http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lUQs_TF9yE
An idea I had a while ago, now realised in draft form.
Stylistic notes: "Brazil" meets "Eternal Sunshine of the
Spotless Mind" meets J. G. Ballard's "Crash".
BIG BROTHER (who is a girl dancer in male drag, black
pants, braces, black and white retro shoes - roughly like
Fred Astaire "Puttin' on the Ritz", but dressed down a
little bit - a more "worker" than "high class" style)
enters for a street scene. It's an "open air market" in
London but "1984" style, which means that it sells only
things like soup ladles and other stuff that people don't
want. She is the only one with any vivaciousness,
everyone else is sort of gray and pasty -- like, but not
quite as dismal as, the "What have you done with his
body?" dream from "Brazil".
WINSTON (who is roughly speaking, one of the people
described above) buys a newspaper from a newstand in the
market, and a package of "Victory" cigarettes, and heads
home. This is of course the same newspaper that he
produced at the office. He puts the newspaper down on his
writing table and opens up the drawer to reveal his secret
journal.
BIG BROTHER dances along behind him and enters into a
run-down telescreen repair shop on the ground floor of
WINSTON's highrise, where she winks at the PROPRIETOR, and
dances into the back room, where there is a surveillance
substation: she tunes into his telescreen and watches him
writing in the journal.
DISSOLVE
Meanwhile, across town JULIA leaves a Junior Anti-Sex
League meeting for a liaison with a party member (O'BRIAN)
at his apartment. She takes a sweet out of a red
cellophane wrapper and puts the wrapper into a wastebin
before heading upstairs. We see a little skin through the
window before the light's out
and CUT
to WINSTON working at the newspaper office, redacting
newspaper stories. Then it's his lunch break, and in the
cafeteria, BIG BROTHER (now dressed in light coloured
dungarees and a white long-sleeved shirt, as if she was
coming from painting or cleaning windows) leads the office
workers and food servers in a choreographed dance through
the food line (based as directly as possible given the
limitations of space to the video of Feist's "1234" for
Apple's iPod Nano commercial) while WINSTON talks a bit
too freely with SYME sitting in the canteen. WINSTON is
clearly somewhat perturbed, and you can't tell (based on
the passive diners sitting in the main part of the canteen
and the antics in the food line) if he might be unhinged
and imagining the whole dance. He sees JULIA walk through
the line without dancing, and she smiles at him; he looks
a bit surprised. The whole mood is managed with tricky
camera work, which ends up focusing on the blue sky:
and PAN DOWN
to O'BRIEN'S apartment, through another window and into
his office, revealing bookcases. He was clearly working with
ink on relatively sumptuous paper, but is now talking with
someone who we don't see and shaking his head, no. He
notices a red cellophane wrapper on the side of the desk and
distractedly flicks it into the wastebasket
and BACK OUT THE WINDOW through blue sky (now darker)
to WINSTON walking in the woods in the evening with JULIA.
We see some fireflies in the ditch and PULL BACK we see
BIG BROTHER, dressed as originally, watching from
a treetop as WINSTON and JULIA begin to make out (we
see that we initially had BIG BROTHER's view on the
scene). BIG BROTHER's expression now: Tsk Tsk!
and CUT
to basement rooms in the MINISTRY OF LOVE in split screen,
where WINSTON is scrambling away from a RAT, and JULIA's
legs and feet are being flogged with a ratan cane. Both
are in an extreme state of pain and terror. The 2 cameras do
long panning shots, coming up out of sewer gratings and
basement-level windows (cf. long shot from "The City of
Lost Children") to converge on a table in front of the nearby
CHESTNUT TREE CAFE (the split screen now reuniting into
one stable shot) where BIG BROTHER and O'BRIAN are out on
a date drinking gin flavoured with cloves. They clink
glasses and look lovingly into each other's eyes: this is
all a big game for the two of them. They now seem less like
"1984" characters and more like American tourists in a
European cafe, looking at the passers by to see if any of them
look like they can be seduced.
