FADE IN

EXT. BEVERLY HILLS - AFTERNOON - 2003

A massive, 1930’s stone and white stucco French Normandy-style home built by famed architect Wallace Neff, once owned by two-time Academy Award-winning actor Fredric March and his wife (from 1927 until his death in 1975) actress Florence Eldridge.

‘Hey, Jess. Will you bring me a diet Coke… Thaaaanks.’

INT.

Jessica hears the woman’s voice from over her laptop computer in the otherwise empty, renovated concrete and steel kitchen and begins her task. She brings a glass of hissing soda and a felt pad. She puts the felt pad and the glass beside the woman’s tanned, bare feet on the glass coffee table, its black, inverted, itsy-bitsy spidering legs visible beneath it. The table has a name, but she forgets it. She looks at the man and the woman. The woman carefully studies her hands, her nails, then her legs, turning and flexing the different parts. Then her nails, again. The woman is stoned from a joint still lit in one of those old, beanbag ashtrays that sits next to her on the awkward leather couch. The couch has a name, too. the woman adjusts her body, unable to find a comfortable position, and looks into the television screen that’s as wide as a car winshield, mounted on the wall. A recent movie about a boy robot is in progress.

Behind the couch, across the room, the man stares, with equal purpose, into a limestone block-sized tome devoted to the work of a famous architectural photographer, which he cradles with the whole of his muscled left arm, scanning page after page of graceful black and white shapes of Southern California homes. He puts himself in the pictures and absorbs them. Following the lines, the repetitions. There is an appealing geometry he believes himself to understand. He is lost and happy, for a moment, in his endless, formless thoughts. He reads the bold font captions. Richard Nutra, Robert Skinner, Albert C. Martin, Pierre Koenig, Gregory Ain, Rudolph Schindler. Case Study House #8, Palm Springs, Laurel Canyon, San Diego. Cities, locations, years, all have equal weight. He tries to store-away as many of them as he can. The light in the room shifts slightly, and he moves, past the cup-shaped chair with the frame of stained black oak and a seat upholstered in linen, nearer to a sun beam falling in a window, allowing the heavy pages to be illuminated, once more.

‘These are really incredible. We should have him take some pictures of the house. Of us, in the house.’

The woman has heard the man talk about his books and buildings many times before. It was a quality for so long she found appealing in him, but, now, quite the opposite. Now it is a reminder of how little else there is to say.

‘Did you hear me?’

‘Hmmmm? What’s that, baby? Take some pictures of what?’

‘We should have this guy, or Annie, or Steven, photograph us, in one of these houses.’

‘You mean like posed pictures?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Of just us?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why?’

“I don’t know. Shit. It’s just an idea.’

‘For a magazine?’

‘Maybe for a magazine.’

‘Ugggh, honey. isn’t that kind of… cheesy? I hate those staged photographs of us. They’re so fake. Besides, you don’t even like regular pictures in the house. Look around. It’s all your modern art stuff, and furniture we can’t sit in.’

The last comment is a barb. Modern design and architecture is not just a passing hobby, but his personal passion, as much a part of him as his nose or mouth, and, thusly, is reflected in every aspect of the couple’s newly renovated home. He is hurt. He does like photographs.

‘Jesus, look… it’s just- it’s not cheesy, Jen. This guy is a legendary architectural photographer. He’s taken literally thousands of pictures of homes in California. He’s a master. a genius. Like Frank.’

‘Oooh… Okay. Okay. I’m sorry, baby… I know how you like your architecture stuff. Okay. We’ll do that… Okay?’

The woman turns around and focuses again on the television on the wall. She is stoned and right back in the movie. Her hand still holding the remote control. Robots that look like humans talk to each other on the screen.

‘I’ve never been with Mecha.’ ‘That makes two of us.’

The man continues looking at her. at the back of her head. her hair. the same hair. His idea has been clipped. slighted. ‘This is marriage’ he thinks. ‘This is what I signed up for.’ An unidentifiable malaise pushes inside his abdomen, again. A cloud inches it’s way past the sun and the enormous room momentarily loses the bright California day that was spilling in through the high set windows and everything dims into shadow. The television gets brighter and louder. The movie’s futuristic palette flashes against every wall, filling the room. He is no longer aware of his facial expression and his thoughts circle around slowly and grind into nothing. Into something. into nothing. Into something.

FADE TO BLACK