AustinvilleStorylineJesus

"A Fine Day in Austinville"

Storyline #2: Jesus Takes a Day Off

Jesus Takes a Day Off: Jesus, tired of working at what is essentially God's IT center, escapes to Austin for a day of relaxation. Unfortunately, this was not an approved absence, and he has to stay one step ahead of the forces of Heaven.

Status: "Josh & Mo" is written. "Jesus in Jail" seems like the next logical step. Still a few holes (how does Jesus get arrested?), but we've got more scenes we can write. (At the very least, "Jesus eludes the heavenly authorities" will get us some plot mileage.)

Protagonist

(Why is it immediately apparent that this character is different from all other characters?)

• Kind of a hippie.1

  • Possibly "domesticated hippie": wears tie dye and birks/tevas, but is reasonably well-groomed and holds down a "steady job" as it were -- see your local software development company for an example. Probably bikes to work.

• Not unfriendly, but obviously frustrated and frazzled.

  • We can sense that his considerable 'cool' is being met with considerable adversity.

Scenes

1. Jesus appears in a confessional booth.

   • We can keep this 'pocketed' until we/if we ever get the location.

2. Jesus runs into Mohammed.

   • Mohammed is also taking a day off (although his leave is authorized).
   • They compare notes and commiserate.
   • Mohammed sympathises with the need to take some downtime, but encourages Jesus to go back to work.
   • Jesus argues that it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission these days.
   • Mohammed eventually gives up and wishes him luck. "If you get busted, I never saw you, dude."

3. Jesus, pursued by angels, seeks temporary refuge in a record shop.

   • Note that we can extend the "Jesus pursuit" to several scenes if need be.

4. Jesus tries to attend a movie.

   • Throw in a quick reference to The Passion of the Christ.
   • Jesus gets caught up in an argument with a fundamentalist protestor.
   • He goes for a walk to clear his head.

5. Jesus gets in trouble with the cops.

   • How?

     • Giving away loaves and fishes?
     • Wrongly accused of the office robbery?
   • Ideally, this is separate from the fundie argument

6. Jesus has to call on God to get him out of jail.

   • Jesus has to convince God not to leave him (Jesus) in jail 'to teach him a lesson'.
   • ... and to just post bail, not destroy the Earth in a cataclysmic flood.

Questions

• Why does Jesus come to Austin to relax?

  • Note that this could give Jesus a positive objective (as opposed to the negative one of 'just being left alone').
  • It needn't be any gigantic objective -- maybe he just wants to spend a day watching movies at the Alamo.

  • There's a special screening at the Drafthouse that night -- one night only -- and Jesus decided he might as well take the whole day.

    • "But Linklater is doing a Q&A!"

    • He never does get to the screening.

      • On account of the protestor-fundie, and the later arrest.

• In the Jesus-and-Mohammed scene, what are the characters' conflicting objectives?

  • (KLK) In my head, the start to the scene was Jesus trying to get a cup of coffee, and Mohammed showing up as well by accident. "Josh? Hey! What're you doing here?" "Ssh! Ssh! Keep your voice down!" "What? Can't a guy say hi to --" "Mo, SHUT UP."

    • That is absolutely a great start to the scene, but I don't think they can go for three minutes like that. If we give them some further conflict, then the rest of the scene should write itself.

  • Mohammed is the only one who knows that Jesus is in Austin (having recommended the 'vacation spot' to him a few years back).

    • He tries to convince Jesus to 'turn himself in'.

• What does the fundamentalist at the movie theater want from Jesus?

  • "'Scuse me, mister, could you sign this petition?"

  • Insert whacked-out fundie petition subject here. (E.g. "We're trying to eliminate all mentions of 'birds' and 'bees' from the elementary school curriculum.")

    • And we can do a slow reveal of just how whacked-out the idea is.
    • We want a Big List of possible whacked-out ideas for the petition.

• What does Jesus get arrested for?

  • I know we'd like to involve this in Ted's storyline somehow (or maybe with the LARPers), but let's at least have a 'backup plan' where Jesus gets arrested for something simple and plot-isolated.
  • Drunk & disorderly?
  • A scuffle with the fundamentalist?

  • Maybe Jesus meets someone of the "Jesus wants you to save money! Jesus wants you to be rich!" type (as Bob proposed, faith-based accounting, not too far off from faith-based weight loss -- "Jesus wants you to be thin and healthy!" -- and the like). Which could lead to a scuffle and some "I threw you people out of the temple in Jerusalem 2000 years ago, you idiot!"

    • Again, it might be cooler if we run this scene before we reveal that Jesus is Jesus.
    • Possibly relate this to the burglary goals in Ted's storyline?
  • Y'know, I'm starting to think that we can just make the fundie scene about "Jesus fails to attend his movie" -- the result is not "Jesus gets arrested" but more "Jesus is pissed off". (It'd make the fundie scene so much easier to write.) We can leave a hole for "how Jesus gets arrested" and fill it in with a separate scene.

• What are Jesus's expletives?

  • Obviously he's not going to say "goddammit" or anything like that; probably won't use other four-letter words either. But what would he use?
  • Curse words in Aramaic?
  • Odd, provincial-sounding constructions?
  • He could just say "goddammit", except it's always followed by the ominous sound of thunder.

• Could we have Jesus perform some minor miracle and then have to cover for it?

  • This could link with either the Ted storyline or the Haunted House storyline -- in the case of the latter, Jesus could tell the ghost to go away.

• Could we add some scenes where Jesus is clearly on the run from the forces'o'heaven?

  • Oooh! Oooh! How about having the Angels and Archangels appear as Matrix-esque agents? (Or would that be too silly?) "Joshua bin Joseph, there you are. We've been ... looking for you."

    • Probably easier to put the angel on the phone -- lower casting requirement, and we can reveal the angels later on.

Scene #1 - Josh & Mo - Done.

Scene #2 - Jesus in Jail.

Jesus is given a phone call to try and make bail. He grudgingly calls upon God.

• We can paper over why Jesus elects to use a phone in this situation.
• This is before we know that Jesus is Jesus.
• The lazzi of the scene: Jesus is just trying to get God to get him out of jail and nothing more.

• Something to ponder on: but what else is going on here, emotionally?

  • It's about convincing God that this wasn't any sort of emotional affront to Him. Instead, it was about a chance to unwind by experiencing the real world in a way that God cannot.

Scene #X - Jesus vs. the Fundie Accountant

• En route to the Linklater film and Q&A, Jesus spies a flyer: "Getting Rich With the Lord", a seminar
• Coincidentally, the seminar-giver happens to walk by.

• Jesus loses his shit.

  • Very "throwing the money changers out of the temple" moment.
  • "Do you think I went through all that for this? What is wrong with you people? Was it not enough for you stupid little jerks to take my message about compassion and forgiveness and turn it into a DEATH CULT?!"
• Mike could try to break up the fight.
• Scene ends w/ Jesus fleeing cops.

Scene #X + 1 - Jesus and Agent Gabriel, Part 1

• Fleeing cops, Jesus tries to hide and is finally spotted by Agent Gabriel.
• "Mr Christ, there you are."
• "Will you stop calling me Mr Christ?" "What would you prefer? Yeshua bin Yosef? Emmanuel?" "Just ... call me Josh, all right?"
• Flees
• Is caught by cops
• (This one obviously needs to be fleshed out more to justify it being a separate scene.)

A note on Agent Gabriel: s/he can be manifested as an electronically distorted voice-over on Jesus's cellphone in earlier scenes (possibly even in this one -- we could save hir actual appearance until the very end). This way, Gabriel's voice does not necessarily have to be that of the person who is cast as hir manifestation. FWIW, I'd like Gabriel to be androgynous, in keeping with Pratchett and Gaiman's observation that angels are sexless unless they really want to make an effort.

Scene # X + 2 - Jesus and Agent Gabriel, Part 2

• In jail, Jesus is bailed out.
• Is horrified to find that Gabriel has shown up to hand-deliver the bail.
• Gabriel is surprisingly sympathetic despite initial Agent Smith-ness.
• Wants to know why Jesus came to Austin.
• "Linklater was doing a Q&A"
• Something about art, and how that makes humanity precious. This is terribly feel-good of me, but I have this idea that there's something about humanity that Jesus just likes, having been one of us, that the angels don't get.
• Gabriel wants to know more.
• It's late, they've missed the Q&A, but they can still catch the midnight movie at the Alamo.

Footnotes

1 I know this isn't the direction you were thinking, but what if we go ahead and make Jesus a bit of a hippie? This would distinguish him from the other characters, and provides the viewers with an Austin stereotype that they expect to see.