“Clockwork” original story treatment
“Clockwork” treatment
By Jimmy Stanley
Part one: the before
Dr. Bernard Glade is a respected professor of neuroscience at Columbia University, specializing in sleep and dream studies. Glade has set upon a path that has brought him a certain degree of stardom within his field, having written well-circulated books and given speeches to his peers at conferences on the findings of his research. Dr. Glade’s life is turned upside down when his 18 year old son, Christopher, is struck by a car and sent into a coma. Dr. Glade, a man with a sudden but understandable edge and darkness, redirects his energy into the invention of a new drug that will grant patients the ability to lucid dream every night, without any lingering grogginess or otherwise undesirable side effects. His way of doing what he can to make life better for those bound to hospital beds and wheelchairs: his son. If Christopher is to be stuck in his head for the rest of his life, the least he could do is to apply his experience to try to help make the experience a little better.
As Dr. Glade continues his work with little luck, a promising high school senior by the name of Christopher Clock is accepted into Columbia University to study neuroscience. Posters of Bernard Glade drape the walls of Christopher’ bedroom, his entire bibliography lining his bookshelf. Clock is a huge fan.
Clock has ambitious intentions when it comes to endearing himself to Glade. But the motive, at this point, hardly supersedes anything beyond wanting the chance to work with his hero. Given Clock knows Glade so well, he goes to extremes to ensure that Glade will like him, including undergoing extensive facial reconstruction surgery in order to appear more like Glade’s son… and changing his name to Christopher (his real name is Killian).
It isn’t until his Junior year that any of this pays off, when Christopher (formerly Killian) Clock enrolls in Advance Sleep and Dream Studies with Dr. Bernard Glade. Rather conveniently, Glade is looking for a new research assistant, and after a contentious sweepstakes, chooses the familiar Clock.
Dr. Glade, all these years later, has made negligible progress on his research into the lucid dream drug. But Clock, despite his many charlatan qualities, is genuinely brilliant and, together, the two suddenly achieve breakthrough after breakthrough. Clock quickly becomes the protege, the good-luck charm, of Dr. Glade.
Some time passes, and later on in the drug’s development process, Glade grows troubled by the direction of the research. As a scientist, Glade is willing to entertain the drug’s development as far as the science deems it worthwhile, but as abject implications of the drug reveal themselves, and his attempted fixes fail to ameliorate them, Glade makes the surprising decision to halt research altogether. It is too dangerous — he reasons — to be worth the potential medicinal value. His line of thinking is that, at one point, the scientists who invented heroin or methamphetamine surely thought they’d found a cure for pain, failing (through ignorance) to predict their creation’s disastrous societal implications. Glade and Clock’s drug, though intended to be a tool that disabled people could use to improve their lives through lucid dreaming, ended up with too much potential to become an extremely addictive party drug where the user can walk through their real life feeling like they’re in a lucid dream.
Clock is devastated by the professor’s decision. Despite clear direction to cease and desist, Clock decides to continue research and testing on his own, in secret, realizing there is far too much to gain to give up merely for ethical reasons; not to mention, he has become power hungry from the praise and affirmation he’s received in his role as Glade’s protege. Clock has changed. And when faced with the reality that this could be the closest he might ever get to making a genuinely consequential contribution to humanity, he doesn’t think twice. So he continues to smooth out the wrinkles of the drug until, at last, he has something he can give to human participants to test. He calls it Lucidizone.
Clock conducts tests at the lab at night, when Dr. Glade is gone for the night. It doesn’t take long for things to go south. Not to mention the absolute mayhem that occurs during the test trials, the drug is so potent, so pleasurable and fun and… oh yeah, addictive, that the research participants start showing up at the lab looking for more. Clock thinks he has it under control, spreading the word that those who want it can contact him directly, but on several occasions, people show up at the lab when Dr. Glade is there himself doing his work, and therefore Clock doesn’t know he has been caught. Dr. Glade goes from angry to suspicious precipitously regarding everything to do with Christopher Clock. He uncovers not only the name change, but the facial reconstruction, even the fact that Clock has been obsessed with him for many years. Glade is horrified and worried that, if he lets on, he’ll be in danger.
Simultaneously, the drug is sweeping the campus in what is precipitously becoming a public health calamity, and the school quickly zeroes in on Glade and Clock. Glade is placed on administrative leave, while Clock is temporarily suspended, pending review of potential expulsion.
Dr. Glade, a lifelong do-gooder, an academic who values trust, truth, and ethics, is crushed by this hit to his reputation. He slinks out of the public eye as it zeroes in on him. He’s certainly upset, but he hardly has time to harp on it as he is far more concerned with Clock, realizing that the measures the school used to stop him won’t be enough. Clock will find a way to keep making the drug, to keep distributing it, to potentially even sell it to a big pharma company for an egregious amount of money. As the epidemic not only persists but exponentially worsens, Dr. Glade realizes there is only one way he can stop Clock -- to get him addicted to the drug. And that’s exactly what he does, with the consequence of permanently throwing his own impression of himself into disarray.
Part two: the high
Christopher Clock roams the streets of New York City, cripplingly high on Lucidizone -- just one of the many people swept up in the life-destroying addiction of this new street drug. Clock struggles to remember anything about himself -- how he got here, who he is, his name… the fact that he is even on drugs in the first place. His life is an endless waking dream. Every fact discovered is a complete reconstruction of his reality. It’s hard to identify what lies in utter fabrication. It also becomes increasingly clear that there are periods of time blacked out from his memory, and he cannot remember what he does during these periods.
Clock grows paranoid as he begins to connect the dots on what is actually going on. He feels that oftentimes he is being followed. In his dilemma and with little grasp on reality, he attempts to piece together his past in order to save himself from whatever it is that is closing in on him. Little bits of information pile up, triggered by artifacts he finds (such as a newspaper front page story that includes his own name mentioned alongside a Dr. Bernard Glade). Glade begins to pop up everywhere. Is Glade the reason he is in this predicament? Or is he an ally?
His investigation slowly leads him back to Columbia, to Glade, and to the realization that this was all of his own making. The streets of the Upper West Side, once visited, reveal to be the stone left unturned.
When he finally tracks down Glade, he observes him for some time, still unsure if this man is his savior or enemy. In fact, Glade has spent the past several years (yes, Clock has been out of it for years) trying to piece back together his own reputation. A large part of this has been explaining to the public what really happened between himself and Clock -- how Clock turned out to be a devil in apprentice’s clothing. How he (Glade) had initiated the cessation of research, fearing the drug they were concocting would not be good for humanity. Clock is confused, but pieces together his own part in the development of the drug, and realizes he must have been on it all this time.
Part three: the aftermath
When Clock finally approaches Glade, Glade is not caught off guard or surprised -- he’d been expecting this all along. As it happens, this has happened every few months or so for the past several years. Seeing as it is in Glade’s best interest to not allow Clock to resurface (he looks very different now and has gone on this long without getting caught), the professor keeps tabs on him (this was who was tailing him and causing the paranoia).
Every few months when Clock’s broken mind leads him back to Glade in a depressing attempt to go back to the start and uncover what happened, Clock shoots him up with a near-lethal dose of Lucidizone and restarts the process. It is also in this moment, every time, that Clock remembers (just a little too late) that this is a cycle that has been going on for years and is probably going to be the rest of his life.
Dr. Glade has just begun the process of publicly recovering from the hit to his reputation that resulted from Lucidizone. He was mostly able to manage to keep his name out of the headlines, to relegate his part in the story to a footnote. He has a new book out and travels to universities and conferences to discuss it. He talks about the scientific age -- humanity’s insatiable thirst for information, the places it brings us. Clearly, Glade is a hypocrite, avoiding his real-life mistake that negates the legitimacy of his message. He argues that no darkness is evil enough to contaminate the worthwhile endeavor of striving toward technological, scientific and medical breakthroughs.
Once he leaves the conference, he ventures to the city to take the train home. And we leave Dr. Glade as he walks through the train station, infested with those strung out on the drug he had a hand in making.
Before the threat of Clock had been neutralized by Glade, Clock had produced massive amounts of the drug and sold a lot of it. Although unclear how it happened, by the time Clock was no longer in control of his mind, the drug was already circulating by third-party distributors; it is a problem that will persist, out of both of their hands.
Does your intention matter when the greedy are able to seize your brilliance and exploit it for their own personal gain? Is knowledge power, or is it poison? Is brilliance just another beautiful facet of life that will inevitably, always, be exploited?
We end with Clock restarting his journey on the drug, the same exact place we found him in the beginning of the film.
