Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Partial script from "The Usual Sort of Thing in British History"

Note to the reader: this just sort of popped into my head this morning and I went with it; I think it was inspired by my successful use of the word "camouflage" in the previous post. With tongue firmly in cheek, enjoy. :)

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EXT.: Brock's Monument, Queenston Heights, Ontario, Canada.
SNOOTY BRITISH PROFESSOR enters from stage left.


SNOOTY BRITISH PROFESSOR
"It was more or less at this moment that General Brock, ascending the rise in bright red camouflage, was picked out and picked off by an American sharpshooter upon the Heights; the results of which you see here, in the form of Brock's Monument."

SNOOTY BRITISH PROFESSOR exits, stage right.
Camera trucks to monument, zooms in on statue of Brock.



EXT.: the view overlooking Queenston and the Niagara River.
Camera pans, slowly, left to right, throughout monologue.


SNOOTY BRITISH PROFESSOR (offscreen)
"Command then passed to Lieutenant-Colonel Macdonnell, that rarest of all creatures, a Canadian-bred officer in the British army. Macdonnell's kind was rendered rarer still when he himself was shot down in a subsequent charge on the Heights."


EXT.: walkway along the Heights.
SNOOTY BRITISH PROFESSOR enters from stage left, walking; camera tracks with him as he walks.


SNOOTY BRITISH PROFESSOR
"In the end, forty-four million men, or thereabouts, were cut down in approximately nine seconds in the various assaults on the American position, held by fourteen men and a three-legged horse. It was, in most respects, a typical British victory; sustaining a long tradition going back at least as far as the Viking invasions, and pointing the way proudly forward to the battles of the First World War."

Camera stops; SNOOTY BRITISH PROFESSOR exits, stage right.

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