Original Screenplay "Norma Day" by Kris Courtney

Norma Day - Treatment Page

Original Screenplay / Script - Author Kris Courtney

(Based on a True Story, Norma Jean's Sun by Kris Courtney)

ISBN-10: 0578020599 ISBN-13: 978-0578020594

American Artist Kris Courtney

WGA Registration number - I267790

Captured by circumstance of events rather than virtue of birth rights, a family is set upon a direction that will alter course to yield penalty. Never in our silent moments of illusion do we sense the dark parallel that lives beside us. Nor do we suspect the carrier.

John J.P., Hildreth and Daughter Norma: Flossie, Don Sr. & Son Donnie: Johnny: Kris

Act 1:

The morning opens and a mist of innocence appears across the countryside, telling us the day is new. The feeling of hope and love and the humble awareness of duty is clear, if only for a moment. It is that inspiration that follows us into a small town, where we are awakened by a cool frost to the laughter of children playing on this Sunday morning.

The broken glass that cloaks the upstairs window tells the story of an empty future, or a past that need not be spoken. Though the fence around the side yard still stands strong, it needs a painting, and the swing set is rusted with neglect. It speaks in the wind, claiming its independence and its loneliness.

This journey begins a tale from this same old house resting on the hill. It offers a view of the carnival that comes every year to this small town and sets up just across the tracks. The pallet is dry now; the colors are gone. The saga told only drawn darker as the years have passed, bitter days into bitter cold nights. All that comes now are glimpses of the faces that have graced my soul.

Act 2:

There was nothing that explained the attraction between them, whether by silence or sin by omission, each who willingly goes this way will pass the corpses of those whom he hurts. I believe that each sin carries a value and that its cost holds a judgment in purgatory.

To court a man’s daughter, one’s intent and implementation was critical. In this case, one daughter experienced only a modicum of oversight; the other was under lock and key. Nobody got close to Norma without J. P.’s knowledge and approval. But it didn’t take long before Johnny and Norma were falling in love. Norma was the prettiest girl in school and Johnny, the leatherneck, wielded an image to defend.

Soon Norma, fifteen, and Johnny, twenty, could regularly be found in the malt shop after class. Admiration or fascination, who could say, but their eyes and hearts connected. Norma was the envy of all as she rode in Johnny’s car, a rat rod that could win a race without spilling a drop of gas. Johnny resembled that little-known Cutter from Fairmont, James Dean. Life was easy.

Here in this town the tracks that once haunted the family still brought on a moment of fear, on of doubt and confusion of the kind that flashes across one’s mind. In that flash of clarity, one finds oneself experiencing either a moment of relief—or of confinement. It was no different for these children except that they knew on which side of the tracks they belong, isolated.

The summer sun was bravely harsh in August, 1958, burning the skin, searing the paint of a house, leaving nothing unseen and no place to hide. It seems life has a way of punishing some and this season was no exception. This year the county fair returned as usual, but circumstances were not the same. With graduation came the responsibility for finding work and defining the future. I suppose this challenge comes to everyone and this was the year for Norma. In high school, Norma excelled in accounting and typing. Therefore, it only seemed natural for her to take a job at the local drugstore, helping in the office, keeping records, and caring for the store. A good job for a fine young lady, you might say. The young woman who walked the boardwalk was tired after a day at work, but eager to gaze at the night lights and enjoy the Midway.

The young man at the fair stood away from the crowd for a moment to observe, the one who had stood boldly in the dim light of the railroad tracks and who had found his future defined in that moment, was the same man who now held tightly to the stature of the adult he had become. His father had long since gone, taking the boy’s childhood with him. Flossie was the family matriarch and provided deep roots of stability for an otherwise unstable family unit.

Act 3:

Norma began to weep; Norma’s voice trembled with anxiety. The ladies laughed and soon fears, replaced by the usual pre-wedding nerves, had been all but forgotten. The room filled once again with chatter and laughter. The players were ready to follow the script set before them.

The sounds of the hospital began to ring with an echo of detachment; God All Mighty himself had struck with his wrath and maleness. Faith and pride were being tested to a point of fracture. This family had never claimed freedom from strife and surpassing the point of pain had always been a fact of life. But this time, in their shame and guilt.

Norma turned to me; I heard her words as if we were in a play, rehearsing our lines. “Kris, do you hold anything against me, Son?” A casualty of circumstances once again, disconnected from any purpose or direction, without values, the stage was set … Time was empty; it paused unwittingly.

Norma Jean's Sun, Memoir by Kris Courtney