Monday 15 February 2016

The Ed Wood Investigative Method.




(MULDER's apartment. Late evening. MULDER is lying on his couch watching "Plan Nine From Outer Space" on TV, one of the first cheesy sci-fi films made. He speaks the lines along with the actors. He obviously knows the movie very well.)

MULDER AND TV: Well, as long as they can think we'll have our problems. But those whom we are using cannot think they are the dead brought to assimilated life by our electrode...

(Someone knocks at the door.)

MULDER: It's open.

(SCULLY enters.)

MULDER AND TV: You know, it's an interesting thing when you consider the earth people who can think... ...

(MULDER sits up and makes room for SCULLY to sit on the arm of the couch beside him. The movie continues.)

TV: ... are so frightened by those who cannot be dead.

MULDER: Couldn't sleep either, huh?

SCULLY: Plan 9 From Outer Space?

MULDER: Yeah. It's the Ed Wood investigative method. 

This movie is so profoundly bad in such a childlike way that it hypnotizes my conscious critical mind and frees up my right brain to make associo-poetic leaps and I started flashing on Hoffman and O'Fallon. 

How there's this archetypal relationship like Hoffman's Jesus to O'Fallon's Judas or Hoffman's Jesus to O'Fallon's Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor, or Hoffman's Jesus to O'Fallon's St. Paul.

SCULLY: How about Hoffman's Roadrunner to O'Fallon's Wile E. Coyote?

(She grins and he laughs. On the screen, a body is rising out of the ground.)

SCULLY: Mulder...

MULDER: Yeah?

SCULLY: Do you think it's at all possible that Hoffman is really Jesus Christ?

MULDER: Are you making fun of me?

SCULLY: No.

MULDER: Well, no, I don't. But crazy people can be very persuasive.

SCULLY: Well, yes, I know that.

(They both smile as MULDER takes the hit.)

SCULLY: Maybe true faith is really a form of insanity.

MULDER: Are you directing that at me?

SCULLY: (emphatically) No. I'm directing it at myself and at Ed Wood.

MULDER: Well, you know, even a broken clock is right 730 times a year.

(They watch the movie. On the screen, a zombie woman walks toward the camera.)

SCULLY: How...?

MULDER: (answering the question before she asks) 42.

SCULLY: You've seen this movie 42 times?

MULDER: Yes.

SCULLY: Doesn't that make you sad? It makes me sad.

(They sit quietly for a moment as the movie continues. Two men are looking at a map.)

ACTOR 1: You ever been to Hollywood?

ACTOR 2: Oh, a couple of times a few years ago.

ACTOR 1: You're going to be there in the morning. Just a few minutes from Hollywood in the town of San Fernando reports have come in of saucers flying so low...

MULDER: You know, Scully, we've got four weeks probation vacation and nothing to do and Wayne Federman's invited us out to L.A. to watch his movie being filmed and God knows I could use a little sunshine.

(She looks up at him. He smiles.)

MULDER: Scully...

(On the screen, a flying saucer wobbles by.)

SCULLY: (resigned) California, here we come.

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