A little yellow Mazda RX-7, '79, speeds through the morning rush hour traffic of a busy city street, dodging, switching lanes, running yellow lights, and barely avoiding collisions. The camera follows from above. Street sounds -- blowing horns, the screeching of tires, an ambulance in the distance -- are heard. A radio plays a lilting, soothing jazz samba in the background as a woman's frustrated voice patters lightly, making running commentary about the traffic:

WOMAN'S VOICE:

OK, Buster, outta my way. That's right, YOU! ... Yeah, up yours, too ... OK light, stay green, stay green, no, no, no, don't turn on me now ... Oh God, that was close ... Good grief, Mister, think you could limit yourself to one lane at a time? OOPS. Sorry. Love you too ...

The camera zooms quickly down through the window of the car into a close-up of the frustrated face of MIRANDA MALACROIX. She is simultaneously flustered and funky. She pulls up at a stoplight behind a late model pickup truck with a black driver. The driver is moving his body to radio music. Miranda is moving her body to the same music because they are both listening to the same station. Suddenly she realizes that he is watching her out of his rear view mirror. She smiles, and they continue to sway in unison. The light changes and he pulls away. They wave to each other. Miranda turns left and he drives straight.

Miranda pulls into a skyscraper parking lot. She parks and takes the elevator up to the 28th floor. She exits the elevator and walks briskly past a construction area in the hallway. Workmen are hammering and sawing, apparently opening a new doorway in an empty stretch of wall. At the entrance to a suite of offices labeled Fantasy Films Ltd., she stops abruptly, catches her breath, and calmly walks in as if in no particular hurry.

The secretary, PAM LUNTZ, widens her eyes in mock approbation as Miranda ambles by her desk. A wall clock reads 8:35.

MIRANDA:

(Sweetly) Hi, Pam. Did I make it?

PAM:

They left ten minutes ago. Dingbert was pissed.

Miranda mutters under her breath.

MIRANDA:

Damn.

She continues toward her office and coos over her shoulder:

MIRANDA:

Would you call and tell them I'm on the way?

As soon as Miranda enters her office and closes the door she shucks her calm demeanor and roots around frantically in the massive clutter of her desk. Both the desk and all available pieces of furniture, including visitor's chairs, are littered with mounds of paper. She mutters and curses under her breath before finally coming up with the script she'd been looking for. She folds up a lap-top computer from the desk, slings the strap around her shoulder, and rushes to the door, then halts abruptly, pats her hair into place, and walks through calmly. She smiles sweetly at Pam, gabbing casually as she goes by.

MIRANDA:

Got a date tonight? It's Friday.

PAM:

Nope. You?

MIRANDA:

Free and easy. Want to hit some night life?

PAM:

Sure.

MIRANDA:

I'll be back about five. We can get dinner and go bar crawling afterwards.

PAM:

Bye. Have a good shoot.

MIRANDA:

Bang, bang.

As soon as Miranda is out of the door she begins running frantically down the hallway, clattering by the workmen she passed coming in. The camera stops full on the workmen as she runs by.

We see that they have just finished sawing around a new entranceway. We watch as one of them gives a light tap, almost a love-pat, with a hammer, and a large door shaped section of the wall falls ponderously back into the space behind the walls, and lands -- WHUMP -- amidst a swirl of dust into the blackness of whatever is beyond. The camera is sucked into the hole a few seconds later, and all goes black.

EXT -- ABOVE A FREEWAY

A TV helicopter circles above a snarl of traffic on the freeway below, the camera trained on a melee of fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances attending an accident scene while a woman reporter talks from the chopper.

MARY:

It's a tragic, tragic accident, Dave. The life of a promising young screen writer taken away from us in the prime of her life. Down there ... somewhere down there in that twisted metal is the undoubtedly horribly mutilated, probably unrecognizable body of Miranda Malacroix.

The camera zooms down as the helicopter circles, the whup-whup of its blades audible in the background. In the center of the chaos is a trashed chunk of metal barely recognizable as Miranda's yellow RX-7.

DAVE:

Yes, Mary, it is tragic indeed ...

The camera shifts to Dave, the anchorman, back in the news studio. A bigger than life picture of Miranda flashes onto the screen behind Dave.

DAVE (Cont.):

... already we are receiving calls of sympathy and condolence for this vital young woman, this bright young writing talent called the imaginative genius of her age, who was so abruptly taken from us. Here are some clips from her early life, with her mother and father ...

Scenes flash on the screen.

DAVE (Cont.): ... and here she is at her high school prom with her date, a social Neanderthal whom she allowed to take her out of sympathy, but who was more interested in drinking with the boys than dancing with this beautiful, effervescent young woman. And here ...

MARY:

Dave, Dave ... we have our man on the scene down there at the wreckage ...

JOHN:

Yes, Dave and Mary, I'm here close up, only a few feet away from the wreckage of Miranda Malacroix's life, and I can tell you it's a humbling feeling to ....

John is interrupted by the sound of a car horn honking.

JOHN (Cont.):

... indeed, a profound, humbling, staggering, upsetting ...

HONK! The horn honks again, drowning John out. John turns and waves his hands angrily at someone off-camera.

JOHN:

Get that son-of-a-bitch out of here, he's ruining the take, he's ...

HOONNK!! The camera shows a close-up of Miranda's startled face, then zooms past and behind her, through the rear window of her car so that we see the angry face of the driver behind her, mouthing words that we can't hear but which LOOK like, "Get the hell out of there, lady!" Miranda pulls away from the stop-light where she had been day dreaming and continues toward her destination.