Paul Kolsby - Ear to the Ground

Back at the car, Charlie retrieved his laptop and ran the simulation program, extending the parameters to see what might happen next. The San Andreas was becoming increasingly active — he’d known that since Indio — but without the exact epicenter of this event, it was impossible to tell what anything meant. He needed more information, to see what the numbers looked like now. Charlie loaded up his rucksack and started on the long ride home.

Title: Ear to the Ground

Writer: Ian Marcus

Recommendation:Pass

Writer:Maybe

Log Line:A journalist, unable to sleep for fear of earthquakes, finds out the Big One is coming to Los Angeles and that seismologists know about it. What they don’t know is how to alert the city without plunging the populace into turmoil.

Comment Summary:This story alternates between gentle earnestness and biting sarcasm. Earthquake meets Network. There’s more science than there needs to be, and I’m not sure audiences will buy the paranoid theory behind it.

Synopsis:BILL MARTIN is a razor-stubbled reporter at the Los Angeles Sun. He’s frequently at odds with his editor, GERARD CONSINO, a small, wiry man with little vision. Bill can’t sleep nights, what with recurring nightmares of the earth opening up and swallowing his Silver Lake apartment building whole. At an editorial meeting one morning, he proposes the idea that earthquakes can be predicted, but the techies are holding out. “Another one of your conspiracy theories?” Gerard asks him.

This angers Bill. He imagines his colleagues talking behind his back and begins to worry that the slightest vibration — a refrigerator’s hum or the passing of a bus — is an earthquake. His bad dreams become more frequent, and one night he is compelled to walk through the streets of Los Angeles. He has never done this before, and he finds the sensation thrilling. At 3 a.m., he lies down in the middle of Wilshire Boulevard and puts his ear to the ground. Underneath him is a fault line, and he hears a rumbling from the center of the earth, which he understands like a language. ( Doctor Doolittle ?) The cops pick him up and keep him briefly under observation.

A few nights later, while roaming the Hollywood Hills, Bill encounters two seismologists discussing a field experiment they’re conducting in a canyon. One of them keeps saying, “My God, I don’t believe it.” The other says, “Relax.” They’ve predicted the Big One.

The seismologists find it uncanny that Bill understands the ins and outs of earthquake prediction. They tell him about their experiments, describing how their soil samples yielded an abnormally high alkaline content, and how it was possible to predict patterns once they considered all the factors involved. (Science gets a little thin here.)

Bill becomes the seismologists’ shadow, following their experiments as best he can. Eventually, the data points in one direction: In exactly five months and five days, at five minutes after five in the morning, an earthquake of between 8.9 and 9.1 will hit near San Bernardino.

Bill writes up the story and turns in a preliminary draft, stressing that it shouldn’t be printed until an agreement can be reached about how best to inform the public. But Gerard publishes the story immediately.

Los Angeles is understandably shocked. People talk (seriously) about leaving. The real estate market bottoms out. Religious fanatics take their prayers to the street corners. Each day, dogs bark more loudly.

The Sun is catapulted to fame, and Bill is nominated for a Pulitzer. But his work suffers. He stops bathing and becomes uninterested in sex. When he begins to live like an animal, his girl friend leaves him. He goes into the hills, burrowing with the coyotes and living off nuts and berries.

As droves of Angelenos leave the city, the mayor announces that the whole thing is a hoax. The populace is divided between believers and skeptics. Earthquake drills become commonplace in schools. The Dodgers move back to Brooklyn.

The clock is ticking. When summer passes into fall, and winter’s rains begin, Bill decides to lead the remaining citizens away from L.A. Like Christ, or the Pied Piper, he summons them on the eve of the earthquake, and they follow him north. Riding in his car is SHEILA, the beautiful wife of one of the original seismologists — although her husband has stayed behind to observe the quake.

Right on schedule, the earth shakes. Buildings tumble. Hollywood is completely destroyed. Burbank is busted, and Venice goes up in flames. Century Park East collapses onto Avenue of the Stars.

In San Luis Obispo, Bill takes the news hard. Half the remaining populace is thought to be dead. Bill and his group make their way south to do what they can, but with the freeways destroyed, travel is slow. Eventually, they arrive on foot and contribute to the rescue effort.

While ABC looks for Bill, hoping to put him on Nightline, he is off with Sheila, searching for her husband. They find him just as he utters his dying words: “Take good care of my wife.”

Bill and Sheila bury the seismologist by the beach and walk quietly as the waves lap at their feet. They kiss.

Comments:This kind of sensationalist trash preys on human fear and paranoia. As such, it could become a blockbuster. Still, the writing is uneven; the writer unproven. I’d make the protagonist a seismologist, not a journalist. The reporter should be the corrupt one. Johnny Depp passed, as did directors Andrew Davis, James Cameron, and Wolfgang Petersen.

Although there hasn’t been a really good natural disaster picture in two decades, people have already pretty much forgotten about Northridge. With the ground silent and still, this just isn’t topical.

PASS.

“LISTEN,” IAN WAS SAYING, “I DON’T MEAN TO BE PUSHY …”

“But?”

“Come on, Grace. You know what I mean.”

Ian glared across the table. It was late Sunday morning, and he was sitting with Grace on the sidewalk outside Quality, traffic racing past on Third Street as they waited for their food. Inside the restaurant, Ian could see Elliott Gould and, slouched over coffee and toast at another table, Drew Barrymore and Eric Erlandson. Ah, Hollywood, where celebrity was a spectator sport, and just going out for brunch was like being on TV.

Ian ran a hand across his face. Two tables away, a redheaded woman and a guy with a gray ponytail sat facing a stroller, chattering at a brown-haired baby with two tiny teeth. All of a sudden, the kid caught Ian’s eye and grinned. Ian tried to imagine what it would be like to be so young, so open to the world. Then he looked up, and Grace gave him such a tired stare he felt he’d never be young again.

“What?” he asked her.

“It’s not my fault your life’s falling apart.”

“My life’s not falling apart.”

“Whatever you say.”

“It’s a good script, Grace.”

“That’s not the point.”

“That’s the whole point.”

“Tracy lost her job going out on that limb.”

“You’re not going out on any limb .” Ian leaned across the table and smiled. “Trust me.”

“You keep saying that.”

Charlie was on his way out when he heard voices in the hall. He waited until the noise receded before he emerged into the white summer heat. These last few days, he’d felt a little off, as if the unsteady earth were transferring some of its shakiness to the marrow of his bones, leaving him unsure how to behave. Now that the entryway was deserted, he breathed a silent prayer of thanks.