Full Moon and Movie Screenplay

The full moon definitely causes insomnia, but maybe more so for me because I have no curtains, and the moon, on certain nights, is shining right in my window down on my face as I try to sleep. When I finally did sleep last night I had a vivid, exhausting dream about writing a movie screenplay, and it was one of those dreams where it really feels like a separate reality and you're just working and working and you feel like you're on to something, and it's exhausting. First of all, I have to apologize to my late cat, Louis, because this misappropriates his story, but I'm sure he'd forgive me (seeing how it's a dream). Second, apologies to Todd Solondz, whose latest movie, Wiener-Dog, I saw two days ago, and which I have obviously misappropriated things from as well, though subconsciously (hey, it's a dream).

A man near the end of his rope is pushed over the edge when he has to take his sick cat to the vet to be euthanized, because he cannot afford the expensive operation that may or may not save the cat's life. After saying goodbye to the cat, he doesn't stick around for the end, but instead, in his bitterness, returns with a time-bomb, which he hides at the vet's office, but set for a time after which he is sure his cat will already be dead. Then the man heads off to a local coffee shop, because by now he is without sleep, exhausted, and just needs coffee. While in the LONG line at the counter, he gets a call from the vet, and they happily explain to him that they decided they love his cat so much (because the cat IS like the sweetest, most friendly and loving cat on Earth) they decided to just go ahead and give him the operation for free, which they have just performed, and it was successful, and now the cat is resting in recovery.

The man, of course, freaks out, and he starts to admit that he set the bomb, and warn them to evacuate, but then realizes his phone has died and he is talking to no one. He gets out of line and starts asking around at the coffee shop, which is full of people working on laptops, if anyone has a charger for his particular phone. Mostly he gets indifference and annoyed stares, but finally a kind old woman produces a charger from her purse. The man then starts hustling around, looking for an outlet, but finds they are all covered with those metal plates they cover outlets with. He then interrupts the line at the counter and asks an employee about the outlets, who explains that they covered them all because they were just being used by homeless people. The man is incredulous, but then remembers to get back to his task. He again starts bustling around the shop, now in a panic, and finally just plugs the phone charger, uninvited, into a USB on the side of the closest person's laptop. The person protests, but the man is so desperate, the person with the laptop allows it.

By now the man is so fatigued, as he still hasn't had coffee, that he falls asleep waiting for his phone to register a charge. When he wakes up, he looks at his phone, which has come back to life, but now the charging cord has somehow become tanged with the mouse cord being used by the person with the laptop. There is a long, kind of slapstick, comic segment while they get the cords untangled. Finally, he calls the vet's office back, but gets no answer. Now he notices some people are gathered around a TV in the coffee shop. There is some breaking news about a terrorist attack: a bomb has gone off at the office of a local veterinarian.

This was as far as I got, but in my dream I decided that it was the end of the first act, and I needed to figure out where the story went from there. Then I woke up. As I slowly regained my awake person senses, the idea, which seemed brilliant in the dream, became gradually less appealing. This is the way ideas in dreams often go, unfortunately. It's also the way screenplays often go, and is one reason I don't try to write them anymore. You come up with a good first act, but then where does it go from there? There are so many good ideas that once they are committed to paper no longer seem like good ideas. So many first acts with nothing to follow.