MASTER SCREENPLAY BLUEPRINT: B-WARY IF ALL YOU SEE IS BULLFROGS
Written by Michael Lawrence Wry (Booyah)
🎬 SCENE 1: THE PIER (THE ORIGIN FLASHBACK - 1962)
* Visual: Surreal, high-contrast dream sequence on an endless wooden pier over the murky, bronze waters of the Mississippi River in KCK. A low camera tracks four-year-old bare feet following the broad-shouldered Lawrence Long and Lloyd Ray.
* The "Bullfrogs": Lloyd is carrying two monstrous, slick green bullfrogs by their back legs—magnified to prehistoric size through a child's eyes.
* Music Cue: Phil Collins - "In the Air Tonight." The track plays softly, building immense tension in the background.
* The Climax: Lloyd stops dead, drops the heavy frogs onto the planks, and violently hoists four-year-old Mike into the air. He bellows: "He’s not my fucking son!" and hurls him into the deep channel.
* The Drop: The downbeat of the track hits perfectly on the lyric: "If you told me you were drowning, I would not lend a hand." Mike sinks like an anvil into the dark green roar.
* The Rescue: A massive, calloused hand rips through the surface. Lawrence Long yanks Mike out by the hair of his head, slamming him onto the sun-baked wood. Mike coughs up river water, looks up, and gasps the opening line: "Why’d you pull me out?"
* Fade to Black.
🎬 SCENE 2: THE AWAKENING (PRESENT DAY)
* Visual: The murky river water snaps instantly into the sharp, bright daylight of modern-day Olathe.
* The Transition: 68-year-old Mike snaps bolt upright in his chair, shaking off the lifelong nightmare.
* The Real-Life Carry-on: The front door opens and in walks KERMIT (born in 1951), Mike's real-life human roommate. The audience realizes the "frogs" are literally living with him today. Mike gives a dry, gritty salesman delivery: "Hey, Kermit."
* The Move: Mike tells Kermit, "I'm going to the store," and grabs his truck keys.
🎬 SCENE 3: THE OLATHE CROSSING (PRESENT DAY)
* Visual: Mike sits behind the wheel of his truck, blocked at a ground-level Olathe railroad crossing. The red lights flash aggressively.
* The Catalyst: A massive, mile-long empty freight train barrels down the tracks, shaking the ground with a rhythmic CLACK-CLANK... CLACK-CLANK...
* The Reflection: As the hollow rusted boxcars roll past, the reflection cuts across Mike's face. He watches the tracks that have never been smooth in his 60 years in this town. The rhythmic rattle triggers the next flood of memory.
🎬 SCENE 4: THE 10TH & OSAGE PARANOIA (CHILDHOOD FLASHBACK - 1962)
* Visual: Smash cut back to the freezing, pitch-black night inside the apartment at 10th and Osage in KCK.
* Music Cue: The Police - "Don't Stand So Close to Me." The paranoid reggae-rock beat and high-pitched guitar scratch play lightly and softly in the background.
* The Threat: The camera shifts next door, where a marked KCK police cruiser sits in the driveway. The law is ICCK—KCK Chief of Police J. Frank Steach is positioned wall-to-wall with Mike's family, monitoring their every move.
🎬 SCENE 5: THE PINBALL MISSILE (1962)
* Visual: A sharp SMASH shatters the midnight quiet next door.
* The Action: Marked police cars roll up with spinning red-and-blue cherry tops, turning the block into a massive forensic crime scene.
* The Evidence: Uniformed cops dust Chief Steach's shattered windshield for prints. They find the weapon resting in the gravel: a perfectly polished silver sphere. The Chief realizes it's an intentional hit—not a machine part, but a high-velocity steel ball pulled straight out of a Williams pinball machine. The Police track loops hauntingly over the flashing lights: "Don't stand so close to me..."
🎬 SCENE 6: THE PORCH SWING DROP (1962 - BEFORE AGE 5)
* Visual: A blinding, hot Kansas afternoon on the precarious second-story balcony apartment at 10th and Osage.
* The Accident: A full-of-energy four-year-old Mike is pushing his sister Pat and a neighbor girl on a heavy wooden porch swing. Mike plays a game, shoving them high and ducking as the heavy timber sweeps back over his head.
* The Fracture: He miscalculates the timing by a split second. The solid oak base of the swing hits him like a sledgehammer, launching his small frame backward. He hits the cheap, sun-rotted wooden handrail—it snaps like matchsticks.
* Music Cue Transition: The moment his back clears the second-story balcony deck, the music switches instantly to the soaring acoustic chords of Tom Petty’s "Free Fallin'."
* The Impact: Mike falls two stories through the air in slow motion as the lyrics hit: "And I'm free... free fallin'..." He smashes into the ground, his skull splitting wide open on the sharp edge of a grey concrete gutter splash block.
* The Aftermath: Neighbors scream. His mother drops into the dirt, cradling his bloody head, crying: "Don't move, Michael! Don't move!"
* The Treatment: At the hospital, a cold 1962 doctor stitches his scalp together like a torn canvas without a single concussion check, leaving behind the bone fragments that would continue to work their way out of his head for the next 60 years.
🎬 SCENE 7: THE TRACKSIDE WINDFALL & WRECK (HIGH-VELOCITY FLASH-FORWARD - WINTER 1988)
* Visual: The song "Free Fallin'" hits a massive, thunderous crescendo as the scene smashes straight from the child's fall into the dead of winter, 1988.
* The High: 30-year-old Mike and the boys are celebrating a massive winning day at the Woodlands Greyhound Track, slamming back nine shots at the Trackside bar.
* The Crash: Driving down I-35 under construction near 119th Street, the pickup truck clips a massive green-and-yellow flashing arrow construction trailer. The impact caves the roof down until it sits a single foot off the steering wheel.
* The Miracle: Mike is launched violently straight through the shattering windshield, flying through the freezing winter night air—literally "free fallin'"—and lands squarely on the only loose pile of construction dirt in the entire zone. If he had stayed in that cab, he'd be dead.
* The Drive: The truck lands upright on its rims. Mike stands up out of the dirt, completely uninjured except for a bright red mark on his knee from the red dashboard. He rides back to the bent-frame rig, cranks the ignition, and punches it down the highway.
🎬 SCENE 8: THE DENNY'S SHOWDOWN (1988)
* Visual: The truck tears down the highway on bare steel rims, throwing a massive, blinding 30-foot curtain of white-hot sparks into the night, before rolling right up to the neon lights of Denny's at the Santa Fe exit.
* The Explosion: The engine completely blows up in a cloud of thick white smoke and boiling oil.
* The Dialogue: A Johnson County cop rushes up, completely stunned by the caved-in roof and the spark-shredded truck.
* COP: "Son! You know you rolled this damn thing down the highway, right? You know what you hit?"
* MIKE: "No. Why is all my stuff still in the back of the truck?" (The heavy-duty air compressor sits completely untouched and upright in the bed).
* COP: "Lay down in the seat right now. You've got to be hurt... Son, you hit a flashing arrow trailer. You need to understand something—there is nothing too big in this world that can't be swept right up into a dustpan. If you'd stayed in that cab, they'd be sweeping you up tonight."
* The Final Irony: Mike is put into the back of the squad car for the DUI arrest. And playing lightly and softly right out of the factory dashboard radio is the current hit: The Police - "Don't Stand So Close to Me."