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KID ANARCHY (The Angry Rednecks!)

A teenage anarchist learns the essence of punk - in Podunk. It’s a classic “coming of angst” story set to a melodic early eighties punk soundtrack.

Memphis, 1984: TOMMY DELANEY (15) is more sensitive than most. His mother CANDY (37) is an uncaring drunk and his father is a painful, recent memory. Tommy loses himself in the city life of skateboarding, making noise on his guitar, and adapting the look of punk rockers that he sees gravitating around the Antenna Club, a venue that he is too young to enter. But that doesn’t stop him from trying.

Notorious bouncer REBEL (23) catches Tommy inside the club and tosses him out across the street. Tommy enrages Rebel by cussing him out. Rebel jumps on his ever-present motorcycle and chases Tommy into a nearby alley. Tommy hides until the danger has passed then finds a can of red spray paint. As soon as Tommy tops off a large anarchy symbol in the alley, the cops are on his tail. Tommy runs up the stairs of an abandoned building, reaching a dead-end on the roof, with the cops in hot pursuit. Tommy LEAPS to the adjoining roof. Victory is his but not for long. The roof collapses, taking Tommy with it.

Tommy, physically unhurt, is arrested. Soon he is hauled one hundred miles away to a small town in Mississippi called Yamston to live with his mother’s sister PAM BOONE (40) and her laid back husband JOE BOONE (42); however, Tommy has struck a deal with Candy that she will come down and pick Tommy up in a couple of weeks. Joe is doubtful of Candy’s promises. Regardless, it was the only way to get Tommy in Joe’s beat-up truck. Tommy only takes his punk cassettes, battered amp, a guitar covered in stickers, skateboard, and the tattered clothes on his back.

Once there, Aunt Pam expects Tommy to be one with the family, but Tommy would rather test her will. Tommy reveals at the Boone supper table that he doesn’t want to pray, because he doesn’t believe in God. Furthermore, he has no interest in going to school “with a bunch of rednecks”. Tommy’s cousin, a sixteen-year old (loin-cloth wearing) SAM BOONE (15) is oblivious to anarchy, expecting Tommy to play guitar in his Ted Nugent cover band “White Wolf”. Tommy insults Sam’s corporate taste in rock music, bragging (lying) that he played in a punk band at the Antenna Club in Memphis. Pam looks up “anarchy” in the dictionary - and worries.

Tommy, always with a chip on his shoulder, sees a Yamston deputy talking to a black teenager. Tommy makes it a point to give the cop a civil-rights lesson before realizing everyone in this town knows each other – except for Tommy. African-American bespectacled intellectual SHERMAN KRELLBERG (15) motorbikes Tommy around in his rickety side-car, and they become fast-friends, eating dough burgers at a grease-pit called Snappy Snacks. At an impromptu practice, Tommy urges Sherman to play bass and Sam to play drums. Yamston’s first punk band is born -and boy, are they awful.

Tommy humors the Boones by attending Yamston High School. Tommy’s new English teacher NINA MOORE (25) assigns George Orwell’s “1984” as a book project. Tommy blurts out the song “California Uber Alles” in class with the quote “now it’s 1984.” Ms. Moore picks up on the reference and tells Tommy she knows who the Dead Kennedys are (and she’s not impressed with his outburst.) Tommy is in awe - and sits quietly for the rest of the class.

Tommy will discover that Nina attended college in Memphis, saw bands at the Antenna Club, then returned home to care for her ailing father. Tommy falls hard for his teacher.

Sam introduces Tommy to someone a little different. CHUCK MOONCHOW (30) is more than Sam’s pot buddy. Tommy has never met an adult before like Chuck: a shirtless redneck stoner-philosopher whose life seems to revolve around role-playing a buffoonish wizard, making pot brownies, painting bad folk art, claiming to be from another planet, and waiting by the phone to get laid. Tommy plays D&D against his will and fears that Chuck sees through his abrasive tactics - but Tommy likes him anyway. Chuck gives the boys their band name: The Angry Rednecks.

Pam and Joe try to make Tommy feel at home by ignoring his vulgarities. Tommy tries to make the most of a bad situation, despite the fact that he must wear Sam’s hand-me-down clothes. Pam encourages Tommy to call his mother, but she never answers. Pam sees the worry building up inside Tommy. Tommy senses tension and “bad blood” between Pam and her sister Candy.

Sam and Sherman want to see a real punk band play, speculating that it might make The Angry Rednecks a better band. While Pam and Joe are looking the other way, Sam, Sherman, and a reluctant Tommy sneak away to Memphis on a forbidden road trip to the Antenna Club.

Having arrived and refused entry, Tommy is mortified when asshole bouncer Rebel reveals to Sam and Sherman that Tommy has never played the club much less been allowed in. Tommy is caught in a lie, but Sam and Sherman do not judge him. In a moment of punk solidarity, Sam knocks over Rebel’s motorcycle, and the boys take off running for their lives. Rebel swears to kill them all if he ever sees their faces again.

To make matters worse, Tommy spots his mother Candy in the bar across the street. He storms into the bar and confronts his shocked (and drunken) mother about not answering her phone. This leads to a battle royale with her drunken boyfriend in which Sam and Sherman come to the (underage) rescue of Tommy. The teens return to Yamston with a few bruises and a new shared secret. Joe and Pam are none the wiser.

Frustrated with his inability to show Nina how he feels, Tommy begins to write a love song for her inspired by the lusty, filthy one liners that are written in her honor on the bathroom stalls of the boys room. Meanwhile Pam and Joe put Tommy’s 16th birthday party into motion. Tommy still expects his mother to come get him on the day he turns sixteen.

Tommy’s party goes horribly awry. Candy doesn’t attend nor does Nina. Then Sam surprises Tommy with his old band White Wolf performing “Cat Scratch Fever” as an opener. Tommy finally snaps during the first Angry Rednecks song “Skoal Patrol”, wrecking the party and smashing (Joe’s friend) the Deputy Sheriff’s windshield with a microphone stand. Tommy tears off on Sherman’s motorbike in search of Nina, the only one who will understand him, while escaping the pissed off Deputy in hot pursuit.

Successfully hiding from the Deputy, Tommy secretly finds Nina at home having sex with Chuck. Tommy’s notions of fairness and love are shattered. These people were beginning to grow on him. Now he realizes Nina and Chuck are just like everybody else. Everything sucks.

The next day in the classroom Tommy acts out at Nina. She sends him to the principals office to get a paddling for disrupting the class while reading “1984”. Mortified, Tommy walks back to class while the kids all laugh. The Boones are not pleased and ground Tommy, hiding away his guitar.

That night, Nina shows up at Chuck’s D&D game. Tommy, in a fit of role-playing anger, tries to kill Nina and Chuck but they are too powerful for him and it is Tommy who suffers defeat. Nina relates to Tommy and thinks he is gifted. Nina even feels emotions for Tommy but guards herself as much as he does. She reminds Tommy that the book report for “1984” is coming up soon. Tommy falls deeper and deeper in love with Nina but can only express it in his secret lyrics.

While grounded and left alone by the Boone family for the weekend, Tommy finds his guitar and shows up on Nina’s porch to play his finished love song. This deeply impresses Nina (who’s had a few glasses of wine). Tommy makes a juvenile attempt to kiss Nina, and she lets him. It’s a moment lost to time. Nina snaps to her senses, realizing that she has done a wrong thing, and stops Tommy’s advances. A shouting match develops and In defiance, a shattered Tommy runs away, leaving his guitar on her porch swing. This time the town of Yamston will know his anger.

As darkness approaches, Tommy finds a spare brick lying on the sidewalk and lobs it through a hardware store window. He steals red spray paint and creates one anarchy symbol after another until the town looks like a teenage war zone. Tommy calms himself by finishing the book “1984” in the only place he feels safe, atop the town’s water tower underneath huge letters that spell “YAMSTON”. He tosses the book to the wind, then spray paints a huge red anarchy symbol over the “A” for all to see; a crowning achievement of his destruction.

Guilt and fear and morning light create futility in Tommy’s troubled teenage mind. In seeking redemption for his anger, Tommy reaches out to Chuck Moonchow as a ‘big brother’. He discovers that Nina has kept his guitar (and their secret) quite safe. Then the Deputy arrives to arrest Tommy, slamming him on the police car and cuffing him in front of a just arriving Sam and Sherman.

At the jailhouse, the Boones rally around Tommy, pay his bail, get him safely in the car and head home (despite a gauntlet of angry store owners). Tommy is a nervous wreck but glad that the Boones are there for him. He realizes that he has judged these people too harshly. In the driveway of the Boone home, Candy awaits, desperately needing her son. Affected by the continuous forgiving nature of the Boones, and a punk rock aspect of country life that he could not have imagined, Tommy explains to his mother that he has a responsibility to clean up the town and begin his first steps toward being a man.

Tommy’s teenage crisis is avoided thanks to the people who love him – and being needed is all Tommy really ever wanted. Tommy sets his new goal: an ‘all ages show’ at the Antenna Club with the Angry Rednecks. Rebel and his motorcycle be damned.

Kid Anarchy Outline 2018 - Mike McCarthy, Bart Shannon, George Cole.



screenplay

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writers

Kid AnarchyKid AnarchyKid Anarchy



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Auditions

Caleb Johnson | Gayla De Guise





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Kid Anarchy and characters created and owned by George Cole and Mike McCarthy
Images from Kid Anarchy #1, 2, 3, Published by Fantagraphics Books
Kid Anarchy Copyright 2012 George Cole, Mike McCarthy