IMAGES FROM "HOLLYWOOD A.D." COMING SOON!
TEASER
In letterbox format, Bullets fly towards a man who ducks behind a tombstone. As he changes the clip on his gun we see that he has a ceramic bowl. The man is not Mulder, but Gary Shandling.
A man, CSP, yells for Mulder to give it up because he’s got sniper zombie’s everywhere. He’s holding Scully (Tea Leoni) back. He offers Mulder a deal – Scully for the Lazarus Bowl.
SHANDLING: How ‘bout this deal? You give me Scully, I don’t smash the Lazarus Bowl and shove the jagged pieces where the sun of God don’t shine, you Cigarette-Smoking mackerel snapper!
Shandling comes out from behind the tombstone holding the bowl. The zombies lower their weapons.
CSP tells Shandling that he doesn’t fool him – the bowl has encrypted in it the words Jesus spoke when he raised Lazarus from the dead, Shandling’s Holy Grail. He could no longer destroy it then he could let Leoni die.
A zombie steps forward and asks Shandling not to drop the bowl because they don’t want to go back to being dead. There’s no women or dancing. Shandling says that he would rather serve in Heaven than rule in Hell.
Shandling throws the bowl in the air. Leoni breaks free from CSP, grabbing his gun.
A zombie is ready to catch the bowl when Leoni shoots him. The bowl shatters.
Shandling grabs Leoni and they tumble over the hill, right into a casket. The lid closes. Inside:
LEONI: Is that your flashlight, Mulder, or are you just happy to be lying on top of me?
SHANDLING (pulling out a flash light): My flashlight.
DARRYL ZANUCK THEATER
20TH CENTURY FOX
HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA
The scene changes from regular TV format to show that we are in a movie theater. On screen:
LEONI moves around; SHANDLING is surprised
SHANDLING: Oh, that?
SHANDLING kisses LEONI briefly
SHANDLING: Seven long years I’ve waited for just the right moment, Scully.
LEONI kisses SHANDLING
LEONI: You’re a sick man…go on…
SHANDLING: I love you, Scully. No ifs, ands…
LEONI: Or bees.
LEONI and SHANDLING kiss…
Inside the theater, the camera pans to show the front row: Chris Carter, David Allen Grier, Minnie Driver, Gary Shandling, Tea Leoni, Federman’s date, Wayne Federman, Scully, and Mulder. Everyone appears to be enjoying the show except for the real Mulder and Scully who are shocked. (I kind of get the vibe here though that they're think about 'what ifs,' etc.)
Mulder and Scully just stare at the screen for a few seconds. Mulder puts his head in his hands, embarrassed. He turns to see Skinner smiling. He bows his head once again.
EIGHTEEN MONTHS EARLIER
Mulder and Scully are in Skinner’s office and told about the case. A small pipe bomb exploded in the crypt of Cardinal O’Fallon’s Christ’s Church.
Behind Mulder and Scully on the couch is Wayne Federman. He speaks into his recorder.
FEDERMAN: She: Jodie Foster’s child on a payless budget. He’s like a Jehovah’s Witness meets Harrison Ford’s Witness.
Federman continues to talk into his recorder throughout the scene.
Mulder tells Skinner that it looks like a terrorist case. Skinner tells him that it is.
Skinner introduces Federman as an old college buddy who is working on writing an FBI-based movie, and needs access.
SCULLY: A screenwriter?FEDERMAN: Actually I’m a writer-slash-producer.
MULDER: Well, that’s just a hindrance-slash-pain in the neck.
FEDERMAN: Yo, yo, yo Agent Mulder. I don’t wanna eat your lunch, I’m just here to get some procedural flavor, just a taste.
MULDER: I have no idea what you just said.
FEDERMAN: Well, the Skinman’s filled me in on your particular bent, he said that you come at things maybe a little fahkakte, a little star trekky, which is the exact vibe I’m thinking of for this thing I’m doing. It’s a “Silence of the Lambs” meets “Greatest Story Ever Told” type thing. It’s beautify, and I will not be in your way, I’ll be strictly Heisenbergian.
Skinner tells Mulder and Scully that they will tread Federman as they would a friend of his and the bureau’s.
MULDER: Sir, have I pissed you off in a way that’s more than normal?
Mulder and Federman go to the church to meet O’Fallon. Before they go in, Federman asks if Scully is more than a partner, but Mulder just tells him ‘enough.’
In the church, Mulder asks O’Fallon if there was anything valuable in the crypt that someone might have wanted. He tells him that there are some artifacts, relics, and documents that they store there.
The four enter the crypt of the church. It’s mostly rubble. Mulder tells O’Fallon that he thinks of this desecration of the dead less as a murder attempt and more as a terrorist act.
A cell phone rings. It’s not Federman, Mulder, or Scully. They look to O’Fallon. He pulls out a cell phone, but it’s not his either.
Mulder follows the sound to a pile of rubble. He pulls rocks off of something, to find the cell phone in the hand of a corpse. Mulder says that it’s Micah Hoffman. His name is also printed across the screen of his cell phone.
ADAMS MORGAN DISTRICT
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Mulder, Scully, and Federman head to Hoffman’s. Inside they see a homemade bomb. It looks like Hoffman was killed by his own creation.
Mulder and Scully find calligraphy materials. Scully opens one of the cans and tells Mulder that it’s sodium hydroxide, which is used to age the ink and paper prematurely. It’s a forger’s trick.
Mulder rummages around and finds some old papers. Scully knows some Greek so she attempts to translate part of it. It’s the mythical, heretic gospel of Mary Magdalen.
MULDER: Well, what would Micah Hoffman be doing with heretical religious texts?
SCULLY: I think the question is what would Hoffman be doing forging them.
FEDERMAN: I think the real question, Agents, is what might O’Fallon be doing with Hoffman’s forgeries.
The agents realize that, unfortunately, he could be right.
FEDERMAN: You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. (Raising hands in defense) Don’t shoot.
Mulder and Federman go back to the crypt.
FEDERMAN: I like the way you guys work – no warrants, no permission, no research – you’re like studio executives with guns.
Mulder and Federman find more of the forged documents inside.
Federman’s cell phone rings again. Trying to get better reception, he starts walks away. He tells the person on the other end that he’s in the crypt and he’ll call him back.
Federman moves closer to take a look at something. He hears a strange noise, kind of like the scurrying of rats. He walks towards the noise. He sees movement and drops his flashlight. There are moving bones and a skull. A skeleton hand takes the flashlight away and goes towards more pieces of the broken pottery, where many bones are trying to fit the pieces together.
ACT TWO
In a diner, Federman tells Mulder and Scully what happens. Scully tells him that his eyes were playing tricks on him, and nothing was really there.
He says that it was either mechanical or CGI. Mulder tells him that it’s not the movies, but real life. He asks what the difference is. He says that he has what he needs, and he starts to get up to leave. Mulder asks him if he wants to get to the bottom of the case, but he just tell him, “Not especially.”
MULDER: Well, you know, sometimes truth can be stranger than fiction.
FEDERMAN: Well, fiction is quicker than the truth and cheaper. You guys want my advice? (Not waiting for an answer) You’re both crazy.
MULDER: Why do you say that?
FEDERMAN (to MULDER): Well, you’re crazy for believing what you believe. (to Scully) And you’re crazy for not believing what he believes. I’ll leave you with that.
Federman thanks them and leaves as the agents look on for a few seconds, speechless.
MULDER: I miss him already.
Scully tells him that she knows Federman is B.S.ing them, but his story reminds her of the Lazarus Bowl. She tells him that in Catholic school they had a wacky nun, Sister Callahan, who they called Sister Spooky because she would always tell them scary stories. She says that she would show them an old piece of wood with a rusty nail in it and say it was an actual piece of the cross that Jesus Christ’s wrist was nailed to, or a vial of red liquid and tell them it was the blood of John the Baptist.
MULDER: She’d be in prison today, you realize that.
Scully tells Mulder that the nun used to tell them that when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, there was an old woman, Lazarus’s aunt or something, who was spinning a clay bowl, and that Christ’s words – the incantation to raise the dead – were recorded into the grooves in the bowl, like music recorded into vinyl. The nun said that it still had the power to raise the dead.
MULDER: You see, it’s just not true that you can’t get good science at a Catholic school. It’s a lie. Scully smiles.
Mulder tells Scully to go to the office to see Chuck Burks, who he’ll have check it out.
In the office Chuck shows Scully what he found. He tells her that everything that exists vibrates and has a tone. With the machine he can hear the ambient sound (white noise) that we normal tune out without thought.
Chuck listens through the headphones and hears something. Surprised he gets Scully to hear it too. Chuck asks her who made it. She tells him that they aren’t sure, but one of two people, either Micah Hoffman, or someone in the vicinity of Jesus Christ. Chuck laughs, but he sees Scully’s serious look he knows she means it.
At the church, Mulder shows O’Fallon Hoffman’s forged documents. O’Fallon asks if he got them from the crypt. He tells him he did and asks if he can translate it. He does, and it is about Mary Magdalen. Mulder hands him more papers which O’Fallon tells him are the same. He says that they appear to be copies, but Mulder tells him that they are rough drafts – forgeries. Mulder asks him if he bought them from Hoffman. He did, but he thought they were real. He didn’t go outside of the church for authentication because the words were so damning to the church. He bought them to hide them. Mulder tells him that Hoffman was a master forger, as well as an explosives expert.
O’FALLON: Is being made a fool of a crime, Agent Mulder?
MULDER: I’d be doing life if it were, sir.
Mulder is driving the car when he calls Scully. Mulder asks her to perform an autopsy on Hoffman. He thinks that Hoffman was dead before the explosion, and that he might have been blackmailing O’Fallon with the documents. Maybe O’Fallon retaliated. Scully tells him that Chuck said the bowl has properties he has never seen before. Mulder gets a beep on the other line.
It’s Federman.
FEDERMAN: Who do you see playing you in the movie?
MULDER: I’m in the movie?
FEDERMAN: Ah, it’s a character loosely based on you. It’s more of an amalgamation.
MULDER: Hold on a second, Wayne. (MULDER clicks over) Hey Sister Spooky, I gotta take this.
SCULLY (smiling): I’ll call you after the autopsy.
MULDER: Thanks.
MULDER clicks back over
MULDER: How ‘bout Richard Gere?
FEDERMAN laughs
FEDERMAN: Yeah, okay, seriously. What if I said to you the name Gary Shandling?
MULDER: Wayne, you’re breaking up. It sounded like you said Gary Shandling.
FEDERMAN: Gary Shandling’s signed on to play the amalgamation loosely based on you, and Tea Leoni’s playing the amalgamation loosely based on your partner. You stud. The movie’s called “The Lazarus Bowl.”
MULDER: How do you know about the Lazarus bowl?
FEDERMAN: The Skinman. Listen Shandling and Leoni want to meet you guys, get your flavor, and actor type thing. Come out to the studio’s dime, we’ll make it nice.
MULDER: Who’s, who’s, well then, who’s gonna play Skinner in the movie?
FEDERMAN: Richard Gere.
MULDER hits a bump in the road
In the autopsy bay, Scully records what she has found from Hoffman’s body. As she weighs the heart, the corpse sits up behind her.
HOFFMAN: I’m gonna need that when you’re done with it.
HOFFMAN comes over to her
SCULLY: Oh my God…who are you?
HOFFMAN: I am, who I am.
Scully takes her scalpel and slowly moves it towards his chest, as if to poke him to see if he’s real. He knocks it out of her hand.
HOFFMAN: Uh huh. Noli me tangere, baby. (If anyone knows what this means, please let me know.)
Scully reaches down to pick up the scalpel. She accidentally cuts her finger with it. When she stands up and looks around, she sees Hoffman lying still on the table as if nothing has happened.
ACT THREE
Mulder enters the autopsy bay to find Scully. Scully is shaking. She tells him that she found traces of a poison in his stomach. Mulder thinks that O’Fallon poisoned Hoffman and played him in the explosion to cover his tracks.
Mulder and Scully enter the church. O’Fallon is giving mass to a few people. Mulder goes to arrest him, but Scully stops him, telling him to at least give O’Fallon some dignity.
Scully looks at a cross on the wall and it changes and she sees Hoffman nailed to it. She looks to Mulder. When she turns back, Hoffman is gone and the cross is normal again.
Scully, having changed her mind, starts up with Mulder to arrest O’Fallon. Mulder starts to handcuff him as Scully stares at the doorway to the church. Mulder follows her gaze. A man is walking down the aisle. It’s Micah Hoffman, alive and well.
Mulder and Scully sit in Skinner’s office. He is really angry. To Scully, he says that there was misidentification and a subsequent unrequested autopsy. Scully tells him that the body looked like Hoffman, and he had his ID, so they assumed it was him.
SKINNER: Agent Scully, if I’m carrying Marilyn Monroe’s purse, do you assume that I slept with JFK?
Skinner turns to Mulder, and tells him that the bureau prides itself on its speedy cases, and this is the first time that when they attempted to prosecute a murder case the victim was still alive. Mulder tells him that a bomb went off and a crime has been committed.
SKINNER: Agent Mulder, you will leave O’Fallon alone! You will leave Hoffman alone! And Scully, you will put your trigger happy scalpel away! Best case scenerio, you get to keep your jobs; worst case, O’Fallon and the church bring a huge embarrassing lawsuit against the bureau which will feature you two as its sacrificial lambs! As of right now, I am forcing you to take a four-week leave effective immediately pending review!
Mulder and Scully walk into their office.
MULDER: I think this whole Richard Gere thing is going to Skinner’s head.
Chuck is still in the office messing with the bowl. He’s gotten the sound settled into a human voice speaking Aramaic, the language Christ spoke. The linguist translated it into two parts. The first translates into “I am the Walrus. I am the Walrus. Paul’s dead. Coocoocachoo.” Although there is no word in the language for walrus, so it literally says “I am the cow-like sea beast.” The second part appears to be a man commanding someone to rise from the dead.
At Hoffman’s:
HOFFMAN: I am become Jesus Christ.
HOFFMAN laughs
MULDER: I am become skeptical.
Hoffman tells them that in order to write like Christ he had to become him, much like an actor would, so he immersed himself in Christ.
HOFFMAN: But then something truly weird came over me.
SCULLY: Remorse?
He tells her that it was conversion. One day he was not just impersonating Jesus Christ, but he had become Him. That is why he blew up the crypt, because the documents he made were so blasphemous.
Mulder is in his apartment watching a movie, reciting the lines along with the characters (much like X-Philes do with "The X-Files":).
Scully comes in.
MULDER: Couldn’t sleep either, huh?
SCULLY: “Plan 9 from Outer Space?”
Mulder nods and talks about Ed Wood’s investigative method, and how the movie is so bad that it hypnotizes his conscious critical mind and frees up his right brain to make leaps, and he started flashing on Hoffman and O’Fallon. He thinks that there’s an archetypal relationship that hasn’t played out yet, like Hoffman’s Jesus to O’Fallon’s Judas. He gives some more examples.
SCULLY (smiling): How about Hoffman’s roadrunner to O’Fallon’s Wile E. Coyote?
Scully asks Mulder if she thinks it’s possible that Hoffman is Jesus Christ. He asks if she’s making fun of him, but she tells him that she’s not.
MULDER: Well, no I don’t, Scully. But crazy people can be very persuasive.
SCULLY: Yes I know *that.*
The two of them smile. Scully says that maybe true faith is a form of insanity. Mulder asks if she’s directing that at him, but she tells him she’s directing it at herself, and at Ed Wood.
MULDER: Well, you know, even a broken clock is right 730 times a year.
They both stare at the movie
SCULLY: How…
MULDER: 42.
SCULLY: You’ve seen this movie 42 times?
MULDER: Yes.
SCULLY: Doesn’t that make you sad? It makes me sad.
MULDER: You know, Scully, we both have four weeks probation vacation and nothing to do, and Wayne Federman’s invited us out to LA to watch his movie being filmed, and God knows I could use a little sunshine.
SCULLY: California here we come.
ACT FOUR
STAGE 8
20TH CENTURY FOX
HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA
Mulder and Scully walk down a street of the exterior of Stage 8 at the Fox lot (this reminds me so much of being there:) The
two enter. There is a fake graveyard on set, which a green screen behind it. Federman is standing behind the monitors. He
comes up to Mulder and Scully. He tells them that Tea and Gary want to meet them. He introduces the four of him. Tea asks
that if why she’s there Scully could show her how to run in high heels. The two of them walk off. Through the rest of the
scene, Scully can be scene running back and forth.Gary talks to Mulder.
SHANDLING: Do you dress to the left or to the right?SHANDLING looks down and MULDER looks down at his own crotch.
MULDER: What do you, what do you mean?
Both are laughing
SHANDLING: Look, when I play a character, I need to find his center, his sort of rudder so to say, and then everything comes from that.
MULDER: Uh, I guess mostly to the left.
SHANDLING (laughing): Mostly?
MULDER: Most of the time.
SHANDLING: Most of the time. To the left…Wardrobe!
Shandling leaves.
The scene starts rolling. The zombies approach Shandling and Leoni. One of them grabs Leoni and bites into her shoulder. He jumps back spitting. He starts screaming, wanting to know what Tea’s shoulder is made out of. A man tells him turkey, and he gets mad because he wanted tofu turkey because he’s a vegetarian.
THE BEVERLY ERNESTO HOTELHOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA
At the hotel, Scully is relaxing in a bubble bath drinking wine when she calls Mulder. She asks what he is doing, and he says that he’s at the computer. She tells him that she’s packing. An image of Mulder pushes in to share a split screen with Scully. Mulder is in a bubble bath as well. Mulder asks her why when people come back from the dead, they always want to hurt the living. She tells him it’s because people really can’t come back from the dead, and they are only projections of people’s repressed fears and desires. She says that they are who we fear we are at heart – mindless automatons who only kill and eat.
Mulder calls her a party pooper and tells her that he has a theory. It’s only the first stage when zombies try to eat people.
They’re going to do all the things they miss – drink, dance, and make love. Scully asks if he means that we never stay with
them long enough to see the gentler side. He replies “Exactly.”Mulder’s phone beeps. He switches over to the other line. It’s Skinner. He tells Mulder that he hopes he didn’t catch him at a bad time. Mulder tells him that he’s just at his computer. Skinner tells him that he just wanted to apologize for the harsh way he acted.
MULDER: I appreciate that, Skinman.
SKINNER: Don’t call me that.
Skinner tells Mulder that he’s right under him, in the room below him at the hotel. He says that Federman got him an associate producer credit in the movie. An image of Skinner comes up under Scully and Mulder. Skinner’s in a bubble bath as well. Mulder asks what he’s doing. He tells him he’s in a bubble bath. Mulder tells him to hold on.
Mulder clicks the phone, and tells Scully that Skinner’s calling him from a bubble bath. Skinner informs him that it’s still him on the line. Mulder clicks the phone again and this time gets Scully, and he tells her about Skinner. They think he’s gone Hollywood.
Scully tells Mulder that she thinks Tea Leoni has a crush on him, but he thinks she’s nuts. She then says that she thinks Gary Shandling likes him too.
SIXTEEN MONTHS LATERBack in the theater, movie, “The Lazarus Bowl,” plays. It is the same as the teaser, but it continues.
Shandling and Leoni continue to kiss until Leoni pulls away. She tells him to stop, that she can’t do it. He tells her that he knows it feels wrong because they’re such great friends and treat each other as equals, but it doesn’t matter. He starts to kiss her again, but she pushes him back. She tells him that it’s not that. She tells him that she’s in love with Assistant Director Walter Skinner.
In the theater, the real Mulder stands up and waves his arms in the air.
MULDER: That’s it! Scully, I just can’t take it anymore!
SCULLY: Shh, Mulder. Sit down.
Mulder looks to Skinner, but he is grinning from ear to ear. Mulder leaves, but Scully continues to watch the movie. On screen:
SHANDLING: What does he have that I don’t have?
LEONI: A bigger flashlight.
The audience laughs at this. A woman sitting near Skinner kisses him on the cheek.
Mulder and Scully are at the deserted set. Scully tells him that Hoffman was murdered by O’Fallon, who then hung himself. Mulder tells her that he was right, it was like Jesus and Judas.
Mulder tells Scully that he was thinking how Hoffman and O’Fallon will be remembered as jokes in the movie. O’Fallon is listed in the credits as Cigarette-Smoking Pontiff. They both agree it’s silly. Mulder asks her how they will be remembered, and she tells him that hopefully the movie will tank. Mulder talks about the dead people who are forever silent and can’t tell their stories.
MULDER: They’re gonna all have to rely on Hollywood to show the future how we lived and it all becomes over simplified
and trivialized and cigarette-smoking pointificized and becomes as plastic and meaningless as this stupid, plastic Lazarus
[popcorn] Bowl.SCULLY: You do know that there are no dead people out there. It’s a movie set.
MULDER: The dead are everywhere, Scully.
SCULLY: Well, we’re alive, we’re relatively young, and Skinner was so tickled by the movie…
MULDER (smiling): I bet he was.
SCULLY: …He has given us a bureau credit card to use this evening.
Scully shows Mulder the card. She takes him by the arm and starts to lead him away.
SCULLY: Mulder, I have something to confess.
MULDER: What’s that?
SCULLY: I’m in love with Associate Producer Walter Skinner.
They laugh
MULDER: Ah, me too.
Mulder turns the bowl over a statue and puts it on its head.
The agents walk away laughing, and happy.
The fake bowl lies beneath a tree. It says “Made in Israel” on the bottom. A tree branch scratches the bowl and it makes a note each time.
Music starts to play, and suddenly, corpses appear out of thin air in the graveyard and start to dance. The green screen changes into a real scene as they continue to dance.
