Getting started
The window
A tour of the Calmly Script window, from the title strip at the top to the footer at the bottom, and what hides while you write.
Calmly Script is one page on a quiet background. Everything else stays at the edges, and some of it steps out of the way while you type.
# ACT ONE
## The call
INT. MAYA'S APARTMENT - NIGHT
A studio above a laundromat. The dryers hum through the floor. MAYA (30s) sleeps in her clothes on the couch, a stack of unopened mail on her chest.
Her phone buzzes. She lets it. It buzzes *again*.
MAYA
(into the phone, half asleep)
Whoever this is, it's two in the morning.
LEO (V.O.)
It's Leo. The diner's closing.
Maya sits up. The mail slides to the floor.
[[Idea: the mail is all from the bank. Pay it off in act three.]]
MAYA
Closing when?
LEO (V.O.)
Come and see.
The line goes dead. Maya looks at the phone, then at the envelopes fanned across the floorboards. FINAL NOTICE, in red, on three of them.
She steps over them to find her shoes.
INT. MAYA'S CAR - MOVING - NIGHT
A hatchback held together by bumper stickers. The wipers are losing to the rain. On the radio, a late-night host takes calls from the sleepless.
RADIO HOST (V.O.)
...and if you're still awake out there, you're in good company. Line two, go ahead.
Maya switches it off. Through the streaked glass: the river, black and swollen; the high school, dark; a billboard for a housing development, WATERFRONT LIVING, COMING SOON.
She slows as she passes it. Then speeds up.
EXT. PARKING LOT - NIGHT
A neon sign with half its letters dead: RIVERS DE D NER. Rain on the asphalt. Maya's car pulls in beside the only other one, a pickup older than she is.
She kills the engine and sits. Her phone lights up: one new voicemail. She plays it on speaker.
CAROL (V.O.)
Ms. Reyes, it's Carol from Lakeshore Savings again. I really do need you to call me back before Friday.
Maya deletes it. Through the diner window, a lone figure wipes down the counter as if the breakfast rush were an hour away.
## The last night
INT. RIVERSIDE DINER - NIGHT
Chrome, red vinyl, a jukebox with the plug pulled. LEO (60s) stands behind the counter in an apron he has worn for forty years.
The bell over the door rings. He doesn't look up.
LEO
You came.
MAYA
You said closing. You didn't say tonight.
LEO
Tonight's when it closes.
[[Todo: does Leo know about the offer yet?]]
He pours two coffees. Neither of them drinks.
MAYA
Where is everybody?
LEO
Home. Asleep. Where people are at this hour.
MAYA
Dot?
LEO
Dot was in at six for her pie. Same as every night for thirty years.
MAYA
Does she know?
LEO
(wiping the same spot)
Everybody knows. It was in the paper.
MAYA
I didn't read it in the paper. You called me.
LEO
Then I'm glad I called.
Maya turns her mug a quarter turn on the counter. An old habit.
LEO (CONT'D)
How's the city?
MAYA
Loud. Expensive. Fine.
LEO
And the job?
MAYA
(a beat too quickly)
Also fine.
Leo nods as if he believes her. He doesn't.
LEO
You eat?
MAYA
I'm not hungry.
LEO
That's not what I asked.
He's already at the grill. Butter hisses. Maya watches him work: the same economy of movement, the spatula flipped and caught without looking.
LEO (CONT'D)
(over his shoulder)
Kitchen needs clearing out anyway. Everything back there that isn't nailed down belongs to somebody now.
He slides a grilled cheese across the counter, cut into triangles, a pickle on the side. Maya looks at it for a long moment.
MAYA
Triangles.
LEO
Your mother's rule.
She picks up the plate and follows him through the swinging door.
INT. RIVERSIDE DINER - KITCHEN - CONTINUOUS
Boxes everywhere, taped and labelled. Leo has already vanished into the walk-in. Maya reads the nearest box: BOOTH SIX, DO NOT SELL.
MAYA
(calling out)
Who would buy a booth?
LEO (O.S.)
Somebody already did.
Maya runs a finger along the tape. Under the new label there is an older one, in her mother's handwriting: MAYA'S HOMEWORK.
[[Setup: her mother's handwriting. Let Maya find it again at the end.]]
She peels the new label back far enough to read the old one whole, then presses it flat again.
DISSOLVE TO:
INT. RIVERSIDE DINER - DAY (1996)
Sunlight through clean windows. Every stool taken, the jukebox playing. YOUNG MAYA (8) does long division in booth six, her tongue between her teeth.
Her mother, ROSA (30s), in a paper hat, sets down a grilled cheese cut into triangles without breaking stride.
ROSA
Homework first, then the pickle.
YOUNG MAYA
The pickle is part of the sandwich.
ROSA
The pickle is a reward.
A younger Leo, all elbows and moustache, leans through the kitchen hatch.
LEO
Rosa! Table four is asking for you by name.
ROSA
Table four can ask.
She slides a cardboard box under the booth for Maya's books, tears off a strip of tape and writes on it in marker: MAYA'S HOMEWORK.
YOUNG MAYA
Nobody's going to take it.
ROSA
Then the label won't hurt.
CUT TO:
## Closing time
INT. RIVERSIDE DINER - LATER
Leo stacks chairs on the tables, legs in the air. Maya takes the other side of the room without being asked. They meet in the middle.
LEO
You still do the corners first.
MAYA
You taught me.
LEO
Your mother taught you. I just yelled.
The bell rings. DOT (70s), in a rain hat and a coat over her nightgown, stands dripping in the doorway.
DOT
Don't you dare tell me you're closed.
LEO
Dot, it's three in the morning.
DOT
And I couldn't sleep, and neither could you, or the lights would be off.
She takes her stool at the counter, third from the end. Nobody else has sat on it in thirty years.
DOT (CONT'D)
(to Maya)
Look at you. You got tall.
MAYA
I was tall when I left.
DOT
Then you got taller.
Leo lifts a glass dome off the last slice of cherry pie and sets it in front of her. Maya catches his eye. He looks away.
DOT
(between bites)
They say the new place will have forty flavors of coffee.
LEO
There's one flavor of coffee. It's coffee.
DOT
That's what I told them.
She finishes, folds a twenty under the plate, and pats Leo's hand on her way to the door.
DOT
Six o'clock tomorrow.
LEO
Dot. There's no tomorrow.
DOT
(without turning)
Then I'll be early.
The bell rings behind her. Leo lifts the plate. The twenty is wrapped around a key.
# ACT TWO
## The offer
INT. RIVERSIDE DINER - OFFICE - NIGHT
A closet with a desk in it. Invoices on a spike, a calendar stuck on a month from years ago, and a wall of photographs: the diner in every decade.
Maya squeezes in with a flashlight, sent to find packing tape. On the desk, under a coffee can of pens, a letter on heavy paper from HALVERSON DEVELOPMENT GROUP. A number with a lot of zeros. At the bottom, Leo's signature, dated three weeks ago.
[[Question: did Maya know about the letter before tonight?]]
She sets it down exactly where it was. Her eyes go to the wall. One photograph: a girl of eight asleep in booth six, a textbook for a pillow, a waitress in a paper hat standing guard.
MAYA
(quietly)
Three weeks.
LEO (O.S.)
Maya? You find the tape?
She switches off the flashlight and stands in the dark a moment longer.
MAYA
(calling back)
Not yet.
EXT. RIVERSIDE DINER - BACK DOOR - NIGHT
Rain drums on a tin awning. Leo drags a trash bag to the dumpster. Maya waits in the doorway with the letter.
MAYA
You signed it three weeks ago.
LEO
I signed it when they asked me to.
MAYA
And you called me tonight.
LEO
I called you when I could.
He heaves the bag in. The lid bangs down. For a moment, only the rain.
MAYA
They're going to knock it down, Leo. All of it. The counter, the booths.
LEO
It's a building.
MAYA
It's *the* building.
LEO
(finally turning)
It's a building with a roof that leaks over table four, a freezer that dies every August and a man who's sixty-eight years old. That's what it is.
MAYA
You could have told me. Three weeks ago, you could have picked up the phone.
LEO
And said what? Come home and watch?
MAYA
Yes.
Leo has no answer for that. Water runs off the awning between them in a sheet.
Maya looks at the key in his fist. He sees her see it, and pockets it.
MAYA
What's that?
LEO
Dot's.
MAYA
Dot's what?
LEO
Come inside. You're getting wet.
## The booth
INT. RIVERSIDE DINER - NIGHT
Rain against the window. Maya slides into the booth across from Leo, who has not touched his coffee.
For a while neither of them speaks. Outside, the neon buzzes, and the dead letters stay dead.
LEO
You used to fall asleep right there. Your mother would carry you out to the car.
MAYA
I remember.
LEO
You don't. You were asleep.
Maya smiles in spite of herself. Her thumb finds the edge of the table, where a child once scratched four letters into the Formica.
MAYA
When do they come?
LEO
Seven. With a truck, and a man with a clipboard.
MAYA
And the booth?
LEO
The booth goes on a different truck.
[[Rewrite: too on the nose, let the booth say it]]
MAYA
You kept the table.
LEO
I kept the whole diner.
# ACT ONE
## The call
INT. MAYA'S APARTMENT - NIGHT
A studio above a laundromat. The dryers hum through the floor. MAYA (30s) sleeps in her clothes on the couch, a stack of unopened mail on her chest.
Her phone buzzes. She lets it. It buzzes *again*.
MAYA
(into the phone, half asleep)
Whoever this is, it's two in the morning.
LEO (V.O.)
It's Leo. The diner's closing.
Maya sits up. The mail slides to the floor.
[[Idea: the mail is all from the bank. Pay it off in act three.]]
MAYA
Closing when?
LEO (V.O.)
Come and see.
The line goes dead. Maya looks at the phone, then at the envelopes fanned across the floorboards. FINAL NOTICE, in red, on three of them.
She steps over them to find her shoes.
INT. MAYA'S CAR - MOVING - NIGHT
A hatchback held together by bumper stickers. The wipers are losing to the rain. On the radio, a late-night host takes calls from the sleepless.
RADIO HOST (V.O.)
...and if you're still awake out there, you're in good company. Line two, go ahead.
Maya switches it off. Through the streaked glass: the river, black and swollen; the high school, dark; a billboard for a housing development, WATERFRONT LIVING, COMING SOON.
She slows as she passes it. Then speeds up.
EXT. PARKING LOT - NIGHT
A neon sign with half its letters dead: RIVERS DE D NER. Rain on the asphalt. Maya's car pulls in beside the only other one, a pickup older than she is.
She kills the engine and sits. Her phone lights up: one new voicemail. She plays it on speaker.
CAROL (V.O.)
Ms. Reyes, it's Carol from Lakeshore Savings again. I really do need you to call me back before Friday.
Maya deletes it. Through the diner window, a lone figure wipes down the counter as if the breakfast rush were an hour away.
## The last night
INT. RIVERSIDE DINER - NIGHT
Chrome, red vinyl, a jukebox with the plug pulled. LEO (60s) stands behind the counter in an apron he has worn for forty years.
The bell over the door rings. He doesn't look up.
LEO
You came.
MAYA
You said closing. You didn't say tonight.
LEO
Tonight's when it closes.
[[Todo: does Leo know about the offer yet?]]
He pours two coffees. Neither of them drinks.
MAYA
Where is everybody?
LEO
Home. Asleep. Where people are at this hour.
MAYA
Dot?
LEO
Dot was in at six for her pie. Same as every night for thirty years.
MAYA
Does she know?
LEO
(wiping the same spot)
Everybody knows. It was in the paper.
MAYA
I didn't read it in the paper. You called me.
LEO
Then I'm glad I called.
Maya turns her mug a quarter turn on the counter. An old habit.
LEO (CONT'D)
How's the city?
MAYA
Loud. Expensive. Fine.
LEO
And the job?
MAYA
(a beat too quickly)
Also fine.
Leo nods as if he believes her. He doesn't.
LEO
You eat?
MAYA
I'm not hungry.
LEO
That's not what I asked.
He's already at the grill. Butter hisses. Maya watches him work: the same economy of movement, the spatula flipped and caught without looking.
LEO (CONT'D)
(over his shoulder)
Kitchen needs clearing out anyway. Everything back there that isn't nailed down belongs to somebody now.
He slides a grilled cheese across the counter, cut into triangles, a pickle on the side. Maya looks at it for a long moment.
MAYA
Triangles.
LEO
Your mother's rule.
She picks up the plate and follows him through the swinging door.
INT. RIVERSIDE DINER - KITCHEN - CONTINUOUS
Boxes everywhere, taped and labelled. Leo has already vanished into the walk-in. Maya reads the nearest box: BOOTH SIX, DO NOT SELL.
MAYA
(calling out)
Who would buy a booth?
LEO (O.S.)
Somebody already did.
Maya runs a finger along the tape. Under the new label there is an older one, in her mother's handwriting: MAYA'S HOMEWORK.
[[Setup: her mother's handwriting. Let Maya find it again at the end.]]
She peels the new label back far enough to read the old one whole, then presses it flat again.
DISSOLVE TO:
INT. RIVERSIDE DINER - DAY (1996)
Sunlight through clean windows. Every stool taken, the jukebox playing. YOUNG MAYA (8) does long division in booth six, her tongue between her teeth.
Her mother, ROSA (30s), in a paper hat, sets down a grilled cheese cut into triangles without breaking stride.
ROSA
Homework first, then the pickle.
YOUNG MAYA
The pickle is part of the sandwich.
ROSA
The pickle is a reward.
A younger Leo, all elbows and moustache, leans through the kitchen hatch.
LEO
Rosa! Table four is asking for you by name.
ROSA
Table four can ask.
She slides a cardboard box under the booth for Maya's books, tears off a strip of tape and writes on it in marker: MAYA'S HOMEWORK.
YOUNG MAYA
Nobody's going to take it.
ROSA
Then the label won't hurt.
CUT TO:
## Closing time
INT. RIVERSIDE DINER - LATER
Leo stacks chairs on the tables, legs in the air. Maya takes the other side of the room without being asked. They meet in the middle.
LEO
You still do the corners first.
MAYA
You taught me.
LEO
Your mother taught you. I just yelled.
The bell rings. DOT (70s), in a rain hat and a coat over her nightgown, stands dripping in the doorway.
DOT
Don't you dare tell me you're closed.
LEO
Dot, it's three in the morning.
DOT
And I couldn't sleep, and neither could you, or the lights would be off.
She takes her stool at the counter, third from the end. Nobody else has sat on it in thirty years.
DOT (CONT'D)
(to Maya)
Look at you. You got tall.
MAYA
I was tall when I left.
DOT
Then you got taller.
Leo lifts a glass dome off the last slice of cherry pie and sets it in front of her. Maya catches his eye. He looks away.
DOT
(between bites)
They say the new place will have forty flavors of coffee.
LEO
There's one flavor of coffee. It's coffee.
DOT
That's what I told them.
She finishes, folds a twenty under the plate, and pats Leo's hand on her way to the door.
DOT
Six o'clock tomorrow.
LEO
Dot. There's no tomorrow.
DOT
(without turning)
Then I'll be early.
The bell rings behind her. Leo lifts the plate. The twenty is wrapped around a key.
# ACT TWO
## The offer
INT. RIVERSIDE DINER - OFFICE - NIGHT
A closet with a desk in it. Invoices on a spike, a calendar stuck on a month from years ago, and a wall of photographs: the diner in every decade.
Maya squeezes in with a flashlight, sent to find packing tape. On the desk, under a coffee can of pens, a letter on heavy paper from HALVERSON DEVELOPMENT GROUP. A number with a lot of zeros. At the bottom, Leo's signature, dated three weeks ago.
[[Question: did Maya know about the letter before tonight?]]
She sets it down exactly where it was. Her eyes go to the wall. One photograph: a girl of eight asleep in booth six, a textbook for a pillow, a waitress in a paper hat standing guard.
MAYA
(quietly)
Three weeks.
LEO (O.S.)
Maya? You find the tape?
She switches off the flashlight and stands in the dark a moment longer.
MAYA
(calling back)
Not yet.
EXT. RIVERSIDE DINER - BACK DOOR - NIGHT
Rain drums on a tin awning. Leo drags a trash bag to the dumpster. Maya waits in the doorway with the letter.
MAYA
You signed it three weeks ago.
LEO
I signed it when they asked me to.
MAYA
And you called me tonight.
LEO
I called you when I could.
He heaves the bag in. The lid bangs down. For a moment, only the rain.
MAYA
They're going to knock it down, Leo. All of it. The counter, the booths.
LEO
It's a building.
MAYA
It's *the* building.
LEO
(finally turning)
It's a building with a roof that leaks over table four, a freezer that dies every August and a man who's sixty-eight years old. That's what it is.
MAYA
You could have told me. Three weeks ago, you could have picked up the phone.
LEO
And said what? Come home and watch?
MAYA
Yes.
Leo has no answer for that. Water runs off the awning between them in a sheet.
Maya looks at the key in his fist. He sees her see it, and pockets it.
MAYA
What's that?
LEO
Dot's.
MAYA
Dot's what?
LEO
Come inside. You're getting wet.
## The booth
INT. RIVERSIDE DINER - NIGHT
Rain against the window. Maya slides into the booth across from Leo, who has not touched his coffee.
For a while neither of them speaks. Outside, the neon buzzes, and the dead letters stay dead.
LEO
You used to fall asleep right there. Your mother would carry you out to the car.
MAYA
I remember.
LEO
You don't. You were asleep.
Maya smiles in spite of herself. Her thumb finds the edge of the table, where a child once scratched four letters into the Formica.
MAYA
When do they come?
LEO
Seven. With a truck, and a man with a clipboard.
MAYA
And the booth?
LEO
The booth goes on a different truck.
[[Rewrite: too on the nose, let the booth say it]]
MAYA
You kept the table.
LEO
I kept the whole diner.
# ACT ONE
## The call
INT. MAYA'S APARTMENT - NIGHT
A studio above a laundromat. The dryers hum through the floor. MAYA (30s) sleeps in her clothes on the couch, a stack of unopened mail on her chest.
Her phone buzzes. She lets it. It buzzes *again*.
MAYA
(into the phone, half asleep)
Whoever this is, it's two in the morning.
LEO (V.O.)
It's Leo. The diner's closing.
Maya sits up. The mail slides to the floor.
[[Idea: the mail is all from the bank. Pay it off in act three.]]
MAYA
Closing when?
LEO (V.O.)
Come and see.
The line goes dead. Maya looks at the phone, then at the envelopes fanned across the floorboards. FINAL NOTICE, in red, on three of them.
She steps over them to find her shoes.
INT. MAYA'S CAR - MOVING - NIGHT
A hatchback held together by bumper stickers. The wipers are losing to the rain. On the radio, a late-night host takes calls from the sleepless.
RADIO HOST (V.O.)
...and if you're still awake out there, you're in good company. Line two, go ahead.
Maya switches it off. Through the streaked glass: the river, black and swollen; the high school, dark; a billboard for a housing development, WATERFRONT LIVING, COMING SOON.
She slows as she passes it. Then speeds up.
EXT. PARKING LOT - NIGHT
A neon sign with half its letters dead: RIVERS DE D NER. Rain on the asphalt. Maya's car pulls in beside the only other one, a pickup older than she is.
She kills the engine and sits. Her phone lights up: one new voicemail. She plays it on speaker.
CAROL (V.O.)
Ms. Reyes, it's Carol from Lakeshore Savings again. I really do need you to call me back before Friday.
Maya deletes it. Through the diner window, a lone figure wipes down the counter as if the breakfast rush were an hour away.
## The last night
INT. RIVERSIDE DINER - NIGHT
Chrome, red vinyl, a jukebox with the plug pulled. LEO (60s) stands behind the counter in an apron he has worn for forty years.
The bell over the door rings. He doesn't look up.
LEO
You came.
MAYA
You said closing. You didn't say tonight.
LEO
Tonight's when it closes.
[[Todo: does Leo know about the offer yet?]]
He pours two coffees. Neither of them drinks.
MAYA
Where is everybody?
LEO
Home. Asleep. Where people are at this hour.
MAYA
Dot?
LEO
Dot was in at six for her pie. Same as every night for thirty years.
MAYA
Does she know?
LEO
(wiping the same spot)
Everybody knows. It was in the paper.
MAYA
I didn't read it in the paper. You called me.
LEO
Then I'm glad I called.
Maya turns her mug a quarter turn on the counter. An old habit.
LEO (CONT'D)
How's the city?
MAYA
Loud. Expensive. Fine.
LEO
And the job?
MAYA
(a beat too quickly)
Also fine.
Leo nods as if he believes her. He doesn't.
LEO
You eat?
MAYA
I'm not hungry.
LEO
That's not what I asked.
He's already at the grill. Butter hisses. Maya watches him work: the same economy of movement, the spatula flipped and caught without looking.
LEO (CONT'D)
(over his shoulder)
Kitchen needs clearing out anyway. Everything back there that isn't nailed down belongs to somebody now.
He slides a grilled cheese across the counter, cut into triangles, a pickle on the side. Maya looks at it for a long moment.
MAYA
Triangles.
LEO
Your mother's rule.
She picks up the plate and follows him through the swinging door.
INT. RIVERSIDE DINER - KITCHEN - CONTINUOUS
Boxes everywhere, taped and labelled. Leo has already vanished into the walk-in. Maya reads the nearest box: BOOTH SIX, DO NOT SELL.
MAYA
(calling out)
Who would buy a booth?
LEO (O.S.)
Somebody already did.
Maya runs a finger along the tape. Under the new label there is an older one, in her mother's handwriting: MAYA'S HOMEWORK.
[[Setup: her mother's handwriting. Let Maya find it again at the end.]]
She peels the new label back far enough to read the old one whole, then presses it flat again.
DISSOLVE TO:
INT. RIVERSIDE DINER - DAY (1996)
Sunlight through clean windows. Every stool taken, the jukebox playing. YOUNG MAYA (8) does long division in booth six, her tongue between her teeth.
Her mother, ROSA (30s), in a paper hat, sets down a grilled cheese cut into triangles without breaking stride.
ROSA
Homework first, then the pickle.
YOUNG MAYA
The pickle is part of the sandwich.
ROSA
The pickle is a reward.
A younger Leo, all elbows and moustache, leans through the kitchen hatch.
LEO
Rosa! Table four is asking for you by name.
ROSA
Table four can ask.
She slides a cardboard box under the booth for Maya's books, tears off a strip of tape and writes on it in marker: MAYA'S HOMEWORK.
YOUNG MAYA
Nobody's going to take it.
ROSA
Then the label won't hurt.
CUT TO:
## Closing time
INT. RIVERSIDE DINER - LATER
Leo stacks chairs on the tables, legs in the air. Maya takes the other side of the room without being asked. They meet in the middle.
LEO
You still do the corners first.
MAYA
You taught me.
LEO
Your mother taught you. I just yelled.
The bell rings. DOT (70s), in a rain hat and a coat over her nightgown, stands dripping in the doorway.
DOT
Don't you dare tell me you're closed.
LEO
Dot, it's three in the morning.
DOT
And I couldn't sleep, and neither could you, or the lights would be off.
She takes her stool at the counter, third from the end. Nobody else has sat on it in thirty years.
DOT (CONT'D)
(to Maya)
Look at you. You got tall.
MAYA
I was tall when I left.
DOT
Then you got taller.
Leo lifts a glass dome off the last slice of cherry pie and sets it in front of her. Maya catches his eye. He looks away.
DOT
(between bites)
They say the new place will have forty flavors of coffee.
LEO
There's one flavor of coffee. It's coffee.
DOT
That's what I told them.
She finishes, folds a twenty under the plate, and pats Leo's hand on her way to the door.
DOT
Six o'clock tomorrow.
LEO
Dot. There's no tomorrow.
DOT
(without turning)
Then I'll be early.
The bell rings behind her. Leo lifts the plate. The twenty is wrapped around a key.
# ACT TWO
## The offer
INT. RIVERSIDE DINER - OFFICE - NIGHT
A closet with a desk in it. Invoices on a spike, a calendar stuck on a month from years ago, and a wall of photographs: the diner in every decade.
Maya squeezes in with a flashlight, sent to find packing tape. On the desk, under a coffee can of pens, a letter on heavy paper from HALVERSON DEVELOPMENT GROUP. A number with a lot of zeros. At the bottom, Leo's signature, dated three weeks ago.
[[Question: did Maya know about the letter before tonight?]]
She sets it down exactly where it was. Her eyes go to the wall. One photograph: a girl of eight asleep in booth six, a textbook for a pillow, a waitress in a paper hat standing guard.
MAYA
(quietly)
Three weeks.
LEO (O.S.)
Maya? You find the tape?
She switches off the flashlight and stands in the dark a moment longer.
MAYA
(calling back)
Not yet.
EXT. RIVERSIDE DINER - BACK DOOR - NIGHT
Rain drums on a tin awning. Leo drags a trash bag to the dumpster. Maya waits in the doorway with the letter.
MAYA
You signed it three weeks ago.
LEO
I signed it when they asked me to.
MAYA
And you called me tonight.
LEO
I called you when I could.
He heaves the bag in. The lid bangs down. For a moment, only the rain.
MAYA
They're going to knock it down, Leo. All of it. The counter, the booths.
LEO
It's a building.
MAYA
It's *the* building.
LEO
(finally turning)
It's a building with a roof that leaks over table four, a freezer that dies every August and a man who's sixty-eight years old. That's what it is.
MAYA
You could have told me. Three weeks ago, you could have picked up the phone.
LEO
And said what? Come home and watch?
MAYA
Yes.
Leo has no answer for that. Water runs off the awning between them in a sheet.
Maya looks at the key in his fist. He sees her see it, and pockets it.
MAYA
What's that?
LEO
Dot's.
MAYA
Dot's what?
LEO
Come inside. You're getting wet.
## The booth
INT. RIVERSIDE DINER - NIGHT
Rain against the window. Maya slides into the booth across from Leo, who has not touched his coffee.
For a while neither of them speaks. Outside, the neon buzzes, and the dead letters stay dead.
LEO
You used to fall asleep right there. Your mother would carry you out to the car.
MAYA
I remember.
LEO
You don't. You were asleep.
Maya smiles in spite of herself. Her thumb finds the edge of the table, where a child once scratched four letters into the Formica.
MAYA
When do they come?
LEO
Seven. With a truck, and a man with a clipboard.
MAYA
And the booth?
LEO
The booth goes on a different truck.
[[Rewrite: too on the nose, let the booth say it]]
MAYA
You kept the table.
LEO
I kept the whole diner.
Above, a scene is already under way. The writer carries on: a name completes itself from the script, a new scene heading starts, and at the end the Outline opens down the left-hand side.
The title strip
The strip along the top of the window holds:
- The document’s name. A document that has never been saved goes by the title on its title page, or else its first line, and is called untitled while it is empty. A dot beside the name means there are changes that are not saved yet. Once the document is saved, hold the pointer over the name to see where the file is.
- The menus: , , , and . Every command in the app is in one of them, with its shortcut beside it (they are all in Keyboard shortcuts). On a Mac the menus are in the menu bar at the top of the screen instead, where a Mac keeps them.
- Two buttons on the right: Preview, which shows the script as it will print, beside it or over it depending on the room there is (see Preview), and Settings, which opens the settings.
On a narrow window (less than 600 pixels wide, as on a phone) there is no room for five menus beside the name, so they fold into a single button with three lines. Choose it, then the menu you want; each one fills the window, with a way back at the top.
It hides while you write
The strip fades out as soon as you start typing, so only the page is left. To bring it back, move the pointer to the top of the window, or press EscEsc. On a touch screen, tap the top of the window.
To keep the strip on screen all the time, switch off Hide the menu bar when typing in Settings › Distraction free.
The page
The page is where you write. It is as wide as the text of a printed
screenplay page when the window has room for it, and each element is indented
the way it prints: character names towards the middle, dialogue in its
narrower column. The characters
Fountain uses to mark a line (a full stop in front of a heading, the **
around bold words) are shown, dimmed, where you typed them.
The footer
Along the bottom of the window:
- The element menu, on the left. It names what the line with the caret is (Scene heading, Action, Character …), and opens a list of the six elements a scene is made of, to change it. See Elements and shortcuts.
- B, I and U, for bold, italic and underline.
- The counter, on the right: pages and words to begin with. The menu chooses its lines: pages, words, scenes and running time (see Counters and writing goals).
The Outline
In the margin to the left of the page there is a button that opens the Outline: the sections, scenes and notes of the script, in order, to jump between them. It is also (Ctrl+Alt+A⌥⌘A), which is the way in when the window is too narrow to have a margin and the button is not there. See The Outline.