Black List Script #10A: By Way of Helena by Matt Cook
MAJOR DISCLAIMER: Since these scripts, bought or not, are currently unproduced and/or in the midst of long, tedious development processes, they may not make it to the screen for up to three years, if ever. You should know that the synopsis contains MASSIVE, EARTH-SHATTERING SPOILERS, even though this screenplay may not resemble the finished film (if any) in any way. Read at your own risk.
Secondary Disclaimer: I refer to what follows as “coverage” by the loosest definition of that term. In keeping with this blog’s tradition, I’ve crammed the notes so full of rancorous rants, it’s 1/10th as concise as actual coverage, almost falling into the category of a review. However, since I’ve included the loglines and a detailed synopsis, it’s close enough to coverage for my purposes. Deal with it.
Logline (provided by The Black List): “A Texas Ranger and his wife move to a frontier town to investigate the disappearance of Mexicans in the area, and soon find themselves caught in the cult of personality that rules the area.”
Jump to:
Synopsis
Notes
The Bottom Line
Synopsis
Helena, Texas. 1857. ABRAHAM BRANT (20s), a tall, muscular, hairless man, stands opposite JESSE KINGSTON (30s), with supportive crowds gathered on either side. An ill man, SAUL, introduces the conflict: godly Abraham and godless Jesse are to fight a duel. Muttering scripture, Abraham kills Jesse rather easily. Among the spectators is a small boy, who 30 years later grows up to be DAVID KINGSTON (30s), a Civil War hero and Texas Ranger tasked by the governor to go to the small village of Mount Hermon, because dead Mexicans keep washing up downriver of that town, and one of the latest corpses turned out to be the nephew of an influential Mexican general. The governor warns David about Abraham, who runs the town. David doesn’t remember him from the past, and he doesn’t believe the legends that now float around about him — that he’s a fearless Indian killer who is still right enough with God to heal the sick like Jesus.
David goes home to his Mexican wife, MARISOL (20s), to tell her he’s leaving on the trip. She insists on going with him. They stock a wagon and ride off through hill country and into the desert. Nestled in the Davis Mountains is Mount Hermon, which they arrive at after a brief respite at Fort Davis. A mile outside town, they reach ISAAC riding with a few men. He tells them they need to see the Preacher — Abraham. Isaac leads them through the small, pristine town to the Town Hall, where he introduces them to Abraham. He’s a gregarious, seemingly friendly man who introduces the significantly less friendly Isaac as his son. Abraham offers them a fine cottage for lodgings. He asks them about their religious beliefs — Marisol claims to be spiritual but not religious, while David doesn’t exactly answer the question. Left alone, the couple unpack. David marvels at the sturdy construction of the cabin. Marisol feels uneasy — Abraham sort of creeped her out, acting is if he knew them both and knew they were coming. David tries and fails to comfort her.
The next morning, David rides through town. He comes upon Abraham and Isaac. Isaac prepares to lead a hunting expedition with several men. Abraham shows David around and asks how they ended up in Mount Hermon. David says he and Marisol wanted to get away from it all. Abraham asks how long they’re staying, and when David says only a few days, Abraham asks David to stay longer and offers him the position of town sheriff to secure his stay. David is reluctant, but Abraham, convinces him. Marisol is visited by a gaggle of women from town, who already know David is the sheriff. David examines the stretch of river where the corpses keep washing up. He finds rifle shells nearby. When he returns home, Marisol is still creeped out and feeling ill. She complains about the town and wants to leave. David insists they need to stay a short while longer, until he’s figured out what has happened. If Marisol wants to leave, she can return to Fort Davis. She says she’d never leave him. They make love.
The next day, David is examining his new digs at the jailhouse. He finds a rifle that matches the shells he found by the river. Meanwhile, Marisol gets a surprise visit from Abraham. After some initial awkwardness, Marisol is charmed by Abraham. David stops by Hoot’s brothel. Outside, Isaac makes the stern suggestion that David won’t like it there. David won’t listen to him — unafraid of dickish Isaac, he stands up to him, and Isaac allows him to move past. One of Hoot’s prostitutes, beautiful redhead NAOMI sidles up next to David. She warns him about the town, saying things like “you can’t just leave” and that Abraham both prophesied David and Marisol’s arrival and can hear every word uttered in Mount Hermon. David excuses himself, and outside he runs into Abraham. David talks with him about Isaac. Abraham laughingly agrees when David suggests Isaac needs a serious beating. A shopkeeper gives Abraham some chickens, which Abraham hands to David. When David returns home, Marisol is excited by the food. She’s less excited by how strange she feels. She tells David about Abraham’s visit, which he finds odd because Abraham never mentioned it. He tells her to be careful what she says. Marisol tells him she’d like to go riding tomorrow.
The next morning, Marisol looks sicker, but she insists on riding. Abraham, Isaac, and Naomi arrive. In offering them the opportunity to come to his Sunday service, Abraham is careful to point out that David and Naomi have already met, displeasing Marisol. David thanks them. David and Marisol go riding. Her condition seems to worsen. That night, she starts coughing and vomiting. The following day, at the sheriff’s office, David looks over marked maps of the area when Naomi bursts in, having been beaten by one of her “clients.” David demands to know who did it; Naomi tells him. He goes to Hoot’s, pistol-whips some of the men — despite Hoot’s protestation that Abraham takes care of these things — and drags the assailant back to the jail (all the while yelling at some townspeople to get the doctor). Meanwhile, Marisol wanders the streets, stopping in front of the town hall. Inside, Abraham gives a cult like sermon to most of the town. He sees Marisol, invites her in, and hands her a snake he’s using as a prop. He tells her if the snake bites her and she dies, her salvation is assured. She hands off the snake but does start to get into the sermon.
While the doctor treats Naomi, Isaac storms into the jail, displeased with David’s violence. When Isaac makes an unsavory comment about Marisol, David drags him out to the street and beats the shit out of him. Abraham and others arrive, watching with amusement. David takes Marisol back to the cabin. She’s still ill and behaving strangely, talking about Abraham like he’s a god of some sort. The next morning, David announces to Abraham that he and Marisol are leaving. Although Abraham makes veiled threats in Latin (which David doesn’t understand), he acts sort of pleasant about it. David documents what he’s learning in a journal he keeps. Naomi appears, warning David of danger and asking him to meet her at a creek on Sunday. The doctor visits Marisol. David asks if she can travel, but the doctor says it will kill her. The doctor mutters some scripture suggesting that she will be healed by a savior.
David meets Naomi. She says she’s running away to California and urges David to go with. Naomi tells him that Abraham says he knew David would come, that he knew David’s father, and that David would bring him a wife. David is alarmed by this, but he doesn’t understand it. He gives Naomi his horse and a compass, which he shows her how to use and points the way to California. He tells her to go quickly before the townspeople realize she’s gone. She goes. Disheveled, Marisol wanders into town, looking for Abraham. She collapses. One of the shopkeepers holds on to her. Meanwhile, in Hoot’s, Abraham, Isaac, and a bunch of men surround three newcomers: WILLIAM (50s) and his twin sons, JOHN and GEORGE. Abraham tells them about his time in the Civil War, meeting General Lee. As he describes a quaint scene in which he and his men arrived at the battlefield to help the soldiers, what is actually shown is Abraham and his men pillaging and scalping Union soldiers, to the disgust of General Lee and the other survivors. William and his sons are impressed. David is unimpressed, especially with the strangers’ obsession with killing. His take is that reading about killing has become a substitute for it, and that people who don’t fight in battles wonder what it would feel like to kill. Abraham offers that David seems to have an overburdened conscience; David suggests that Abraham should, as well, but Abraham argues that he’s doing God’s work.
David returns to the cabin to find it in disarray. Marisol holds a knife. She’s cut herself in several places and lies in a pool of blood. David cleans her cuts and bandages them, then announces they’re leaving in the morning. As he prepares the wagons the following morning, he realizes he’s left his journal at the jail. He heads into town to fetch it when he finds Abraham, Isaac, and others leading George, John, and William out of the jail, all holding rifles from the armory. They don’t see him, so he uses that to his advantage, following them deeper into the mountains. Abraham has a group of Mexicans living in what’s effectively a concentration camp. William, George, and John have paid to hunt them for sport. David is horrified, and although he’s a little terrified when Abraham appears to make direct eye contact with him and smile, Abraham never lets on that he’s actually seen David. Once William and his boys have made the kill, Isaac is left to bury the body. Instead, he pretends to shovel until Abraham and the others are out of sight, then dumps the corpse in the river.
Upon returning to the cabin, David finds most of the town is there. Inside, Abraham has tied Marisol to the bed and appears to be exorcising her or…something. David demands to know what’s going on, but Abraham merely says Marisol is no longer his. The crowd beat him and shove him outside. David heads back into town, where he pillages the general store, makes a bunch of molotov cocktails, and hurls them at most of the buildings in town. David goes to Hoot’s, where William and his boys are with Isaac, bragging about the hunt. He shoots and kills George to get their attention. David orders some prostitutes to get everyones guns. David demands to know how much William and John paid to hunt the Mexicans. David orders John to shoot one of Isaac’s men, or else David will kill William. Quivering with fear, John does as he’s asked. Abraham enters the bar. He explains what happened with David’s father in Helena, that he was an awful man and David has turned out better not being raised by him. Abraham is surprised to learn David hasn’t come to town for revenge. David explains his true purpose: that he’s a Texas Ranger investigating Mexicans who have washed up downriver. Abraham condescendingly points out that they bury their victims. David points out that Isaac merely tosses the bodies in the river, surprising Abraham.
Abraham brings David and Isaac outside to a knife duel, mirroring the duel between Abraham and Jesse 30 years ago. David kills Isaac with some difficulty. It takes enough of a toll on him that he falls unconscious. He wakes in the cabin, where Marisol redresses his stitches. She’s cold and distant. David tries to encourage her to remember their love. He dreams of their first meeting, making love, etc. Two days later, Abraham has found his journal and discovered some of David’s romantic poetry. Abraham offers David the opportunity to escape — if he can outlast a group of three hunters who have just arrived from Africa. David is in no condition to do this, but he has no choice. The hunters go after David, but they’re inept. David manages to make out two of the three, and Abraham is so disgusted by the third that he kills him himself. It’s just Abraham and David now. When Abraham runs into a ravine, David manages to unwedge a boulder, which pins Abraham to the ground. Refusing to kill him, David simply secures him to the ground with boulders, hoping nature will take its course. Abraham tries to draw a comparison between Marisol and the men David led in the war, suggesting that David thrives on people needing him to lead and help them. He jams a knife into Abraham’s arm, telling him to kill himself. Abraham tells him that’s a path to Hell, then tells Abraham he will see David again — they are bound to their fates. David returns to the Mexican camp and releases the prisoner, which include a helpless young woman named MARIA, whom David knows needs help.
Six months later, the Texas governor condescendingly explains to the Mexican general that no evidence of the freed Mexicans’ story of a prison exists, so therefore there’s nothing to investigate. The general asks about Abraham Brant; the governor explains that they found him, but he was in no condition to have done what the Mexicans accused. The general asks about David; the governor says he never heard from him, and he’s either dead or missing. The governor refuses the general’s request to send his own men to search for David. Somewhere in the mountains of Colorado, wealthy men arrive in a small town. They come upon Abraham reading David’s journal, leg missing above the knee. Marisol emerges from the house, with a new child. In a Mexican villa, David wakes from a bad dream. He’s now living with Maria, carefree.
Notes
Ugh.
So let’s see… “The Most Dangerous Game” in the Wild West, a religious conflict that makes There Will Be Blood seem subtle, and a repetitive subplot involving a character writer Matt Cook never compels us to care about? That’s By Way of Helena in a nutshell.
What scares you more? A guy who firmly believes in his own God-endowed self-righteous bullshit, or a guy who’s completely full of crap and invokes God as a limp justification for his horrendous actions? If you picked the latter, you might enjoy By Way of Helena. To me and others who aren’t idiots, this becomes the fatal flaw of the script. Part of the problem is that we never really get to know these people or what the fuck, exactly, is going on, but ultimately Abraham Brant seems like a man with too much self-awareness to really believe in his own Godliness. Part of this stems from the scene where he weaves a tale of bullshit about meeting Robert E. Lee when, in reality, he and his followers just pillaged and scalped — if he really believed that every action he takes is justified by the Lord, he’d tell the honest (if alarmingly contorted) truth rather than a complete lie. Because what Abraham tells them isn’t spun or distorted — it’s just horseshit. So if that’s horseshit, doesn’t that make everything else horseshit? This certainly explains his oddly good-humored view of the godless David or his tolerance of a decidedly un-fundie house of ill repute in his town, but it doesn’t make him into the pseudo-mythical walking terror this script is clearly aiming for. He’s just kind of a douchebag.
That’s not to say I’d rather have some sort of Unsolved Mysteries faith healer roaming about. All I want is a guy who really, with all his heart, believes his own hype. That seems to be the great debate with cultists: are these guys great bullshit artists who crassly manipulate people so they can bang a harem of underage girls, or is the reason they’re so convincing because they completely buy into their own full-of-shit beliefs, which compels others to believe? Here’s my cheat sheet, which comes with absolutely no psychological training: if he’s been on TV for 30 years, he doesn’t believe a goddamn word he says; if he leads a group of followers to an isolated compound that will ultimately result in the deaths of every member of the cult, including its leader, chances are he believes he talks to God. Make sense? Thought so.
So if Abraham isn’t a real threat, what does this script hinge on? The “mystery” of who’s dumping Mexicans? The one plus here is that writer Matt Cook gives us the “why” — something he neglects with the two other subplots (David vs. Abraham and Marisol’s descent into…whatever the fuck that is) — and although it’s deplorable, it’s also a storyline familiar to anyone who enjoyed John Leguizamo in The Pest. Or, you know, anyone who’s read “The Most Dangerous Game” or seen the thousands of adaptations and variations (The Pest among them). Now, there’s a reason this story has perpetuated for so long, so I guess I can’t complain about Cook using it here. It’s just that, with so little else to offer, a rehash of a 95-year-old story (that, itself, was probably lifted from somewhere else) isn’t much to hang one’s hat on.
So, then, I guess we’re left with David and Marisol. David, the taciturn “hero” who defies all dramatic sense by not having any clear desires or interests. Yes, he writes love poetry; yes, he was good in the war. But what does he want? He’s assigned the task of investigating the dead Mexicans. He doesn’t have any real desire to do anything but a good job, which is not exactly a riveting character trait. He makes no decision to take any action except what’s required of him, until it reaches a point where any man would be forced to take action. Also not riveting.
To put it in a different context, think about similarly structured western: Unforgiven. Like By Way of Helena, Unforgiven starts with a heaping helping of backstory, followed by the introduction of a taciturn hero who doesn’t explicitly state his motives. The explicitly part is important, because while he never says it allowed, it quickly becomes abundantly clear through conversation and that he wants at least one of three things: the reward money, redemption for his dark past, and/or to protect a woman who may share some similarities with his deceased wife. One of the most interesting parts of the story is seeing Munny reveal more and more of himself until all the cards on the table, allowing us to understand exactly why Munny has decided to take this on (as well as exactly what he’s capable of).
By Way of Helena eventually fleshes out David’s character, but he’s still never ascribed reasons for his behavior. In passing, Abraham suggests that David has a caretaker personality, but not much is made of it, and David’s actions don’t quite match Abraham’s speculation. Aside from that brief moment, no mention whatsoever is made of David’s internal motivations. A little would go along way toward explaining why he doesn’t just get the fuck out of Dodge at the first sign of Marisol’s illness. “Dutiful,” while a practical explanation, just isn’t terribly compelling.
Because of this massive problem with David’s characterization, his issues with Marisol are a flat-out bore. The scenes are repetitive — she shows increasing signs of illness and increasing signs of loyalty toward Abraham, while David non-reacts — but they add no dimension to either character. If Marisol refuses to come into her own, the least she could do is provide a reflection of the things David would never say aloud. Problem is, David would say them aloud — he writes and recites love poetry, for fuck’s sake. An interesting character trait predicated on explicitly stating, in blunt language, one’s feelings, and I still ran through 118 pages without having any idea who this person is or why he acted the way he did throughout the story. Some of his behavior is simple common sense; what isn’t just comes across like bizarre puppet theatre.
The Bottom Line
Let’s see… A pseudo-spiritual battle that is neither spiritual nor much of a battle, a romantic subplot that’s neither romantic nor meaty enough to qualify as plot of any kind, and a cheesy mystery that becomes vital to the cheesier third act? Overall, this year’s Black List scripts have been better than last year’s, because I’m at #10(A) and this is the first one that just completely flatlined, without any redeeming qualities or any suggestions on turning this into a story worth telling. The best choice here is to fly to a safe distance and nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Posted by Stan on December 25, 2009 5:16 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Reviews | Digg It
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