Romancing the Ruins, a Film Treatment
by
Lois Foyt and Jon Foyt
Copyright 2010 and Registered with the Writers Guild of America, West by Lois Foyt and Jon Foyt
All characters in this film treatment, which is an adaptation of the novel, The Architecture of Time, are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons living or dead is coincidental.
Opening:
From a low-flying airplane, as titles appear on the screen, we see below us massive stone structures—one after another—in the chain of archaeological ruins that comprise the ancient Anasazi center of Chaco Canyon. As we pass over the largest of these 12th-century pueblos in northwestern New Mexico—the multi-story Great House of Pueblo Bonito—we hear the ominous sound of a distant train whistle growing louder and louder.
Scene One:
Worthington Rhodes (tall, handsome, blue eyes, early 40’s) and his nine-year-old precocious, curly-haired daughter, Emily, browse the news shop in the Dulles International Airport as they await the arrival from Greece of Worthington’s father, “Dusty,” an archaeologist. Emily holds up a children’s book about archaeological fables and tells her father she’ll read them so she can surprise her grandfather.
Seeing the book, Worthington recoils with memories of the humiliation he suffered when, as a high school student, he went to his father’s archaeological excavation in Greece.
Fade to a flashback. A young Worthington is standing in the hot sun looking down into an archaeological dig. His father and all the men are laughing at him as he tells his father he wants to be a pop singer and not go to college to study archaeology.
Belittling him, his father tells him the ancient Greeks will sing all the tunes he needs to know. “Besides, you’re destined to carry on our three-generation family tradition of archaeologists here in Greece.” Young Worthington reacts by storming out of the excavation site, returning to the Greek village, entering a taverna and getting into a fight with the bartender. (These temper outbursts will haunt him the rest of his life. He will cope by being in denial.) Flashback ends.
Worthington is abruptly brought back to the present by a firm hand on his shoulder. A smiling Senator Schurz of Missouri congratulates him on besting the French T.G.V. technology with The Windjammer, the proposed new transcontinental bullet train. From their dialogue we learn that Worthington is not only a model family man with an attractive wife, Sara, but also the czar behind a momentous national project to construct a magnetically-levitated bullet train that will zip across the country from New York to Los Angeles.
As Schurz dashes for his plane, Worthington is greeted by Ms. C. C. Trinket, a speechwriter for the President whose mother is on Dusty’s flight. She tells Worthington he is to be featured in the President’s speech to the nation’s governors. Gracious in his acknowledgment, he introduces Emily, who wants to tell Ms. Trinket the story she has been reading:
Fade to animation of Emily’s storybook: A Toltec from Mesoamerica is being ostracized by the priests and elders of his city because they disdain his new ideas, especially his invention of the wheel. They banish him far off to what is now the American Southwest. When he attempts to convince the native Anasazi of the merits of his wheel, they, too, reject the technological progress of his invention, brutally bashing in his skull. Animation scene ends.
Visibly shaken by the children story’s conclusion, a worried Worthington frets to Ms. Trinket, “It’s a warning from out of the past: Don’t be the person out there on the edge advocating a new transportation system.”
Scene Two:
“Welcome to Washington, sir.” Worthington’s attempt at a smile fails, and it becomes apparent he and his father (tall, gray-bearded, rumpled and suntanned from years of field excavations) still don’t get along.
Amidst Emily’s childish excitement at greeting her grandfather, Dusty grandstands with gruff male bravado that he has flown all this way to help out the noted archaeologist, Dr. Anna Ardmore, who is about to conduct an important dig in the American Southwest. Worthington recalls Dr. Ardmore’s and his back-to-back testimony before Congressman Roybal’s Congressional committee at its initial hearing for his Windjammer project. Worthington remembers how, though they were on opposite sides of the issue, he was taken by Anna’s humor as she fielded the congressman’s inane questions.
As Worthington drives his Volvo into Georgetown for Dusty’s scheduled appearance at the reception for Dr. Ardmore, he and his father again argue about Worthington’s choice of a career. Dusty says his son is frittering away his life on non-scientific matters. To prove his point that scientists—and only scientists—respect the “truth” about the world, Dusty extols Anna as a potential mentor for Emily. He promises Emily that Anna will autograph her storybook if she and her daddy will come with him to the reception.
Worthington agrees reluctantly, saying it will be a good experience for Emily.
Scene Three:
For this special Georgetown social event, the banquet room of the Four Seasons Hotel is resplendently decorated in a Southwest theme. A large ice sculpture of the 12th- century Taos Pueblo constitutes the food table’s centerpiece, while an array of exotic Southwest foods surrounds the frozen-in-time Indian pueblo.
Anna Ardmore, beautiful and charismatic, dressed in khaki shorts and jacket, a safari hat shadowing her eyes, appears on stage to an orchestral introduction. All eyes are upon her.
Dusty murmurs, “She’s the Delphi Oracle.”
Athletic Lil’ Abner-like Alex Parish, former star third baseman of the Washington Sluggers, remarks, “Gosh, she could coach me any day.”
The African-American mayor of Washington, D.C., Jedson Beyer, says, “She could get elected to any office.”
Prominent Washington benefactor and chairman of the evening’s sponsoring non-profit organization, the Institute and Living Museum of Archaeology (ILMA), Quentin Ford IV (distinguished, impeccably tailored), comments, “Steady men, she’s a good draw. I never know whether it’s her good looks or her scientific accomplishments in archaeology that inspire our rich donors to ante up.”
Young and pretty Brenda Turner, editor of the Four Corners Weekly Tablet newspaper, holds up her wine glass in a toast to Anna.
As Anna comes off the stage to greet Dusty, Emily steals the scene by tugging at her grandfather’s arm and holding up her storybook for Anna to autograph. Anna writes a message on the title page and surreptitiously exchanges glances with Worthington.
But Quentin Ford IV has become agitated at the presence of Worthington in their midst. He says to his executive director, Stuart Wales, that they must do everything they can to stop Worthington from bulldozing the wide right-of-way for his bullet train and obliterating the nation’s treasured Anasazi sites—before it is too late.
Mayor Beyer introduces Anna to the audience, praising her as an authority on the American Anasazi and suggesting that those who accompany her on her excavation in the Four Corners will bask in the glories of the Anasazi. To stir their imaginations about how they, too, could become famous, he tells them about the momentous discovery that changed American archaeological thought back in the 1950s when the black cowboy, George McJunken, unearthed an arrowhead imbedded in the skeleton of a mastodon known to have been extinct for 10,000 years. Until then few people believed human beings inhabited this country before the birth of Christ.
Anna fascinates her audience with descriptions of the ancient culture of the Anasazi people and their massive 12th-century stone buildings. She hints at the pleasures awaiting those in the audience who will accompany her as seminarists on ILMA’s forthcoming expedition. She invites them to come with her to those water-and-wind-carved monuments of red ro
ck rising above an endless, rolling sea of mesas and arroyos, and to search with her among those desert varnished tableaux for buried answers to all their questions.
Worthington is aroused by Anna’s body language and alluring voice. As they leave, he remarks to Emily that Anna would indeed make a good mentor for her.
Scene Four:
In the ladies room of the Four Seasons Hotel, as Anna freshens her makeup, she thinks about the public and private corners of her life. As a career woman, she has vowed not to marry or to have children. For her, sex is recreation, not procreation. She fantasizes about Worthington Rhodes, and her adversary takes on a human dimension. In another world she would be physically attracted to this charismatic trailblazer, but here and now she knows she must suppress those desires and focus her efforts on blocking this pathfinder if she is to win out over him and save the prehistory