Screenplay

A brief, adapted screenplay on Rip Van Winkle's awakening.

(Please, excuse the format. This wiki doesn't allow the attachment of documents and has altered the original - and necessary - original formatting of it.)

“RIP VAN WINKLE”

(Scene: AWAKENING)

EXT. MOUNTAIN                                            MORNING

RIP VAN WINKLE, a pale elderly man, with a full white beard, wearing brown pants and a blue jacket rubs and opens his eyes on a green knoll set on a Mountain, SMALL BIRDS hop around him, an EAGLE soars above him.

RIP

(yawns)

Surely. I have not slept’ here all night!

EXT. MOUNTAIN                           AFTERNOON

TWENTY YEARS BEFORE

A STRANGE MAN with a KEG sits on the mountain ravine.

EXT. MOUNTAIN                          MORNING

RIP

(widens eyes)

Oh! That Flagon! That wicked flagon! What excuse shall I make to DAME VAN WINKLE!

A RUSTED GUN is tucked in the grass.

RIP

(screams)

WOLF! Oh. Where is my DOG! And my gun! Oh! My gun!

RIP

(stands and clutches his back)

These mountain beds do not agree with me. And if this frolic should lay

me up with a fit of the rheumatism. I shall have a blessed time with

Dame Van Winkle.

RIP

(walks)

I will venture back to the place I saw that strange man. Where I drank the flagon!

EXT. Rip walks and trip over thickets of BIRCH, WITCH HAZEL and VINES. A tower of ROCKS with a torrent of FOAMING WATER falls into a DEEP BASIN.

RIP

(cries out and whistles)

Where is the amphitheatre! Oh! Wolf!

A flock of BLACK CROWS glide above Rip. He looks up to them.

RIP

(clutches his stomach)

I am famished! I’m sorry Wolf! I must go back to Dame Van Winkle!

Rip walks slowly out of the mountains holding his rusty gun.