I Woke Up at Quarter to Eight

I Woke Up at Quarter to Eight

by Jacob Juntunen

Characters:

JOHN: A man
CAROLYN: A woman
JENNIFER: A woman

Setting:
This can be done on an empty stage, ideally with no props and no miming of phones.

                                                            JOHN
Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. Come on! This stupid piece of shit!

                                                            CAROLYN
Hello?

                                                            JOHN
Carolyn, it’s John, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hang up on you, I just got this stupid smart phone, and I can’t figure out how it works—

                                                            CAROLYN
John?

                                                            JOHN
Yeah, I hit some button with my chin or—

                                                            CAROLYN
John! “I woke up at quarter to eight”—

                                                            JOHN
—‘cause I just got this smartphone but I—

                                                            CAROLYN
No, you say, “Bossman say don’t be late”—

                                                            JOHN
We’re retired now, we don’t have a boss anymore—

                                                            CAROLYN
We’re retired?

                                                            JOHN

We were talking about your hospice care—

                                                            CAROLYN
You used to call and say you were stuck in traffic—

                                                            JOHN
Are they taking good care of you?

                                                            CAROLYN
And I’d say, “I woke up at quarter to eight” and you’d say, “Bossman say don’t be late,” like we were in the military, like our boss was a drill Sargent or something.

                                                            JOHN
I don’t know how we put up with that asshole for twenty years—

                                                            CAROLYN
But you were always late.

                                                            JOHN
Traffic was bad.

                                                            CAROLYN
Every day? I always had to do the early morning reports by myself to cover for you.

                                                            JOHN
We were talking about your hospice care.

                                                            CAROLYN
Oh, man. These guys are awesome. I am so high.

                                                            JOHN
Right, that’s what you were—

                                                            CAROLYN
Like, morphine is awesome. Way better than anything we did in the eighties.

                                                            JOHN
But the hospice people are taking good care of—?

                                                            CAROLYN
But we had a good time when—

                                                            JENNIFER
Beep

                                                            CAROLYN
—didn’t we?

                                                            JOHN
Wait, say that again, there was—

                                                            CAROLYN
Say what again?

                                                            JOHN
Whatever you were—

                                                            JENNIFER
Beep

                                                            CAROLYN
—but we did, right?

                                                            JOHN

Sorry, I didn’t hear you. It’s beeping.

                                                            CAROLYN
I’m beeping?

                                                            JOHN
No, this stupid phone—

                                                            JENNIFER
Beep.

                                                            JOHN
Wait, hold on— It’s call waiting?

                                                            JENNIFER
Hey, Dad!

                                                            JOHN
No, Jennifer, no, not now—

                                                            JENNIFER
What’s wrong—?

                                                            JOHN
I don’t have time to explain, I’ve got Carolyn on the other—

                                                            JENNIFER
How is she?

                                                            JOHN
Not good, I need to—

                                                            JENNIFER
Okay, but I need to talk to you.

                                                            JOHN
Not now.

                                                            JENNIFER
I think you’ll want to hear this.

                                                            JOHN
Okay, I’ll call you back. Carolyn? Carolyn? Are you there? Carolyn?

(Silence)

                                                            JOHN (cont.)
Shit! Stupid phone! Where did… Address book… Okay… Hey, Carolyn!

                                                            CAROLYN
John?

                                                            JOHN
Yeah, sorry, didn’t mean to hang up on you, it was Jennifer, probably wants to borrow money—

                                                            CAROLYN
John! “I woke up at quarter to eight”—

                                                            JOHN
I was just saying I didn’t mean to hang up on you—

                                                            CAROLYN
No, you say, “Bossman say don’t be late”—

                                                            JOHN
It was the call waiting, Jennifer—

                                                            CAROLYN
Hey, how is Jennifer? Did she make varsity?

                                                            JOHN
Um, she’s thirty years old, still living with that bum.

                                                            CAROLYN
She’s not playing volleyball anymore?

                                                            JOHN
She’s thirty. Years old. Living with some car salesman, going month to month on his commission, always needing—

                                                            JENNIFER
Beep.

                                                            JOHN
No, no, no—

                                                            CAROLYN
Did I tell you they got me on morphine? This shit is awesome. We should have been buying—

                                                            JENNIFER
Beep

                                                            CAROLYN
—instead of cocaine.

                                                            JOHN
Well, it was the eighties. How are you feeling?

                                                            CAROLYN
I feel—

                                                            JENNIFER
Beep

                                                            JOHN
Goddamnit.

                                                            CAROLYN
No, don’t be mad, I’m not in pain, the hospice people—

                                                            JOHN
I’m not mad, I just didn’t hear what you said—

                                                            JENNIFER
Beep.

                                                            JOHN
Hold on. Jennifer?

                                                            JENNIFER
I think we got cut off.

                                                            JOHN
I hung up. I’m trying to talk to Carolyn. She’s dying of stomach cancer.

                                                            JENNIFER
Yeah, but I wanted you to be the first person I called.

                                                            JOHN
Fine, I can be the first person you ask, but in a little bit, okay?

                                                            JENNIFER
But Dad—

                                                            JOHN
Do you know about stomach cancer? That kind of pain is— She’s so doped up on morphine I don’t know if she—

                                                            JENNIFER
Dad, listen—

                                                            JOHN
She’s a year younger than me. I mean, she drank a ton, and smoked, and, you know, did other stuff, but she’s a year younger than me and is stuck in some hospice—

                                                            JENNIFER
I have news.

                                                            JOHN
Great. I’m going to call you back, okay?

                                                            JENNIFER
No, I want you to be the first person I tell—

                                                            JOHN
Okay, I’ll call you back. Carolyn?

                                                            CAROLYN
Hey! John! “I woke up at quarter to eight”—

                                                            JOHN
I’m not late for work.

                                                            CAROLYN
I’m here waiting for you. You don’t want me to have to do all this without you, do you?

                                                            JOHN
You’re not at work, you’re— Do you know who this is—?

                                                            CAROLYN

This is John, right?

                                                            JOHN
Yeah. Listen. I never told you how much you... You were there for me during Marie’s breast cancer, and you came to her funeral with me and let Jennifer lean on you. Literally. You were the only person in the whole office I could really talk to after that. That whole year of mourning. You didn’t take it personally when I made that desperate pass at you; you knew what it was; you stayed my friend. I couldn’t have worked there for twenty years without you, and I never would have made it through my forties without you.

                                                            CAROLYN
The forties? Don’t you mean the eighties?

                                                            JOHN
I wish I could come out and see you. Your kids are taking care of you okay?

                                                            CAROLYN
The hospice people are great. Did I tell you they’ve got me—

                                                            JENNIFER
Beep

                                                            CAROLYN
—morphine?

                                                            JOHN
Fuck! Hold on.

                                                            CAROLYN
You need to try to calm down. See if you can find some morph—

                                                            JOHN
Jennifer, whatever you need, you’ve got it.

                                                            JENNIFER
I just want to tell you—

                                                            JOHN
You need to borrow money? I’ll send you the check in the morning—

                                                            JENNIFER
Dad, I just wanted you to be the first to know—

                                                            JOHN
I will call you back, but right now I’m trying to have a last conversation with—

                                                            JENNIFER
I would have called Mom if she were alive—

                                                            JOHN
Carolyn is dying—

                                                            JENNIFER
Dad, I’m pregnant.

(Silence)

                                                            JENNIFER (cont.)
Dad?

                                                            JOHN
That’s wonderful. That’s amazing. That’s… Wow. You’re pregnant, and Carolyn’s…

                                                            JENNIFER
So go finish your conversation with Carolyn. I just thought you’d want to know.

                                                            JOHN
Yeah. Yeah. That’s such amazing news. I… I’m in shock. Look, I want to talk, but Carolyn—

                                                            JENNIFER
I get it. I just wanted you to know. Call me when you’re done talking to Carolyn.

                                                            JOHN
I will. I will. This is amazing. This is so great. I will call you back, okay?

                                                            JENNIFER
Okay.

                                                            JOHN
Carolyn?

                                                            CAROLYN
Hey! “I woke up at quarter to eight”—

                                                            JOHN
“Bossman said don’t be late.”

                                                            CAROLYN
I can’t keep making excuses for you. You’ve got to do this with me.

                                                            JOHN
I will. I’ll be right there with you. In a little bit. I just gotta meet someone first.

(Blackout)

Be a Fan

A Short Rant on GONE GIRL, Monstrous Female Characters, and Domestic Violence

As I left a late-night showing of Gone Girl, shaking with rage, in my small university town, I encountered one of the university’s male undergrads. He was a film major I recently met at a screenwriters’ club that invited me to critique their scripts. His face glowed, he obviously loved the movie, and he asked me what I thought. Too forcefully, I told him I hated it. He recoiled, and I felt like I had stolen candy from a baby. And Gone Girl is surely sugar-coated with its beautiful cinematography, soundtrack, and direction. But it is poisoned candy.

Briefly, I hated the movie because the disproportionate response of the female character to the male character’s actions makes her appear at best psychotic, at worst monstrous, and I find this message dangerous. The female character finds out the male character is cheating on her, so she decides to fake her death, kill herself, frame the male character, and destroy his life. When that doesn’t quite work, she fakes her rape by her ex, then kills that ex while orgasming in his blood, and uses the male character’s frozen sperm to lock him into a dangerous marriage. The end.

So let’s review: male cheats. In response, female kills and tortures. A more proportionate response might be divorce, marriage counseling, or all out verbal war à la Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? But because the female’s response is so utterly bizarre—who taps a vein and throws blood on the ground for the police to find because you saw your husband kiss another woman?—she is depicted as an uncontrollable monster who literally kills one man and destroys the life of another.

But why do I find this disturbing? Surely not every female character must be a saint?

I find the depiction of “monstrous” women killing/destroying their male partners so troubling because it is the opposite of reality. The fact is, between 2001 and 2012 in the U.S., 11,766 women were murdered by their male partners or ex-partners. Three women are murdered by a current or former male partner every day in the U.S. And nearly five million American women are attacked physically by a male partner every year. You can find these and other truly monstrous facts about domestic violence in this Huffington Post article.

The art of a culture delineates and “imagines” ideological boundaries of that society. Movies and other media create a picture of the world on which we ground our beliefs. And so movies like Gone Girl—and it is only the latest in the genre of monstrous women—obscure our society’s real domestic violence monsters: men who murder women.

Be a Fan