Jeff suddenly realizes why the apartment next to the community pool was so pricey.

ARLINGTON ROAD

The Abridged Script

FADE IN:

INT. JEFF BRIDGES' HOUSE

JEFF BRIDGES

I sure am glad I met my neighbor when I saved his Village-of-the-Damned- reject child.

GIRLFRIEND

Yes, it's a real shame people don't get to know their neighbors well enough anymore. We instead isolate ourselves from everyone around us. Speaking of which, your kid locked himself in the bathroom.

JEFF BRIDGES

What kid? Oh, right, him. Yeah, well he isolates himself from the people around him, as do I.

WRITER EHREN KRUGER

You'll notice Jeff isolates himself very much from the rest of society, which is one of the main causes of the problems here.

GIRLFRIEND

Yes, and it's a shame people do that. We wouldn't know it even if your neighbors were terrorists, Jeff. Ha ha!

JEFF BRIDGES

Ha ha!

(pause)

Wait a minute..

JEFF goes into paranoid delusions and begins to suspect his neighbor, TIM ROBBINS, of being a terrorist.

AUDIENCE

Wow.. because of how obsessive this guy is about his dead wife and how paranoid he is, I can't even trust him as my protaganist to be right.. he could be completely wrong about his neighbor.

Luckily, as we found from the trailers, he's not wrong at all, but instead, his psychotic ramblings happen to be right!

For the next hour or so, JEFF discovers things about his neighbor that convince him TIM is a terrorist... thanks to ads for the film, though, the AUDIENCE already has been made very aware that TIM is a terrorist, so they go to SLEEP.

EXT. THE MEAN STREETS OF VIRGINIA

A car chase has started, JEFF chasing his kid in a van, who is apparently kidnapped. The AUDIENCE awakens at the sounds of skidding tires.

JEFF BRIDGES

Those sons of bitches played me like a fool! From one or two conversations, they figured out exactly what I would do when presented with very specific situations. They even knew my girlfriend, who is very different from me, would react to things the same way I would when presented with very specific situations. It's a good thing humans are so predictable. I wonder why there are so many fields devoted to studying the mind when it's so simple to understand.

JEFF speeds down the street more and more. Eventually, a cop tries to pull him over for speeding and reckless driving. BRIDGES, bent on finding his child, doesn't stop. The cop shoots out his tires, thus completely fucking up the plan.

TIM ROBBINS

Ha ha! Just kidding! That's how it COULD have happened in the real world. This is what actually happened.

JEFF speeds down the street more and more. He follows the van as his is supposed to, has a fight with TIM as he is supposed to, but gets into TIM'S VAN, thinking the bad guys will think he is TIM so he can play the bad guys for fools, thus fucking up the plan.

TIM ROBBINS

Ha ha! Joking again! We know exactly what Jeff will do and exactly what everyone around him will do, and it's none of those things! Here's what actually happened.

JEFF speeds down the street more and more. He follows the van, fights TIM, gets in his car, and drives into a government office. Everything has gone as planned by the PYSCHIC TIM ROBBINS and the plan has succeeded!

TIM ROBBINS

(staring like a robot into the horizon; dead calm)

I have won. Hooray.

NEWSCASTER

And here behind me is the rubble from the government building which was blown up by a nutcase going by the name of The Dude. It is believed that he was angry at the government because of his wife that he never shuts up about, so he killed some government people. Thus, we now completely understand what happened and know what caused it.

JOAN CUSACK

(speaking through the lower- left corner of her mouth)

Tim, honey, I was just wondering, why did you even blow the building up? Don't terrorists usually blow shit up to send a message to the world?

WRITER EHREN KRUGER

People think that, but they also think terrorists are loners, and I'm trying to present the idea that perhaps those loners are just puppets to real terrorists, crazy suburbanites like Tim.

TIM ROBBINS

Yes, I didn't actually have a real reason, I just like blowing shit up. Let's go inside and have a quiet, awkward family dinner while watching Seinfeld.

END

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