Evening. The camera opens to desert turned the color of an overcooked pancake. A talus rises at a diagonal out of the left-edge of the frame. The sounds of wind rushing over gravel and dust, sssssing through the branches of a dead tree.
Credits. ‘A Film Directed by Uwe Boll.’
An inscrutable voice is carried in the wind. The camera cuts to a closer shot of the base of the talus. The voice is louder, mixed with the wind, and now discernibly angry. The camera cuts to a closer shot of the base of the talus. Gravel spills into the frame, followed by a cloud of dust that clots out the view. Now we can make out the words of the angry voice.
Angry Voice (off camera): --say it again. I will say it again! All the shit in the world—every last shit squeezed out the anus of every single thing that ever existed—an entire history of defecation, from the smallest fucking organisms, single-celled shitters flagellating in a shit-filled drip on a petri dish, to all the blue whales, shitting out bricks the size of jet engines that collect in heaps at the pitch black bottoms of abysses—I’ll say it again Werner and this time you will hear me, you will understand precisely what it is I’m getting at—
Cut to feet in white leather wedged shoes, dirty, pacing back and forth, kicking gravel off the edge of a talus.
—all this history of shit, from the primordial ooze-shit that our ancestors first crawled out of—from the solid, brown, black, white, gray, pellets to the viscous goop of birds, bat guano, the billions of diarrhea-brushed diapers of babies—to the metaphorical shit, the shit-slinging our politicians do in the name of democracy, peace, globalism—all this shit would smell better, would be preferable, to another moment with you—so help me God, Werner—
The camera cuts from the feet to a close-up of KLAUS, his nostrils dilated, his eyes swishing from one side to the other in their sockets.
KLAUS: —I would kill you to not breathe in your stench one moment longer! I would prefer the new smell of your putrefying body to the smell of you breathing, living, reddening like a syphilitic whore in front of me! Do you want me to say it again, Werner? I will say—
New Voice (off camera): It’s getting dark, Klaus.
The camera cuts from KLAUS’ face to a wide-shot of a car on the side of the road. The car is a beat-up Chevy right out of one of those movies in which two characters travel the USA in a similar beat-up Chevy. The car’s hood is cocked open, and WERNER’s leaning over it, the top half of his body cut off by the hood. Klaus keeps pacing back and forth along the edge of the dirt road past the tailpipe. The camera cuts closer to the car, peering into the backseat which is filled with camera equipment, two suitcases, one tan, the other blue, rounded at the corners and fitted with plastic handles, and dozens of tin film canisters. The front seat is one cushion made of fake leather, ribbed with rigid fake leather trim. Several holes are torn into the seat, the yellow stuffing puffing out like shimmering cheese. A handgun rests on the passenger side in a parallelogram of late-evening light.
KLAUS: The night will not fall unless I tell it to! The night dare not show itself in the light of my wrath! Werner! Werner! Close that hood! You won’t fix it with your tinkering! The car will work because I want it to work! The car will drive us out of this cancerous anus of a hell hole because it too does not want to be here! It would rather rust apart and turn to shrapnel anywhere, anywhere Werner, than this—
WERNER: It will get very cold in an hour or so. There won’t be any cars on this old road to save us.
KLAUS: There! There! That’s precisely the heart of it, Werner! The very pumping, valved, bloody heart of it. You have no faith in me—in me! The man who saved your life, pulled you out of your artistic failures? Turned you into a shadow of success? You are my shadow, Werner. Where I go, you follow. You are pinned to me like Peter fucking Pan. You will do what I say you will do.
WERNER: Your shadow will be gone by night. And then you will be all alone, Klaus. King of one.
KLAUS: I welcome loneliness, Werner. It seethes inside me. I am the loneliest creature there ever was. I have never felt communion with another human being. My whore mother pushed me into the world and then was gone. My first and last connection was the umbilical cord, Werner. And this is part of my first memory: tearing through the cord with my retardedly new teeth, wanting to be away from that whore. She didn’t want me? I did not want her, Werner! Birth is the worst sin man commits—we don’t ask to be born, Werner. The agonies that would have been spared by my not being born—they are innumerable, Werner.
WERNER: The world would be much quieter.
KLAUS: You tease and tinker and move through life a half-serious thing, Werner. You think life is a joke, so you must also joke. But life is the least funny joke ever told. It is more perverse than a holocaust joke, Werner, it is far more perverse! How can you laugh? How can you not be filled with rage that your life is being told to you by some retarded God! I curse God! I heckle Him! There’s no tomato large enough to splatter into his mongoloid face, Werner.
WERNER: If the car isn’t fixed by nightfall, we are going to be sleeping here.
KLAUS: I refuse to sleep here. I will walk back to town, Werner—
WERNER: Don’t be a ridiculous baby. Town is 70 miles from here.
KLAUS: And each mile, 1 to 70, I will relish the distance I’m gaining from you, Werner. At each step I will say, over and over, Werner, this is one step further from that wreck of a human being, that abortion of thought. I will say it, Werner—
WERNER: You better start walking now, Klaus. I’ll pick you up frozen on the side of the road sometime tomorrow.
Klaus begins walking away from the car, still shouting back at Werner. His words become quieter and quieter.
KLAUS: I would spit on you if you were worth spit, Werner! I would strangle you if you—
Until we hear only Werner’s breathing and the sounds people make fixing car-things.
WERNER: He’ll come back in the night, and I’ll shoot him.
Cut to Night. The car is still parked at the side of the road, its hood closed, pinned to the blue-black desert night. The moon, waxing but not full, is spirit white and high in the sky. Cut to the INTERIOR of the car, Werner sleeping on his side in the front seat, his arms folded into his chest. Cut to the exterior shot, where we see a silhouette crawling on all fours toward the car, making almost no noise. The silhouette reaches the driver’s door and begins to creep up the side of the car with its hands, like a centipede flashing its mandibles. Cut to a close-up of Werner’s face, eyes closed, the breathing even and quiet. Cut to a reverse-shot of the driverside window, where we see a black face with two glimmering eyes, peeled wide open, staring into the car. Cut back to Werner’s face.
WERNER: Klaus, I promised to shoot you if you came back in the night.
KLAUS: There, there, Werner. Be a darling and unlock the door. It’s so cold out here. Please, my love, unlock the door and let your Klaus in. He’s shivering, can’t you see? Where is your heart? Your compassion for suffering? Please, my love—
Cut to the wide exterior shot of the car. A gunshot goes off. The silhouette flings away from the car and begins writhing on the ground, clutching the side of its head.
KLAUS: My God! You shot me! He shot me! My God! There’s blood! Everywhere! I’m slain! My God! My God!
The camera cuts to the car window, a hole the size of a child’s pinky poked through it, lovely glass fractures coming off from it in spokes. The camera cuts to a close-up of the bullet hole, the interior of the car beyond it out of focus.
WERNER (blurred): You’ll sleep outside for the night. We’ll get you help tomorrow.
Screams of agony. Cut to exterior of car, DAY. Klaus is leaned to the side of the car, his hand clamped to the side of his head, blood tracing from his hands down his white shirtsleeve. Cut to a close-up of Klaus’ face, the eyes wide and shaky. Klaus lifts his hand from the side of his face, and we see a puzzle piece-shaped absence where his earlobe should be. Klaus is breathing rapidly.
WERNER (off camera): Are you awake, Klaus?
KLAUS: (Heavy breathing.)
WERNER: The car is fixed, Klaus. I wanted a nap before we drove back. Hop in, we’ll take you to the hospital.
The titlecard ‘Werner and Klaus’ High School Reunion’ appears over the image of Klaus struggling to his feet, struggling to the passenger side of the car, opening the door, and collapsing inside. The car shakes on, and Werner pulls the transmission lever, turning the car around and driving out of frame. The road is filled with blood. The titlecard fades away.
Cut to--!
