Maybe we're not so different after all. The past didn't mean anything to me...and the future doesn't mean anything to you. If it did...maybe there might be one for you and your son...and for me and my father... -- Zoom addresses his grandfather Gato |
This Dance Can Kill is a Bahia-Online/Pardal spec screenplay ostensibly built on capoeira and its roots, but in a deeper sense what this project is really built on is the tension invoked by a clash between a disposable modern-day culture and an older culture rooted in bedrock family values. And no, these aren't the so-called family "values" touted by present-day American conservative groups...the possessors of these family values arrived naked and chained within the holds of the negreiros arriving in Bahia from ports-of-embarkation on the far side of the Atlantic Ocean. These family values meant survival with dignity in a new world where both had to be fought for. These are real values.
A couple of things... this is a feature-length movie, set between New York City and Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. It was written keeping in mind Bertrand Russell's dictum that serious doesn't necessarily have to mean solemn (Lord Russell evinced Mozart as an example...I evince horny old boxing promotor Sonny Greene). The latter is important by way of saying that a movie set in earnestness doesn't have to be stodgy and boring... far from it and don't worry... This Dance Can Kill includes plenty of action -- asskicking and dancing and other good stuff -- to a pumping soundtrack moving from hip-hop to Johnny Wakelin & the Kinshasa Band's Black Superman - Muhammad Ali (original version and Rhakeem's remix) to hard-hittin' riddems right off the plantations of Bahia. Now...
The crux of the matter here is the introduction of deeply Bahian themes (and the deepest themes of any society are universal, aren't they?) into the consciousness of the public-at-large; any serious interest on the part of anybody wanting to be on the cusp of things is welcome. So...
The first minute-and-a-half of the opening is below, followed by the very end of the screenplay, followed by a link to the script in its entirety. And...
At that very end of the screenplay...as the final, celebratory scene is taking place on Harlem's 125th Street, Timbalada (or a Timbalada-like Carnival drumming/music ensemble) parades, with people in windows, on fire escapes, in the streets of course...all dancing and all hell breaking loose (in the very best sense)...the drummers/musicians playing some incarnation of a truly rousing Bahian anthem which can be heard by clicking below...
(If you'd care to know anything about the curious path this great song took into the public light, that's here.)
And while I'm on the subject, here's the opening theme (Ony Sarue, from Milton Nascimento's Missa dos Quilombos), brought in after the cut from Bahia to Madison Square Garden and played (while credits run) to a two-dimensional backdrop montage of basketball players interspersing capoeira moves into the more conventional moves of the game (and yeah, I know they say that writers aren't supposed to interject themselves into the director's territory...but until there's a director I'll do all the interjecting I want)...
Logline: Smartass and reluctant would-be all-American homeboy is forced to take up the ancient fighting art of his African slave ancestors and make a stand on the streets of New York City.
A title burns in: “DYNASTY” FADE TO BLACK The screen remains unlit. In the darkness, the stroked drone of a lone berimbau, primitive and primal... A drum joins in, then another, and another, then handclapping and singing, all rising in volume and intensity until the darkened theater ROCKS TO A FULL COURT PRESS OF MUSIC AND PERCUSSION... LIGHT! In a dirt clearing fringed by palms and banana trees, TWO LITHE YOUNG MEN kick, flip, gyre, and cartwheel around one another in a remarkable display of acrobatic prowess. They, like their companions who are providing the music we hear, wear only the roughest cotton pants tied with rope at the waist and reaching to just below the knees. Super on Screen: AFRICAN SLAVES ON A SUGARCANE PLANTATION IN BAHIA, BRAZIL, SOMETIME DURING THE 19th CENTURY As the men continue to move another sound can be heard developing - almost imperceptible at first - a distant staccato counterpoint to the drumming. It evolves into POUNDING HOOVES drawing closer and closer. The slaves fall still and quiet... IN A RUSH THEIR PERIMETER IS BROKEN; armed men riding in, reining up snorting, stamping charges with clearly branded haunches: CIRCLE CB A tense standoff... CRACK! A truncheon falls across the side of one slave's head. He crumples to the ground and another, the BERIMBAU PLAYER, stoops to help him. CRACK! A whip reaches out and lashes this man's back. Slowly, almost majestically, the man rises and turns to face his tormentor head-on. His berimbau lays in the dust. The long bow has been carved into a series of heads, one atop another. The calabash is emblazoned with lightning strokes. ANOTHER LASH OF THE WHIP -- but this time it's caught and held taut by the Slave's powerful arm. He stares unflinchingly into the eyes of the Overseer. Without his eyes deviating he says under his breath, but loud enough for his compatriots to hear:
The others repeat it to themselves. Then a cry!
PUNCHING ONE FIST DEFIANTLY INTO THE AIR, the Ancestor pulls mightily with the other, bringing the Overseer down to a hard fall in the dust. The slaves are on the offensive now -- dancing like Baryshnikovs and hitting like Kalashnikovs -- whirling, gyring, cartwheeling and kicking in a mortal version of what they had been practicing amongst themselves just moments before. One of the intrepid stretches his hands overhead and LEAPS for a man on horseback. He rises in SLO-MO... SMASH CUT TO: INT. ARENA - NIGHT À LA 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY THE LEAPING MAN BECOMES A BASKETBALL PLAYER GOING UP FOR A SLAM DUNK... WHOOSH! The ball is rammed through the net. Super on Screen: MADISON SQUARE GARDEN THE CROWD stands up and goes wild. FIND a MIDDLE-AGED MAN and a TEENAGER side-by-side, wearing identical Knicks caps. These are JOE (who speaks with a thick accent) and his son ZOOM (who is as American as sweet potato pie). The boy’s clenched fist is rammed into the air. * * * Babalu wonders out loud:
The Old Crone from the apartment over the Harlem House of Saints is standing next to her.
And the camera pulls up, back and away from the celebration on 125th Street. It skims with lightning velocity over sea and jungle, flying, until it arrives in one of the favelas of Salvador, Bahia. There's a celebration there too, on a much smaller scale. An old radio is propped in the window of one of the shantytown houses, and in the dirt street out front the kids are dancing and playing -- under the contented Mona Lisa smile of Madalena. The music is the same. The camera pulls back again, up, up, and away into the sky, everything diminishing below in the distance, the camera moving higher and higher and further and further out until we can see the Earth itself, shining blue, hanging in the blackness of space... Super on Screen: WE ALL HAVE CHAINS TO BREAK FADE OUT THE END THIS DANCE CAN KILL (a Final Draft version is available if you want to e-mail me) WGA Registered |
Thank you!
Documentary
I'm currently working on another script -- a documentary -- on the beautiful culture of the Bahian Recôncavo, treating a kaleidoscope of moving roots music, musicians, dance, capoeira, and survival. My dream is to see repository-of-deep-culture Taj Mahal doing the narration. (I've already suggested it to him and he hasn't said no...)
Channelin'
the Ancestors
Final Round: Feature Addendum
A cultural touchpoint rises in THIS DANCE CAN KILL between capoeira and the sweet science (boxing)...
Rhakeem turns to Sonny:
Another shrug.
Rhakeem pulls up an old 45 rpm vinyl and holds it aloft:
He throws it on the turntable and lowers the tonearm. A song from an era of different technical recording values fills the store, Johnny Wakelin & The Kinshasa Band's -- BLACK SUPERMAN - MUHAMMAD ALI |
Greater Together
(aren't we all?) - Ali & Louis
