Now, Yours Script
Now, Yours opens with a gesture which mimes the gesture of an audience in wait, extending the opening countdown with numbers letrasetted onto clear leader running from 1 to 59, one per second. Then a number 1 appears, marking one minute, the two and three minute mark in the film are also marked.
While the film’s opening minute (showing the 1-59 count) is accompanied by a pure tone, the next twenty seconds are silent. A number of questions are asked in voice-over as the black leader gives way to a broken, pulsing emulsion.
Do you think I can wait longer than you?
Why am I the only one speaking in the room?
Have you got anything to say?
If you had anything to say would you be on film?
If you had nothing to say would you be on film?
Do you think your answers make any difference to me?
Now that it’s begun do you feel an obligation to see me through?
Do you think you’re doing the right thing?
If I asked to be alone would you leave?
Is it too late for that now?
What else is too late?
Are you more important than me?
If I stopped talking, what would you do?A commercial for television appears, new medium of the fifties. The announcer declares: “And with it we are going to reach people, all kinds of people in all sorts of places. And we’re going to turn these people into something special: our customers.”
An intertitle announces: “And now eleven films so brutal, so horrifying, they had to be kept from the public for over a century.” Eleven brief films ensue, each just eleven frames long. The first is entirely black and the last entirely clear. The whole intended to summarize the cinematic enterprise.
1. Untitled (Not a film)
2. William Tell (His Story)
3. A New Word (The possibility of form)
4. Salt (Her Story)
5. Alignment (Caesar, Tsar, Sardar, Senate, Sirdor, Seigneur)
6. Nail (The New Law)
7. The Wedding (The Double)
8. Cancer (Water, Blood, Inspiration)
9. Law Film (Calculation, Balance, Time, Woman Satisfied, Just Nature)
10. Hand (Egg, Snake, Phallus, Sperm, Logos, Virgin)
11. Alpha Beta (The Wheel)
Each of these films are silent and contain just a few pictures in their respective eleven frame lengths. The tenth film has nine pictures, the ninth has eight and so on. After the clear leader of the last film (denoting all film, sound and light) Now, Yours dissolves into a number of urban locales, settings for the infinite film, emptied spaces awaiting the beginnings of spectacle. An optical flicker ensues—single framed passages of colour fields cropped from these same settings—then the emulsion breaks and cracks as if under strain. A length of hand-processed colour negative follows as a city grown strange beneath its own stare opens to reveal a passing traffic—which flares red before another red flare ushers in a hand spray-painting a red line across a brick wall. This line expands to fill the entire frame, the screen exploding into a uniformly crimson stare. The sound shifts as well, as a game show host excitedly intones:“Both the bullseyes? Alright freeze both the bullseyes up there. Those windows are closed off, we’ve locked off the bullseye. There’s light behind one of the windows. Let’s hope it is behind one of the windows you’ve blocked off. Are you ready then? And we are spinning the one window, the one remaining window, the lower window… C’mon, another bullseye for the big prize, another bullseye (rising music) Bullseye! You got it! Congratulations! Alright. That was fantastic. You have $300 in cash. You’ve doubled the $150 you had. And all of the prizes we told you about—the trip to Brazil, the electronic backgammon game, all those baseballs and everything—it’s all yours. But not only that you’ll be back to win some more money! We’ll see you on the next show. You’ve now won a grand total of cash and prizes of $6,100. So long! Until then I hope everything goes for you. It’s the bullseye!
This is heard over red film (bullseye close-up), then a car pulls away with three sets of closing credits superimposed:
1) The End
2) Director: Roy Crost
Script by Brian Swanbrik
Camera: Gerhard Alsen
Assistant Director: Joe Haywood
3) An Ontario Travel Film. Produced by Cinecraft Toronto.
This last another bit of found footage. The trip is over.