(SCENE:\u00a0 A darkened alley in Newark, New Jersey, on a dark, drizzly April evening.\u00a0 A broken down school bus full of inner city\u00a0middle-schoolers returning from a trip to the ballet in New York sits by the side of a dismal road, steam rising from its up-tilted hood, in front of a deserted chemical plant.\u00a0 The driver, a cute, plucky Puerto Rican single mother of three named Maria LOPEZ, looks under the hood along with passerby\u00a0Tobias “Wang Dang Doodle” JACKSON, a\u00a0grizzled 60-something\u00a0black man in a porkpie hat and a worn black suit.\u00a0 Mitch BERG pulls up, driving a rented Ford Focus, and climbs out to try to render assistance, carrying a cell phone and a nearly empty\u00a0bottle of lemon-lime Powerade).<\/p>\n
BERG:\u00a0 Can I help?\u00a0 Has anyone called a tow or anything yet?<\/p>\n
LOPEZ:\u00a0 I called the police, the district and a wrecker, but there won’t be any help coming for at least an hour.<\/p>\n
JACKSON:\u00a0 Those infernal garages aren’t what they used to be.\u00a0<\/p>\n
BERG:\u00a0 OK.\u00a0 Well, maybe we can figure out what’s wrong here…<\/p>\n
(A black BMW sedan pulls up beside the bus.\u00a0 Out pops a dapper African-American man, who walks briskly to the bus).<\/p>\n
MAN:\u00a0 Hi.\u00a0 I’m Corey Booker, and I’m the mayor of Newark.\u00a0<\/p>\n
LOPEZ:\u00a0 Hello, Mister Mayor!<\/p>\n
BOOKER:\u00a0 Hi.\u00a0 We don’t have much time.\u00a0 The CIA just called me.\u00a0 A band of Serbian narcotraficantes <\/em>are apparently en route from the docks in Elizabeth to pick up several drums of methamphetamine stored in that disused chemical factory, and they’re not above killing everyone that gets in their way.<\/p>\n BERG:\u00a0 Isn’t this a job for the police?<\/p>\n BOOKER:\u00a0 They’re all busy.\u00a0 It’s up to us.\u00a0<\/p>\n BERG:\u00a0 I hate it when that happens.<\/p>\n JACKSON:\u00a0 Newark police are, let us say, sub-optimal.\u00a0<\/p>\n BOOKER:\u00a0 Be that as it may, we’re going to have to get these children out of the way before the Serbian narcotraficantes <\/em>get here and kill everyone in their path.\u00a0 You, maam, and you, sir (points to LOPEZ and JACKSON), start walking those kids to safety in that community center on the other side of that culvert.\u00a0 You, sir (points to BERG) and I need to divert them to provide cover.\u00a0<\/p>\n BERG:\u00a0 Er…OK.\u00a0<\/p>\n (LOPEZ and JACKSON start to herd the kids out of the bus and into the ditch).<\/p>\n LOPEZ:\u00a0 Hurry, kids!<\/p>\n JACKSON: Remember, gentlemen – fire and movement!<\/p>\n (In the distance, a\u00a0pair of\u00a0panel vans stop and\u00a0disgorge 20\u00a0Serbian narcotraficantes<\/em>,all carrying AK47 assault rifles.\u00a0 They form a skirmish line and start charging toward the bus.\u00a0 Scattered shots ring out as the line moves forward.\u00a0 LOPEZ and JACKSON start the children running in single file down the ditch by the side of the road as a few sparks fly from the bus’ chassis).<\/p>\n BOOKER:\u00a0 You flank them to the right.\u00a0 I’ll draw their fire.\u00a0<\/p>\n BERG:\u00a0 Flank them with what?\u00a0 Your state’s idiotic gun laws bar me from bringing my legal handgun, much less something I can use against…<\/p>\n BOOKER:\u00a0 GO!<\/p>\n (BOOKER springs to the left, waving his arms wildly.\u00a0 BERG, nonplussed, crawls to the right and crosses the road.\u00a0 The Serbian narcotraficantes <\/em>fire picks up and their charge gathers speed, as they yell “get the meth!\u00a0 get the meth!” in Serbian)<\/p>\n (BOOKER dodges incoming bullets in a complex, acrobatic display that makes The Matrix <\/em>look like that old SNL “Bears Fans” sketch.\u00a0 An RPG fires, the rocket tracing an angry red slash across the field.\u00a0 BOOKER catches the rocket by the tail and throws it back at the Serbian narcotraficantes<\/em>; it explodes, sending several Serbs diving for cover as others blaze away at the Mayor).<\/p>\n (Berg, in the meantime, as closed the gap with the Serbs, who are focused on blazing away at Mayor BOOKER.\u00a0 Having no weapon, he looks around, and sees a puddle of New Jersey rainwater.\u00a0 He ducks down and starts filling the Powerade bottle).<\/p>\n (Two more RPG rounds rocket toward the Mayor.\u00a0 He catches them, cross-handed, just before they’d have impacted his chest, and in a grandiose double-pirouette, throws both rounds back at the Serbs.\u00a0 One splashes into the mud at the feet of Branko SLRB\u00c7, the leader of the Serb narcotraficantes<\/em>.<\/p>\n SLRB\u00c7 (yelling in Serb with subtitles):\u00a0 Is this even plausible?<\/p>\n (The round explodes, and SLRB\u00c7 vanishes in a gout of gore and flame).\u00a0<\/p>\n (The second round slams into the grill of the first of the narcotraficantes’ <\/em>vans, exploding it in a gout of flame.\u00a0 The rest of the Serbs go to ground, panicked and pinned down).<\/p>\n (BERG caps the bottle of New Jersey rainwater, and with a mighty heave, throws it at the second van, which explodes into brilliant blue and green flames).<\/p>\n (The surviving Serbs get up and run back up the road toward their rally point, a giant Exxon sign which, unfortunately for them, gives the local cops plenty of light by which to apprehend them).<\/p>\n BERG (soaking wet, walks back to Booker, who is somehow still dry):\u00a0 Wow.\u00a0 How did you do that?<\/p>\n BOOKER (As police cars pull up all around them)\u00a0 It’s all in a days work <\/a>for the Mayor of Newark<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n (BOOKER tips his hat and climbs into his car, and – notwithstanding that a dark cloudy night fell over two hours earlier – drives into the sunset as LOPEZ, soaking wet, walks back up the freeway.\u00a0 She and BERG look at each other, drenched, before embracing in a passionate kiss as the camera pulls back to a wide shot of the full post-battle vista).<\/p>\n (And SCENE)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (SCENE:\u00a0 A darkened alley in Newark, New Jersey, on a dark, drizzly April evening.\u00a0 A broken down school bus full of inner city\u00a0middle-schoolers returning from a trip to the ballet in New York sits by the side of a dismal road, steam rising from its up-tilted hood, in front of a deserted chemical plant.\u00a0 The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,4,130],"tags":[236],"class_list":["post-38552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-democrats","category-media","category-tc-media-bias","tag-dramatization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38552"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47305,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38552\/revisions\/47305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}