Monday, August 11, 2014
The Creeper - I Am Jack's Self-Deception - Grant McLaughlin
1 - Jack Ryder stands in his bathroom, standing at the sink and looking into the mirror. As the reader, we have an over the shoulder shot, seeing Ryder's back and his reflection in the mirror. He looks terrible. He's clearly exhausted, his face bears evidence of various injuries (black eye, cuts, bruises, etc), and so forth. While he's looking at the mirror, it's clear he's really looking at nothing. He wears a dress shirt with a tie, but the whole outfit is kind of unkempt. His hair is a mess, his tie askew, sweat stains at the armpits of his shirt - that kind of thing. The bathroom is dark but for a single light above and it's impossible to tell what time of day it is, whether he's coming home from or headed off to work.
CAPTION (JACK): When you have insomnia, you're never really asleep and you're never really awake.
2 - Jack walks away from the bathroom mirror (which is no longer visible), still in the midst of his zombie-esque exhaustion.
CAPTION (JACK): With insomnia, nothing is real.
UNSEEN FIGURE (an uneven bubble, with the outer black surrounded by a gaudy yellow): Hey!
3 - Jack turns to look over his shoulder. While he's responding to what he sees, his body hasn't really registered it and that zombie-state remains.
CAPTION (JACK): Everything is far away.
JACK: No
4 - Straight on shot of Jack, who is once again standing in front of the mirror. Although we still can't see what he sees, he now looks to be wide awake (and more than a little on edge), holding his hands on his head, unable to fathom what he sees.
CAPTION (JACK): Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy
JACK: No, no, no!
5 - Switch to a straight on shot of the reflection. As you may have gathered, the Creeper is the figure looking back at Jack. He holds the same pose, except he smiles crazily. Maybe go for something in the vein of this classic.
THE CREEPER (same uneven bubble style): Yes, yes, yes!
CAPTION (THE CREEPER) (caption coloured to reflect his colour scheme): I know this because Jack Ryder knows this.
With an obvious tip of the hat to Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club (as well as David Fincher's film adaptation). Once I saw the connection, I couldn't see anything else.
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Any hat-tip to Fight Club is more than OK in my book. And the Creeper is a great vehicle to do it with. It totally works with Jack too, and sets the stage for a great tale of "did I / didn't I". Great setting of mood. Just a really neat page that kicks off the week quite nicely.
ReplyDeleteIf this is a a reference to Fight Club, I missed it entirely since I haven't seen Fight Club. As it stands, I see it as difficult to WANT to follow.
ReplyDelete