Heavenly Creatures

HEAVENLY CREATURES Screenplay by FRANCES WALSH and PETER JACKSON PROLOGUE: Newsreel footage of Christchurch circa 1954. EXT. VICTORIA PARK/BUSHY TRACK - LATE AFTERNOON CAMERA CRASHES out of bush and races up a dark bushy track. CLOSE ON... two pairs of feet running up the track, slipping in the mud... desperate. WIDE SHOT... reveals TWO GIRLS running up the track, distraught. JULIET HULME: nearly 16 - tall, blond and willowy, and PAULINE RIEPER: 16 - dark-haired, shorter and stockier than Juliet. It is 1954. Both girls are dressed in overcoats on a chilly winter day. They slip and stumble on the dirt track that winds up the steep Victoria Park hillside. Thick vegetation and overhanging trees give the path a tunnel- like feeling. CUT TO: EXT. OCEANLINER'S DECK - DAY BLACK & WHITE... Pauline and Juliet running... this time they are happy, in holiday clothing, weaving around OTHER PASSENGERS as they race along the deck of an oceanliner. INTERCUT BETWEEN: EXT. VICTORIA PARK/BUSHY TRACK - LATE AFTERNOON Pauline and Juliet desperately scrambling up the track. AND EXT. OCEANLINER S DECK - DAY BLACK & WHITE... Pauline and Juliet happily bounding along the ships deck. They push past a group of PASSENGERS. Juliet waves and calls out. JULIET Mummy! The PACE of the INTERCUTTING between TRACK and SHIP, COLOUR and BLACK & WHITE, increases in rhythm.