(Ridgeview: a small college town in central Illinois, nestled amidst the prairies and the cornfields.)

(Exterior shot of the Ridgeview bus station. Summer, early evening. We hear the tinny sound of a telephone ringing, as heard through a receiver. Dissolve to the bus station’s interior. Camera pans across a line of payphones and comes to rest on one that is missing its receiver. Camera follows the cord down and finds HARRY DOWNING curled up on the floor beneath the payphone, the receiver cradled against his cheek. He is clutching a carry-on bag.)

HARRY
Come on come on pick up…

(The party being called finally answers: we hear the English voice of RICHARD ATKINS, Harry’s psychiatrist.)

RICHARD (groggy)
Hello?

HARRY
Richard? I’m here.

RICHARD
Harry?

HARRY
Yes.

(Cut to RICHARD in bed, in his pajamas, in London. He turns on a bedside light and fishes for his glasses.)

RICHARD
Do you know what time it is?

HARRY
I’m in Ridgeview. I just got in.

RICHARD
Well, congratulations… Look, could you call me back when it isn’t one in the morning?

(Cut to the Ridgeview bus station.)

HARRY
I need you now. Ridgeview… Oh my gosh I can hardly breathe.

RICHARD (sighs)
Does it look like you remembered it?

HARRY
I don’t know. I’m still in the bus station.

RICHARD
I see. What about the community theatre, is that all arranged?

HARRY
Yeah, I’m meeting with the current manager in about… twenty minutes. The guy seems pretty happy to turn it over to me, but…

RICHARD
But what, Harry?

HARRY
I still don’t know if I’m ready to set foot in a theatre again. I’m feeling waves of humiliation as I sit here.

RICHARD
Harry, you’re not the first promising young playwright to have a flop on the West End.

HARRY
Name one other.

RICHARD
Just because I can’t name them doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

HARRY
No, but it means you can’t name them.

RICHARD
Harry. Ridgeview will welcome you back! You’re their most famous son. And the theatre?

HARRY
The Modernistic.

RICHARD
That’s your roots, Harry. This is going to be good. Now go soak up the inspiration. And stop calling me, get yourself a new therapist out there.

HARRY
I don’t think they have therapists out here.

RICHARD
Savages.

HARRY
But you’re right. It is pathetic of me to have a four-thousand-mile umbilical cord, stretching all the way back to you.

RICHARD
No. It’s not an umbilical cord, Harry. Because you’re back in the womb now. In Ridgeview. In the Modernistic. Now attach yourself to the nutrient-rich lining and grow! Break a leg.

(RICHARD hangs up.)

HARRY (under his breath)
Thanks…