Tabula Rasa

Atop the Arch, Lucy marvels at the unique view of the Park spread out before her. From her backpack, she takes out a Bolex 16mm spring-wound film camera and a light meter. She aims her camera around the park, searching for an interesting shot.

She’s distracted by various bits of trash on the ground around her: old bottles, a piece of paper with the word “Whereas” written a dozen times … and a large French tricolor flag mounted on a pole. As she holds up the pole with difficulty, a gust of wind catches the flag. As it detaches and starts to blow away, she grabs her camera, points and shoots the flag as it blows away across the Park.

Several blocks south on LaGuardia Place, Lucy enters an old decrepit loft building. On the top floor, in an SoHo apartment that today would fetch at least $6 million, Lucy meets her father Maxwell, who is pre-occupied with his work on a huge painting of Columbus’s discovery of America from the Native American point-of-view.

As Lucy unloads her film and cleans her camera, Max gets a call from Lucy’s mother Jenny, who is upset that Lucy has skipped out of lacrosse practice at Fieldston Academy to visit her father. Max promises to bring her home after they go to a screening at the Film Forum.

As they walk home from the screening, Max pokes gentle fun at Lucy’s artistic pretensions, which makes her uncomfortable. They see an art gallery advertising a Marcel Duchamp exhibit with a photo of Nude Descending A Staircase. Max explains that Duchamp was a Dadaist, but Lucy demurs: he was still a Cubist when he painted his most famous work …

All these elements: Marcel Duchamp, the conflicts between Lucy’s parents, the view from atop the Washington Square Arch, and the interactions and conflicts between Lucy’s artistic aspirations and the reality of life as an adolescent girl in the 1970s, make up the story of my screenplay, Tabula Rasa.