vegetable garden with an arm full of vegetable. She watches
her parents exit the truck.
Francesca carries her groceries, walking briskly through the
front gate and entering the house.
Richard grabs a bag of feed from the flatbed and strolls more
leisurely. When he walks through the front gate, he notices
something on the ground and picks it up. It is a BUTTON with
RED NATURAL surrounding it.
There is no vegetation whatever, just sand and odd-shaped rock formations. The air is filled with red dust, which alternately obscures and then reveals the image.
CAMERA MOVES FORWARD optically - enlarging the film grain in the process.
SLOW DISSOLVE
OPENING CREDITS BEGIN
ANOTHER SHOT
Of a barren landscape, once more with bizarre rocks. Dust. Sound of wind.
CAMERA MOVES FORWARD again.
DISSOLVE
landscape too deliberate to be of natural origin.
Bisecting this country like a metallic ribbon -- or a scar,
depending on your point of view -- is the 800-mile-long
Trans-Alaskan Pipeline.
??
??
Even the immensity of the pipeline is rendered insignificant
by the vastness of the land. It goes on, and on, and on...
??
??
DISSOLVE TO:
??
??
A lone MAN walks along the Haul Road, a one-lane gravel
tr
landscape. Flooded roads, half-destroyed
huts, broken trees... A dog picks its way through the mud.
FERNANDO (V.O.)
There was a time when the New World
didnt exist...
DISSOLVE TO:
EXT. OCEAN - DAY
A vast stretch of ocean. It fills the screen. Unbroken,
infinite, luminous, mysterious -- it stretches away,
meeting and blending with the sky in pale ribbons of pearl
and misty light.
FERNANDO (V.O.)
.
landscape in Hell. The cars
are stopped in rusted rows, still bumper to bumper. The skyline of
buildings beyond has been shattered by some unimaginable force like a
row of kicked-down sandcastles. Wind blows through the desolation,
keening with the sound of ten million dead souls. It scurries the ashes
into drifts, stark white in the moonlight against the charred rubble. A
TITLE CARD FADES IN:
LO