From my screenplay-novel TRUTH MARATHON. It is a project that I am in the process of altering — or rather, incorporating into something larger. Nevertheless, I think (or at least hope) that the original screenplay-novel — a form of graphic novel — stands on its own.
EXT. THE PLAZA OUTSIDE A DOWNTOWN OFFICE BUILDING. A WEEK-DAY IN EARLY SPRING. MORNING.
TITLE: TORONTO, SPRING, 2006.
Young people stand in this plaza area, smoking cigarettes and chatting. The atmosphere is cheerful, gregarious.
Other people stream into the office building. Most of them are also young, and all of these, though middle-class in appearance, are dressed casually. They look like students. And this is in fact what they are. For although the office building is home to several businesses, it is above all the location of a very popular language school.
And so the casual dress of the young people makes sense; they aren’t here to work, they’re here to study — study the imperial language of the moment, English. And so when we look more closely at the students we realize they are almost all Latin American or Asian.
A HANDSOME MEXICAN GUY is standing WITH SEVERAL EQUALLY COOL MALE BUDDIES OF VARIOUS ETHNICITIES. The HANDSOME MEXICAN GUY is smoking a cigarette.
HANDSOME MEXICAN GUY: [to a very attractive young woman who is walking by] Hey, Maria, where you go?
MARIA: [smiling] What you think? I go to the school.
HANDSOME MEXICAN GUY: No, you come here.
Maria just smiles and ignores him. She enters the building.
HANDSOME MEXICAN GUY: [To a strongly built Asian friend] Eesh. Eh, what you think?
ASIAN FRIEND: She not like you, Luis.
LUIS, THE HANDSOME MEXICAN GUY: Not like?
ASIAN FRIEND: Yeah. She think you not handsome.
LUIS: Oh. Oh. So you think you handsome?
ASIAN FRIEND: [cocksure] Sure.
LUIS: Usted sueña. You dream. You try then okay? You talk to pretty girl.
ASIAN FRIEND: [spotting an enormously good-looking Asian woman] Ji-nah! 안녕! 잘 지내?
LUIS: [mildly upset] No. You don’t talk to Chinese girl –
ASIAN FRIEND: [amused and affronted at the same time] She not Chinese. She Korean.
LUIS: Okay, okay. But you choose different woman.
