Dreamsongs - Volume II Read Online Free PDF

script in this
retrospective. No writer wants to see his children buried in an unmarked grave.
     
    I debated a long
time over which version of the script to use here. The later drafts are more
polished, but in the end I decided to use the first draft, the one with winter
world. The two-hour European cut of Doorways has been released on
videotape everywhere but in the USA, and large crowds saw the rough cut of the
ninety-minute version at the test screenings we did for MagiCon, the 1992
worldcon in Orlando, Florida. But no one has ever visited winter world till
now. And what could be more appropriate for an alternate worlds story than to
present an alternate version of the script?
     
    Doorways will always be the
great ‘what if’ of my career. I wrote other pilots - Black Cluster, The
Survivors, Starport - but Doorways was the only one to get beyond
the script stage, the only one to be filmed, the only one to come within a
whisker of winning a spot on a network’s primetime schedule. If it had, who
knows? It might have run for two episodes, or for ten years. I might still be
writing and producing the show today, or I might have been fired two months
into the series. The only certainty is that I would be much, much richer than I
am at present.
     
    On the other hand,
I would never have finished A Game of Thrones, or written the other
volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire. So maybe it all turned out for the
best after all.
     
    <>
     
    * * * *
     
    The
Twilight Zone:
    ‘The Road Less
Traveled’
     
     
    FADE IN
    INT. - LIVING ROOM - NIGHT
     
    JEFF MCDOWELL and his wife DENISE, an
attractive couple in their late thirties, are cuddled together on their couch,
watching TV. She’s sleepy but contented; he’s rapt on the screen. The light of
the TV plays over their faces. The furnishings are eclectic, not expensive or
terribly chic, but comfortable. There’s a fireplace, with bookshelves to either
side stuffed with magazines and plenty of well-read dog-eared paperbacks.
     
    O.S. we hear dialogue from the original version of The Thing :
the exchange ‘What if it can read minds?’ ‘Then it’ll be real mad when it gets
to me.’ Jeff smiles. Behind them, we SEE their five-year-old daughter, megan , enter the room.
     
    MEGAN
     
    Daddy, I’m scared.
     
    As Megan comes over to the couch, Denise
sits up. The girl climbs up into Jeff’s lap.
     
    JEFF
     
    Hey, it’s only a
space carrot.
    Vegetables are
nothing to scared of.
    (beat, smile)
    What are you doing
down here anyway?
    Aren’t you supposed
to be in bed?
     
    MEGAN
     
    There’s a man in my
room.
     
    Denise and Jeff exchange looks. Jeff hits
the pause button.
     
    DENISE
     
    Honey, you were
just having a bad dream.
     
    MEGAN
     
    (stubborn)
    I was not! I
saw him, Mommy.
     
    JEFF
     
    (to Denise)
    My turn, I guess.
     
    Jeff picks up his daughter, carries her
toward the stairs.
     
    JEFF
     
    (cheerful, reassuring)
    Well, we’ll just
have to see who’s scaring my girl, huh?
    (aside, to Denise)
    If he reads minds,
he’ll be real mad when he gets to me.
     
    CUT TO
    INT. - MEGAN’S BEDROOM
     
    As Jeff opens the door. A typical untidy
five-year-old’s room. Dolls, toys, a small bed. A huge stuffed animal, fallen
on its side, fills one corner. The only light is a small nightlight in the
shape of some cartoon character. Megan points.
     
    MEGAN
     
    He was over there.
He was watching me, Daddy.
     
    JEFFS POINT OF VIEW
     
    As he looks. Under the window is a shape
that does indeed look like a man sitting in a chair, staring at them.
     
    BACK TO THE SCENE
     
    Jeff turns on the overhead light, and
suddenly the man in the chair is nothing but a pile of clothes.
     
    JEFF
     
                See.
It’s nothing Megan.
     
    MEGAN
     
    It was a man,
Daddy. He scared me.
     
    Jeff musses his daughter’s hair.
     
    JEFF
     
    Just
a bad dream, Megan. My big girl isn’t scared of a little nightmare, is she?
     
    He carries her to bed, tucks her in.