FADE IN:
ROLL CREDITS
TITLE
“ONCE UPON A MIDNIGHT DREARY”
CUT TO:
EX. NIGHT - GRAVEYARD
The camera pans down on a graveyard and pushes in to discover a woman standing by one of the large headstones there, her name is ELEANOR and she’s waiting for EDGAR.
NARRATOR
“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore ––While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. ‘’Tis some visitor,’ I muttered, ‘tapping at my chamber door— Only this and nothing more.’…”
A man’s voice can be heard echoing through the graveyard stones –
EDGAR
Eleanor!!
ELEANOR reacts to the source of the voice –
ELEANOR
Edgar! Oh, Edgar darling ––I’m over here.
EDGAR
Ah, found you at last.
ELEANOR
Oh Edgar ––it’s beginning to rain ––did you pack a brolly?
EDGAR
No Eleanor I did not ––but then, just as with MacArthur’s Park in the Rain ––our cake was already melting –
ELEANOR
Mac what?! It’s the graveyard Edgar -Remember? You said, meet me ––
EDGAR
No –silly, the song.
ELEANOR
The song?
EDGAR
Yes: “Spring was never waiting for us, dear, It ran one step ahead, As we followed in the dance, MacArthur’s Park is melting in the dark…” –
ELEANOR
Eh? What are you talking about?
EDGAR
“All the sweet, green icing flowing down, Someone left the cake out in the rain, I don't think that I can take it, ’Cause it took so long to bake it, And I'll never have that recipe again…”
ELEANOR
Cake? It’s not my Birthday ––did you think it was my Birthday Edgar? Oh you silly boy –
EDGAR
No ––the song Eleanor: “I recall the yellow cotton dress, Foaming like a wave, On the ground beneath your knees, The birds, like tender babies in your hands, And the old men playing Chinese checkers by the trees…”
ELEANOR
Yellow cotton dress? I wouldn’t be caught dead in such a thing ––wait, are you remembering someone else Edgar? Someone in a yellow cotton dress ––in this Mac ––whatever park of yours?!
EDGAR
No ––Eleanor, it’s the song ––I just thought the metaphor –
ELEANOR
Be damned with your meta-sores Edgar ––you rotter ––and be damned with your floozie with the yellow cotton dress too ––be damned with both of you!!
EDGAR
Both of us? What us ––Eleanor? It’s a song!!!
ELEANOR walks off into the night –
NARRATOR
And as Eleanor walked off into the dark dark night ––Edgar, her confused lover, called her name out into that dark, but he received no reply, other than the shrill echo of his own desperate cries ––“Eleanor! Eleanor! Eleanor!” ––some say that on darkening of moon, when winter wanes, and all but the ravens call out to the silver moon ––you can to this day hear the faint cry of Edgar calling for his lover ––to understand the strange lyrics of MacArthur’s Park in the Rain.
