Zimmerman, Jonathan SCARY CLOWN MASK A Treatment By: Jonathan Zimmerman Logline: A gala Halloween costume ball is the scene of a major crime, where the masked partygoers see the story unravel from all different perspectives. Act I. (9 Minutes) The entire film will be shot from the point of view shots (POV) of different characters. The story begins from the POV of CLAIRE, looking into a mirror of an ornate bathroom. The door is knocked on a few times by some loud women and Claire yells back “One minute” in her British accent. She is young and wears a schoolgirl outfit. Before she exits the room she pulls a mask over her face. Outside is a massive house party—a modern mansion filled to the brim with mid-20s party goers, all in costume. The main party room is a large and open foyer that is directly connected to the patio. One very noticeable aspect of the party is the amount of guards/bouncers placed at all ends of the house. Gaurds are even placed at the gate to inspect people entering and exiting the party. At the front of the main room is a DJ. He controls a panel which can turn off and on all the lights on the entire property. As the song reaches its crescendo, all the lights are turned off, prompting everyone to begin screaming and running around, grabbing and pulling each others costumes in the dark. At some point in the melee, Claire collides into a person in a tuxedo and a Nixon mask. When the lights come back, the person she knocked into helps her up and escorts her to an upstairs bedroom, telling her that she has cut open her head. After leaving for a moment she returns with a washcloth and some water. She asks Claire to take off her mask, but Claire is reluctant to reveal her identity at this anonymous gathering. In order to make her more comfortable, the tuxedoed Nixon also unmasks, to reveal LIZ, a stunningly beautiful woman. After a short but intimate introduction, the two are about to head back to the party when Claire offers Liz an ecstasy pill. Hesitant at first, Liz relents under the pressure and takes the pill. Suddenly, the lights go completely dark. In the foyer, the din of the party washes out the shrieking sound of a woman’s voice yelling, “Please don’t kill me!” The POV changes to OFFICER TOM’s. As soon as the lights go down, he begins running for toward the room. Other partiers stare at him as he pushes past then. He finally reaches the room and finds Claire, lying on the bed, with Liz sobbing nearby. On Claire’s face is a clown mask. Liz lifts her head up and looks at the man wearing an officer “costume”. She asks, “Are you a real cop or a fake one?” Act II. (16 minutes) The POV changes to ZED’s, sitting in his van outside the party. His face is shown dividing pills over a mirrored table. He is wearing a black eye-mask and fake Rastafarian dreadlocks. In front of him is a man’s face covered by a clown mask. He takes a bag of pills from Zed and forks over some cash. Looking through the back window of the van, Zed watches him walk off with another woman. He pops a couple of his own pills and exits the van. The effects of the drugs distort his vision, and he collides into a few people as he makes his way into the party. He tries to chat up some girls as he makes his way
Zimmerman, Jonathan toward the front of the dance floor. At the front, the DJ points his finger in his direction. Confused, he turns around and sees Officer Tom looking intently at the stage. The DJ puts five fingers in the air, and Tom nods. As the music reaches its frenzied peak, Zed keels over to the floor in a drug-induced state. Five-seconds later, the lights shut off. The POV changes to BRENT. He and his friend HOWIE, both high-school kids from the area, are trying to sneak into the party. As they chug a few bears outside the gates, they draw up a plan for getting in. First they climb over some hedges, then climb up a tree and finally crawl across a branch and through a window. Once inside, they begin making their way downstairs when they notice, through an open door, two people with masks having sex. One of the two is the man with the clown mask, who looks over and notices the boys watching him. He gets up and slams the door in their faces. Brent and Howie turn around and are face-to-face with Liz. In Liz’s left hand is a knife with blood on it. Howie immediately runs away, but Brent is too slow and Liz grabs him. The POV changes to HOWIE. He runs down to the foyer and looks around for someone to help him. He finally spots Officer Tom smoking a cigarette and flirting with a young lady. He doesn’t look much like an officer, but Howie figures he’s the best option. He runs over and tells him that a woman in a Nixon mask has his friend. Tom responds that Abraham Lincoln just kidnapped his daughter and walks away. The POV changes to the DJ. He looks out and sees Officer Tom walking away from Howie. Tom walks up the DJ booth and hands him an envelope. There is money inside, and written on the flap are the words: “At 1:45, lights are off.” The POV changes to Liz. Her and Claire are on the bed, and it is again the moment before the lights are about to go off. Claire notices the knife in Liz’s pocket. Liz takes it out and licks the fake blood off, revealing the knife to be a plastic toy. “I think I scared some poor kids to death with this.” The door suddenly swings open and the man with the clown mask walks in. The lights go down and the same woman’s voice is heard shrieking. When the lights come back up, Officer Tom is at the door. “Are you a real cop or a fake one,” she asks. “Fake, definitely fake,” he says and hits her upside the head, knocking her unconscious. Act III. (5 minutes) The POV changes to a cameraman. A reporter stands in front of the house, which is now surrounded by squad cars. She is giving a report about how a police officer, who went undercover at a costume party by wearing his own uniform, cracked a major drug deal that was being conducted inside the house. As some officers carry out bags of pills and coke from the inside, other officer’s escort the handcuffed Brent and Howie into the backs of police cars. The two boys look terrified, crying “I didn’t do anything, I’ve never seen those before.” Using the commotion as a distraction, a white van quickly pulls out the front of the gate, going unnoticed by any of the guards around the house. The POV changes to an unidentified man. He is sitting shotgun in a white van. In the back, Liz is tied up and gagged but still making a great deal of commotion. He turns to her: “Will you shut the fuck up? Do you know how much trouble we went through to get you?” Claire, who is driving, tells him to take off his damn mask already. He complies and throws the mask out the window. For the first time, the camera pulls off the POV shot and pans over, centering on the image of the clown mask on the side of the road.