Pleasantville (1998)
by Gary Ross.
Shooting script.
FADE IN:
INT. HIGH SCHOOL AUDITORIUM. DAY.
A college counselor stands at the Podium lecturing the high school seniors about their future.
COLLEGE COUNSELOR
...For those of you going on to college next year, the chance of finding a good job will actually decrease by the time you graduate. The available number of entry level jobs will drop thirty-one percent over the next four years. Median income for those jobs will go down as well...
There is some rustling in the audience.
COLLEGE COUNSELOR
Obviously, my friends, it's a competitive world and good grades are your only ticket through. In fact, by the year 2000.
INT. HIGH SCHOOL. HEALTH CLASS.
A different teacher lectures a different class of students.
HEALTH TEACHER
...The chance of contracting HIV from a non-monogamous lifestyle will climb to one in one hundred and fifty. The odds of dying in an auto accident are only one in twenty-five hundred.
(beat)
Now this marks a drastic increase...
INT. HIGH SCHOOL. SCIENCE CLASS.
Same angle. Different teacher.
SCIENCE TEACHER
...From just four years ago when ozone depletion was at ten percent of its current level. By the time you are twenty years old, average global temperature will have risen two and a half degrees, causing such catastrophic consequences as typhoons, floods, widespread drought and famine.
REVERSE ANGLE. STUDENTS.
They stare back in stunned silence. One of them, DAVID WAGNER, sits in the front row with a pencil in his mouth. Nobody moves...
SCIENCE TEACHER
(chipper "classroom" tone)
Okay. Who can tell me what famine is?
