The Mall

A scrap on the cutting room floor, from this project I'm working on:

(JOHN and THEO sitting on a bench in the mall. One is eating a pretzel, the other is drinking a smoothie.)

THEO
This it it? You just sit here and watch people?

JOHN
The most entertaining thing to watch in the world. Human beings, with their endless passions and melodramas.

THEO
That's crap. People are very simple. Like robots. They're easily led. In this case, the television led them to the mall.
(pause)
Except for them.

(THEO points to a group of teenage girls, fashionable and disaffected, laughing and texting and sipping their super-sized soft drinks at a table nearby)

THEO
They're here because school lets them out too early.

JOHN
(shakes his head sadly)
I see. You seem like a smart guy, Theo, but you sure look at things funny. What's so wrong with a mall?
(THEO attempts to interject)
Let me finish. The mall is a picture of human existence in miniature.

THEO
What the hell are you talking about?

JOHN
Okay, look at those kids over there, the ones you just pointed out.

(cut to teenagers again)

JOHN
They come here to hang out because all their friends come here to hang out, and all their friends come here because all their friends come here, and so on. They buy music, hair dye, jewelry. Luxuries.

(now JOHN points to a married couple in their late twenties walking leisurely, stopping to glance in a shop window)

JOHN
In a few years they’ll be coming here on weekends with their spouses to get away from the hell of the work week and the daily grind, maybe to catch a light romantic comedy and shop for some sensible shoes.

(JOHN points to another couple, mid-thirtyish. The wife is pushing a stroller.)

JOHN
Eventually, they’ll start bringing their own children with them, a whole new generation of consumers to keep the machine going.

(Now JOHN points to an old woman with curly short white hair in jogging gear power-walking.)

JOHN
Finally, in the twilight of their lives, they’ll come here on the weekdays, early in the morning. Retired, widowed, children all grown up and shopping in their own malls somewhere else, they’ll walk the mall. No shopping, just walking, because they have nowhere else to be, nowhere else to go. The tribal village has been replaced by a mall and no one even knows.

THEO
Huh. Paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

JOHN
So they say.