Peacock

Genre: Drama
Premise: A screwed up cross-dresser’s private life is thrown into disarray when a train accident sends a caboose into his/her back yard.
About: To star Cillian Murphy and Ellen Paige, this 2005 script finished very high on that year’s Black List. Although it was the 2005 script that landed on the Black List, I read a draft dated February 2, 2008 by the same writers – so it should be noted this is a rewrite. The film will be hitting theaters late this year.
Writers: Michael Lander and Ryan Roy

Check out some of these names: Cillian Murphy, Ellen Paige, Susan Sarandon, Josh Lucas, Keith Caradine. What do these actors have in common? They all signed up for one of the most frustrating scripts I’ve ever read.

Now this is complicated. There is ambition here. There is originality. There is a desire to do something different. But for the life of me I can’t find anything in this script to latch onto. Not one single thing to identify with. I love Cillian Murphy. I love Josh Lucas and Ellen Paige and Susan Sarandon. But why they signed up for this………….I’m still trying to figure out.

I would say my confusion started less than a page into the screenplay. There was no indication of what year it was. It could’ve been 1932 or 2005. Why didn’t I know? Cause they never told me. The script begins by pointing out “1900’s Middle Class homes.” Does that mean we’re in the year 1900? Or does that just mean we’re in a modern town with very old houses? This isn’t insignificant information we’re talking about here. The film tackles the issue of cross-dressing and the way our society reacted to cross-dressing in 1930 is different than how they reacted to it in say, 1965. Or 1978. Or 1990. Of course there were some things that implied a certain time period but because this town was so isolated, I didn’t know if these old-fashioned things were old-fashioned because the town hadn’t caught up yet or because we were literally in that time period.

Anyway…

We meet Emma, 30s, who lives in a house by a field in the small town of Peacock, Nebraska. Emma peeks out of her house in the morning hours but looks flighty, uncomfortable, always dashing back into the shadows whenever she’s near a window. She cooks breakfast, writes a note to someone named “John” before heading upstairs, enters a bedroom, undresses, and we see that Emma…has no breasts. Because Emma…is really a man! She’s John! Or John’s Emma. Or they’re each other. I’m still not sure.

So once John dresses up as a man, he bikes to the town bank, where he works as a clerk. John shuffles quietly by everyone, preferring not to be bothered, not to be noticed. I guess he’s a little like Emma in that sense. Which begs the question, why does he need to change personalities if their personalities are exactly the same?

Anyway, the next morning Emma is preparing for her day when a caboose from a passing train comes loose, wobbles off the tracks, into the field, and through John/Emma’s yard, stopping just a foot from her/his house. Within minutes the town descends upon the house, and the worst possible thing that can happen to a person so dependent on privacy happens. John and Emma are forced to interact with other people.

Now at this point, I saw potential for a movie. I like the idea of forcing a character to face their deepest fear. But as soon as that moment passes, the story takes on a garbled confusing plot that I’m still not entirely sure I understand. At first it appears that there’s some Psycho thing going on here as it’s implied that John is dressing up as his dead mother. However at a certain point, Emma becomes John’s wife. It’s all very bizarre because at times it seems as if John has no idea who Emma is and vice versa. Yet they’re writing notes to each other and occasionally hear about one another from the townspeople.

As if not being satisfied with only being kind of confusing, Farm-Trash Maggie shows up out of nowhere and needs money for a child apparently fathered by John. John seems very confused that he has a child. So does that mean that in addition to not knowing about anything that happens in Emma’s life, he sometimes doesn’t know about things that happen in his own life as well? Lol. You can’t make this stuff up. Emma, however, doesn’t want to give Farm-Trash Maggie any money. She’ll do anything to keep the money from her. Despite this, she decides to become Maggie’s best friend. Are you starting to sense why I was frustrated? It was all so bizarre.

There’s a moment in the script where John is talking to Farm-Trash Maggie, says ‘hold on’, goes upstairs, comes down 2 minutes later dressed as Emma, and Farm-Trash Maggie has no idea that the person in front of her is still John. It’s as if you were standing in front of a phone booth and Clark Kent ran in, you saw the whirly super-changing blur, then out came Superman, and you still had no idea that the two were the same person.

The Senator sees a photo opportunity to use the train in the backyard for his campaign and asks John for permission, yet all John wants is for everybody to be gone. Emma is initially against it as well but then changes her mind (not for any logical reason – just because). So as the townspeople come in and out, they get yes’s from Emma and no’s from John – sending mixed messages. They occasionally wonder why John and Emma are never together but no one thinks to address the fact that EMMA LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE JOHN WITH A FUCKING DRESS ON!!! That might be your first clue on why they’re never seen together.

Now there may be a chance -although if it happened, I missed it – that everybody knew that John and Emma were the same person but they were just playing along, afraid to rock the boat. But because that would turn what was previously just a terrible movie into a fucking catastrophically terrible movie, I didn’t even want to consider that possibility.

Now for all of you who are saying, “Well, what do you expect Carson? You read a script called ‘Peacock’.” I would say to you, “You’re right.” What does a high Black List script read like? Download it here and find out.

Script Link (2008 version) : Peacock

Script Link (someone just handed me the 2005 Black List version. Read that here and tell me if it’s any better): Peacock

[x] trash (I hate to say this but I just. did. not. get it.)
[ ] barely kept my interest
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

I’m actually encouraging people who enjoyed this script to comment. I am desperate to find out what it was that got 30-some executives and development execs to vote this as not only a good script, but a great script. Tell me what I missed. Or is this just a case where I didn’t “get it”?

What I learned: Unless you have some reason to hide it, please make the time and setting of your screenplay clear. Don’t leave it up to the reader to guess.