Excerpt From My Unfinished Screenplay ‘Movie Money’

Loosely inspired by recent events.

• Athens teen tries to buy McDonald’s food with movie prop money
• Walmart Worker Turns Herself In To Police After Accepting $1,000 In Movie Prop Cash
• Fake money leads to Athens arrests

INT. APARTMENT — NIGHT

MAN 1

Why is it we spend our days surrounded by fake money but we don’t make enough to pay our rent?

MAN 2

Nobody said being an actor would be this hard. No, wait. I’m joking. Every single person said that.

MAN 1

I’m thinking about taking the money.

MAN 2

The movie money?

MAN 1

Yeah, the movie money. We finish shooting the bank robbery tomorrow. Nobody’s going to notice some extra grabbing a few stacks of bills on the way out the door.

MAN 2

You want to rob the bank robbery.

MAN 1

It’s not robbing if you’re taking something that doesn’t have value.

MAN 2

I’m not sure the courts are going to see it that way.

MAN 1

Well, if we pull this off we aren’t going to see any courts. We’re going to be rich. With movie money.

MAN 2

No bank’s going to let us deposit money that says “for motion picture use only” on the top of it. Also I haven’t been in a bank in six years. I don’t even know what you’re supposed to do anymore. Do they still have those little slips of paper? Those pens with the chains? Those pens never worked.

MAN 1

No, no, no. We’re going to go somewhere they don’t have time to check the money. Like Taco Bell. The drive-through. Corporate’s saying you gotta get ’em in and out in 20 seconds. Nobody’s looking at the tops of our cash.

MAN 2

You want us to commit multiple felonies so we can go to Taco Bell?

MAN 1

Have you been to Taco Bell? They’re putting Cheetos inside of burritos now.

MAN 2

If we’re going to do this, we can’t go to Taco Bell. We need someone on the inside.

MAN 1

Of the financial industry?

MAN 2

Of a store. Someone who’ll take our money even though they know it’s just movie money.

MAN 1

How’s that going to work?

MAN 2

You never worked retail? What kind of actor are you? At the end of the day, everyone puts their register money into this big bag that goes to the bank. Once it gets in the big bag, nobody’s going to look at every dollar individually. If we get someone on the inside, we can pull this off.

MAN 1

Who are we going to get?

MAN 2

I think it should be a girl.

MAN 1

Why a girl?

MAN 2

Because every story needs one girl so you can have the romantic subplot, of course. Joking. Because she’ll seem more trustworthy.

MAN 1

What if it all goes wrong?

MAN 2

Then we’ll say we didn’t know it was movie money. Somebody else already took the money without knowing it was movie money, so we’ll have plausible deniability.

MAN 1

What about the girl?

MAN 2

We’ll tell her to say the same thing.

MAN 1

I thought I was supposed to be convincing you of this.

MAN 2

It’s what’s called a reversal. I’m developing my character right now. Also, it’s foreshadowing the way my greed is going to outpace yours and get us in major trouble at the end of the second act.

MAN 1

What?

MAN 2

Don’t worry about it.

MAN 1

So we’re both in. I’ll take the movie money. You find the girl.

MAN 2

It’s the perfect crime.

MAN 1

The perfect crime.

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