HALLOWEEN OVERCOMMERCIALIZED
Script/Idea: West/West
This Draft: 6-25-08 Later (JK)
NOTES: Table read notes. Work on Duncan.
Funfact: Halloween spending is around $5 billion.
Lauralee -- Blames the stores. Talks about the children.
Leslie -- Blames each of us. Takes the religious view.
Halloween is sacred. Our failure to respect Halloween points
to bigger problems in society -- our lack of morality.
Robert Haige -- knows a lot of specific facts about ancient
rites. Takes an academic approach. Wants to be open to
diverse views of halloween. It shouldn't be rammed down
anyone's throat. He believes in ghouls imself.
Duncan -- fatalistic. America is too degraded to ever get the
real Halloween back.
INT. ITK SET
HOST
Hello, I'm sitting in for Clifford
Banes, who is going through a rough
patch.
ALTERNATE:
HOST (CONT'D)
Hello, I'm sitting in for Clifford
Banes, who is going through a bit
of a rough patch.
FOOTAGE: All sorts of halloween footage.
HOST (CONT'D)
The Halloween season is upon us
once again. But with Americans
spending an estimated fifty-four
billion dollars on the holiday this
year, many lament that we've lost
sight of the true meaning of
Halloween. Are they right?
LESLIE
Absolutely. Americans have
forgotten what Halloween is really
about: Appeasing evil spirits to
ward off sickness and ensure a
bountiful harvest.
Everyone agrees.
LAURALEE
Last Halloween I asked my nephew
"Do you know why you wear a
costume?" and he said: "to have fun
and get candy."
HOST
That's so sad.
LAURALEE
He didn't even know it was to
protect his virgin spirit from the
wretched dead who walk the earth
one night a year to steal souls.
LESLIE
In my own neighborhood, I've seen
jack-o-lanterns with smiles carved
into them. Not a grotesque smile,
an actual smile.
Everyone agrees that's horrible.
ROBERT
That won't keep banshees off your
property.
HOST
It won't. Banshees will hover
right by it.
DUNCAN
Well, times have changed. Some
people just don't put as much
emphasis on frightening away demons
-- and that's their right.
LAURALEE
Frightening away demons is the
reason for the season.
LESLIE
Well, I certainly agree with you,
Lauralee, but some people are bent
on taking the "Hallow" out of
"Halloween."
DUNCAN
Listen, I'm not saying that I don't
believe in ghouls -- in fact, I'm
terrified of them. I'm just saying
that there are many ways to
celebrate Halloween and no one way
is right.
HOST
But we need these traditions to
keep our souls from being eaten.
DUNCAN
Some people prefer the more
traditional route of smearing their
faces with the ashes of their dead
relatives to thwart the specters,
while others just want to dance in
the witchvox circle and be done
with it. And that's their choice.
FOOTAGE: Skellington.
Photo: Alghol.
HOST
A recent poll of American fifth
graders found sixty three percent
could identify the cartoon
character Jack Skellington, while
only fifteen percent could identify
Alghol, the ghoul that dwells in
burial grounds.
Robert, Leslie, and Lauralee are distraught.
LAURALEE
That's appalling. Kids are more
familiar with a fictional cartoon
than a real ghoul.
HOST
Well, we've all seen how stores
start selling Halloween merchandise
earlier every year.
LAURALEE
Yes. It's ridiculous. They start
inundating us with Halloween
commercials the day after Labor
Day.
ROBERT HAIGE
These days, Halloween has been
reduced to an opportunity for the
mask industry to make money.
LESLIE
When I was a child, the whole
family would go down to the town
square and dance round the
ceremonial mound both sunwise and
anti-sunwise...
Everyone except Duncan remembers this fondly.
ROBERT HAIGE
Yes, and then we'd sing the
traditional Halloween songs.
(singing)
Shoh shenn oie Houiney; Hop-tu-naa…
LESLIE/LAURALEE/HOST join in.
ALL EXCEPT DUNCAN
T'an eayst soilshean; Row-doo-ha.
Kellagh ny kiarkyn; Hop-tu-naa.
HOST
And then everyone would throw the
bones of their slaughtered
livestock into the communal
bonfire.
EVERYONE remarks on how nice this was.
ROBERT HAIGE
But today, people just go to the
butcher and buy a bag of precut
bones.
LAURALEE
Or they pull the artificial bones
out of the closet and just dust
them off.
DUNCAN
Well, for some families plastic
bones are a big time-saver.
LESLIE
Duncan, the whole idea of the bones
is to spend the time butchering
with your family.
HOST
Now, here's a telling statistic:
Two decades ago seventy seven
percent of Americans attended a
forest bonfire dance on Halloween
eve. Today it's twenty-six percent.
LAURALEE
You know, the town I live in
doesn't even erect an altar anymore
where we can torture animals in a
warning to the spectral realm.
ROBERT HAIGE
(shocked)
Why?
LAURALEE
Someone complained about the
howling.
ROBERT HAIGE
The howling is the point. That's
what scares the demons away.
LESLIE
Well, I wish I was surprised, but
it's just one more example of the
movement to push Halloween out of
the public square.
DUNCAN
Leslie, some people get enough out
of attending a thirty-minute forest
ritual rather than the full four
hour one. You have to admit: it's
hot under that animal head.
LAURALEE
Duncan, donning animal skins and
dancing around a fire pit is the
most important event of the whole
holiday.
DUNCAN
Well, not for everyone. A lot of
people just don't believe phantoms
will literally cast blight upon our
orchards and sow our fields with
rocks if we don't appease them with
dance.
LESLIE
(indignant)
Well, I feel sorry for those
people.
DUNCAN
People should be allowed to believe
in whatever evil spirits they want.
Everyone is shocked at this.
ROBERT HAIGE
Duncan! Stop talking like that!
LAURALEE
You'll anger the spirits!
DUNCAN
I'm just stating a fact. Some
people think--
LAURALEE
Duncan, quiet. We have our wells to
think about!
DUNCAN
Come on, if someone wants to
worship Joehaynus the leaf banshee
instead of Alghoul, that's okay.
LESLIE
Please Duncan, stop! We don't want
a spate of stillborn births this
year!
An ominous wind-like noise starts up in the background. It
grows louder and louder.
HOST
You'll be whisked to the dark half,
Duncan!
The papers on the table begin getting blown about by an
unseen force (a fan off screen). The wind is very loud now
and howling is heard. The lights dim and flicker. Duncan
starts to become afraid, looking from side to side.
HOST (CONT'D)
Get out your amulets!
The pundits begin pulling out strange velvet sacks and
throwing powders into the air. One pulls out a small bundle
of sticks and waves it around. Another makes strange motions
with their hands, not the sign of the cross, but something
like that.
Now Duncan is scared.
DUNCAN
Have mercy on me! Don't steal my
soul! I'll do anything you ask! I
do believe in Alghol. I believe!
Duncan cowers and puts his hands over his head.
END.
------------------------------------------------------------
FAVORED ALTS:
LESLIE
When I was a kid I'd always end the
trick or treating by crying with my
sisters until we felt a catharsis
from the spirits passing over our
bodies and devouring our "seeds of
vanity."
LESLIE (CONT'D)
Yeah, that's how it's supposed to
be. Fearing wrath with all those
you care about the most.
---------
HOST
It's been written that the biggest
problem with Halloween is what
trick-or-treating has become.
DUNCAN
What, kids shouldn't be allowed to
have fun?
HAIGE
They shouldn't be running! The
tablets call for solemn trudging.
It's just as fun to trudge.
LESLIE
But they have got a job to do, they
can't lose sight of that. It's fun,
but to scare away demons, and if
the offering is treated like a
joke, the demons could come back
for real.
---
OTHER ALTS / SCRAPS
DUNCAN
Listen, I'm not saying what I don't
believe in ghouls -- in fact, I am
terrified of them. I'm just saying
that there are many ways to
celebrate Halloween--
---
ROBERT HAIGE
But not for everyone. Duncan's
right: For many, Halloween is no
more than a time to prepare their
stores of meat and grain for the
coming dark half.
----
LESLIE
I'm shocked by what passes for a
Jack-o-lantern these days. They
don't look grotesque at all.(Alt:
People are actually carving smiles
into them.)
ROBERT HAIGE
The purpose of the Jack-o-lantern
is to protect our souls from
banshees in case our bodies are
torn asunder by wrathful ancestors.
A banshee isn't going to be scared
off by a smiley face.
HOST
Not at all.
----
.
HOST
Well, some people say a major
reason Halloween has drifted so far
astray is because it has become too
focused on the children. It's
adults who need to be concerned
about the success of our harvest.
LESLIE
Yes, but it's the kids that need to
be taught to carry the real
traditions on to future
generations.
LAURALEE
At my kids shcool they call their
Jack o Lantern a "carved pumpkin.".
Come on! It's a symbol of Jack the
night watchmen's lantern, which he
used his lantern to protect the
town from spectres.
ROBERT HAIGE
Terrible. People have all but
forgotten the significance of trick
or treating. It's supposed to be
solemn and harrowing, not fun.
===
---
LAURALEE
It is true that it's getting harder
to celebrate in the traditional
ways. The town where I live doesn't
even erect an altar anymore so that
we can slaughter animals in a
warning to the spectral realm.
ROBERT HAIGE
(shocked)
Why?
LAURALEE
Someone complained about the
howling.
ROBERT HAIGE
The howling is the point. That's
what scares the demons away.
---
LESLIE
The biggest threat to the Halloween
tradition is our own laziness. If
your town doesn't offer a bonfire,
you have to make one in your own
yard.
HOST
It takes a lot of time to chop 100
cords of wood. I always hear people
say "I'm too busy to make a
cauldron this year."
ROBERT HAIGE
We've seen this same thing happen
to our other festivals as well. No
one celebrates, the festival of
Perchta, the lady of the beasts,
because no one wants to prepare the
three day feast of gruel or
dumplings.
LAURALEE
And I can't remember when I last
attended a spring fertility mud
cleansing.
LESLIE
This is the attitude that is
destrying Halloween.
----
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