[Quick Summary: In his search for the Ultimate Truth, a scientist becomes obsessed with a little known drug that brings his altered state of consciousness into reality.]
I had difficulty getting my mind around this script. The story is odd:
- The ambivalent scientist agrees to marry another scientist, who loves him.
- She accepts that he's not sure what love is. He says it's the only way to keep her.
- Seven years and two kids later, they divorce.
- She still loves him, but he sees his life as a sham.
- He leaves her and the kids to search for Self.
- He finds a Mexican hallucinogen that regresses his mind.
- He travels through time and space to his past human origins.
- He takes the hallucinogen home for research and unleashes results so scary that his colleagues and ex-wife try to intervene.
However, my interest in these characters did not diminish despite other distractions.*
Why? I think it's because Paddy Chayefsky knew how to wield words to build clear emotions. In the scene below, he used dialogue + rhythm = feels like bursting out.
A few suggestions as you read:
- Don't be afraid of the length and dense black print.
- Try skimming for content. Focus on HOW he says the words, not WHAT.
- Notice that each paragraph is actually one thought.
- Notice the rhythm is fast, unfettered.
- Each thought (one per paragraph) are verbose BIG ideas + Fast rhythm = Three Big Ideas squashed together in a small space makes it feel like an explosion.
Prior to the scene below:
- Jessup, the protagonist, has just announced to his friend Rosenberg that he is divorcing Emily.
- Jessup then suggests all his friends go to dinner with him and Emily.
ex. "INT. DOM'S RESTAURANT
...If we can make anything out of all this esoteric jabber, it will be Jessup's discourse to Sylvia Rosenberg, sitting at his right. Jessup, who is having a lot more wine than he usually does, is loaded and talking loudly -
JESSUP (to Sylvia Rosenberg): -- As a matter of act, the year I spent in India was disappointing. No matter how you slice it, yoga is still a state-specific technology operating in the service of a n a priori belief system, not much different from other trance-inducing techniques. Of course, the breathing exercises are effective as hell. The breathing becomes an entity in itself, an actual state of consciousness in its own right, so that your body breathing becomes the embodiment of your breath. But it's still a renunciatory technique to achieve a predetermined trance state, what the zen people call an isness, a very pure narcissism, Freud's oceanic feeling. What dignifies the yogic practices is that the belief system itself is not truly religious. There is no Buddhist god per se. It is the Self, the individual Mind, that contains immortality and ultimate truth -
EMILY (interrupting her own colloquy to shout from her end of the table): What the hell's not religious about that? You've simply replaced God with the Original Self!
JESSUP (shouts back): Yes, but we've localized it! At least, we know where the Self is! It's in our own minds! (he stands, not too sturdily) It's a form of human energy! Our atoms are six billion years old! We've got six billion years of memory in our minds! Hell, our hydrogen atoms are even older! (he has begun to weave a bit in and out of his place at the table) Memory is energy! It doesn't disappear! It's still in there! (he wheels to Rosenberg, ignoring the nervous interest he is causing at neighboring tables) There's a physiological pathway to our earlier consciousnesses! There has to be! And I'm telling you it's in the goddamned limbic system! -
PARRISH (roaring happily): Jessup, you are a whacko!
JESSUP: What's whacko about it, Mason? I'm a man in search of his true self. How archtypically American can you get? Everybody's looking for their true selves. We're all trying to fulfill ourselves, understand ourselves, get in touch with ourselves, face the reality of ourselves, explore ourselves, expand ourselves. Ever since we dispensed with God, we've got nothing but ourselves to explain this meaningless horror of life. Well, I think that true self, the original self, that first self is a real, mensurate, quantifiable thing, tangible and incarnate, and I'm going to find the fucker -"
WHAT I'VE LEARNED: I was impressed that Jessup's emotional life was so strong that I stayed interested, despite the copious scientific gobblety-gook.
Altered States (1980)(undated 1978 draft)
by Paddy Chayefsky
Based on his novel.
* ex. Length (141 pgs.), dense narrative, long scientific exposition, etc.
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