Writing Notes: Elliott Roosevelt's Motorcar

2018-06-14T13:23:44Z

The Movie Treatment:

(xii) Fix: Alice has to spend a day alone in her room in order for the timeline to work. (Note to self: Do not become overly fixated on what she does to pass the time.)

Also, Mrs. Ludlow Hall and the spectral daughters must be removed from the premises so that Alice and Valentine Hall are alone in the house. It’s Monday, so perhaps they’re doing the shopping? Maybe Alice spies on them from her window as their coach leaves.

(xiii) Valentine Hall drags Alice back to the carriage house. He is muttering incoherently about the hideous old clock that strikes thirteen: And there shall be time no longer.

There is a thunderstorm. (Note to self: Do not waste five paragraphs describing the acoustic effects of thunder as it bounces off the Catskills and reverberates up and down the Hudson River Valley.)

Alice is not scared until she sees fresh tire tracks in the mud. As she looks, the rain washes the tracks away and there is a huge bolt of lightening that illuminates the dark interior of the carriage house, casting a shadow on the wall that looks like two centipedes writhing on top of one another or two lobsters ripping each other apart with their pincers.

But it is Nell in an – ahem! – compromised position in the motorcar with what looks like the old coachman doing the compromising.

Alice has to say something.

Valentine has to respond along the lines of But he is dead, dead.

Valentine runs up to the motorcar. He’s been carrying the rifle, and he takes aim at what he thinks he sees next to Nell.

Nell says something like, You shall not take him from me again!

Light bulb go off over Alice’s head! Oh, of course! When I see the coachman, she sees the ghost of her father!

Who, Nell? Who do you see? she asks.

Voila! The Peter Quint, you devil! moment.

Of course, when you name the ghost, the ghost instantly disappears.

Alice sees the look of confusion on Nell’s face, but Valentine is insanely drunk and fires his rifle. The shots miss the car, but ignite the haystack behind it. (Note to robby: I Googled this, and it is possible!)

Another peal of lightening! The carriage house goes up in flames!

Alice runs inside, grabs her cousin, drags her to safety!

As they near Oak Terrace, they hear the ancient longcase clock has gone completely mad. It is pealing and pealing and pealing. Valentine is fuming; Nell is practically catatonic. Dripping wet, Alice forages around in her pocket, finds the silver thimble and jimmies the clock mechanism. She probably has to smash the glass to do it.

At this moment, a coach pulls up outside Oak Terrace’s front doors. Not Mrs. Ludlow and the spectral daughters! Alice’s stepmother who walks into the house and asks, “What is the meaning of this?”

(xiv) Scene in which Alice’s stepmother tells Mrs. Ludlow Hall that Nell must be sent to boarding school.

Of course, throughout the interview, Mrs. Ludlow Hall’s chief concern is the damage to her clock.

“I don’t care a fig for your clock,” Edith informs her coolly.

A tiny spark of admiration for her stepmother ignites in Alice’s heart.

Quick fast-forward of the years intervening.

The two women saw each other now and again as their husbands were in the same business. More or less.

But they did not seek each other out.

(xv) Written!

THE END

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In the scene where Valentine Hall marches Alice back down to the carriage house, I am very specifically channeling that wonderful scene in The Go-Between in which Margaret Leighton (Mrs. Maudsley) marches Leo down to the old barn where Julie Christie (Marian) and Alan Bates (Ted Burgess) are in flagrante delicto.

Mrs. Maudsley, of course, knows perfectly well where Marian is, so her You will take me to her is a kind of monstrous charade; she is pulling the boy past the belladonna in the old kitchen garden.

In the novel, there is a rather brilliant description of what Leo sees when he looks at the couple copulating. He doesn’t know what he’s seeing; he only knows the shadow on the wall is folding and unfolding rather like an umbrella opening and closing.

I want that image.

But plagiarism is a no-no.

Of course, all Peter Quint, you devil! moments are an homage to The Turn of the Screw.

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Writing Notes: Elliott Roosevelt's Motorcar