Remote Control by David George (Excerpt 3 )

3rd  excerpt from my two-man play REMOTE CONTROL. Did you ever feel like your life was interrupting the television commercials?

Los Angeles 1980’s. Harold & Fred watch television: they become the characters they watch.

HAROLD & FRED’S APARTMENT – DAY
Harold is in his bathrobe and Fred is in his frock on the couch playing solitaire.
HAROLD: It was her muddledheadedness that was the problem.
FRED: Couldn’t follow a line of logic?
HAROLD: That’s it exactly.  We’d go and see a film, for instance, a war film that was about the horrors of war.  The film clearly champions peace and tries to show that war is stupid…
FRED: …And does it by showing the atrocity.
HAROLD: Well, of course.  She would get so stuck on the idea that the film was glorifying violence by showing it at all, that she’d instantly dismiss this film that essentially agreed with her point of view.  Well, you want to have a conversation with someone like that about what the film was all about but you can’t, can you?  You get stuck in the debris of irrelevance.
FRED:Right.  So what happened?

HAROLD:Well, I pride myself on my ability to accept people for what they are, don’t I?
FRED: ‘Course you do.
HAROLD: I mean, you have two ways you can go.  You can try to convince them of your idea and not get anywhere; or leave it alone and be patronizing.
FRED: Well, you don’t want to be patronizing, do you?
HAROLD: ‘Course not.  No.  That’s the trouble with leaving it alone.  You end up being patronizing.
FRED: But you couldn’t club her on the head with your point of view either.
HAROLD: No.  Of course not.  So, in the ultimate, selfless, act of acceptance, I left her.
(pause)
That’s your paradox, isn’t it?

Fred lays down another card.

FRED: Sounds like she was just one other person echoing the current sentiments.
HAROLD: Absolutely right.
FRED: It’s hard to have a fresh conversation with anyone these days.  You don’t know whose ideas they’re spouting. I was talking to someone the other day and they said,”Did you hear the one about…etc. etc.” and, of course, I did, didn’t I?   I mean, whatever they were about to tell me, I already read it in People.
HAROLD: Right.  It’s not even warmed over, is it?  I mean, they’re the direct thoughts of someone they’d never even met.  I mean people are talking to each other all over the Western World and they might as well not bother.
FRED: Right.  They should have these mass rallies where everyone gets together and says the same things in unison for five minutes and be done with it for the rest of the day.  Blah,blah,blah,blah,blah…
FRED & HAROLD: Blah,blah,blah,blah,blah!
HAROLD: No point having a conversation.  Might as well just shut up and watch the telly.

Harold raises the remote.
The African drums begin.

FADE TO:

REMOTE CONTROL is available as an audio drama on iTunes, Amazon & Audible.com (US & UK) and recently aired on radio across Canada.

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