Finished this one up just in time to leave for Governors Island. Enjoy:
Black Out
Old School Hip Hop plays over a montage of life in Brooklyn in 1977. We see people breakdancing, playing chess in the part and playing basketball. There is graffiti everywhere, including in the high school where we meet Jimi. He is a short skinny kid who gets pushed into a locker. His books go flying everywhere. As he tries to gather them the other kids see his sketches of Star Wars characters. They all point and laugh at him for being a nerd.
Jimi eats lunch by himself in the AV room. One of the teachers walk in on him and gives him a pep talk about having to stick up for himself and to be more outgoing. Jimi says he just isn’t interested in the things the other kids are into. He says no one is as interested in science fiction and electronics as he is. The teacher gets distracted from his speech and shows Jimi a new portable cassette recorder they just got in, and seeing how sad he is offers to let Jimi borrow it.
After school Jimi plays around with the tape recorder, recording things around the house and singing into it. As he is singing we can hear his parents yelling at each other from the other room. He runs out of the house and goes to the theater to watch Star Wars for the seventh time. He has the recorder with him and he looks around and hits record.
The next week is tough for Jimi. The bullying gets worse. He ends up getting a black eye. His parents aren’t empathetic and use it as an excuse to start another fight with each other. Every spare moment he has he spends listening to the Star Wars recording. He gets his allowance and runs out to see the first showing of Star Wars he can get to.
Jimi is excited to see it again. He has to stop himself from saying the dialogue along with the movie, but he notices little visual things that he had wrong in his mind when he listened along with his tape.
The movie is about halfway over when suddenly the lights and projector turn off. The audience is sitting in darkness. People start to yell and be disruptive. Jimi has been continuing to say the dialogue from the movie from right where is left off. He starts to get louder and people in the audience start to join in. There is clapping as people start to get on board with what is happening. People pull their lighters out and push Jimi toward the front of the theater, all the time continuing to say the dialogue.
Jimi is saying the dialogue as other people will randomly come up and do different roles against his. They get to an equilibrium where Jimi is expected to be Luke at all time and a cute girl is Leia. A really tall burnt out hippie with a beard is Chewie. The hippie is so stoned he doesn’t really know what’s going on, but the audience points at him whenever he is supposed to roar and he does a pretty good Wookie.
Just as the death star is about to be destroyed, everyone extinguishes their lighters, then in unison light them up again and wave them around to thunderous applause.
The finish up acting out the movie and flow out of the theater. Everyone is congratulating Jimi and giving him high fives. As they walk out onto the street they see that the entire city is dark. There is no electricity anywhere and it would be pitch black if not for fires raging along the street. People are breaking windows and stealing things from shops.
The theater crowd is dumbfounded. The camera shows Jimi’s face in a close up illuminated by the raging fires. He starts to hum the Star Wars’ theme as we cut to black. As the credits role we hear more and more people start to hum along with the theme until it seems like the entire city has joined in.
The End