We’re in the driver’s seat of an armored black stretch limo, our brown-skinned hands gripping the wheel tight.
It’s the 21st century, peak holiday pandemonium, and we see the world scroll by beyond bullet-resistant windows, a moving panorama of everyday struggle:
– CHRISTMAS CAROLERS dash through fake snow after robbing the Salvation Army
– a drunk MALL SANTA stomps out an inflatable tube man
– SEX WORKERS in candy cane stockings spin signs that say: “3-for-1 HO HO HOES!”
As this montage of mayhem unfolds, inside the limo is calm, a temporary haven from all the racket.
The driver is LORNETTE “MACE” MASON, a weary Black woman with box braids, hailing all the way from Strange Days (1995).
She pulls up to a hotel with neon signage. This is a fancy spot where an incognito priest or politician might check in for a special hourly rate.
She parks at the entrance, waiting for her client to emerge. But instead of her client —
— a STRANGER, in a baggy gray hoodie and cheap sunglasses, yanks open the back door and jumps in, pointing a Beretta 92FS at Mace.
STRANGER
Drive.
Mace doesn’t flinch. She’s been in way worse situations, but she complies. No use in complicating things.
She pulls out of the lot, back onto the main road.
MACE
You just cost me a client.
STRANGER
Fuck your client.
Mace watches the stranger in the rearview. She sounds younger, early 30s maybe, slouching, peering out the glass.
MACE
Where are we going?
STRANGER
Just keep driving till I say when.
Mace’s jaw tightens. Discreetly, she turns up the heat, lets the hot air seep into the back.
After a while, the stranger says:
STRANGER
Yo, it’s hot as hell in here.
MACE
The A/C is broken. I tried getting it fixed, but everything’s closed now, you know, for the holidays.
The stranger mumbles.
STRANGER
Bootleg-ass limo service.
MACE
You can roll down the window if you need some air.
STRANGER
Right.
The stranger pulls off her hoodie and shades, revealing herself to be PERFIDIA BEVERLY HILLS, a fierce Black woman with a pixie cut, straight outta One Battle After Another (2025).
Mace takes a breath. She’s encountered all types of madness in her life. This is just another Tuesday.
Truth is, she thought the turn of the millennium was going to be the end for her. But it’s only gotten crazier since.
Mace laughs to herself.
PERFIDIA
What’s funny?
MACE
Nothing.
PERFIDIA
Don’t nothing me. I wanna laugh too.
MACE
Trust me, you wouldn’t understand.
PERFIDIA
We’ll see who’s laughing when these bullets tickle that funny bone.
Perfidia has a razor blade for a tongue, but Mace sees past the empty threats. What she sees is a scared and scarred young soldier, a woman bound to shatter any second.
As a limo driver/bodyguard in Los Angeles, Mace has learned some things about people: how they hide behind the curtains of performance, how they protect their hand-me-down costumes to avoid being cut from the play.
The real them, if anything remains, lies somewhere beneath the masks and makeup and model figures. Without access to their unfiltered perspective (without a direct line to anyone’s inner world), we’re all essentially outsiders.
Strangers on a runaway train.
As Mace has learned, the only way to look for signs of unartificial life is to raise the temperature. Get them running their mouths in hopes that loose lips stumble onto some semblance of truth.
MACE
You from around here?
PERFIDIA
Fuck you.
MACE
I’m just asking.
Perfidia points the gun again.
PERFIDIA
Look, I ain’t here for no interview. Just get me where the fuck I’m going and we’ll be done with this.
MACE
What the hell is this?
Zooming out, we can see that this is a scriptment: a hybrid document that’s part screenplay, part treatment.
Self-described “king of the world” James Cameron gets the credit for coining the term. His Avatar scriptment (known as Project 880) is legendary. But it’s in his scriptment for Strange Days, the 1995 dystopian sci-fi thriller directed by Kathryn Bigelow, where Cameron breaks down exactly what it is and why it exists.
“At the beginning of any writing project is the agonizing period in which nebulous ideas dance before the mind’s eye like memories of a dream, and vaporous vague shapes take on human form and begin to answer to their names,” he wrote.
He scribbles notes on the story’s themes and the social infrastructure of an imagined world. All hazy at first.
But then, slowly, “a change happens.”
“I start sticking words in the mouths of characters who are still mannequins,” he wrote, “forcing them to move and to walk.”
Mace shudders. Having words stuck in her mouth and being pushed to move where someone else points is a feeling she knows all too well. As a Black woman, this is the high cost of living: to be or not to be a projection screen.
Sometimes, assigned words align with her soul. Other times, force-fed quotes get caught in her throat. Like that line she told Lenny “The Magic Man” Nero (Ralph Fiennes):
“Memories were meant to fade. They’re designed that way for a reason.”
It was a hard-hitting line, delivered with Angela Bassett’s unimpeachable conviction, but it didn’t reflect her character’s personal experience as we knew it. How could Mace forget the day her husband got hauled off by the police? That look in the eyes of her young son, Zander?
She still jumps when she hears fireworks, startling echoes of that New Year’s Eve in 1999, when cops in riot gear swung batons at her as she lay fetaled on the concrete, each blow a thunderclap against bone under a swarm of confetti.
These memories don’t fade. They stay lodged in the body like keepsakes you wish you didn’t have to keep.
Is that the writer’s fault? Depends on the writer, their intention and diligence, attention to detail. Cameron called himself a “witness only, a court reporter,” and from such a safe distance, outside the frame of her uniquely nuanced POV, how could he know what’s real?
By the nature of the beast, there will be flaws.
“The value of this ‘scriptment’ lies solely in it being presented unchanged, unedited, unpolished,” Cameron wrote. “It is the first hurling of paint against the wall in the visualization of a future world and the people in it.”
Mace checks the rearview. What words, she wonders, has this stranger gotten stuck in her mouth? Maybe those ill-fitting statements are what brought her to this breaking point.
MACE
What’s your name?
Perfidia sucks her teeth.
PERFIDIA
Nunya.
Mace rolls her eyes. She tries a different route.
MACE
I had a friend. I called him The Magic Man. He was a sleaze merchant. A good guy who took a wrong turn. He used to sell these high-tech headpieces that people could wear to record their experiences. For buyers to get high living vicariously. I never fooled with that wired shit, but it was big in the streets. You ever heard of a SQUID?
The SQUID (Superconducting Quantum Interference Device) tech literalizes the commodification of trauma, implicating viewers in consuming it. It was designed by the FBI to replace body mics, a headset that records the experience of whoever wears it to share with others.
In Lenny’s words: “This is life. This is a piece of somebody’s life. Pure and uncut, straight from the cerebral cortex. I mean, you’re there, you’re doing it, you’re hearing it … you’re feeling it.”
It was subversive and speculative long before Black Mirror, but maybe too real for critics and audiences, who largely averted their eyes from Bigelow’s in-your-face approach.
PERFIDIA
I don’t know nothing about that.
MACE
Yeah, well, the SQUID tech was harder to come by after the murder of the revolutionary Jeriko One.
Perfidia catches Mace’s gaze in the mirror.
PERFIDIA
Who the hell is Jeriko One?
MACE
A powerful Black man. Rapper, activist. “Here We Come.”
Perfidia looks blank. Mace frowns. How could she not know about this? Or have so many brothers died at the hands of the law that she’s forgotten names?
MACE
The murder of Jeriko was all over the news. Shot in the head by the police. Execution style.
PERFIDIA
Bullshit.
It’s been 30 years since Strange Days came out, depicting the political crises of the 1990s through a dystopian lens. This is a world of police brutality, racialized state violence and a capitalistic system that feeds on voyeurism.
Through a recurring first-person format (shot by cinematographer Matthew F. Leonetti), the film is a case study in ethical spectatorship; camera movements, framing, and POV sequences force the audience to confront social disorder live and direct.
As a film both timely and ahead of its time, the politics strike the body viscerally, excruciatingly, devastatingly. Decades later, we’re still reeling from its prescience.
While some predictions missed the mark (e.g. “By the year 2025, there will be a second woman president.”), others hit the virtual bullseye dead-on (see: surveillance media). From live-streamed protests to viral body-cam footage, pain has become content.
MACE
The SQUID footage exposed the whole thing, set the town on fire. You really never heard of him?
Bigelow showed us the uncomfortable reality: There is no separation between form and politics. There is no passive entertainment here. Only the viewers and the viewed, both complicit in a world that’s burning.
MACE
Must’ve been before your time.
Perfidia scoffs.
PERFIDIA
Muthafucka, I’m from a long line of revolutionaries. It’s in my blood. Been fighting since I was in my mama’s uterus and I’ll tell you right now, if this Jeriko One was real, best believe I’d know about him.
MACE
He was real. And then he was gone.
She looks around, her throat constricting.
MACE
You say you’re a revolutionary?
PERFIDIA
It don’t matter.
Mace half-turns around.
MACE
Listen to me: Everything you do matters. Your entire existence is a revolutionary act in itself. You hear what I’m saying?
PERFIDIA
Don’t talk to me about no damn revolution. Not with you chauffeuring filthy rich muthafuckas around like Driving Miss Fuckin Daisy.
Mace laughs to herself.
MACE
Those Miss Daisys are VIPs with moneybags where their hearts oughta be, but they pay the bills. I’m out here doing what I gotta do to survive. What are you doing?
PERFIDIA
I’m tryna get the hell out of here.
MACE
Child, this hell ain’t going nowhere. It’ll be right there with you, no matter how far you go. Trust me on that. It’s a hard lesson, but that’s the truth I’m trying to teach Zander. That’s my son.
Perfidia’s eyes flare for a second, a maternal chord struck. Mace clocks this.
MACE
What’s your son’s name?
PERFIDIA
Never said I had a son.
Perfidia squeezes her eyes shut, clenching her jaw and rocking back and forth.
Mace lets the moment linger.
PERFIDIA
Willa.
(beat)
My daughter.
MACE
And how old is Willa?
Sweating now, Perfidia fans herself.
PERFIDIA
No, no, we not doing this, alright? I’m not with this Taxicab muthafuckin Confessions routine.
MACE
What’s to confess?
Perfidia averts her eyes. Under the staccato strobes of streetlights, we see a flash of guilt across her face.
MACE
We’re just having a conversation, aren’t we? We’re just talking. No harm in that. I’m Mace, by the way.
Perfidia opens her mouth, then closes it.
MACE
You can trust me, you know.
PERFIDIA
I can’t even trust myself.
She leans forward, elbows on her knees, tapping the gun against her skull.
PERFIDIA
It means betrayal.
MACE
What’d you say?
PERFIDIA
My name’s Perfidia. It means betrayal.
MACE
Well, Perfidia, you want to tell me where we’re supposed to be going?
PERFIDIA
I told you: Just keep driving till I say when.
She leans back, her head falling, twirling the Beretta.
MACE
Alright then, you want to tell me why you’re pointing that pistol at me?
PERFIDIA
I’m fuckin tired.
MACE
I’m tired too, but that’s not telling me much, now is it?
Perfidia stares outside again, her posture softening in the plush backseat. She runs her left hand along the ceiling.
PERFIDIA
That Magic Man you talked about. Whatever happened to him?
MACE
Lenny? Oh hell, I don’t know. We lost touch. He was a decent man. A slimeball, but a decent slimeball.
PERFIDIA
You loved him?
The question catches Mace off guard. She clears her throat.
MACE
Why would you say that?
PERFIDIA
Something in your voice.
MACE
His heart was for somebody else.
PERFIDIA
You ain’t answer my question.
Mace takes a beat to process this. It’s a thought she hasn’t had to hold in a while, but another memory yet to fade.
MACE
I loved him. I did. I thought I did.
PERFIDIA
What he look like?
MACE
Why?
PERFIDIA
Was he a white man? Intense blue eyes, shaggy brown hair? A goofy muthafucka who’d be lost without you?
MACE
You knew him?
PERFIDIA
I know the type. I loved one too.
MACE
Is that who you’re running from?
Perfidia shakes her head.
PERFIDIA
Nah, it ain’t like that. Without him, you and I wouldn’t even be having this conversation.
MACE
Child, you’re gonna have to elaborate on that one.
Perfidia shifts in her seat. The truth’s been caged up, rattling heavy in her chest. Too long to not let it out.
PERFIDIA
I exist. I’m real. I got one hell of a role to play … but only through this blue-eyed muthafucka do I get to be seen.
MACE
Oh, I see. You’re feeling like the supporting character in someone else’s movie.
PERFIDIA
Right.
MACE
Like you’re not allowed to be as complex as you truly are for more than two seconds.
PERFIDIA
Guess it ain’t my story to tell.
MACE
You’re doing all the emotional labor and yet —
PERFIDIA
— I’m fuckin stuck taking a backseat!
She smacks the cushion beside her with an open palm.
MACE
Can’t see no other way?
PERFIDIA
Not from where I’m sitting. Not with this role of a lifetime.
MACE
But not your lifetime.
Perfidia shrugs, spinning the Beretta in her hand.
PERFIDIA
Shit, it’s better than nothing, right? If I don’t play, I disappear.
Mace nods. She understands the tension. This tightrope between giving in and opting out. What you gain in visibility, you lose in autonomy. And vice versa.
What she doesn’t understand is Perfidia’s predicament. Here’s a woman fueled by passion, a figure brought to life with flash-bang ferocity by Teyana Taylor. A leader of the French 75, a militant activist unit hellbent on liberation.
But in this hunger for freedom, she prioritized her own.
Perfidia shot a security guard, got knocked up by a white supremacist, ratted out her team, and abandoned her daughter.
Does this make her character complex?
Or morally corrupt?
By contrast, Mace is the moral center in her story, competent without compromising. Trained for combat, she fights for what’s right with a pure heart, kicking ass and taking badge numbers. Her stance is less gray because she was drawn that way, which gives her the clarity to say:
MACE
This is your life, Perfidia. Right here. Right now.
PERFIDIA
Don’t always feel like that. I done things I wouldn’t do. Made some fucked up choices that didn’t come from me and I gotta live with that. I’m not saying I wouldn’t do shit, but I can’t say I would do that shit.
MACE
What kinds of choices?
Perfidia shakes her head. She doesn’t even want to think about it, let alone say it out loud.
MACE
You call yourself a revolutionary, right? That means you’re fighting on two fronts: one outside, and one inside against forces that try to define you.
Perfidia scoffs.
PERFIDIA
Talking all high and mighty … what you know about fighting battles? You driving a fuckin limo.
Mace watches the city bleed past, a blur of looters and lonely people. So much has changed and yet nothing has.
Feels like just yesterday there was a man running wild out there, using the SQUID to force his violent sexual fetishes onto his own captive audience.
And history repeats itself: When the subject’s objectified, the objective turns subjective. A recursive nightmare.
MACE
I’ve seen a whole lot in my days. Some terrible things I’ll never forget. On New Year’s Eve in ’99, I clocked a crooked cop across the face with his own baton and tased another. Had both those sons of bitches on the ground before the whole force came down on me, swinging clubs like there was no tomorrow …
Mace rolls her tongue behind her bottom lip, blinking back the sudden burns.
She composes herself with a deep breath.
MACE
… but here I am, still alive, still breathing, navigating these streets as best I can. Fighting for justice isn’t just toting a pistol and proclaiming yourself an activist. It’s protecting yourself, your family, your community, you hear me? Those are the battles that never end: trying to do right when one wrong turn can make it all disappear.
Perfidia ducks as the limo zips past a police brigade, squad car lights in luminous chorus with Christmas lights.
Mace turns off the heat.
PERFIDIA
You think I chose this shit?
MACE
Hell, we didn’t choose none of this.
PERFIDIA
But I didn’t choose … where I lived, who I loved–none of that was up to me.
MACE
I understand. It’s complicated.
PERFIDIA
It’s compli-fuckin-cated.
There’s a moment of stillness as the limo stops at a congested intersection. The traffic signal is out of order.
We see a MEXICAN MOTHER pushing a stroller, a bloated bag of toys slung over her shoulder while she texts on her cell.
PERFIDIA
Can I ask you something, Mace?
MACE
Of course.
PERFIDIA
What makes a woman complex?
Mace smiles.
MACE
I’d say it’s doing shit you wouldn’t do in front of your mama.
PERFIDIA
Ha. I know that’s right.
MACE
But it all depends on if you’re the one telling the story.
PERFIDIA
And if I’m not?
MACE
Then you’re put on trial and judged for what they see. And you don’t have the privilege to explain yourself.
PERFIDIA
You’d judge me too if you saw the mistakes I made.
Mace adjusts the mirror. The women lock eyes.
MACE
Listen to me, Perfidia: I’m not here to judge you. You’re figuring it out. Finding your way. Hell, if you made no mistakes, then I’d be concerned.
PERFIDIA
Everybody don’t feel like that.
MACE
That’s their problem. You gotta drown out the noise.
PERFIDIA
Easy for you to say, cruising around in this fancy car. I be outside. Ain’t no windows to roll up on the frontlines. But you? You got it made. You in control of your own fate.
MACE
The only thing I control is this wheel. I’m gripping it tight, holding on to my sanity like any other flesh-and-blood human being.
PERFIDIA
Am I flesh-and-blood or just some fucked-up fantasy?
MACE
So then the question is: Who wrote you, Perfidia?
PERFIDIA
I don’t know.
MACE
Yes, you do. Did you write yourself? Or did somebody else decide who you were before you had a chance to say your piece?
(beat)
Who’s telling your story?
PERFIDIA
Who’s telling yours?
MACE
Child, I’m in the same car as you, just on the other end of it. If I’ve got one real flaw, it’s falling for a man who played me for a fool.
PERFIDIA
The Magic Man.
MACE
I just wanted to be seen. To be respected. So I gave up some of my voice to make that happen.
PERFIDIA
What other choice do we have?
MACE
We can speak for ourselves.
PERFIDIA
Every muthafucka I know who spoke for themselves is dead and gone.
(beat)
Like Junglepussy.
MACE
Who is Junglepussy?
PERFIDIA
One of the baddest bitches in the game. And she gone. Because I couldn’t keep my damn mouth shut.
MACE
So what, then? You gonna take a vow of silence? Join a convent?
PERFIDIA
Hell nah! I ain t built for no kind of celibacy. No, ma am. Nope.
Mace laughs.
PERFIDIA
I’d have to sneak in one of them squiddies to fuck vicariously.
MACE
Uh-uh. You better not fool with that.
PERFIDIA
What? I can hide it under my habit.
MACE
You’ll fry yourself.
PERFIDIA
One way or another I’m getting off.
MACE
But is that you talking? Or another man sticking words in your mouth?
Perfidia smacks her forehead.
PERFIDIA
Fuuuuuuck!
Both women laugh.
MACE
There’s another route you can take.
PERFIDIA
Yeah? What’s that?
MACE
If you can’t speak up, you can always write your shit down. Some things just hit harder on paper.
Perfidia takes that in. Sets the gun down.
PERFIDIA
Right.
Mace lets out a long exhale.
MACE
We’re living in strange days, Perfidia.
Perfidia turns to look out the window.
PERFIDIA
So you never tried one of those SQUID thingamajigs?
MACE
I don’t need a device to see the weird shit in somebody else’s head. I got enough going on in my own.
PERFIDIA
But you said it gives outsiders a window into your experience or whatever. Ain’t that what you want?
(beat)
Has anybody seen inside your head?
It’s a question Mace asks herself every day, driving down these man-made, dead-end streets.
MACE
Not yet. But they will.
Perfidia shuts her eyes.
PERFIDIA
When?
THE END