"We're gonna do the original justice!"
********************
(THIS MOVIE IS TO CAPTURE THE
HUMOR, WIT, AND
EARTHINESS OF 100% PURE AMERICANA WITHOUT YOUR
SAPPY, PREPACKAGED
DISNEY LIES AND DISTORTIONS)
Opening screen, the Mississippi river by a sleepy river town
Sound of blacksmiths hammering out horseshoes, and sight of horses stamping around stables
Hogs grunting in the mud, as men lean against the fence post, passed out on booze
Next
the town square, and girls playing hopscotch. Boys pick up handfuls of mud and
throw it at their pretty dresses. As they scream, nosy old women come out their
and tell the young mischief-makers to
"stop it"
A hand reaches out to grab an apple from the table as this narration overlays:
"Yawp. That's how it was in St. Petersburg, Missouri back in Lord-Almighty-knows-when. You wouldn't know me, unless you heard about the book 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer' which was mostly the truth, but had some stretchers in it on account of that author, Mr. Mark Twain. There was my buddy Tom, his Aunt Polly who made him paint the fence, and the old widow Douglass who I'm staying with now".
"As it went, we found that secret stash in the cave left by the robbers, which definitely wasn't a pile of Sunday school books, and got awful rich-- both me and Tom did. Well, the local judge, Judge Thatcher, took it away from us "for our own good", put it out on interest, and fetched us a dollar a day apiece all year 'round. Not bad, for a pair of 13 year olds. . . . ."
"So life went back to normal, except that the old widow Douglass took me in and tried to 'sivilize me"
Shot reveals a dirty young lad standing awkwardly in clean clothes in front of the camera, fidgeting, as narration continues
"Clean clothes, Bible study, it'll drive a man to pieces!"
Huckleberry Finn changes into his old clothes, and throws his new clothes on to the floor. He runs out the door just as an old woman calls out "Huckleberry!" in a sing-song voice.
He takes off running down the street barefoot
Huck sips from a bucket of beer and cuts off slices from a ham with a pocket-knife out by a tree stump near the pig sty. Tom Sawyer comes on by and asks what he's doing out here like this, and convinces him that if he goes back to the widow Douglass's then he can join his band of robbers and they'll be "real outlaws". They're talking casually, and Tom takes a giant sip from the bucket of beer. In the air is the electricity of juvenile mischief because Tom is a real "showman" who "pulls the wires".
Huck returns to the house, all dirty, and the widow Douglass bothers over his lapse, calling him "a poor lost lamb"
(Cut to shot of caricature of gnarled, scowling old billy goat. . . . . set in it's ways)
She sends him off to get "washed up" and to put on his new clothes back on
Huck looks miserable standing outside "all freshened up", like a boy in a sailor suit, and tosses rocks
(A dinging sound of a bell. . . . . time for supper)
Huck sits at the table with the old widow Douglass and another old woman, Miss Watson. As they set down to grumble a prayer over the meal, he reaches out to grab a biscuit. She scolds him and he draws his hand back
Narration overlay: "Why, blast my soul to pieces if I could get away with anything!"
Huck goes outside for an after-dinner smoke on his pipe, and the old widow Douglass reproves him. He sulks, looking singularly unhapp because he can't ever seem to get away
Narration overlay: "Ah, what does she know?" as the camera focuses on her sitting in a rocking-chair taking a pinch of snuff and comically sneezing and snuffling
The next scene is of Huck struggling along with Miss Watson, a sour old mad, on a spelling book. Clearly he doesn't want to do it and is being goaded with the exhortation "to be a good boy".
Next is a head-on shot of Huck leaning back with his feet up on the table. The widow Douglass comes in and announces over his shoulder "Don't put your feet up there, Huckleberry". "Don't scrunch up like that Huckleberry". "Have you heard a word I said?"
Huckleberry turns around and sulks. She then proceed to tell him about hell, where bad boys go, and Huck says he wishes he was there. She tells him it's an awful thing to say, and starts lecturing him about heaven, and people singing all day and walking around with harps.
Huck asks if she reckons Tom Sawyer will be there, and she says he won't, with great solemenity.
As it gets dark outside and they burn candles, they call the slaves in and everyone says their prayers then goes to bed
Huck sits up in his room, dimly lit by candles. Silence. The distant clock tower rings 12 times He hears an owl hoot and a dog bark. He looks fearful. Then he hears a twig snap, and a "meowing" below his window.
Cut to shot of perspective from the street, over Tom Sawyer's shoulder, as Huck climbs down from the second story window. They whisper a greeting, and go off tip-toeing. They pass the kitchen, where the slave Jim (-- who's a friend of the boys) is sitting up playing solitaire. Huck trips, and makes some noise. Jim looks up with alertness, and steps outside:
"Who dah?" he calls out.
Tom and Huck stand with perfect stillness in the dark, crouched down
"Say-- who is you? What is you? Dog my cats ef I didn't hear sumf'n. Well, I knows what I's gwyne to do. I's gwyne to set down here and listen tell I hears it agin"
He picks up a chair and puts it outside the door. He then sits down and listens, wide-eyed. Gradually he falls asleep and starts snoring. Tom and Huck crawl off, then Tom gets an idea. He goes back to the door, walks around Jim, and takes some candles-- laying down a five cent piece. He exits then as an after-thought, takes off Jim's hat and hangs it on the tree across the way. Then he snickers and walks off, leaving Jim to sleep there, snoring
Tom and Huck walk on to the top of a hill, at which point, they look down at the sleepy, nighttime town-- the stars sparkling above-- and joined up with some other boys, and take off on a skiff down the river.
They finally got to a secret cave hidden behind some bushes, and crawl in with their lit candles, Tom, as their leader, starts talking clandestinely in the dimly-glowing, clammy, echoing:
"Now we'll start this band of robbers and call it 'Tom Sawyer's Gang'. Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath and write his name in blood"
Everyone nods and agrees. Tom unfolds a sheet of paper that he wrote the oath on, and reads it. It swore every boy to stick to the band, and never tell any of the secrets; and if anybody done anything to any boy in the band, whichever boy was ordered to kill that person and to make his own family do it, and he mustn't eat and he mustn't sleep till he had killed them and hacked a cross in their breasts, which was the sign of the band. And nobody that didn't belong to the band could use that mark, and if he did he must be sued; and if he done it again he must be killed. And if anybody that belonged to the band told the secrets, he must have his throat cut, and his name blotted off of the list with blood and never mentioned again by the gang, but have a curse put on it and be forgot, forever.
Modern-day interlude:
(SOUNDS LIKE GUNS N' ROSES!)
Everybody says it's a great oath, and asks if Tom made it up himself. Tom says "some of it", but the rest came out of pirate books and robber books and every gang that was high-toned had it. Some of the boys thought that it would be a better idea "to kill the families" of the boys that told the secrets. Tom thinks that's a good idea, and writes that in-- crossing out one part and editing it over.
Ben Rogers, the voice of common sense, starts asking "hey, wait a minute--" questions
"Here's Huck Finn-- he ain't got no family-- what are you going to do 'bout him?"
"Well 'hain't he got a father?"
"Yes, he's got a father, but you can't never find him, these days. He used to lay drunk with the hogs in the tanyard, but he hain't been seen around these parts in ages"
Everyone talks it out, chewing it over, at a small-minded impasse reckoning that it wouldn't be fair to the rest if they let Huck in on account that he has no family. Then Huck offers them up The Widow Douglass and Miss Watson--
Cut to shot of Miss Watson sitting there next to Huck with a spelling book, and a hand reaching around and muffling her mouth, and a knife making an exaggerated slitting motion--
and the boys figure that it's alright!
They stick their fingers with pins, then sign the oath in blood-- one at a time. Then they ask what the line of business is with this gang
"Nothing-- only robbery and murder".
Ben Harper starts up again:
"But who are we going to rob? Houses-- or cattle-- or--"
"No way, stealing cattle and such things ain't robbery, it's burglary. We ain't burglars. That ain't no sort of style. We're highway men. We stop stages and carriages on the road, with masks on, and kill the people and take their watches and money"
"Must we always kill the people?", another voice speaks up
"Oh, certainly. It's best. Some authorities think different, but mostly it's considered best to kill them. Except some that you bring to this here cave and keep them till they're ransomed"
"Ransomed? What's that?"
"I don't know. But that's what they do. I've seen it in books, and so of course that's what we've got to do"
"But how can we do it if we don't know what it is?", Ben Harper asks insistently.
"Why blame it all, we've got to do it. Don't I tell you it's in the books? Do you want to go to doing different from what's in the books, and get things all muddled up?"
"Oh, that's all very fine to say, Tom Sawyer, but how in the nation are these fellows going to be ransomed if we don't know how to do it to them? That's the thing I want to get at. Now what do you reckon it is?", Ben Harper asks sarcastically.
"Well I don't know. But per'aps if we keep them too they're ransomed, it means that we keep them till they're dead"
"Now, that's something like. That'll answer. Why couldn't you said that before? We'll keep them till they're ransomed to death-- and a bothersome lot they'll be, too, eating up everything and always trying to get loose"
"How you talk, Ben Rogers. How can they get loose when there's a guard over them, ready to shoot them down if they move a peg?"
"A guard. Well, that is good. So somebody's got to set up all night and never get any sleep, just to watch them. I think that's foolishness. Why can't you just take a club and ransom them as soon as they get here?"
"Because it ain't in the books so-- that's why. Now Ben Rogers, do you to do things regular, or don't you-- that's the idea. Don't you reckon that the people that made the books knows what's the correct thing to do? Do you reckon you can learn 'em anything? Not by a good deal. No, sir, we'll just go on and ransom them in the regular way"
"All right. I don't mind; but I say it's a fool way, anyhow. Say-- do we kill the women too?"
"Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you I wouldn't let on. Kill the women? No-- nobody ever saw anything in the books like that. You fetch them to the cave and you're always as polite as pie to them; and by-and-by they fall in love with you and never want to go home any more"
"Well, if that's the way, I'm agreed. but I don't take no stock in it. Mighty soon we'll have the cave so cluttered up with women, and fellows waiting to be ransomed, that there won't be no place for the robbers. But go ahead, I ain't got nothing to say".
They notice that the youngest of the lot had fallen asleep, and they wake him up. He looks around, startled, gets scared and begins crying, wanting to go home to his ma, and doesn't want to be a robber any more. The boys all make fun of him, and call him a cry-baby and that makes him get mad and he gets huffy and says that he'll go out and tell all the gang's secrets. But Tom gives him a five cent pieces to keep quiet and says they all ought to go home and meet next week and rob somebody and kill some people. Ben Rogers announces that he can't get out much, only Sunday'ss, but all the boys agreed that it would be wicked. They agree to fix a day as soon as they could, elected officers, and started home.
Huck comes back to see that the slave Jim has slumped out of his chair and his snoring, curled up like a dog He climbs through the window just when day is breaking
The next day the Jim is talking about how the witches bewitched him and put him in a trance, and rode him all over the State, and hung the hat on a limb to show who done it, showing off the five cent piece as a good luck charm. (This will be a recurring theme, and Jim's story will grow with the telling before awed audiences as the movie continues)