In pages 111-115 of “Right of Way,” our 28th and penultimate installment of the LA Observed Script Project, two murderous enforcers have cornered Napolitano and Rachel in the hills, where they’ve taken refuge under cover of the Hollywood Sign.
The thugs have Napolitano’s cohort, suspended LAPD Detective Deland, with them to use as a hostage, a bargaining chip or perhaps as an agent of their menace.
But time is running out. Even as Rachel cowers in terror with Napolitano (whom she’s recently been told is her real father), the bad guys too are under the gun, pursued by an approaching police helicopter.
One of the cops in the chopper may turn out to be Undersheriff Dallesandro, who himself is no doubt sweating the chance that Deland will survive this ordeal and expose the department’s history of corruption that runs underneath the city like so many abandoned subway tunnels.
And so, this Mobius strip of a tale takes us to the same place all good stories eventually go:
The ledge.
Everyone must now move left or move right, and their decisions will reveal their character.
On another more immediate level -- as illustrated by the case of the henchman Alphonse, whose car just went tumbling off the mountainside -- every choice made now could mean life or death.
This is the third consecutive installment and fourth overall from reality show writer (oh, sorry, most reality TV doesn’t use “writers”; he’s got some other title) Michael Breiburg. Mike is the only one of our collaborators to contribute more than twice.
The script has come together remarkably well for something written by 20 different strangers working on their own without an outline. Still, there are questions that need to be answered and a few loose ends that may never be tied up, at least not in this draft.
(These dead ends are like Alaska’s “bridge to nowhere,” in that I, as final arbiter, enthusiastically encouraged their inclusion but am now disavowing them as shortsighted and wasteful. Unfortunately, in this case, there were no $398 million earmarks involved.)
I’ll be writing the script’s final pages next week, doing the best I can to make sense of things. Please come back after Tuesday to find out how our story ends.
And stay tuned here at Script Notes to learn about future developments, including an upcoming LA Observed/“Right of Way” wrap party to which you’re all invited!
