Sirena's Scenes: It’s all fun and games until…
Act IIA, Scene 2 + why boring jobs rule
The fun and games section continues as Sirena gives work ethic a try and Grizzie begins an adventure with “El Club del Sueño Americano.” This is where the whimsy peaks and the initial cracks begin to show.
Let’s get into it.
THE SCENE
INT. Feel-Good Creamery and Cafe. Backroom. Day.
ANDY squints, looking at something he can’t quite believe.
SIRENA tosses a box to PACO like it’s a football.
They move in sync, dismantling boxes with military precision.
ANDY Paco. We need coverage in the front.
SIRENA (eager) I’ll do it.
Andy raises his eyebrows, not quite believing what he sees.
INT. Feel-Good Creamery and Cafe. Front. Day.
Andy is at the coffee machine, mouth fully agape.
Sirena, wearing a floral apron, carefully draws a peace sign in foam. She’s highly focused, but the peace sign comes out wobbly.
She looks up somewhat apologetic at a CUSTOMER, but the customer takes her phone out to picture the latte.
CUSTOMER This is...art.
SIRENA (surprised) Uh, yea. I’m practicing my peace sig--
CUSTOMER A melted uterus. Really speaks to the moment. I came for a pick-me-up, but you gave me food for thought.
She grabs Sirena’s hand. Sirena doesn’t know what to do.
CUSTOMER Thank you.
Andy tilts his head. A smile flickers.
INT. Feel-Good Creamery and Cafe. Evening.
Sirena, bathed in soft focus, looks straight into camera, smiling gracefully.
SIRENA I just hope that I can, through this program, inspire my people to live their normal lives.
The PHOTOGRAPHER, behind a camera, raises her head.
PHOTOGRAPHER Almost perfect. I think you meant to say best?
SIRENA Huh?
PHOTOGRAPHER Best life? Instead of normal.
SIRENA Oh, right. I’m sorry. Let’s do it again. I just hope that...
Andy sits at the other side of the room as she talks, now nodding enthusiastically.
INT. Zoe’s House. Living Area. Night.
Sirena keeps saying her line on Zoe’s tablet.
SIRENA (in tablet) ...inspire my people to live their... (beat) ...BEST lives.
Sirena, in the flesh, comes through the front door. ZOE beams at her over her tablet.
ZOE Sirena, this is great stuff. The pause before “best” is intense, but has a nice effec-
Sirena rushes past her.
SIRENA (Cheerful but absent minded) Hi! Glad you liked it.
And she runs into her room, shutting the door.
INT. Zoe’s House. Bedroom. Night.
A clothes drawer bursts with crumpled cash sticking out of an envelope that has a van drawn on it .
Sirena, GRIZZIE standing by her, smiles as she fills it with new bills.
GRIZZIE So this is why you’re suddenly a model employee. Nice drawing.
SIRENA (mocking voice) Visualize your goal.
She shuts the drawer suddenly as the door opens and Zoe pops her head in.
ZOE Grizzie.
Grizzie straightens.
GRIZZIE Yes ma’am.
ZOE I’m very pleased with your mentee’s progress.
Grizzie nods.
ZOE Which means I’m very pleased with you. You’re clearly making an impression.
She looks at Sirena, who nods enthusiastically.
ZOE Dinner’s almost ready.
She shuts the door.
Sirena turns to Grizzie.
SIRENA Yes, suuuchhh an impresssioonnnn!
Grizzie shoves her playfully.
GRIZZIE Shut up!
SIRENA If she only knew what you’re ACTUALLY up to.
Grizzie looks alarmed.
GRIZZIE (whisper) Seriously, quiet!
EXT. Feel-Good Creamery and Cafe. Dusk.
Grizzie crouches with LIONEL, behind a bush. Lionel is shushing her.
LIONEL (whispers) Quiet.
He looks over at the door of the cafe’s back stock, across the parking lot.
GRIZZIE But I don’t understand why we have to--
Lionel kisses her. She blushes heavily.
Lionel smiles and holds a shhh finger to his mouth.
Suddenly the Cafe backdoor opens and Andy, whistling, lets himself out. He locks the door and cheerfully walks away.
Lionel sprints to the dumpster, with Grizzie shuffling behind him. He dives in and recovers trash bags of pastries, tossing them to Grizzie like he’s stealing the Crown Jewels.
Ext. Mutual Aid Yard. Day.
Lionel and Sirena man El Club del Sueño Americano’s smoothie stand that also holds pastries.
A CUSTOMER studies them
CUSTOMER Are these organic?
SIRENA Organically rescued. Buy one, save the planet.
The customer pays in crumpled bills.
A sign reads “Farm Fresh-ish Pastries.” Grizzie, giving a fresh paint job to the sign, paints over the “ish” part. She takes a step back and looks at the aesthetically rehabilitated stand, proud.
GRIZZIE Now it looks worthy of El Sueño.
Lionel smiles at her.
A DELIVERY PERSON arrives with three huge boxes labelled Nutrivance. Grizzie’s face brightens.
DELIVERY PERSON For...uh.. (Mispronounced) El club del sueño Americano.
LIONEL (dismissive) Must be a mixup.
GRIZZIE It’s right!
She runs over, takes the delivery person’s clipboard, and signs for it.
GRIZZIE Thank you!
Lionel looks outraged as she unloads the boxes.
LIONEL What’s this?
GRIZZIE I pulled some strings to get donated food.
LIONEL From corporations?
The Photographer comes up. Grizzie motions to the whole group.
GRIZZIE Everyone, huddle up! You can have a proper group picture now!
Everyone gathers awkwardly.
GRIZZIE (to Lionel) A little efficiency doesn’t make you a sell-out. And you know how I feel about dumpster-diving.
PHOTOGRAPHER OK! Smile!
Everyone smiles. The photographer snaps some pictures and gives a thumbs up. Grizzie gives her a thumbs up back, then turns her attention to the boxes.
She opens one to reveal food items that are all individually wrapped in garish Nutrivance logo-covered plastic.
CLUB MEMBERS scoff.
CLUB MEMBER 1 (Spanish) Are we handing out space food?
CLUB MEMBER 2 (Spanish) Embarrassing.
Lionel gives Grizzie a pained look. She puts her arms around him.
GRIZZIE You can feed so many more people now. That’s a good thing.
Lionel hesitates.
LIONEL Fine. We’ll take the food, but not the logos.
GRIZZIE Works for me! Let’s take these ugly wrappers off our beautiful food!
The others shrug and groan, but grudgingly start unloading the new food.
Grizzie smiles. She gathers the foraged pastries to throw out, but Sirena stops her.
SIRENA Whoa whoa! I’ll sell these.
GRIZZIE (shrugs) Anything for your van, huh?
SIRENA Your trash is my inventory.
Grizzie smiles, self-satisfied.
GRIZZIE You’re onto something with this whole thing about needing to topple the rigged system.
Sirena looks at her blankly.
SIRENA I didn’t say any of that...but thanks for making me sound smart.
ANOTHER CUSTOMER comes up to them.
SIRENA (to customer) Organically rescued pastries? Three dollars.
The customer rummages through her pockets, doesn’t have enough. She eyes Grizzie’s free box, then quietly slides it back.
SIRENA What the hell: this one’s on the revolution.
The customer lights up and takes her pastry.
Sirena smiles, taking in the customer’s satisfaction in the pastry. She looks around, takes in the sunlight, and stretches her arms, pleased.
SIRENA (to Grizzie, idly) Huh. That felt kinda nice.
Grizzie furrows her brow as she notices a long line of people coming for food...and clearly not enough boxes.
Sirena notices, waves her hand in front of Grizzie’s face.
SIRENA You good?
GRIZZIE (almost to herself) Our little setup is adorable.
Sirena turns and looks at the line, the scant boxes.
GRIZZIE (somber, dark) It’s also not working.
Sirena turns back to her, uneasy.
Ext. Mutual Aid Yard. Dawn.
Sirena now looks annoyed and sleepy.
The sueño americano crew hustles around, setting everything up. They look hassled and stressed.
SIRENA This was supposed to be the gig where we don’t have to perform!
Grizzie ignores her, shuffling through a laminated, color-coded route on a clipboard. She looks at her watch.
GRIZZIE They should be here by now.
The van pulls in.
GRIZZIE Let’s go everyone!
People walk up to the van--now absolutely full of boxes--and start unloading.
GRIZZIE Let’s get them into our coolers so they don’t spoil.
Lionel gets out of the van. He looks exhausted.
LIONEL Do we have to pick up the stuff this early? And from so many stores?
GRIZZIE That’s how we keep them as fresh as possible!
CLUB MEMBER 1 (offscreen) No one comes until midday anyway!
Grizzie looks surprised.
GRIZZIE Why not?
LIONEL (a little embarrassed) Because we never set up until then.
CLUB MEMBER 1 We’re called El Sueño, why would we make them wake up early?
Sirena looks at the scene as she lazily helps unload boxes. Grizzie notices her disapproving look.
GRIZZIE What’s up with you?
SIRENA So much for the club being a “laid-back bunch.”
GRIZZIE They are! There’s no anxiety here. I love it!
Sirena motions around with her hand. Grizzie looks around at everyone running, sweating, and stressed.
GRIZZIE (sheepish) I’m just helping tighten up some things, that’s all.
She smiles at Sirena.
GRIZZIE What, you thought it’d be all sunbathing and nature walks?
SIRENA Sort of, yea.
GRIZZIE You need commitment.
SIRENA Are you sure you don’t want to tell your mom about what you’re doing here? She’d be proud.
Grizzie punches her in the shoulder.
Lionel comes up with a couple paper plates.
LIONEL Coffee?
GRIZZIE (playful) Thank you good sir.
Sirena takes and sips it, skeptical.
SIRENA I can taste the paper cup. This country, man.
Lionel looks at Grizzie.
LIONEL Drink up, you look tired. Like always.
GRIZZIE (flirty) Someone’s gotta keep you in line.
Lionel looks at her, genuinely worried.
LIONEL If you’re always tired, you’re too easy to manage.
Grizzie looks sheepish, like he hit a nerve. Sirena fans herself and winces in delight.
SCENE NOTES
First things first, I want to call attention to the fact that the last scene ended with a squint and this one started with a squint. Match cut baby! Yup, I’m a professional. I’m actually pleased with this sequence’s transition and match cuts game. Those aren’t things I usually pay too much attention to, but in this sequence they flowed.
I’m less pleased, however, that the whole thing feels a bit montage-y, even for a fun-and-games section, and montage-y sequences often feel like you’re delivering necessary information just to check a box and move the story forward.
The delivery scene especially feels a bit strained to me, which makes sense because it’s a brand new scene that wasn’t in the previous draft in any form. When moving on to make the movie, I will prioritize scenes like this one to tune up and possibly even replace.
Believe it or not, this sequence replaces one that was even clunkier and more perfunctory, jammed with many more characters and locations. So this is an improvement. But we’re not there quite yet.
Some needed new character depth that this sequence now contains:
It surfaces Grizzie’s attempted transformation (via Lionel and his club) from a goody-two-shoes along with her opposite impulse to impose some of her own conditioning onto the group. (Also, like both her mother and the customer getting the latte, she projects traits onto Sirena that aren’t there) This is a new dynamic that gives Grizzie more weight and justifies her abundance of screen time in the end of the movie.
Sirena, on the other hand, is trying to lean into a good worker mindset so she can set herself free with her earnings. While it’s not in earnest, she has a real moment here where she feels genuine satisfaction at helping a fellow citizen—a slight contrast to just a scene ago, where she declared her separateness from the men at the working lot.
You’ll notice both characters are acting in slightly opposite ways than they did in Act I. As long as it’s earned, having characters “change direction” gives your story’s acts contrast and gives audiences the sense that they’re on a journey with the characters, helping them feel close to them even though the total amount of time they’ve spent watching them is actually short.
This sequence ends the whimsy fun and games part of the story by giving you a new thread to follow: Grizzie’s increasingly problematic efforts to “help” the club and whether or not those will lead to further conflict. And with the next scene, you’ll see that the story pushes Sirena forward and into a new, externally imposed goal that ends up driving the rest of act IIA.
Antiwork content of the week: boring jobs are the best jobs
Great advice that I wish I knew when I first started. Nothing more noxious than a company that has “drunk the we’re-changing-the-world Kool-Aid.” This is a recurring theme on here, otherwise known as broadening your portfolio of meaning.
As an aside, it’s funny to me how advertising agencies operate as a “dream job” even though I barely know any people who originally dreamed of working in the field. Yet their “fun” aura allows them to not pay quite as much as boring jobs. They’re this weird no-man’s land, a plan B that takes itself way too seriously.
These dispatches are part of a “Sirena’s Scenes,” a special BQE section with installments of our slacker film script accompanied by interesting pieces of antiwork-adjacent content.
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