Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Video: "Coming Out"

This isn't brand new (it was on the festival circuit in 2007, and first televised in January 2008), but I just learned of it (at the Berks, thanks Susan). And Jana has requested "things to make me laugh," so here's "Coming Out," an award-winning short film from BBC2's See Hear, written by Charlie Swinbourne and directed by Louis Neethling. David Hay and Debbie Norman are playing the son and mother.



Visuals described: A nice suburban kitchen, mother cooking tea, toast, frying something for breakfast. Twenty-something son comes into the kitchen. He signs his lines; all the dialog is subtitled:
Mum!
What darling?
I've got something to tell you.
All right dear, just a minute.
I've been wanting to tell you something for a some time now....
This sounds serious.
It is serious!
Are you ill?
No, it's nothing like that.
It's about me. Who I am.
What do you mean?
The thing is that I...I'm different to other people.
Oh, I know that, you're my special boy! Always have been.
No, I mean really different. I've know for sometime now, but... I'm deaf.
No you're not, just don't concentrate enough, always away with the fairies in your own little world...
[I'm not sure about the legalities of typing out the whole six-minute script--I wish there was a transcript somewhere online already! Ideas?]

Charlie Swinbourne's "Four Deaf Yorkshiremen" is also on YouTube. (This one has no audio at all, all subtitles.) Fookem and Bug has an interview with Swinbourne.

1 comment:

EkC said...

Thanks for sharing this short film! I hadn't seen it before. I'll have to check out the other one as well.