Treatment of The Sleepwalker
Title: The Sleepwalker
Screenplay by David Bramer
Opening Scene (1980): A dimly lit house in Tampa. BONNIE wakes up to the sound of her husband, PETE, coming from downstairs. She gets out of bed and, guardedly, gets out of bed and descends the stairs to the first floor. Once downstairs, she finds Pete crouched next to their five-year-old son, KEMP. Pete, somewhat defensively, claims that Kemp was sleepwalking and about to poop on the kitchen floor. Bonnie is disturbed by the situation, but obeys Pete’s demand that she go back upstairs to bed. This opening establishes the fact that Kemp was almost certainly sexually abused by his father, but given his age at the time of the abuse (and as later events make clear), he is too young to be aware of what is happening.
ACT ONE: The Downward Spiral / Present Day (2024): KEMP GOODELL, now in his forties, is a (soon-to-be former) adjunct professor and heavy drinker, wasting his days working on an unpromising online rare books business instead of finishing the PhD that provide a possible avenue for him to get a teaching job better than the part-time adjunct position he currently has. In the first scene of the act, he has just learned about the passing of his abusive father, and is day-drinking heavily on his lanai when he receives a call from his more successful wife, CHARLIE, who informs him that she has received a call from the school of their daughter, KATE, because she is skipping school. His conversation with his wife indicates his brokenness – as a husband, as a father, and as a man.
In the next scene, his daughter shows up with a boy who is older than she is. Both are drunk. Her lack of respect for her father is evident when he asks her why she is skipping school. She reminds him that it is her 16th birthday and says that nobody goes to her high school on their birthday. He asks her if it’s also traditional for students to get drunk on their birthday. She responds by pointing out his state of inebriation, stating sarcastically that she is just a chip off the old block. Despite the seemingly offhand cruelty of her remark, she is underlining his role in the generational trauma that is at the heart of this screenplay.
In the next scene, Kemp shows up late and intoxicated to the class he is supposed to teach that day. Only a single student remains, and his department chair directs him to come to her office, where she fires him.
When Kemp gets home, his wife is furious. As it turns out, while he was in the process of being fired, Kate and the boy raided his liquor cabinet and then, in gut-wrenchingly murky circumstances, had sex. Kemp and Charlie’s argument gets so heated that the police arrive. After the policewoman leaves them with a warning, Charlie, emotionally done in by the day’s events, kicks him out of the house.
Kemp drives to a bar where he gets even drunker, nearly gets in a fight, but in an important plot twist, reconnects with someone, ANA MARÍA, he was distantly acquainted with in high school. This chance meeting deepens when they later meet at a grocery store. Like Kemp, Ana María is somewhat damaged. Her ex-husband has left the country with her young son, and she works at middling jobs that do not reflect her intelligence and talent. The budding relationship provides Kemp with an emotional safety net of sorts and a constructive force in his life. She is not enamored with his drinking, and, perhaps because of the loss of her own child, has an almost instinctive bond with Kate.
For work, Kemp takes over his deceased father’s responsibilities at his parents’ bookstore. This provides him with an income, but it comes at the expense of him reinhabiting one of the haunted, so to speak, spaces from his childhood. The unexplored traumas of the past lay barely submerged beneath his relationship with Bonnie and he resists her imprecations to conduct himself in the manner of a businessman (i.e., like his father). pressures him to take his life more seriously, but Kemp remains in denial about his drinking problem and overall lack of direction. Meanwhile, Kate, rebellious and distant, refuses to engage with him in any meaningful way. The generational cycle of dysfunction is in full display.
ACT TWO: Unwanted Responsibility / A Second Chance. Charlie calls Kemp one morning (while he is in bed with Ana María) and tells him that Kate has gotten so bad that she can no longer be responsible for her (Kate is Charlie’s stepchild and Kemp is her biological parent). She tells Kemp that she will be dropping Kate off and Kemp’s new residence that evening. Since Kate has been expelled from her former school for putting a tampon in her English teacher’s coffee and been sent to an alternative school for troubled teens called Charlie has enrolled Kate in Step-Up, Kemp new responsibilities as her primary guardian include making sure that she actually shows up to her new school – no small challenge given her delinquency and their tense relationship. Needless to say, most of this act is dedicated to his up-and-down struggles to parent and reconnect with her.
Kate tests the boundaries of her new situation. She skips school, sneaks alcohol, and starts hanging around with Derek more often, much to Kemp’s dismay. Their arguments escalate, with Kate accusing him of being just as unreliable as he always has been. Kemp wants to discipline her, but he struggles to command any authority given the mess his own life is in.
A breaking point occurs when Kemp shows up to Step-Up to pick up Kate and PRINCIPAL DAWSEY warns him that he needs to take his role more seriously, beginning with the most basic things of all: seeing that she comes to school in outfits that adhere to dress code. Humiliated, Kemp begins to recognize that his failures extend to something as simple as getting her dressed properly.
Kemp takes her to the mall and buys her clothes that fit the school’s dictates, but Kate, who despises this new uniform, leaves the restaurant they are in while Kemp is in the restroom and hitchhikes into parts unknown. Kemp goes to Charlie’s house to inform her and while they are talking about it, Kemp hears a phone ring upstairs. It’s Kate, of course, and he takes her home, where they have perhaps their first meaningful heart-to-heart conversation. Kate lashes out, telling him that she doesn’t believe he cares about her. In her eyes, he’s just another selfish adult too wrapped up in his own problems to be a real father. Kemp is devastated but realizes she’s right.
He moves forward more determined to be parental, even if it means risking a backlash from her by putting seemingly excessive restrictions on her. He tries to take the edge off the new rules, which include her having to dress according to school rules, by telling her that Ana María has offered to give her a free makeover in her salon. Kate asks if she can get whatever style she wishes and Kemp agrees, since hair is the one thing that is not factored into the alternative school’s dress code.
ACT THREE: Facing Up to the Past / Charting a Future. On the ride home from Ana María’s salon, Kemp tells Kate that they are going to stop by the book store before going home. Kate becomes hysterical and tells Kemp that she hates the bookstore because Pete had groped her there. Kemp, thunderstruck, blanks and runs into the car in front of him at the stoplight they are approaching. Kate, who is not wearing her seatbelt, is thrown into the windshield and bloodies her nose. Unclear as to the extent of her injury, Kemp rushes Kate to the emergency room where she gets a CT scan. Charlie joins them in the ER and, furious at herself for entrusting Kate to his care, demands Kate return home with her.
The next day, Kemp confronts his mom Bonnie about Kate’s accusation that Pete molested her and the whole “sleepwalking” portion of his life. Somewhat aggrieved, Bonnie admits that Pete might have molested them both. The admission is a jolt to Kemp who is awake for the first time in his life. He apologizes to Kate for failing her and promises that, Charlie’s threats to gain sole custody of Kate notwithstanding, he is going to do better, as a parent and a person.
THE SLEEPWALKER is a story about how our worst past experiences affect us in the present; it will leave viewers unsettled, but with an increased appreciation for the degree to which frailty and resilience can coexist, in agonizing antagonism, within a single, floundering individual.
