUT TO:

INT. THE FUNERAL PARLOUR -- DAY

COSMO and LARCH are standing one either side of FELIX'S open coffin.
LARCH is a large bumbling man in mourning clothes which have never fit him right - and never will.  COSMO stands defensive, arms folded, there are places he'd much rather be.

The coffin stands on two trestle stands with the lid leaning against the wall behind. FELIX is laid out inside in his white shroud and someone else's rosary beads.

COSMO
Old Larch had some ingeniously technical solutions to my problem...


Felix's feet are unceremoniously prised apart and a nice new car battery is wedged in between. It already has red and black jump leads crocodile-clipped to the outlets.

COSMO
_...he did a very tidy job.


A compact little mobile CB unit is balanced on Felix's chest.  The cables from the battery are already connected in.

Larch mimes a 'Testing One two three' into the mike then offers it to Felix to have a go. Felix refuses.

COSMO
A little trickery with aerials at the graveside and poor Felix was 'on the air'.

CUT TO:

INT. THE LIVING ROOM -- EVENING

EMILY and COSMO are still staring, transfixed, at the radio.

EMILY
So the 'radio' in the grave is transmitting?

COSMO
Constantly darling. As long as the battery holds up.

EMILY
God! On this channel?

COSMO
I switched over. The 'silent grave show' was freaking me out a bit. You'll laugh; I started imagining I was hearing, well, movements.


This horrible thought breaks the spell.  Emily turns away and makes for the cabinet.

EMILY
Christ, I need a drink



        *        *        *        *

Thanks to Dermot and Lara of Claddagh Films for bringing my little script back to life and to all the great guys who acted in it and worked on it.

Thanks very much.

5 comments:

Jim Murdoch said...

A delightful little piece. And unlike a play you get to keep it for ever and ever. Quite subtle too in some of the asides. Not terribly surprised with how it ended but how could you have ended it any other way, eh?

Emily Suess said...

Delightful is right. I'm off to post this all over Facebook. :)

hope said...

I ALWAYS wondered if you got finish filming this piece! (Didn't you admit to trying on a coffin for size?)

Well done! If we were a live audience I'd be yelling, "Author! Author!"

:)

Ken Armstrong said...

Jim: Glad you liked it. You're right, it's something I get to keep.

Emily: Delightful for the Delightful. :)

Hope: I'm terrible about updating things, sorry. Yes, we got finished soon after the last blog posts (that's me driving the car in one of the last-filmed scenes) and then the film went around a number of film festivals. I was lucky enough to see it on the bog screen in both Dublin and Galway, which was great.

Jena Isle said...

Great piece Ken, subtle. I had "fun."