EPISODE 2
We start with a collage of mixed-media storytelling that recounts the amazing Zelig-like life of Fin Weaver.
We learn that at 15, Fin ran away and joined the war, He went home, raced cars, became a marxist and started painting to ward off the demons that had joined him in his head.
Painting sent him even madder, so he went Bauxite mining in Australia in the most remote place he could think of but soon realised he was just another white fucker stealing the tribal guy’s shit and left. He went to Europe hung out with the Beatles and punched Picasso’s lights out in a Parisian bar. In America he fell into music and promoted some big bands (Ike and Tina included) But the demons wouldn’t let up. He hated the business of music. He felt like he was stealing bauxite all over again, so once again he walked away and started over. He bought an old bus loaded it with artists, musician and circus performers and took them to any place that wasn’t a city full of dickheads and did so for years, happy as Larry.
Then he got sick. The doctor told him the sickness would eventually kill him.
”So’ll Rock n Roll Doc” He replied. ”So’ll Rock n Roll”
He decided to do one more tour then retire and get himself better. All he needed was a great little band that was willing. But all he could find were the three fuckwits sitting in the back his Cadillac. END OF FIN STORY
We cut to see Fin and the boys driving in the desert. Aiden is quiet and we see his Simon and Garfunkel based hallucinations out the window.
They spend the first night in a shitty trailer park. At 5am they are woken by a cranky Fin screaming “Get up you lazy fucks you’re missing the best part of the day!”. He makes them drag the mattresses from their beds out and tie them to the top the car. “You’ll need them where we’re going, NO MORE FANCY PANTS! you dirtylittle fuckers” he barks with a grin.
They screech off into the morning light chased by the half dressed owner of the trailer park who wants his stolen bedding back. The band can’t stop laughing as they watch the old fella running behind the car with his saggy old balls swinging in the early morning breeze.
Back out on the road Fin inspires the kids and starts to loosen their fears. “You’re free out here, and once you are truly free, then you can make real fucking art or music. You hear me?”
“Fuck your parents, fuck your school, fuck me, fuck anyone that tells you what or how to do anything.”
He makes them tear up their school books and throw them out the window of the mattress topped Caddy. He then makes them hang out of the windows and yell exactly what will set them free. And so they do. Vulgarities hitting the warm air. The passing landscape, sparser and sparser. The roads straighter and straighter, screaming their teenaged hopes and dreams into the silence of nowhere.
The band meet FATS and AUDIE at the first gig. It’s an unsettling meeting for the BAND as they are genuinely unsettling creatures.
The gig is in an old folks home which is also attended by small group of kindergarten students on a field trip.
The BAND is visibly nervous nonetheless. CLEM keeps swearing at old people and children, LENNY vomits on his lucky tennis shorts but refuses to take them off and AIDEN is having a full blown panic attack and won’t come out of the car.
Fin finally convinces them all to calm down and take the stage. FATS sets up a locker on stage for AIDEN to perform in. The gig is miserable. The old people boo them and the children tell them they are much shitter than the last band that came.
That night the band and crew take refuge in the abandoned clubhouse at a disused football field. Shitty yes, but strangely beautiful in the evening light as they approach.
The roadies, LENNY and CLEM throw an old football that they find and run about through the grass that is almost as high as the rusty goals that are leaning over drunk. Even though their first gig was a disaster, they are genuinely happy.
Even AIDEN seems to perk up and in a quiet moment asks FIN what he would he have yelled out of the car? “What do you dream of?” He asks intuitively.
Knowing that he is sick and will achieve very little else in the future, Fin lies. He glances at the cheap gas station cigarette lighter adorned with a holographic image that he is holding, and tells AIDEN a made up a story about a sacred waterfall that a Voodoo Witch told him about. She said that in that waterfall he would find his freedom and that he’d like to get there one day.