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-"Johanna. Let's call her Johanna. She's the star of this show"

-"Johanna? What kind of name is that? I have a Johannes in my class. Is she German?"

-"No, yes, well let's think about it. She needs an occupation-"

-"A hooker! She has to be a hooker!"

-"What? Why?"

-"Character depth! I'm not writing this if Johanna's not a hooker!"

-"Fine, but let's make it more relatable. Let's make her a stripper. You know, wrong decisions and what not. Same as a hooker, but a tiny bit more acceptable"

-"Ooh, stripper's better. More classy..Also...Leaves more to the imagination"

-" Fine, so a German stripper named Johanna. Then what?"

-"You just said she's not German!"

-"How many German strippers do you know man? Germans are industrious. They read books. They have trains that work on time. They have weird pornos, but we're not writing porn. Romanian, she's Romanian"

-"Why does she need to be Romanian? What do we know of Romania? Did you take the walking tour of Bucarest? 'Cos I haven't! I wanted to go there, but you wouldn't let me. I heard it's like walking into a city that's just lost a war"

-"I'm sure they have their reasons. Now focus. Romanian stripper, Johanna...what? walks into a bar?"

-"With a Parish priest and a Jew? No. She has to be involved in something. I don't know, a client who gets her into trouble?"

-"Helloo?! She's not a hooker, remember? What's she doing with a client?"

-"Oh yeah, right. Maybe she's a stripper who moonlights as a hooker-"

-"That's just about the stupidest idea I've ever heard. The audience isn't going to see the difference in the two roles. What reason do we have of making her a stripper, if we're going to have her give it away anyway? How about the guy dies?"

-"What guy?"

-"The guy she's giving a lap dance to at Club Nightshaft. Nightshaft? No Club Manana. I got it, Club Hasta Manana!"

-"So we're not in Germany any more?..And what's wrong with the guy? Is he really old? Did he get a heart attack when his old prick felt the joy of touch? I say let's get him killed after he leaves. Let's not make him old either. An old guy at the club looks more of a degenerate. Besides, why would she follow him out if she's not interested or..or..curious or inquisitive about the guy? He has to be 35-ish. Give him a stubble. Stubble all but shouts mysterious"

-"No, she wouldn't be following him out after giving him a lap dance. I mean, she can. But we're not casting Wahlberg from Boogie Nights here. Let's say she goes out for a cigarette just when he leaves the club."

-"And what? He gets shot? Let's not kill him, I'm beginning to like old-stubbley here. Imagine this. He puts on his coat, turns his face only the slightest so she can see he's stopped for a brief look. But it's a really deep look, you know? Really intense. Like he has a story to her that she will never know. And it just takes a second and he's off walking down the street again"

-"He just walks away? Why're we even bringing him in then? Jeez, the central character is Johanna, not Stubbley. His coat is black, yes?"

-"Obviously. And we'll bring him back. He's just gone for this scene. And what's his name? Are we going with Stubbley? Stubbleman? Aldrich Crow. Let's go with Aldrich Crow"

-"That's nice. So Aldrich Crow is a content man. Or so it would seem for someone in the periphery of his life, looking in. He wakes up in the morning, takes a bath, kisses his wife - He Has a wife. Gives her a peck on the cheek as he leaves for work. Does he take the train or the bus?"

-"No no. Scratch that. Aldrich Crow doesn't have any of that. Why are we making him a middle-aged run of the mill character when we want to make him mysterious at the same time?"

-"It's not your muscle flexing ab-crusted hero who's mysterious. It's the average Joe, who goes into work, does his 9 to 5, comes out and orders coffee. Black. No sugar. 'Cos who knows what he's thinking? He's got a life that's so abysmally normal, he probably craves for something more intriguing. Some..some burst of excitement. And he leaps at it and grabs it"

-"OR. Or maybe he kills people. He's a serial killer and he can't help it. He doesn't kill for any specific reason. It's not game for him, it's not art, it's not even a way out. It's like alcoholism or, or smoking. Like you're smoking right now. He can't help it. At first we show him to be very calm and content. Put your wife idea in. Never smiling, mind you. He's not happy. He never smiles. His hair is neatly combed back which shows he's very organised and has attention to detail. But when he murders. When he murders, he does it with a cold apathy. As if he's disgusted by the very notion. And he leaves the bodies around. Doesn't even bother to wipe away the evidence. Almost like he wants to get caught. That's what he's so desperate for someone to know, yet cautious about divulging...yet. Maybe Johanna"

-"Wait, wait, wait, hold up. Come back to Johanna here. Is she a student? Is she someone with a dead-end? What? Why is she in the job?"

-"That's the best part. We don't give a reason"

-"No reason? We have a central character without a reason and a parallel character with about a half-film's worth more depth than her"

-"How can anyone ever put themselves in her shoes, man? If we legitimize her role, we're giving the audience a reason to accept her. That she's there because of one wrong choice. But the thing we disregard is that THIS is. It is. Already. Like THIS. We don't want them to accept her because of her reasons, we don't even want them to rationalize that maybe her decisions were the best she could have made. We want them to LIKE her for her person. We break open her life and show it to them. She puts on her clothes - normal, mundane, non-eye-catching clothes. The kind that would make her walk right by you without you ever guessing she might be a stripper. She goes home to her little kid-"

-"Brother. She has a younger brother. He's 6"

-"Sure, brother. She cooks, does the laundry, buys the groceries. Then there's the landlord, and he's a real mean sort. Sleazy. Charges a hefty lot for the dilapidated shithole of that apartment. It's a one bed, one TV kind of a dig. It's a scary neighbourhood as well. We have men with their faces covered in hoods walking determinedly toward something when she hears shouts and looks out a window. Moments later, we hear the blaring sounds of an ambulance. The streets are a shambles. Dismal graffiti on the walls. No light. Just a flickering lamp-post. She hasn't paid the electricity bill again this month, so she's sitting reading to her kid brother one of his books by the light of that lap-post as it filters in through a parting in the curtain. They're sitting on the floor with her back resting against a projection of the wall. It's a side-shot and you don't exactly see her face, just her hair. You see the child's face, all rapt with attention. And you hear her voice. And you fall in love with her. It has to be the sort of uneasy, sympathetic, uncomfortable love that'll make you want to fold her into your arms and pray she cries...'Cos if she does not, you will"

-" And this Aldrich fellow. He's just out there killing folk. Does he know Johanna? Does he sense something? He comes across as a pained man himself. Something must have gone wrong with him to have him commit bloody murder of all things..?"

-"He is pained. After all, pain can sense pain. For him, it is not a circumstantial pain, it's not an agony wrought by the physical condition of being in a deprived and endemic world of hopelessness. It's the emotional pain of normalcy. Maybe the killings are a sort of manifestation of a self-inflicted reinforcing perpetual guilt that he feels for the life he willfully chose, but wants nothing to do with. As sort of reprieve if you will. And he's dying to let somebody know. To reach out to someone, but he cannot."

-"They have to meet at some point.."

-"I picture a seedy room at the back end of the strip joint. Maybe he pays money just to sit silent in the corner while she does her stuff. But he's not interested in sex. He doesn't care about the money. She can feel what he wants. She stops. There's scant dialogue punctuated with voluble silence. Their expressions tell it all. I think there's a majestic instant of time when two people worlds apart, but with the same sense of emptiness see themselves reflected in one other...Maybe they're soulmates in an afterlife they can't wait to part the veil of..But they cannot"

-"I have to ask..Does he die?"

-"No. She does."

-"But why?"

-"Don't you see? She has to. It is not a plot point. It is not a death of necessity. It is a death of the idea of hope. It is the erasure of any shred of evidence that she ever existed or mattered at all. And she doesn't matter. Not to us, not to the good folk sitting out there. She matters to him. So he has to kill her. God knows she's died enough deaths already...It's the sane thing to do in his perspective"

-"Good God!...And what's the story?"

-"Who cares? They're failures. Their eyes meet. What else is there?"