The Heat is On

We sit opposite each other in our usual spot of the long table by the window and drink tea or pineapple juice or coke or lime and soda or sometimes a beer, and we start by talking to each other about life, like Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro in Heat.

NAOMI:
I am never goin' back in the joint.

VINCE: 

Then don't take down scores.

NAOMI: 

I do what I do best. I take scores. You do what you do best trying to stop gals like me. [shrugs]

VINCE:
You never wanted a normal-type life?

NAOMI: 

A man told me once: you want to make moves? Don't keep anything in your life you're not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner. 

VINCE:

We're sitting here like a coupla regular fellas. You do what you do. I do what I gotta do. What happens if I am there and I got to put you away? [pause] I won't like it. But, if it's between you and some poor bastard whose wife you're going to make into a widow, sister, you are gonna go down.

NAOMI: 

There's a flip side to that coin. What if you got me boxed in and I gotta put you down? [pause] 'Cause no matter what, you will not get in my way. But now that we been face to face, I would not feel good about that. But I won't hesitate. Not for one second.

Except of course in our case there will tend to be a lot more talk about the proper way to bend your knees when lifting an overweight housecat, or the tastiest flavours of Campbell's tinned soup, and a lot less talk about the US penal system and the mindset of cooly intelligent career criminals who carry out daring bank heists in Los Angeles. 

That awkward moment when you both realize that neither of you is going to offer to get the bill.

And Bristol these days is freezing - there is a notable absence of heat.  At home I'm smashing up furniture to burn on the fire and sleeping under a furry pile of (drugged) cats.  Everyone's wearing eighty layers of clothing and staying in every night to save enough money to pay the heating bills. It's like the Soviet Union in 1982.

The Llandoger Trow was alive with an excitable flock of young German students who had chosen to stay in Bristol just as everyone here is freezing to death.  The lively Germans would go upstairs to their rooms, then come down again to order beer and food, then huddle around tables animatedly discussing Nietzsche. A few of the men started to half-heartedly feed coins into the slot machine by the bar as customers entered and exited the pub, the doors swinging open in their wake, allowing the October wind to intrude with gusty tumbles of golden leaves.  We like this pub.

We got busy, and started bringing to life a character delivering a monologue.  Naomi had come prepared with print outs of facts about gambling, roulette tables, statistics about superstitions (in Columbia as the clock strikes midnight on New Year's Eve, people hold a suitcase as they run hard and fast around the house to ensure a year of safe travelling), and I doodled a quick portrait of the young barman.  Researching Roulette  - the Devil's Game - threw up many surprises and exciting plot ideas.  When we start a script we have loose ideas for characters and story, and tend to let things naturally develop through the characters reacting to situations as they get ever more complicated; this is basically the construction of farce, with an escalating series of misfortunes and catastrophes overwhelming the characters, like cascading dominoes.  We have clear ideas of where we want to end up (and we think in terms of theatrical staging), and we discuss various paths we can take to get there.  Often we will start talking as the characters, and we'll write down the dialogue as we hear each other speak it.  And then we'll pause as we research Skegness (did you know it's famous for a UFO encounter?), or probability statistics, or we'll watch YouTube tutorials on how to carry out daring bank heists in Los Angeles so that we'll have enough money to pay heating bills.

 We have written roughly fifty pages of (roughly written) script, with twenty more pages of previously written material (by Naomi) earmarked to be incorporated into the first draft.  We're doing well, and --

-- There was a sudden whoop of excitement and laughter from the German students.  We looked up from our work and watched in amused disbelief as the slot machine poured out hundreds of pound coins in a cascade of good fortune.  Lucky bastards.

On the way home, wet and freezing, I hummed a song to cheer me up.  Glen Frey's The Heat is On, as featured on the soundtrack for Beverly Hills Cop, and which reached number twelve in the UK hit parade in the summer of 1984.

The Heat is On