DADDY

Description

Open on a phone ringing on the table. Off screen we hear garbled words ‘Just a minute!’ A hand reaches for the phone, we follow it to a close up of Joe’s face. He answers and listens: his eyes light up! ‘The baby? Now? God, yes, I’ll be right there!’ Pull out to reveal Joe is at the dentist, bloodied gauze spilling out his mouth. He spits, jumps out of the chair, and is off… As Joe leaves the dentist, mouth bleeding, he comes out to find his car, parked illegally for just one second, has been clamped. Cut to him hitchhiking, dried blood still on his face and shirt . A family stop to take him in. He says “I’m on the way to the hospital. I’m about to be a dad!” He sees their baby - awww, he coos. Mum says: “We can get you most of the way there.\"Next he’s hunched in the back seat with the baby and four-year-old. The boy offers him a half-eaten yoghurt tube. Joe looks at him with barely-hidden disgust - but simpers at the parents in the mirror reflection, grateful for the help. They drop him off in the street, “should be just round the corner.” And drive off, the boy sticking his tongue out the window. He checks google maps – just as a teen on a moped zooms by and swipes his phone. “HEY! My first child is being born!” But then he sees a little girl on a pink tricycle. He looks at it. Should he? He’s come this far… Cut to him on the tricycle, zooming down the street like a villainous Marty McFly, the girl knocked over behind him. He goes straight through an overhanging branch, and from now he’s not just bloody and sweaty, he also has bits of branch in his hair. Like Job covered in sores. FINALLY he arrives at the hospital. It’s lit with a halo-like glow. at the hospital, Joe calls for the lift, and a kid gets in. Happy, he gives the kid a high five. But then the kid presses all the buttons. And Joe EXPLODES. Just as Job accuses God of injustice, so Joe decries the unfairness of the universe, in a sarcastic tirade against this child. (For this climactic scene, we were inspired by the sarcasm and irony that Job uses when confronting his situation - a rare moment in the Bible!) Joe gets to the maternity ward, bedraggled. His wife is lying there, with their child in her arms. He picks up the baby and grins down. Has redemption come to Joe? And then the baby spits up in his face. Comedically bringing to life the immortal words of Job in Job 17:6, “God has made me a byword among the people, a man in whose face people spit.”

Biblical Connection

The story of a man tested can be dramatic, or it can be comedic. In our case, it’s the latter. We were inspired by Job, at his lowest, saying “God has made me a byword among the people, a man in whose face people spit.” This was a creative springboard to tell the modern story of a man tested, culminating in the memorable and funny image of our protagonist Joe being spat at in the face by his own newborn, after his own series of trials on the way to the birth. We thought about the modern equivalent of when we are morally judged or tested in our actions and behaviours, and early parenthood is that time: everyone strives to be the \"perfect\" parent. But kids are chaotic, unpredictable, and insane. So how do we respond when the universe is seemingly unfair to us for no reason? When all we want to be is morally upright, but it’s really hard? That question is the heart of early parenthood, the heart of Job, and the heart of our story, DADDY.