Hi Everybody!
Thanks again for all the interest in reading the script. We have casting in progress, set design is now complete, and we’ll start set building soon.
Anyway, here's the second extract...
A curious phenomenon of human behavior I’ve often observed is people’s passions for subjects, such as history, the sciences or sport. They are often unable to contain these passions within themselves and frequently feel the need to share them others less interested in the subject.
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NIGEL has placed a handset with speaker phone on Wally’s desk. NIGEL is crouched down and focused on connecting the phone.
WALLY: How’d you get into this business, Nigel?
NIGEL: I used to help my dad when I was a kid. He was with the PMG and he replaced the telex machines when they invented the fax...
WALLY: And when was the fax invented?
NIGEL: Eighties...?
WALLY: 1842. Alexander Bain was the man’s name and they used the new telegraph cable to send faxes across the English Channel, Paris to London. It worked by sending a metal engraving of the picture that was wrapped around a copper drum. Extraordinary. 1842, sending faxes 40 years before people started having telephone conversations...
NIGEL: Oh yeah...?
WALLY: Bain was actually experimenting with sending electrical current down a copper wire and there were some chemicals spilled onto some paper at the other end and it left a black mark. Or so the story goes. Imagine what people in those days thought when they heard about sending a picture down an electrical wire? They must have thought, “what bullshit”.
NIGEL is squatting down and concentrating on getting the line connected.
NIGEL: Yeah, what bullshit...
WALLY: Anyway, the military were always interested in them because of their potential for sending maps, and there was a commercial service in the US in 1902, but they weren’t really used until the First World War when they started using them for transmitting newspaper photos...
NIGEL has connected the new business line. NIGEL calls from his mobile in the midst of Wally’s technological lecture. The new business line rings.
NIGEL: How’s that?
WALLY: What, already? Nice one young Nigel!
WALLY picks up the line and listens to the dial tone. NIGEL has already packed his toolbox.
WALLY: Alright. So will your company bill me or are you ABN or Sole Trader or…?
NIGEL looks bewildered and doesn't know what to say, but WALLY soon picks up that NIGEL wants cash off the books… WALLY pays NIGEL with cash from his wallet.
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Above picture: Alexander Bain's improved facsimile, 1850.
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