EXT: HELICOPTER – MADISON STATION/MADISON HILL – ESTABLISH – DUSK
From high above, the town of Madison Station/Madison Hill fills the screen, washed in the slanted light of a late summer sunset. The view is lush with green maple trees and lawns surrounding classic colonial white clapboard and brick houses. The village green is overseen by a high-spired church, and a small river courses through a valley. The town center is at the bottom of the hill and includes a gas station, village store, post office, and a library, with several made-over Colonial buildings which serve as shops and offices. It looks like an archetypal New England village, a rural paradise.
EXT: HELICOPTER – PASTURE – DUSK
From above, CAMERA PANS from pastures with grazing cows, across more farmland and up the Hill which overlooks the town center. On the crest of the Hill is the town green. Further away are large estates with immaculate grounds, large lawns, tennis courts and pools.
CAMERA FRAMES and ZOOMS DOWN on one of them, an enormous faux chateau with slate roof and Normandy-style exterior.
Under the CAMERA, a helicopter appears and lands on the front lawn. A man in a white jogging suit gets out and walks to the mansion carrying a briefcase.
INT: ZACK MANSION LIVING ROOM – ESTABLISH – DAY
O.S. DIMINISHING ROAR of the helicopter taking off.
MUSIC OVER: UNDECIPHERABLE RAP
Contrary to its exterior, the interior of the mansion has been done to an inch of its wainscoting in current chic. On the white piano are silver framed pictures of theater openings and a Tony Award. The tiger rug, Brunschwig and Fils-covered furniture and Clarence House drapes have been featured inevitably in Architectural Digest, issues of which lay casually on tables. The art is Schnabeleze. The flowers are huge and perfectly arranged. There are several theater posters arranged on one wall.
At the moment, two vile boys, ten and twelve years old are screaming. Their mother, CAMILLA ZACK, wearing dramatic make-up as well as red and white Blass casuals, screams back. Her black hair is in a French braid. From the screaming, the boys’ names are revealed: BUTCH and BOOTH. At 35, Camilla has just had her first face lift and tummy tuck, an she looks fabulous. There are two Puerto Rican maids, both of whom try to help in Spanish, and are tongue lashed in an approximation of that language by an abruptly maternal Camilla. One of the children hits a glass side table and a pre-Colombian dish crashes to the parquet floor. Camilla rages; the two children scream blame at each other; the maids pray hysterically.
CREDITS HOLD.
Into this domestic scene strolls the master of the house, MARK ZACK, still wearing the white designer jogging suit, but now carrying a blue drink in a martini glass. His hair is coiffed stylishly; the wristwatch on his carrying hand is fifty grand worth of obvious. He wears power eyeglasses, and remains oblivious to the chaos around him as he moves to the sun porch. Involved in their own crises, no one pays attention to him.
“Welcome home, daddy.” “Hello, darling, how was your week?” The sun is going down.. I don’t care about anyone in this room as much as I care about seeing that lucky ‘ol sun sink slowly out of sight.
He opens the glass sun porch door, goes out, and closes it hard behind him.
EXT: SUN PORCH – ESTABLISH – DUSK
The NOISE from inside is muted almost completely.
The sun porch overlooks Madison Station below. The sun is indeed slipping behind a distant hill and after an appreciative sigh, Mark raises his blue drink in homage.
Without warning, a carbon graphite arrow with pink fluorescent vanes shoots in from O.S., and hits Mark directly in the heart. The force knocks him back so that he is leaning against the porch door. Astonished, he looks down at the blood seeping onto his sweat shirt, then at his drink.
Red, white, and blue. – Oh yeah, America, you live all your life dodging muggers in New York City, and you get shot with an arrow in Connecticut!
Losing strength fast, he slides down against the glass door, through which his family is seen screaming, trying to get out to him.
SHUT UP!
It is enough to gain a moment of silence behind him.
Tell Tom Webster to open the envelope.
The screaming and pounding on the door begin again. He lifts the glass to his lips, but it sloshes with the pounding and he can’t drink before he dies.
EXT: HELICOPTER – ZACK MANSION – DUSK
CREDITS CONTINUE
The CAMERA RISES from the Zack mansion and again takes in the town.
On the town green, opposite the spired white church, is a grand colonial with neat green shutters and a shingle roof, with a columned porch surrounded by a broad lawn.
CAMERA ZOOMS DOWN TO FOCUS on a beat-up truck filled with lawn and tree tools in the back yard. ADAM CROSS is splitting wood with a maul beside a huge old maple he’s cut down, which spreads out across the lawn.
EXT: BACK YARD – ADAM – DUSK
Adam is sweating and the slanted sunlight makes his well-developed body flow. At 18, he’s good-looking if somewhat slack jawed.
In mid-swing, he senses something and turns quickly.
EST: BACK YARD – ADAM’S P.O.V. – DUSK
At the corner of the porch is PHOEBE WALTERS, 16, plain with glasses, her dark hair pulled back in a knot on her head. When she realizes Adam has seen her, she gasps and ducks away.
EXT: BACK YARD – ANOTHER ANGLE – DUSK
Adam watches without reacting, and goes back to work.
EXT: HELICOPTER – BACK YARD – DUSK
CAMERA again RISES above the town and PASSES over to the lush farmland surround it.
As the CAMERA SOOMS DOWN, a car is seen tearing out of the town at top speed. Quickly passing into the rolling farmland of corn and cattle, the car hits a dirt road and raises a trail of dust.
The vehicle is a green Range Rover with a corkscrewed car phone aerial. It approaches several chickens crossing a farm road. The chickens are forced to fly.
EXT: AVERY FARM – FRED – DUSK
Fred is a milk cow. She moos into the CAMERA as it PULLS BACK to reveal DUNCAN AVERY, Fred’s owner, with his arm draped over his cow’s withers He is a swamp-Yankee farmer, in his sixties, with the face and manner of a stonewall. Behind them is a small dairy herd who are mildly attentive to the approaching vehicle.
CREDITS HOLD
Yep, its’ her again.