Below is a treatment of my screenplay, Bordertown.The bracketed portion I just added. It's my tentative third act (resolution). Let me know what you think. Any suggestions are very much appreciated.
Just north of the U.S.-Mexican border, wind whips through a desert town, bending the post of a bilingual sign reading:Welcome to La Frontera, Bienvenidos a La Frontera. The wind rises and begins to wail, kicking dust against an office sign reading Pocho Martinez, Private Investigator. A beautiful woman, Eva Garcia de Guerrero, an admirer of Pochos from his wrestling days, hires the detective to investigate the possible adultery of her husband, Miguel Guerrero, a Mexican politician running as PRI candidate for governor of Chubasco, a state bordering the U.S.
Pocho and his operative, Jon, follow the candidate and his entourage on the campaign trail, with Jon always having his camera ready to snap a picture of Guerrero with the other woman. They suspect, but cant prove, the other woman is Dolores Sanchez, assistant to his campaign manager, Ernesto Portillo, though Dolores is definitely involved with Ernestoof that Pocho and Jon are certain. Pocho and Jon, however, do uncover something significant: Major rifts within the Guerrero camp.
One such rift emerges between Guerrero and Rafael Osorio, an Army General who is supposed to be involved in drug interdiction, but is mainly involved in drug trafficking. Osorio is furious over Guerreros support, expressed in a campaign speech, for Mexican participation in a multinational anti-narcotics air fleet under Pentagon command. Guerrero argues that the measure is necessary, if Mexico is to receive US drug certification and avoid serious economic sanctions. Osorio calls Guerrero a Malinchista (supporter of foreign intervention), willing to surrender Mexican sovereignty to the US government and the US corporations seeking to control Mexicos natural resources. Another rift emerges between Guerrero and his campaign manager, Ernesto Portillo. Portillo is unhappy with the way the campaign is going and even more unhappy that the current governor, Pedro Dvila, didnt select him to run instead.
Pocho and Jon also learn that Guerrero also has enemies outside his camp, notably
Moctezuma Castillo, his PRD challenger who lost to Dvila in the previous governors raceone that was rife with electoral fraud. In the current race, Castillo leads in the polls, but is afraid that the PRI candidate will find a way to win , just as it has every election for the last seventy-one years. On the campaign trail tension runs high, with violence always on the verge of erupting. At one rally, Pocho and Jon witness security forces roughing up and arresting an elderly woman protestor who cries, as she is taken into custody, they attacked me first.
Finally, everything comes to a head at a campaign rally in a poor Mexican border town. Pocho and Jon are present, Jon with his camera at the ready. Pocho, bored, looks down at his newspaper, the La Frontera Gazette, the front page headline reading: POLLS INDICATE CHALLENGER MAKING A STRONG SHOWING AGAINST GUERRERO. He flips the paper over, and below the fold the paper reads:AMID CORRUPTION CHARGES, US THREATENS TO WITHHOLD DRUG CERTIFICATION."
Guerrero delivers a rousing speech, accusing his opponent, who challenges the results of the last election, of speaking, not for the Mexicans, but for the reactionaries in the Catholic Church and the Republicans in the United States. The commander of CISEN, the secret police, raises a white-gloved hand and flares go off. As people scatter, shots ring out. The first shot, fired from the candidates right, strikes his abdomen and Guerrero reels in pain, the second, fired from his left, strikes his temple and he crumples to the platform floor. Jon photographs the gunman on the left. Dolores runs to Guerrero and, as she clutches his lifeless, bloody body, Jon snaps their picture. The police apprehend the gunman on the left, but not the gunman on the right. The CISEN leader, observing Jon and Pocho, casts an angry glance in their direction.
Act II begins back at the office with Eva begging Pocho to investigate her husbands killing, since the authorities are insisting that the man arrested acted alone. Pocho declines, unwilling to get involved in what is shaping up to be a Mexican JFK assassination, complete with multiple gunmen, a coverup, and wide-ranging conspiracy. Just after Eva leaves, Pocho receives a threatening phone call, warning him not to stick his nose in where it doesnt belong. Pocho tells the caller that he cant be intimidated and that he will investigate whatever he wants. He heads home, giving Jon a ride. Its not long before they discover a car following them . Pocho tries, but cant seem to shake it. He goes faster and faster, and turns again and again, trying desperately to elude it. Finally, Pocho loses control, the car skidding before coming to a screeching halt against a guard rail. The pursuing car pulls alongside. Pocho cries Hit the deck!and, just as they duck down, a shotgun blast shatters the side windows. The driver shouts:Greetings from Los Intocables [The Untouchables]!,and the car speeds off.
The next day, Pocho receives a call from the old woman roughed up at the rally. She wont give her name, but she says Pocho knows herher and her son. She says her son is in danger and she needs Pochos help to protect him . He agrees to meet her at a La Frontera bar called The Mexico City. Pocho, parked out front, sits in his car and watches the bar. He sees her approach bars entrance. A car passes Pocho. The passenger rolls down the window and shoots, striking the old woman. The car speeds way. Pocho hesitates, considering whether to chase, but, seeing the woman bleeding on the sidewalk, he gets out and rushes to her. Mortally wounded, she struggles to speak. She manages to utter three last words: not the gunman.
Pocho goes to the morgue, where the coroner has identified the woman, Ramona Quesada de Arroyo, the mother of Jesus Arroyo, a guerilla leader who was arrested in the 70's and then disappeared. Pocho did, in fact, know them both. He and her son were college classmates and student protest leaders. Hed been to his house and seen his mother a couple of times. Pocho and Jesus had been at Tlatelolco in 1968 on the day of the massacre. That day, Jesus had managed to escape. Another day, a few years later, Jesus wasnt so lucky.
Pocho goes to the offices of the La Frontera Gazette, where a reporter friend lets him look around the archives. There, he uncovers the story of his old, long-lost friend. He went underground and joined a guerilla group that kidnaped the governor, father of the current governor, Pedro Dvila. He was freed in a staged rescue after the government paid Jesus ransom. After that, the security forces stepped up their efforts to capture Jesus. When they finally did, the police took him into custody and he was never heard from again. After that, Jesus mother, Ramona, became an activist, calling for justice for her son and for all the other children who had disappeared in La Guerra Sucia, Mexicos Dirty War.
As Pocho drives back to the office, Ramonas words repeat in his head: not the gunman.
When he arrives, taking his seat at his desk, Marina brings him his newspaper. He looks at the headline, DEFENDANT ARRAIGNED IN GUERRERO CASE, and the defendants photo below it. The photo shows the defendant, head shaved, dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit, leaving the courthouse after the arraignment. Pocho does a double take. It suddenly occurs to him that the man in the photo is different from the man he saw arrested. He pulls the Guerrero file and compares the newspaper photo to the photo of the gunman Jon took during the rally. Sure enough, the newspaper photo is of a different man. Not the gunman. he repeats aloud. The man in the newspaper is not the gunman, but who is he? He looks again, closely, at the newspaper photo. A little older, sure, but it still looks like himmy old friend Jesus.
Just then the phone rings and Pocho answers. A woman who tells him that the man in custody is not the man arrested. Tell me something I dont know. I know where the real shooter is, she replies. Where? She says: Meet me in an hour at the vacant lot next to San Benito Cemetery. And one more thing. Whats that? Bring a shovel.
Pocho and Jon meet her at the lot. The woman, it turns out, is a sham psychic named Zorina, who claims a spirit from the great beyond is guiding her to the body. They go to the spot she claims the body is buried and Jon digs up the grave. When Jon uncovers the body, Pocho climbs in to inspect. He notes that finger tips have been removed and that there is a straight horizontal cut down to the skull above the eyes. They say their good-byes to Doa Zorina and Jon quickly fills in the hole. Jon puts the shovel in Pochos car and they take a walk.
Jon says hes aghast that someone would mutilate someones head like that, to which Pocho laughs. Mutilate? Do you really think the killer bothered to mutilate him with a surgical saw? No, my friend, he was autopsied.
They enter San Benito, a cemetery Pocho knows well since his family plot is there. Thats why the name Zorina seemed so familiar. He passes the Martinez graves and comes to Zorinas family plot. There Pocho examines the dates on the headstones and notices a recent death. We really need to pay Doa Zorina a condolence call , he says to Jon. It seems one of her male relatives died recently. My guesshe sustained a fatal head injury.
Pocho has been shot at and lied to. Only one thing is clear: Someone doesnt want him to discover who is behind the Guerrero assassination. But who? They drive to Zorinas office to find out. Pocho tells her that he is aware that body is not that of the assassin but of her relative. He wants to know who hired her. Was it someone in the PRI? No response. Was it someone in the secret police, in CISEN? A slight reaction. So it was someone in CISEN. Who? She says she cant tell him. If they find out she squealed, theyll kill her. He tells her Im going down to the CISEN office right now and tell them you blew it, that Im on to you and your feeble attempt at deception. Then theyll definitely kill you. Your only chance is for you to help me catch those behind the Guerrero killing and make them pay. She tells him he already knows one of them, or, at least, knows of him, since he was there at Tlateloloco. She wont tell Pocho any more than that.
Back at the office, Pocho examines the Guerrero file again, looks through the pictures. He sees a photo of the CISEN leader, raising his white-gloved hand. He realizes the raised hand was a signal, just the like one hed seen before.
He meets with Eva, telling her he'll investigate her husband's murder, after all. He tells her that, initially, he refused to take the case, since he doubted Mexicos culture of impunity would ever end. He figured that, even if he fingered those behind the killing, they would just get away with it. But he knows now that he has to bring those responsible to justicehas to, since one of them is the man who killed his friends, years earlier, at Tlatelolco.
[Pocho suspects that, just as they conspired to kill the students at Tlatelolco, the military and the secret police conspired to kill Guerrero. They tail General Osorio and Los Intocables, the armys elite anti-drug unit, only to discover it only busts drug traffickers affiliated with the Coromuel Cartel, leaving alone those affiliated with the Chubasco Cartel. Pocho and Jon gather evidence of Osorios corruption to present to the federal attorney general, or PGR.
Pocho meets with the PGR in Mexico City, convincing him to prosecute the general. When police arrest Osorio, the secret police head comes after Pocho. While in Mexico City, Pocho gets together with some old friends from his student days, many of whom had fought with Jesus' guerilla group. When they revisit Tlateloloco, they are confronted by the secret police head and Los Intocables. Pocho and his friends, put up an incredible fight. When the fight is over, the CISEN head and most of Los Intocables lie dead.
The movie ends with Pocho and Jon meeting with Eva and the recently freed Jesus at Pocho's office in La Frontera. Theyre talking about the election victory by Castillo, the opposition candidate. Pocho remarks that Mexico is opening, becoming more pluralistic. It is also a country where, increasingly, individuals can no longer act with impunity. In the end, Pocho reflects soberly that, although the demise of the countrys single-party (PRI) system will bring both popular sovereignty and public accountability, it will also bring the instability and internecine violence that made Mexico adopt the PRI system in the first place. In any case, Pocho says, a wind of change is blowing across Mexico.
Outside, the wind whips through the desert town, bending the post of a bilingual sign reading:Welcome to La Frontera, Bienvenidos a La Frontera.]
Just north of the U.S.-Mexican border, wind whips through a desert town, bending the post of a bilingual sign reading:Welcome to La Frontera, Bienvenidos a La Frontera. The wind rises and begins to wail, kicking dust against an office sign reading Pocho Martinez, Private Investigator. A beautiful woman, Eva Garcia de Guerrero, an admirer of Pochos from his wrestling days, hires the detective to investigate the possible adultery of her husband, Miguel Guerrero, a Mexican politician running as PRI candidate for governor of Chubasco, a state bordering the U.S.
Pocho and his operative, Jon, follow the candidate and his entourage on the campaign trail, with Jon always having his camera ready to snap a picture of Guerrero with the other woman. They suspect, but cant prove, the other woman is Dolores Sanchez, assistant to his campaign manager, Ernesto Portillo, though Dolores is definitely involved with Ernestoof that Pocho and Jon are certain. Pocho and Jon, however, do uncover something significant: Major rifts within the Guerrero camp.
One such rift emerges between Guerrero and Rafael Osorio, an Army General who is supposed to be involved in drug interdiction, but is mainly involved in drug trafficking. Osorio is furious over Guerreros support, expressed in a campaign speech, for Mexican participation in a multinational anti-narcotics air fleet under Pentagon command. Guerrero argues that the measure is necessary, if Mexico is to receive US drug certification and avoid serious economic sanctions. Osorio calls Guerrero a Malinchista (supporter of foreign intervention), willing to surrender Mexican sovereignty to the US government and the US corporations seeking to control Mexicos natural resources. Another rift emerges between Guerrero and his campaign manager, Ernesto Portillo. Portillo is unhappy with the way the campaign is going and even more unhappy that the current governor, Pedro Dvila, didnt select him to run instead.
Pocho and Jon also learn that Guerrero also has enemies outside his camp, notably
Moctezuma Castillo, his PRD challenger who lost to Dvila in the previous governors raceone that was rife with electoral fraud. In the current race, Castillo leads in the polls, but is afraid that the PRI candidate will find a way to win , just as it has every election for the last seventy-one years. On the campaign trail tension runs high, with violence always on the verge of erupting. At one rally, Pocho and Jon witness security forces roughing up and arresting an elderly woman protestor who cries, as she is taken into custody, they attacked me first.
Finally, everything comes to a head at a campaign rally in a poor Mexican border town. Pocho and Jon are present, Jon with his camera at the ready. Pocho, bored, looks down at his newspaper, the La Frontera Gazette, the front page headline reading: POLLS INDICATE CHALLENGER MAKING A STRONG SHOWING AGAINST GUERRERO. He flips the paper over, and below the fold the paper reads:AMID CORRUPTION CHARGES, US THREATENS TO WITHHOLD DRUG CERTIFICATION."
Guerrero delivers a rousing speech, accusing his opponent, who challenges the results of the last election, of speaking, not for the Mexicans, but for the reactionaries in the Catholic Church and the Republicans in the United States. The commander of CISEN, the secret police, raises a white-gloved hand and flares go off. As people scatter, shots ring out. The first shot, fired from the candidates right, strikes his abdomen and Guerrero reels in pain, the second, fired from his left, strikes his temple and he crumples to the platform floor. Jon photographs the gunman on the left. Dolores runs to Guerrero and, as she clutches his lifeless, bloody body, Jon snaps their picture. The police apprehend the gunman on the left, but not the gunman on the right. The CISEN leader, observing Jon and Pocho, casts an angry glance in their direction.
Act II begins back at the office with Eva begging Pocho to investigate her husbands killing, since the authorities are insisting that the man arrested acted alone. Pocho declines, unwilling to get involved in what is shaping up to be a Mexican JFK assassination, complete with multiple gunmen, a coverup, and wide-ranging conspiracy. Just after Eva leaves, Pocho receives a threatening phone call, warning him not to stick his nose in where it doesnt belong. Pocho tells the caller that he cant be intimidated and that he will investigate whatever he wants. He heads home, giving Jon a ride. Its not long before they discover a car following them . Pocho tries, but cant seem to shake it. He goes faster and faster, and turns again and again, trying desperately to elude it. Finally, Pocho loses control, the car skidding before coming to a screeching halt against a guard rail. The pursuing car pulls alongside. Pocho cries Hit the deck!and, just as they duck down, a shotgun blast shatters the side windows. The driver shouts:Greetings from Los Intocables [The Untouchables]!,and the car speeds off.
The next day, Pocho receives a call from the old woman roughed up at the rally. She wont give her name, but she says Pocho knows herher and her son. She says her son is in danger and she needs Pochos help to protect him . He agrees to meet her at a La Frontera bar called The Mexico City. Pocho, parked out front, sits in his car and watches the bar. He sees her approach bars entrance. A car passes Pocho. The passenger rolls down the window and shoots, striking the old woman. The car speeds way. Pocho hesitates, considering whether to chase, but, seeing the woman bleeding on the sidewalk, he gets out and rushes to her. Mortally wounded, she struggles to speak. She manages to utter three last words: not the gunman.
Pocho goes to the morgue, where the coroner has identified the woman, Ramona Quesada de Arroyo, the mother of Jesus Arroyo, a guerilla leader who was arrested in the 70's and then disappeared. Pocho did, in fact, know them both. He and her son were college classmates and student protest leaders. Hed been to his house and seen his mother a couple of times. Pocho and Jesus had been at Tlatelolco in 1968 on the day of the massacre. That day, Jesus had managed to escape. Another day, a few years later, Jesus wasnt so lucky.
Pocho goes to the offices of the La Frontera Gazette, where a reporter friend lets him look around the archives. There, he uncovers the story of his old, long-lost friend. He went underground and joined a guerilla group that kidnaped the governor, father of the current governor, Pedro Dvila. He was freed in a staged rescue after the government paid Jesus ransom. After that, the security forces stepped up their efforts to capture Jesus. When they finally did, the police took him into custody and he was never heard from again. After that, Jesus mother, Ramona, became an activist, calling for justice for her son and for all the other children who had disappeared in La Guerra Sucia, Mexicos Dirty War.
As Pocho drives back to the office, Ramonas words repeat in his head: not the gunman.
When he arrives, taking his seat at his desk, Marina brings him his newspaper. He looks at the headline, DEFENDANT ARRAIGNED IN GUERRERO CASE, and the defendants photo below it. The photo shows the defendant, head shaved, dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit, leaving the courthouse after the arraignment. Pocho does a double take. It suddenly occurs to him that the man in the photo is different from the man he saw arrested. He pulls the Guerrero file and compares the newspaper photo to the photo of the gunman Jon took during the rally. Sure enough, the newspaper photo is of a different man. Not the gunman. he repeats aloud. The man in the newspaper is not the gunman, but who is he? He looks again, closely, at the newspaper photo. A little older, sure, but it still looks like himmy old friend Jesus.
Just then the phone rings and Pocho answers. A woman who tells him that the man in custody is not the man arrested. Tell me something I dont know. I know where the real shooter is, she replies. Where? She says: Meet me in an hour at the vacant lot next to San Benito Cemetery. And one more thing. Whats that? Bring a shovel.
Pocho and Jon meet her at the lot. The woman, it turns out, is a sham psychic named Zorina, who claims a spirit from the great beyond is guiding her to the body. They go to the spot she claims the body is buried and Jon digs up the grave. When Jon uncovers the body, Pocho climbs in to inspect. He notes that finger tips have been removed and that there is a straight horizontal cut down to the skull above the eyes. They say their good-byes to Doa Zorina and Jon quickly fills in the hole. Jon puts the shovel in Pochos car and they take a walk.
Jon says hes aghast that someone would mutilate someones head like that, to which Pocho laughs. Mutilate? Do you really think the killer bothered to mutilate him with a surgical saw? No, my friend, he was autopsied.
They enter San Benito, a cemetery Pocho knows well since his family plot is there. Thats why the name Zorina seemed so familiar. He passes the Martinez graves and comes to Zorinas family plot. There Pocho examines the dates on the headstones and notices a recent death. We really need to pay Doa Zorina a condolence call , he says to Jon. It seems one of her male relatives died recently. My guesshe sustained a fatal head injury.
Pocho has been shot at and lied to. Only one thing is clear: Someone doesnt want him to discover who is behind the Guerrero assassination. But who? They drive to Zorinas office to find out. Pocho tells her that he is aware that body is not that of the assassin but of her relative. He wants to know who hired her. Was it someone in the PRI? No response. Was it someone in the secret police, in CISEN? A slight reaction. So it was someone in CISEN. Who? She says she cant tell him. If they find out she squealed, theyll kill her. He tells her Im going down to the CISEN office right now and tell them you blew it, that Im on to you and your feeble attempt at deception. Then theyll definitely kill you. Your only chance is for you to help me catch those behind the Guerrero killing and make them pay. She tells him he already knows one of them, or, at least, knows of him, since he was there at Tlateloloco. She wont tell Pocho any more than that.
Back at the office, Pocho examines the Guerrero file again, looks through the pictures. He sees a photo of the CISEN leader, raising his white-gloved hand. He realizes the raised hand was a signal, just the like one hed seen before.
He meets with Eva, telling her he'll investigate her husband's murder, after all. He tells her that, initially, he refused to take the case, since he doubted Mexicos culture of impunity would ever end. He figured that, even if he fingered those behind the killing, they would just get away with it. But he knows now that he has to bring those responsible to justicehas to, since one of them is the man who killed his friends, years earlier, at Tlatelolco.
[Pocho suspects that, just as they conspired to kill the students at Tlatelolco, the military and the secret police conspired to kill Guerrero. They tail General Osorio and Los Intocables, the armys elite anti-drug unit, only to discover it only busts drug traffickers affiliated with the Coromuel Cartel, leaving alone those affiliated with the Chubasco Cartel. Pocho and Jon gather evidence of Osorios corruption to present to the federal attorney general, or PGR.
Pocho meets with the PGR in Mexico City, convincing him to prosecute the general. When police arrest Osorio, the secret police head comes after Pocho. While in Mexico City, Pocho gets together with some old friends from his student days, many of whom had fought with Jesus' guerilla group. When they revisit Tlateloloco, they are confronted by the secret police head and Los Intocables. Pocho and his friends, put up an incredible fight. When the fight is over, the CISEN head and most of Los Intocables lie dead.
The movie ends with Pocho and Jon meeting with Eva and the recently freed Jesus at Pocho's office in La Frontera. Theyre talking about the election victory by Castillo, the opposition candidate. Pocho remarks that Mexico is opening, becoming more pluralistic. It is also a country where, increasingly, individuals can no longer act with impunity. In the end, Pocho reflects soberly that, although the demise of the countrys single-party (PRI) system will bring both popular sovereignty and public accountability, it will also bring the instability and internecine violence that made Mexico adopt the PRI system in the first place. In any case, Pocho says, a wind of change is blowing across Mexico.
Outside, the wind whips through the desert town, bending the post of a bilingual sign reading:Welcome to La Frontera, Bienvenidos a La Frontera.]
VIEW 11 of 11 COMMENTS
pollypocket:
Yeah I miss my natural red... the red dye just didn't cut it, hence the blue.
piratekate:
thanks for the supoortive comments... now to think of what I want to do... Pirate is just so tempting..