Olive head

Scene open: (Fade from black)

As the scene opens, we find our two young American protagonists sitting right in the middle of a long-distance Turkish bus. Outside the windows, the suburbs of Istanbul can be seen, as mosques and back-lit signs for Efes beer flash by in the humid night. Our heroes are tired, you can see it in their glazed over eyes; a long weekend in Istanbul has left them happy, satisfied and exhausted.

(Camera pans around behind the two Americans)

We see that their glazed over eyes are glued to the tiny television set located above the bald head of the slightly overweight Turkish man three seats ahead. The television is playing (and has been for the last half hour) an orgy of Turkish music videos depicting men who seem to have given up on buttoning their silky shirts halfway through the song while scantily clad women undulated to a base line that hasn’t changed since the bus attendant put the DVD in.

(Scene fades out into black)

Scene open: Camera fades in on the baggage rack located four feet above Travis’s head (the taller and less topically haired of the Americans).

We see that the oversized North Face backpack that Travis has been using for the last seven years was smashed into the luggage in a precarious position with only a third of the bag actually in the rack. The bus jostles slightly; the bag plummets down, stamping its thirty pounds straight onto Travis’s head. As the camera quickly focuses in on his face, we can see that Travis was dozing with his ipod headphones on and his mouth slightly agape. However, as soon as the bag hits him, he is jarred into semi-consciousness and looks around. It seems to that this embarrassing incident has managed to awake half the bus. Trying to remain cool and surprised that his bag—which is only three times too big for the rack—fell down, he dejectedly pushes the bag under his seat.

(Camera zooms in to see a single tear sliding down his cheek in the light of the fiber-optic lamp)

The large, friendly looking Turkish man who is sitting across Travis leans over and touches him on the shoulder. Travis turns somewhat surprised to see what this gentleman could want. In response to Travis’s questioning eyes, the Turkish man pulls out a large loaf of bread, tearing off a piece for our American champion. (Camera angle switches for and we see Eric—the second American—take his ear buds out and look over inquisitively. “What could be happening?” his blue eyes seems to ask.) Travis smiles and politely declines. But Mustafa (for convenience sake we will give this name to our portly new character) keeps on insisting until Travis accepts the bread and thanks him. However, Mustafa is not finished, he proceeds to hand Travis several tomatoes and a bag of olives as both Travis and Eric giggle and how ridiculously hospitable Turkish people are.

Travis thanks Mustafa in broken Turkish with an accent that would indicate he had recently suffered severe head trauma. Mustafa smiles and begins talking to Travis in Turkish, which surprisingly, Travis and Eric seem to be able to get the gist of. He asks where they are from, what they are doing there, and tells them that they are both exceptionally handsome. Giggling like schoolgirls, the two American demigods except these compliment, but are quickly mystified when Mustafa points at Travis’s head and says zeytin. (Scene cut briefly to show both Americans staring dumbly at the friendly Turk) Though both Eric and Travis know that this means olive they cannot figure out what he means. Eric takes the quick and easy escape route, as he is on the inside seat, putting his earphones back in. A metaphorical light goes on in Travis’s head and he assumes he must be referring—in some way—to the bag that has recently dropped on Travis’s head and assuming it had olives in it. This does not appear to be the case, however, as Mustafa shakes his head and more emphatically points at Travis’s head saying, again, zeytin, then pointing at Eric’s head and saying zeytin yok (no olive).

(Camera angle switches back to close-up of Travis’s face as a look of stunning realization dawns upon it.)

Begin montage: (begin song: Apologize by Onerepublic) A flash of white light fades to reveal Travis at middle school graduation, he bends down to pick up a pen that a pretty girl in front of him dropped. He is startled when he feels her hands separating the hair on the top of his head; a look of horror comes across his face as she asks him why his hair is thinning. (Another flash of white light) We see Travis in front of his bathroom mirror that same night desperately clawing through his hair trying in vain, to prove to himself that the wench at his graduation must have been hallucinating. (Another flash of white light) We see Travis getting a hair cut two years later from Carla, his mother’s hairdresser, as he sadly tries to explain that he wants a haircut that will make him look less balding. He smiles bravely as Carla tells him that its hardly noticeable and that it happens when a young man has too much testosterone, but the audience can see that he doesn’t really buy it. (The montage continues for the proceeding three minutes and ten seconds; awkward scenes about hair loss punctuated by flashes of white light. Through the montage we see the bare spot over Travis’s occipital lobe grow as two hairless driveways work their way up his temples. As the audience watches Travis’s face throughout this process, they also see an interesting progression starting with denial, moving on to shame (the period in which Sam’s Choice generic rogaine was used), then next to self-defacement (in the hope that if he makes fun of it enough other people won’t) working its way up to acceptance and (after person #362 tells Travis he is balding) finally reaching it.

(Final flash to white)

(As white light fades the audience finds themselves back on the long-distance bus careening through the Turkish night with Mustafa and our two American megastars (Eric still hiding beneath his headphones).)

Though the montage of hair loss, it took only half a second to flash through Travis’s mind’s eye (as it seems to do every time someone new tells him this) and, after swallowing the mouthful of bread and olives that Mustafa had so generously given him, he smiles and says, “Evet (yes), zeytin,” and points to his head.

Scene close: (As scene fades to black Lucky Man by The Verve begins fading in and, as the slow fade out ends the last thing the audience sees is Mustafa and his wife helping Travis and Eric get a cab for a reasonable price at 4:00am, then waving them off. The scene ends with Mustafa popping an olive in his mouth as he turns to the camera and winks.

(Full fade)

(Role credits)