hopeful1.
INT. RS DEVELOPMENT OFFICE - DAY
The "mailroom" department appears more like a production line, but staff proudly came up with a sign to hang on the wall to give the loft an office feel.The only thing that could be remotely considered official post office business equipment at the publishing company is the Stamps.com labels, the laser printer, computer and stamps.com software.
Boxes are being being assembled in mass numbers. Not your ordinary express mail boxes neither. These boxes are the size a case of 8-1/2 by 11 bond paper usually comes packaged. ST BIER is repeating over and over again, inside his head the same phrase.
ST BIER (OS)
The axe forgets, the tree remembers.
He does this not robotic-like, but instead in rhythm with his movements. Sometimes he changes it up for flair, yet it isn't obvious that what he is doing, inside his head, is repeating to himself the same phrase, sometimes in a downbeat, other time an upbeat, watching him assemble Office Depot cardboard boxes and listening to his voice utter an escaped axe, or lose track of the sentence because his artist license permits it may qualify as music.
A fly swoops by his ear. The way he dodges his head away is a classic headbanger flourish to basic headbanging style.
ST BIER (OS)
If I was a musician, I'd write: hair strands, like thumb drives of memory. Each strand a like insect pupil to its compound eye. Then: The axe forgets, the tree remembers.
St Bier can't help himself and does a little air guitar looking around making sure nobody's watching.
ST BIER (OS)
Fucking fly.
St Bier looks around for it as he know from the quick flyby that this one is a big one. He looks at his hand from having already assembled 5 hours of boxes.
ST BIER (OS)
I should've used gloves.
St Bier feels a spur on his finger.
2.
ST BIER (OS)
Is that a hangnail?
He uses his other hand to pinch it and yank it off. His face turns to pain. When he looks at it, he know.
ST BIER (OS)
That wasn't no hangnail.
St Bier doesn't use his waist so much to turn around due to back pain, and with the whiplash he suffered from discovering the police in this city wear hot pink uniforms, when he walks, he looks a little like the President.
As he makes his way to the first aid box, he travels a maze of stacked boxes he arranged to kill the monotony of an 8-hour day assembling boxes, with not even a radio to play his favorite headbanging sounds.
When he returns he's surprised to see Jennifer chilling in a corner of boxes where he never would've suspected anybody could be watching.
ST BIER
You didn't see that fly, did you.
JENNIFER
No but that concept of hair strands being like human memory chips puts in perspective something I've puzzled over since I learned in history class concentration camps shaved off prisoners' hair because nobody knows why.
ST BIER
I said that aloud?
JENNIFER
Out loud?
ST BIER (OS)
There it is.
Frozen like when owl memes depict the way owl's head movement don't budge when they focus on stuff, St Bier eyeballs lock on target. Quick glances in search for a weapon has him almost tightrope walking so as not to lose the fly on the wall, and together with his back problems, soar legs from standing 6 straight hours, Jennifer checks herself to make she hasn't smoked a joint and that's why this picture is so amusing.
3.
ST BIER (OS)
The axe forgets, the tree rememmmm…
He quickly folds the tabloid paper for impact and takes a swing at the fly. Missing.
ST BIER (OS)
-bers.
JENNIFER
Hey, stop. I wanna talk to you. You know that thing that's going on?
ST BIER
Bob Saget.
St Bier gets no response.
ST BIER (CONT'D)
Alec Baldwin.
(BEAT)
Covid?
Still Jennifer shows no expression she's listening
ST BIER
The war.
JENNIFER
That's it. If I stop smoking, you think we could have one of those war time romances?
ST BIER
What? Weed?
(OS)
The axe forgets.
(TO JENNIFER)
Hell no. Eighty percent of the reason we're friends is because you smoke weed.
JENNIFER
No, actually. I've been smoking cigarettes for anxiety. Remember what you said? No sex if I smell like tobacco.
Now St Bier is looking at Jennifer as if he thinks she's high.
4.
ST BIER (OS)
The tree remembers
ST BIER
Well, you are kinda sexy. And you can always just shower just before…
JENNIFER
Okay, that answers that.
ST BIER
Yeah, but you know that's kinda not safe for work material to be talking about.
JENNIFER
And that noise you call music is?
ST BIER
But it makes sense, kinda, how we might all be insects and this garbage about humanity is just a stupid way of hypnotizing us into believing we're not slaves.
JENNIFER
Where's your guitar? You been practicing.
ST BIER
No.