Shorts I Probably Won’t Make: “Parents”
On a particularly sleep deprived night last December, my daughters were taking turns screaming at my wife and I in half hour intervals between midnight and 6am. This was easily the fourth night in a row where they’d conspired to give our sleep the middle finger and we were shells of humans. SHELLS.
That night, I wrote the short below on my phone while my youngest slept in my arms and emailed it to myself. The time-stamp on the email was 4:24 a.m. on a Saturday. I feel sorry for the version of me who wrote this. It’s a brutally honest look at what it’s really like to be a parent when it feels like everything is going wrong, and as such, it’s really dark. I mean, REALLY dark…and completely absurd.
It’s a short I’ll probably never make, but I got a laugh out of it when I came across it yesterday. I love my daughters more than I can comprehend, but holy shit, being a parent can be hard. Re-reading this short now, I like the brutal honesty of the moment I was in…a moment that seems funny now that my kids aren’t trying to kill my wife and I through sleep deprivation. If you’re a parent, hopefully it’ll be funny to you too.
“PARENTS”
EST. BEACH — DAY
It’s sunset on the most picturesque beach you’ve ever seen. A husband and wife are walking, hand-in-hand, as the waves crash lightly at their feet. Neither has ever been happier than they are right now. They smile and embrace one another, falling gracefully to the sand, as the waves crash around them. The husband looks up, smiling with pure joy, as water hits his face. From offscreen, he hears someone faintly calling, almost echoing his name. He continues to get splashed in the face by water as the voice grows louder and noisier. He hears crying now and the voice is now calling his name angrily as a single stream of water hits him in the face. He looks around, concerned and confused. The scene looks like a dream (a la Frank the Tank’s dream in “Old School”) because it is.
SMASH CUT TO:
INT. KIDS ROOM OF HOUSE — NIGHT
WIFE: Stan? Stan? STAN! What the hell is wrong with you? Henry is peeing everywhere!
We pull back to see the same confused look on the man as he’s hit in the face with a stream of pee from his infant son on a changing table. He looks awful, with huge bags under his eyes. Behind him, his equally-distressed wife desperately tries to sooth twin toddler girls who are crying hysterically and fighting. We pan over to see a clock that reads: 2:03 a.m. It changes to 2:04 and we smash cut to the title screen:
TITLE CARD: “PARENTS”
We hear “Sunshine Lollipops and Rainbows” by Leslie Gore playing throughout as we go into a montage showcasing how distressed the husband and wife are.
EST. TRENDY COFFEE SHOP — DAY
We see the man getting coffee at a hipster coffee shop. The barista is staring at him like he’s nuts. He looks like hell. He takes the coffees and turns back to look at his wife struggling with their kids and yelling at him to hurry up, pleading for help from across the coffee shop. We cut back to him for a hopeless beat, then cut to his kids making a scene.
The baby won’t stop crying, one of the girls has taken her diaper off and put it on a customer’s plate and says “I poo poo,” and one purposely knocks a customer’s coffee over and it soaks his laptop. The wife is nearly in tears, people are staring — it’s all so awful.
CUT TO:
EST. PLAYGROUND — DAY
The husband and wife have taken the kids to a playground and are trying to read on a park bench, when they hear one of the girls crying. She’s stuck almost impossibly and illogically high on top of the playset. The husband and wife scream in panic, and the husband tries to scale the playset to get to his daughter. He can’t reach her, and doesn’t understand how she got all the way to the top. The scene devolves into utter chaos and panic, with all of their kids screaming and crying. Other parents stare, judging and disgusted at the husband and wife. The panic reaches a fever pitch when the husband looks incredulous as a fire truck pulls up and an absurd number of handsome firefighters pile out to help get the daughter down. A woman in a suit walks up to the wife.
WOMAN: I’m from Child Protective Services; is that your daughter?
CUT TO:
EST. HOUSE — NIGHT
“Sunshine, Lollipops” continues to play as we see a clock that reads 3:45 a.m. and the husband and wife are now beyond overwhelmed. The kids are all up crying and both parents are at each other’s throats. The kids completely dominate the situation. Just when one kid falls asleep, another wakes up screaming and wakes the others. It’s a vicious cycle that reaches a ludicrous pitch. The husband and wife give each other a knowing looking and take a deep breath. They lovingly put each crying child in their bed, kiss their heads and walk hand-in-hand down the hall to their room.
The two walk into the bedroom as we hear the kids crying off camera in the background. They methodically step up on chairs, put their heads in nooses, give each other a loving look, then hang themselves together. The music stops on impact and we smash cut to black.
FADE IN — HOUSE — AERIAL, TRANSPARENT VIEW THROUGH ROOF
We fade in on a pair of ghosts drifting up and away from the scene as soft, mournful music plays. The ghost wife points at the kids in their bedrooms.
WIFE: No way! They’re all sleeping now??
We see all three kids peacefully sleeping in their beds from the vantage point of the ghosts.
HUSBAND (yelling, angry): MOTHER FU-
SMASH CUT TO:
TITLE SCREEN: “PARENTS” (“Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows” plays on cut)
FADE TO BLACK
END