Dickhead

DICKHEAD

Pg1

SCENE 1 INT BEDROOM DAY

A man in his thirties lies sleeping in bed. His clock radio alarm goes off. The time is two thirty in the afternoon. On the radio a storyteller is reading from a novel.

STORYTELLER

Henry Castle lay in bed. He’d been finding it harder and harder to get up. What was the point he kept telling him self. His sanity payments that he received from the government weren’t enough to go out and do anything with. All his friends were at work at the New Labour Camp. His ex girlfriend was going to get the last laugh he told himself as he stirred and thought about breakfast.

HENRY CASTLE stirs, then gets up suddenly.

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SCENE 2 INT KITCHEN DAY

Henry makes porridge.

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SCENE 3 INT LIVING ROOM DAY

Henry eats his porridge on a tray while he watches the television news.

NEWSREADER

The government are saying today that they intend to cut back on sanity payments and help people get back to work in the New Labour Camps.

In further news, security forces have announced a clamp down on activities by gorilla filmmakers.

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SCENE 4 INT HALLWAY DAY

Henry picks up his post. He opens one item, a card with a picture of a gorilla saying happy birthday on the front.

HENRY

But it’s not my birthday…

SCENE 4 CONT.

When he opens the card it plays ‘Salute to the Hauer’. Inside it is blank apart from a telephone number.

HENRY

Strange…

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SCENE 5 INT BEDROOM DAY

Henry sits on the edge of the bed. The radio is still playing. He picks up the phone.

STORYTELLER

Henry thought about weather to ring this number. It was clearly from the gorilla film makers front. This was a step. A step he wasn’t sure that he was ready to take. What the hell, he thought. I’ve come to the end of the road anyway.

Henry dials the number.

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SCENE 6 INT GORILLA FILMAKERS OFFICE DAY

GORILLA SECRETARY

Hello Gorilla Film Makers Front. Natalie 7 speaking. I see Mr Castle. You’ve received our birthday card. Aha. Hm hm. I think if you look you’ll see that there’s a crew already there. That’s right they’ve been filming you all day. It’s alright it’s perfectly normal. No problem. Thank you. Have a good day.

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SCENE 7 INT BEDROOM DAY

STORYTELLER

Henry Castle looked around to see that indeed there were gorilla film makers in his bed room.

Henry looks around and sees that indeed there are two gorilla film makers in his room.

SCENE 8 CONT

HENRY

I’ll be damned.

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SCENE 9 INT KITCHEN DAY

Henry is being interviewed

GORILLA DIRECTOR

So how does it feel?

HENRY

I’m just a bit confused.

GORILLA DIRECTOR

Why?

HENRY

Cos I never asked to join the Gorilla Film Makers Front. I mean I don’t mind cos I didn’t have anything better to do with my life. But I don’t see why you chose me.

GORILLA DIRECTOR

You’ll find that you chose yourself.

HENRY

What do you mean?

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SCENE 10 INT LIVING ROOM DAY

Henry is pacing up and down with a Dictaphone.

HENRY

Henry Castle began to realise increasingly that he in fact was the leader of the Gorilla Film Makers Front, the militant wing of the Chimps Tea Party.

How long had this been going on. How had he so cauterised his brain so as to forget his leadership of this rebel organisation. Why was he subjecting himself to this documentary. Or was it fiction?

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SCENE 11 INT BEDROOM DAY

Henry sits on the bed with the phone in his lap. He picks up the receiver and dials.

HENRY

Hi Sally. It’s me Henry. How are you? OK look, I just wanted to say sorry that I haven’t been in touch it’s just that I’ve been leading this group without knowing it… Go fuck myself? Ok.

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SCENE 12 INT LIVING ROOM DAY

Henry is pacing up and down with a Dictaphone again.

HENRY

So Henry decided there was only one way to make up to Sally and that meant doing exactly as she said. He was going to have to fuck himself. He was going to have to build a replicant, a skin job of himself and have sex with it.

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SCENE 13 INT BEDROOM EVE

Henry has sex with himself.

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SCENE 14 INT KITCHEN EVE

Henry is being interviewed.

GORILLA DIRECTOR

So how was it for you?

HENRY

Kind of disappointing. In fact it was the worst sex I’ve ever had. Really not a turn on. I mean I’ve had sex with replicants before. I admit it! But with myself, well it was just a massive let down.

GORILLA DIRECTOR

Well they say familiarity breeds contempt

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SCENE 15 INT BATHROOM DAY

A nun in a gorilla mask is in the shower.

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SCENE 16 INT BEDROOM DAY

Henry wakes with a start and finds an origami nun by his bed

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SCENE 17 INT STUDY DAY

In big armchair SALLY reads out loud from a book.

SALLY

CHAPTER 1 ‘What are you listening to the radio 4’

Henry Castle sat listening to radio 4. They were reassessing the French Revolution. Let them eat cake, he thought. Such glibness would get him nowhere. He had to penetrate deeper. There was that innuendo again. Penetrate. Deeper. Big ideas. Big. Make a big splash. He thought back to the mockers when he was busy loosing his mind. Did he have it back now that he was leading the G.F.M.F? What had he done to his psychological DNA to make himself forget what it was that he was doing and how he was doing it. Somehow he must have burned away memories while at the same time implanting a kind of hypnotic suggestion that lead him safely to this particular point. Fuck, he thought. The piece de resistance was that somehow he had avoided the worst of the humiliations that he could have faced. They were all laughing as he fell from grace, now they had egg on their face. He liked to rhyme, was that a crime. He got up and started pacing up and down the living room. Ideas were swirling round his head and before long he had to lie down as his head was spinning. Was he having a heart attack he wondered. He could barely breathe but it was not like an elephant sat on her chest. Catching his breath, he rolled over onto his side and looked in the small dictionary that he had left by the side of the couch.

CLONE: n. a group of plants or organisms produced asexually from one ancestor. – v. to propagate or become propagated as a clone.

So this was what God or Buddha or the International Conspiracy was trying to tell him. That he was a clone. No not that. Deeper. That the story he was living was cloned. Yes. But cloned from what. He decided to ring Sally. Leave me alone dickhead! She said. And hung up. Dickhead. With a

SCENE 17 CONT

SALLY

capital D. Yeah I guess that must be my name if Sally says so. But what does that name mean?

SCENE 18 INT LIVING ROOM EVE

It is dark and the room is lit by moonlight. Henry rolls over and speaks into a Dictaphone.

HENRY

Dickhead woke in the dark. He had drifted off. The heating had come on and there were beads of sweat on his forehead.

The doorbell rings. Henry sits up abruptly.

SCENE 19 INT HALL EVE

Henry opens the door and sees his friend GRIFFIN. Griffin is tall, with floppy hair and a trench coat.

GRIFFIN

I’ve found a piece of the shaft of mjilnor.

HENRY

You’d better come in.

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SCENE 20 INT KITCHEN EVE

Griffin is nervously rolling a cigarette

GRIFFIN

I found it washed up on a beach in Whitby.

HENRY

Lets see it then.

Griffin nervously removes a piece of pretty ordinary looking driftwood from his pocket. Henry speaks into the Dictaphone.

HENRY

Dickhead was worried that his friend was having another psychotic episode. This was clearly not the shaft of the hammer of Thor. This was

SCENE 20 CONT

HENRY

just like the time he called round with an empty tin can and told him that he’d found the holy grail.

GRIFFIN

I see that you’re trapped in a Philip K Dick novel again.

HENRY

Philip K…You mean that this has happened before? Dickhead!

GRIFFIN

Steady on!

HENRY

No not you! Me! Sally called me Dickhead and I’ve been trying to figure out what she meant! Now I know!

GRIFFIN

Im so pleased for you!

Griffin grabs him by the shoulders and gives him an encouraging little shake.

HENRY

Henry, sorry, Dickhead could now see that his friend Griffin was not at all psychotic but in fact had a very deep insight into the nature of reality. So maybe this was the shaft of Mjilnor. Did you keep the Holy Grail Griffin?

GRIFFIN

Oh that. No I wasn’t taking my medication when I thought that I’d found that. It was just a tin can.

HENRY

Are you taking your medication now.

Griffin puts his finger to his lips and makes a shh sound. And then giggles.

HENRY

Do you want some fish and chips?

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SCENE 21 EXT LIVING ROOM EVE

Henry and Griffin sit eating fish and chips.

GRIFFIN

So what are you going to do?

HENRY

Well that depends…

GRIFFIN

Go on.

HENRY

Well that depends on whether or not you’ll lend me the shaft of Mjilnor.

GRIFFIN

What do I get in return?

HENRY

Edwina’s number?

GRIFFIN

Seriously!

He licks his fingers and holds his hand out to shook. Henry shakes it. Henry takes out a pen and scribbles a number on it. Griffin rubs his hands together. Henry passes Griffin the number and Griffin in turn passes the piece of driftwood to Henry.

GRIFFIN

Thank you my friend you don’t know how much this means to me.

HENRY

Oh I do. Anyway it was rude of me to try keep her to myself and she doesn’t want me anyway. Maybe you’ll do better. Dickhead wondered at the naivite of his friend. Everyone in town knew that Edwina had been out, proud and fighting for at least a year now. Ho hum too late to go back on the deal.

GRIFFIN

You’ll have to figure out the incantation to make it turn into Mjilnor. Anyway I’m off to find a pay phone.

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SCENE 22 INT BEDROOM EVE

Henry sits at his desk

HENRY

The marshall’s marionette and the mariners majoram The platonic platoon eat a platter of platypus. Normalize the norseman from the northeast of Northumbria.

The shaft turns into a hammer

HENRY

Dickhead wondered how he knew this icantation then realised it was pretty obvious really.

MJILNOR

Why do you importune so, of an ancient gods device?

HENRY

I want to know what’s going on. Why is all this happening to me.

MJILNOR

Well that’s a tricky question. Personally I’m pretty sceptical that any of this is happening at all. If you look at modern physics it will show pretty clearly that what we consider existence is really an illusion.

HENRY

Really? What can I do about it?

MJILNOR

Nothing really. Just hold onto your hat.

HENRY

Hold onto my hat.

MJILNOR

Sure. It can get windy. That’s what happened to Thor. Very sad.

HENRY

Are you going to stick around?

MJILNOR

I might. You look like you need my help.

SCENE 22 CONT

HENRY

Thanks. What about Sally? I’m I going to get back with her?

MJILNOR

Sorry. I think you really screwed that one up.

HENRY

Will there be someone else.

MJILNOR

Try to spend more time in the shower, sure why not. Now leave me alone for a while I’m watching a saga.

HENRY

Dickhead sat in silence as the credits rolled.

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