Year 2 Week #2 The Missing Person

I’m already a week behind on this project, partially because I opened a play this week, but mostly because I haven’t really done any work on this weeks entry in years.

Still I took the time to sit down and at least draw up the first outline below.

There’s a lot of details missing but looking at it like this I actually think I might be able to make a go at writing it.

Act I

Scene 1: Our main character, a private detective who we’ll just call Frank for now, meets the wife of the “missing person”, a wealthy San Francisco socialite, who for now we’ll call Arthur. The wife gives Frank Arthur’s diary and makes it clear she wants to hear nothing about what’s written in it.

Scene 2: Frank meets a friend at a bar and tells her about the assignment he’s received to find a missing socialite. They have a few drinks and the friend reads a little from the diary.

Scene 3: A short scene back at home with Frank and his girlfriend. We see him lie a little to her about how much he drank at the bar and with who. She then goes to bed and he reads aloud (or maybe with voice over) another short passage from the diary.

Scene 4: Frank interviews Arthur’s best friend Robin. Robin is entertaining, charming and not very helpful. He believes that Arthur is probably just off on a little mid-life crisis binge.

Scene: 5: Frank interviews Arthur’s sister not sure what she tells him but whatever it is is leaves him with a pretty good idea what path to follow.

Scene 6: Frank alone reads from an especially debaucherous entry in Arthur’s diary. The passage includes details about Franks double life and his other house in Oakland.

Act II

Scene 1: A meeting in Oakland with the young family friend who lives at Arthur’s secret house in Oakland. Their meeting opens more questions and leads Frank farther into the rabbit hole of Arthur’s secret life.

Scene 2, 3 & Maybe 4: Frank believes he has discovered Arthur’s location and follows the clues farther in that direction. I’m not sure what direction this will be but it brings him back to re-interview the people he’s already talked to. Eventually, after reading a particular entry in the diary, he realizes that his path was misguided.

Scene 5: Frank returns to Arthur’s wife to tell her that he’s reached a dead end, arthur is probably far away and if he kept looking it would probably be very expensive and possibly lead nowhere. Arthur’s wife pay him for the work he’s done and says that she’s received peace of mind and won’t require any more of his services. She just wanted to know if he was coming back and now feels since he won’t be she can move on.

Scene 6: A year later. Frank is in Oregon with his girlfriend on vacation. He goes into a bar to ask directions and finds himself face to face with Arthur, the man he’d spent months looking for. They talk for a while.

This is the first time we actually see and hear Arthur. He should be in many ways very different than the image we’ve formed in our mind during the play. For Frank he’s somewhat of a disappointment. Sadder and more petty than his diary and friends made him out to be. Arthur asks Frank if he can help him get his life back. Frank tells him he doesn’t think that’s a good idea. That his life is gone and his family has moved on.

In the end Arthur is left sitting alone on stage with a drink.

Week #2 The Missing Person- Play

This is an idea I had about a year ago for a play. I guess it could be a movie but I think it works best on stage.

The story follows Aaron Davidson, a young private detective living in San Francisco with his girlfriend. We begin with him being hired by an extremely wealthy woman to find her husband, a man I think I’m going to call Walter. The woman and her husband are members of the highest echelon of San Francisco Society. The woman makes it clear that she doesn’t want the police involved. She gives Aaron all of Walter’s diaries which she says he can read but she doesn’t want to know anything that’s in them.

Reading the diaries Aaron finds out that Walter is living a double and even to some degrees triple life. He is almost an entirely different person depending on where he is and who he’s with. As part of his other life he even has another house up north and a fairly serious drug problem.

Aaron sets about interviewing all the people in Walter’s life who each give him totally different images of the man. We also hear in Aaron’s voice read some excerpts from the diaries showing that Walter also has a very different image of himself than anyone else does.

During the play Aaron should also show a few different sides of himself. Mostly ones he doesn’t show to his girlfriend. I’m not sure what those will be or if I’ll just get rid of this idea and have him be totally blank a’ la Thompson from Citizen Kane.

The last scene in the play takes place a year or so later after Aaron has given up the case. He is up in Oregon on vacation and walks into a bar where he encounters Walter in person for the first time. It is a chance encounter and it’s also the first time we see Walter in person. With the right casting he should be physically very different than any of the impressions we’ve got of him from the people in his life. Aaron confronts him and they have a brief interlude where we learn that Walter simply took off believing he could lead some sort of life free from the constraints of society. I think I’ll have Walter sort of beg Aaron to help him move back and get his old life back. Aaron does not think it’s a good idea. Everyone is doing fine without him.

The idea is obviously very Citizen Kane in structure but the theme is slightly different. It’s about how we are so much more in the eyes of other people than we can ever be totally on our own.

I’ve written a few scenes and I have a basic outline but I really need some input and maybe even someone to help me write some of the dialogue since I’ve never actually written a play before.