Finnian & Flynn

Pre-pitch

Small condominial block of houses in small suburban neighbourhood in mid-1970's Montreal, Canada. Mid to late afternoon.

Finnian & Flynn, twin boys, infants and later, toddler age. Finnian has blonde hair. Flynn has red hair. In all other ways they are identical except for slight alterations in colouring of their clothing.

Pitch

We open to a shot of a nursery with two identical blue cradles as our focal point. It is snowing outside the window. The boys names are written on the wall above the cradles. Finnian & Flynn. This should also be the title shot of the work. Our camera dollys in towards the cribs until we have a medium shot of the two babies.. They are both sucking upon their pacifiers. Flynn sucks his like a normal baby, but Finnian is sucking like he's just drank 12 cups of coffee. Flynn looks over at his brother nervously.

We fade to a shot where the two boys are on their playmat. Finnian no longer has the pacifier in his mouth. He's already grown out of it however Flynn has not. The twins are having their first attempts on learning how to crawl. Both boys are a bit wobbly at first but then Finnian is up on his hands and knees and speeds off out of the shot. Flynn is can only stop and watch. He collapses to the floor, unabe to crawl, desperate, left behind and alone.

Fade to the boys on the playmat again. Finnian is happily playing with a racecar, zooming it back and forth with gusto. Flynn's only toy is a wooden duck, he trys to speed it along the ground like a racecar, but one of the wheels is broken and it just wobbles along the carpeting. Clunkity clunkity clunk. Almost frozen with boredom, Flynn watches Finnian have all the fun, again. He sucks his pacifier.

Fade to the front door of the house opening and the boys, a bit older now, rubbing their eyes to the sunlight that hits them. In the courtyard are a brand new radio-flyer tricycle and a pink plastic pully-worm toy. Flynn sees the toys first, does a quick calculation in his head and looks over at Finnian who's grin has just begun to crack with the prospect of playing otside. Suddenly, Flynn shoves his brother off the step of the house into the bushes and rushes over to the tricycle... he hops on and begins to peddle around and around the flowerbed, his little grin peaking out from behind the pacifier. Finnian meanwhile is crying in the shrubbery. Shortly, Flynn realises that he's been cruel and pulls up alongside Finnian, dismounts and helps his brother up onto the bike. He sits himself down on the stairs, and feeling like he doesn't even deserve his favorite thing, his pacifier, for the way he behaved, soberly takes it out of his mouth and places it beside him on the step. He kicks the pull-worm and has an idea.

Cut to Finnian driving the tricycle at top speed with all the joy in the world. Zoom out to reveal the worm pully toy being dragged behind, and atop it, bouncing up and down like a rodeo rider, is Flynn with the same expressiong plastered all along his face.

-END-

The moral of the story is that there is no reward in acting upon envy of other people's talents. The real route to happiness is in developing your own.