P  L  U  N  G  E
 
 
 

Plot Summary
 

Characters
 

Script

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It is the future. A boy named Karson is a dreamer who cannot learn fractions, and therefore is an outcast when compared to everyone else who is focused and able to multi-task information at exponential rates. He is dunked into a "think tank" where he is attached to software which will help him focus and learn fractions. Since the program draws off the individual's thoughts as well, Karson finds himself in a surreal 1950's style world where he feels alone and pressured, much like how he feels the world he is currently in. His only hope is to cross the river and reach the old Studebaker factory and live a calm life like "the old ways" he envisions, instead of following the people of the future into a mixture of conformity and chaos.
 
 

KARSON - a blonde sixteen-year-old boy with slicked hair, sporting a white t-shirt and cuffed Levi's.

MISS SOMA - the health teacher. A school marm in a brocade dress.

MR. PYTHAGORUS - the math teacher. He's a dark haired man, clean shaven, glasses, pens clipped to his white shirt.

COACH - a large and gruff man who walks with purpose.

NURSE - a drawn, dark haired, mustaccio'd man in a lab coat who's carrying a clipboard. He is Karson's guide.
 
 

The following are two excerpts from the first draft script for Plunge. 
 

INT. CLASSROOM - DAY

Karson walks back into the classroom. But a MOVIE PROJECTOR is running. On a SMALL SCREEN a baby is WAILING. Karson sits back down at his desk and tries to finish his math test. He becomes distracted, starts doodling a river. A factory. Then we see MISS SOMA. She's wearing a brocade dress. As she talks she cuts a large pie on her front desk. As the baby screams, Soma lectures. 
 

Take an apple pie, next a knife. (cuts pie) Slice, after careful slice, class we dissect the meaning of fractions. We begin to see how precision, and a positive-mental-attitude, enables us to understand how negligible over-population is. We break the delicate, gold crust surface of our dilemma, to reveal its delicious core. We slice the pie fraction by fraction. We eat the pie sliver by sliver. Those dumb foo-foo's complaining about over-population. Up there in their academic birdhouses, high in the sky with their Laissez-faire. Their physiocracy this, and their Malthusianism that. All poo-poo crabbiness about our God given right to be fertile. We know that there are only three ways to reach optimum population: reproduce, reproduce and reproduce. I' think I'll put on some Mendelssohn.

She turns on an OLD PORTABLE RECORD PLAYER and Mendelssohn's Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream floats out of the speakers. Karson sees that she's looking at him. He stops drawing and tries to answer the math problem. Close up: The pencil breaks again.
 

INT. POOL - DAY The COACH, a large man who limps, helps Karson out of the pool. He throws a towel at Karson. He quickly dries himself. 
 

What did I say? You gotta' find your center of gravity. Number one rule: the earth is your enemy! It'd sooner see you smeared on pavement than let you fly. This earth is one mean ass ball of spinning mud. Now, here's your goal. (beat) Angular momentum--remember that! There are four basic ways to get angular momentum--
 

Four ways?

Yeah. And shut up. One-overbalancing: the lean. Two-transfer momentum: the jerk. Three--leg thrust: hips are bent. Four--board thrust: springboard only. (beat) Now is that clear?
 

You been spanking your sea-monkey? Your brain going soft?
 

(timidly) It's just that I don't get--
 

Don't get it? You know how much water's in the body-- (pokes him in the head) Well!
 

A lot . . . I think.
 

It's some kinda' . . . fraction.
 

(trying to think, flustered) It means . . . it means I don't know--
 

Dammit, Karson! See these hands-- (shoves hands in Karson's face) You know why I'm not God, Karson?
 

No sir--
 

Because my hands are too small! But they're not so small they can't knock sense into you!
 

I'm sorry Coach; it's just that . . . I don't understand.
 

Karson looks down at the pool's green tiles.