GE 1996-7 Season 3 Episode 13: Complete Script
Note: this is not a transcript, but a working draft of the script, so there may be differences in the aired version.
PAUL:	It was December 19, 1960. 
	Last day of first term.  Grade 
	Six.
	
	We were all watching the 
	clock, counting down the 
	minutes, waiting for that most 
	joyous of Christmas bells - 
	the one releasing us from us 
	from the pedagogical prison, 
	the gulag of learning that was 
	St. Matthew’s Elementary.
	
	Just as the glorious bell 
	peeled, our teacher Sister 
	Mary Ursula asked that I 
	remain in my seat.
	
	My buddies, Rube Snow and Cy 
	Hibbs, charged off to freedom, 
	downtown to the raffles or the 
	shop windows, or up to Nagle’s 
	Hill with a toboggan in tow.
	
	While I sat at my desk 
	wondering what I’d done this 
	time.
	
	Sure I got in a little trouble 
	in school.  Minor mischief, 
	nothing serious like the stuff 
	Rube and Cy used to get up to.  
	And I was good student.  
	
	Jeez, this was Rube’s third go 
	at grade six.   Why me?  And 
	why now?  
	
	But Sister Mary Ursula made me 
	wait, and wait, and wait ... 
	sitting there writing in her 
	Teacher’s Planner in that 
	cramped sexless hand of hers.  
	
	I started to daydream, looking 
	out the window onto the frozen 
	grounds of St. Matthew’s, a 
	gentle snow filling in the 
	tracks of my departed 
	comrades, erasing ... 
	
	AND SUDDENLY SHE POUNCED!  IN 
	ONE MOVEMENT, A GREAT BLACK 
	CURTAIN IN MY PERIPHERAL 
	VISION, AN IVORY CLAW AT THE 
	END OF A  MONSTROUS BAT’S 
	WING, SNATCHING ME UP OUT OF 
	MY SEAT BY THE HAIR, THROWING 
	OPEN MY DESK and finding ... 
	her shoes.  
	
	Who knows why I took them ? 
	Simply to rebel?  
	
	I had been irresistibly 
	compelled to pilfer the 
	sensible brogues back in 
	October.  I didn’t display 
	them to my buddies like a 
	trophy, didn’t flick them in 
	Rennie’s River in an act of 
	defiance.  I just liked 
	looking at them on occasion.  
	Liked running my fingers 
	across the pared leather. 
	Liked ....  
	
	And what was to be my 
	punishment for this ... 
	violation?  Sister Mary Ursula 
	said I’d know.  
	
	But when?  
	
	Five days later, it turned out 
	... when my Mother announced 
	that among the guests coming 
	over for a light Christmas Eve 
	supper was none other than 
	Sister Mary Ursula.  
	
	I could serve a year’s 
	detention, I could take the 
	strap until my hands were 
	swollen to briefcases, I could 
	have a dunce cap welded 
	permanently to my head, but I 
	could not have Dad hear of my 
	... disgrace.
	
	Well, by the time Sister 
	Ursula was sipping her tea and 
	eating her Christmas cake, I 
	was in quite a state.  Why was 
	she tormenting me ?  Why not 
	just out with it ?  Why not 
	offer me up to the wolves,  
	throw me at Dad’s doubtful 
	mercy.
	
	By the time the adults got to 
	the end of the second cup, I 
	couldn’t bear it.  I was ready 
	to confess my sin. 
	
	And then, time to leave for 
	Midnight Mass.
	
	She thanked my Mom and blessed 
	herself.  In the vestibule, 
	she stepped into her plastic 
	translucent galoshes.
	
	Reaching for the front door, 
	Sister Mary Ursula looked back 
	at me.
	
	“Goodnight, Paul,” she said, 
	“and Merry Christmas.”
	
	
MUSIC:	


	Town, finis 1979 -- exeunt 
	decade right.  
	
	There hadn’t been any snow -- 
	just freezing rain through to 
	the third week of December.  
	
	I left the house for the Old 
	Gob Hall to pick up some of 
	the props I’d borrowed from 
	Mom.  The revival of “Country 
	Matters” was closing early 
	after depressing houses and 
	reviews.  
	
	A smash hit in 1976.  
	
	What had turned critics and 
	public against my work ?  How 
	had I gone from “wry and 
	restlessly young” to 
	“overwrought and drenched in 
	pathos” in three short years ?  
	And without changing a single 
	word of text ?
	
	I turned up my collar and 
	bumped into the postman at the 
	corner.  He cursed and handed 
	me ... the letter.
	
	The letter I’d waited so long 
	for I’d forgotten I was 
	waiting.
	
	Expensive stationery.  Upper-
	left corner.  Embossed, hot- 
	pink, mod letters: “Shirley 
	Productions”.  
	
	Here it is, the tattered 
	shreds still ... tattered 
	where I ripped it open all 
	those years of mornings ago. 
	[picks up letter]
	
	“Dear Mr. Moth, We here at SP 
	were thrilled with your 
	“Cinderella” sequence; Shirley 
	thought it was really 
	happening, too.  I quote, “the 
	script fits me like the glass 
	slipper.” 
	
	Not only would we like to 
	purchase the concept, we are 
	prepared to offer you a staff 
	writer’s position with SP on a 
	trial basis.  Unfortunately, 
	because of our production 
	schedule, we would need you to 
	be in LA almost immediately, 
	holiday season 
	notwithstanding.
	
	Very impressed.  Look forward 
	to meeting you.
	
	Andy Stegg, Executive 
	Producer, Shirley 
	Productions.”

	And then, a hand-written p.s. 
	from the Diva herself.  “Paul, 
	surely you’ll come ?  
	Shirley.”
	
	What do you do when you get an 
	offer like that in the mail ?
	
	You go for the big walk.

	By the time I’d read it the 
	tenth, the eleventh, the 
	hundredth time, I was in the 
	heart of the old city, and 
	starting to get a little tired 
	of the syntax, a little sick 
	of the kitschy pink lettering, 
	a little wary of what 
	Shirley’s tidy school-girl 
	script and silly sense of 
	humour might hold in store.
	
	Sure, I had an overwhelming 
	sense that I’d squandered the 
	entire decade in this little 
	burgh, trying to ignite some 
	cultural fire with rotten, wet 
	tinder.

	Sure, I was persona non grata 
	in most theatre and social 
	circles.
	
	Sure, the weather was 
	miserable and the outlook 
	provincial and the restaurants 
	lousy and the politics corrupt 
	and the general mood 
	unrelentingly bleak and 
	despairing --- but it was 
	home.

	And just as that sank in, 
	magically, out of the rain, 
	there began to fall big juicy 
	flakes of snow.
	
	Before my eyes, the streets of 
	the old port donned a look of 
	considerable yule.
	
	Its bedraggled and besodden 
	occupants became brisk and 
	chipper and purposefully 
	Victorian.  
	
	My good old friends, scattered 
	now across the world, would 
	already be setting out on 
	their annual Christmas 
	pilgrimages -- coming home on 
	the great Townee Haj.

	Did it really matter that we 
	had nothing left to say to one 
	another?   

	And my family, who’d soon be 
	filling Mom’s parlour with the 
	screeches of life new and old, 
	would put aside the lingering 
	resentments and festering 
	wounds over a big, stuffed 
	bird.  My family...
	
(the music begins playing its 
marching band opening segment 
somewhere under here)

	Down the way, the black and 
	red began to play ... the 
	Sally Ann Brass Band ... a 
	chill winter blast blew up the 
	street and under my sodden 
	wool overcoat ...
	
	I was suddenly overwhelmed 
	with the sense that this was 
	my town, these pedestrians and 
	unhurried motorists were my 
	people.  This was my place.
	
	Could I abandon them on the 
	very eve of our Christmas 
	communion ?  Could they just 
	be traded in for the random 
	pursuit of celebrity in the 
	City of Angels ?  The glass, 
	the concrete, the toxic 
	warmth, the arrogant palms and 
	ersatz evergreens of LA, LA ?  
	The vapid nubile lubricious 
	vixens prancing on the beach ?  
	The mindless hedonism ?  The 
	vulgar mega-stacks of money ?  
	The expense accounts ?  The 
	perdiems ?  The plush, the 
	soft, the easy ?
	
(pause)

	“Taxi!  Taxi!  Airport.  Step 
	on it!”  


MUSIC:	Jimmy Smith explosion.


	We were en route from L.A.X. 
	to Pearson, flying LA to TO. 
	
	I was in the custody of U.S 
	Marshall Mitchell “Blue” 
	Brand.  
	
	He was executing an order for 
	my deportation from the United 
	States.  

	Toronto was completely socked 
	in.   We were forced down in 
	Minneapolis.

	The good Marshall rented a 
	Chevy Caprice.  He loaded me, 
	shackled, into the passenger 
	side and headed north.
	
	It was December 24, 1989.

	We had gotten as far as 
	Hallock, Kittson County, 
	Minnesota.  It had been 
	snowing for six days.  The 80 
	to Canada was impassable. 
	
	I had eight hours to get out 
	of the country.  
	
	Impending trouble was a 
	standing bench warrant for my 
	arrest, issued in Pomona 
	County.  That document had a 
	crafty and willing executioner 
	standing by at the US/Canada 
	border in Emerson, Manitoba.  
	If I didn’t make it across the 
	49th parallel by midnight, 
	Willard Agnew of the LAPD 
	would see me face charges in 
	the Golden State.  
	
	It was Detective Agnew who had 
	busted me.  Who had, with a 
	bullet to my heel, put an end 
	to what surely must be one of 
	the most protracted and costly 
	binges in the history of 
	Tinseltown.  

	I was out of control friends -  
	Robert Downey Jr., Fatty 
	Arbuckle and Monty Cliff had 
	nothing on me.  
	
	Willard Agnew was incensed by 
	the deportation order.  He 
	thought I was getting off 
	easy, like so many other show-
	biz types.

	What odds that I was a 
	Canadian citizen, my crimes 
	had been committed in the U. 
	S. Of A.  That’s where I 
	should face justice.  
	
	And Willard Agnew was always 
	one step ahead of me.  He had 
	arrived at Pearson Airport the 
	day before.  Taking measure of 
	the leaden sky and the lake 
	effect snow, he reasoned that 
	our plane wouldn’t land in 
	Toronto, and that Emerson, 
	Manitoba would be our only 
	option.  
	
	He had vowed to get me, and if 
	I didn’t meet the terms of the 
	deportation order, he would.
	
	With Hallock, Minnesota buried 
	under three feet of the white 
	stuff, it seemed to me that 
	all was lost.  Agnew would get 
	his man ... me.
	
	Blue Brand must have seen the 
	despair in my face.  Must have 
	seen that I wasn’t, as Willard 
	Agnew reasoned, a bad man, 
	merely a starry eyed fellow 
	from a small town who had 
	gotten in over his head, a 
	soul who had lost his way. 
	
	“You know, Moth,” he said “I 
	did duty in Fairbanks, 
	Alaska.”  
	
	I wasn’t listening, I was 
	thinking of San Quentin 
	Prison. 
	
	“I did some mushing up there.” 
	he said.  
	
	Well, after an hour of 
	flashing his badge around 
	Hallock, he had put together a 
	dog team.  
	
	He had a husky in the lead but 
	the rest of the team looked 
	like they were leaving the 
	pound for the rendering plant.  
	
	There were two shamefully 
	groomed poodle crosses, a half 
	blind Lab, an obese shepherd, 
	three mangy mongrels, an 
	antique Rotweiler, a ratting 
	terrier with attitude, a 
	border collie with a criminal 
	bearing and a frightened Great 
	Dane.  
	
	Marshall Brand had a way with 
	the hound.  He just grabbed 
	‘em by the snout and strapped 
	them in.  They knew he was in 
	charge.  
	
	Well, sir, with seven hours 
	left we climbed aboard a 
	makeshift sled and headed out 
	over the snow covered fields 
	of northern Minnesota.  
	
	They may not have been the 
	strongest, or the youngest, or 
	the best looking of dogs, but 
	with Blue Brand their master, 
	they were the most determined 
	pack of mutts I have ever 
	seen.  
	
	The Marshall wielded a stern 
	but merciful whip.  He sent it 
	snaking out over those curs 
	heads, cracking in their ears, 
	more setting time than 
	scolding them to action.  
	
	I could tell by the way he 
	handled the lash that while 
	Marshall Brand was a stern 
	man, he could not conscience 
	punishment for it’s own sake. 
	He knew I had learned my 
	lesson. 
	
	It seemed we had been mushing 
	an eternity when, with my 
	tightly bound extremities near 
	frozen, I saw  it, through the 
	blizzard, the halogen glow of 
	the border crossing at 
	Emerson.   
	
	The sled pulled up to the 
	station.  Willard Agnew was 
	there on the American side.  
	He checked his watch and then 
	reached for the revolver at 
	his ankle.  
	
	“Run Paul!” shouted Marshall 
	Brand.  
	
	And run I did, like I’ve never 
	run before.  Through the snow, 
	my feet first slipping and 
	then finally striking 
	pavement, my strides sound, 
	building momentum until with a 
	mighty leap I was over the 
	border.  
	
	With one hurdle, out of a 
	backward militarist empire and 
	into a reasonable, though 
	shaky, welfare state.  Out of 
	harm’s way and back safely 
	back in Canada.  
	
	I looked through the streaked 
	glass into the guard house. 
	There on the wall the clock 
	struck twelve.  The radio was 
	tuned to CCCP out of Winnipeg.  
	And this song was playing.  
	
	Merry Christmas, Blue Brand, 
	wherever you are.
	
MUSIC:	JONI MITCHELL

Page 19 of 20	PAUL’S CHRISTMAS TALES - # 13