Scripts and movie update!

Hi everyone! Work continues on my first film, Left Behind and the Translation of God. There are twelve sections in the film, and I just finished the ninth. So, I am 75% done writing. Based on my progress, the release window of winter is still set.

With that aside, here are some of the scripts from recent episodes.

MOONRISE KINGDOM:

 AUDIO 1
 Moonrise Kingdom is a 2012 film directed by Wes Anderson. In 1965, two twelve year olds meet and form a friendship – a boy, Sam Shukusky – and a girl, Suzy Bishop. After sharing their feelings and tales of misfortune through letters, they decide to run away. Sam, an orphan, is unpopular with the other Khaki Scouts. Suzy dislikes her parents, particularly her mother, who is cheating on her husband. Sam uses his Khaki Scout wilderness skills to lead Suzy through the woods and to a place they believe they will be safe from the adults of the town. They are not. First, they are discovered by the Khaki Scouts, and later, the adults. Sam's foster father wants nothing to do with him anymore, and due to his behavior, social services will likely place him in a “juvenile refuge” – a term they learn simply means orphanage. The Khaki Scouts realize the error of their ways, and help Suzy and Sam escape again. They are “married” in an unauthorized ceremony. The adults and social services track them down, and when all hope seems lost, the island's only police officer who was having an affair with Suzy's mother agrees to take care of Sam from now on.
 [clip]
  
 AUDIO 2
 Suzy is a fascinating character but perhaps not in the way that Wes Anderson intended. She is passionate but continuously disappointed. She is raw and human and angry, and everyone is, well, a Wes Anderson character. Quirky and twee or containing some longing for something but in a goofy,  unreal way. Wes Anderson characters are like human beings as illustrated by aliens – nearly but not entirely real. Suzy has no patience for these...Andersonians, and because of this, she rebels. Imagine living on an island populated entirely by smug baffoons and overly articulate pre-teens while classic rock pounds out through the atmosphere. You would be tempted to stab someone with a pair of scissors just to make sure pain existed. Sam is a dreamy, Anderson protagonist. He packs for the trip as if he would never return, and that he and Suzy would stay there forever – off the grid and outside the jurisdiction of parents. He brings food, water and survival supplies.
 Suzy, on the other hand, brings books and a record player. She leaves a note for her brother in which she explains that she will return the borrowed record player in ten days or less. Suzy, even with her head in the clouds about fantasy novels, is still the character who is grounded in reality. She knows they will eventually be caught, probably in less than ten days. The film never tells the audience outright how long either of them plan to stay, but what each child brings and leaves behind tells us everything. Suzy is running away because of her fondness for Sam but also because she knows it will hurt her mother. In the end, Suzy is denied her suicide and is now carrying out a child version of an illicit affair with her secret boy-husband – which means she has more or less become her mother – everything she claimed to have hated. Moonrise Kingdom has what might seem like a happy ending. Sam is rescued, he is apparently impervious to a lightning strike, and he and Suzy are still together and in love.
 AUDIO 3
 Sam and Suzy's make-believe kingdom by the cove is wiped off the map by the end of the film by a storm. This is not subtle, but it does not have to be. We are seeing the end of childhood. The trappings of childhood are everywhere. The children of the town are performing Noye's Fludde, a Benjamin Britten one-act opera intended primarily for child actors. It's based on a 14th century English mystery or miracle play – a dramatization of a Biblical story. This is a miniature version of the world of the film: children who take on the roles of adults, forced into situations that were not intended for them. Moonrise Kingdom plays out like a fairy tale. It is delivered to us by a wise old man – an omniscient narrator who knows the past, present and future. Suzy brings young adult fantasy novels with her on her adventure. She even says that she wants to go on adventures when she grows up, a desire that she acts upon while still a child.    
  Again, a goal for her adulthood that she plays out in her childhood. Her binoculars are called her “special power” – like magic. She reads her novels – these bedtime stories – to Sam and later to the Khaki Scouts. These fantasies mirror the journey of Suzy and Sam. When Suzy turns a page and says “Part Two,” we cut to quite literally the second part of the film. Children's music sung by children is played in the film. We are seeing a transition between innocence and responsibility. The Khaki Scouts are tweens – so close to their teenage growth – and they have regimented, nearly adult responsibilities carried out while wearing little uniforms with merit badges. They dance in their underwear and kiss – poorly – in this in-between world of childhood and adulthood.    
  [clip]  
  AUDIO 4  
 Some philosophical views of the parent-child relationship ignore the idea of an unconditional loving relationship and instead posit that any relationship – even one as important as this – is conditional. One could argue that a child owes their parent a great deal for feeding them, clothing them and keeping a roof over their head, but conversely, one could argue that it is the parent who owes the child. The parent decided to create this human being or adopt this human being and must incur any and all responsibilities for them. If a parent is neglectful, and one could make that argument in Moonrise Kingdom as it pertains to Suzy's mother and father, then Suzy does not owe them respect. The parent-child relationship is a moral contract that the child never signed because the child did not choose to be born. Even if the child does make a deal – a moral contract – with their parents, bear in mind that the child is too young to commit to something that lasts forever.    
  In philosophy, what is called Debt Theory insists that Suzy owes her parents no matter what – perhaps even if they are cruel or abusive. This view was held by such minds as Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle – but realistically speaking, when Suzy grows up, she is not honor bound to pay back her parents for services rendered, especially considering that her parents are legally required to provide that care. Debt Theory is simplistic is comes more from traditionalism than anything else, and like many simplistic philosophies about complicated matters, it falls apart under scrutiny. A child does not have the capacity to make such a moral contract with their parent that persists after said child becomes an adult. Friendship Theory – coined by contemporary philosopher Jane English – would say that after Suzy becomes an adult, she should treat her parents much in the way people treat their friends – if there is love there, the relationship persists, and if there is not, one is under no real obligation to maintain the relationship. Families are held together through love – not blood – and if that is true, then families lacking love cannot form moral contracts with one another. Suzy's parents probably do love her, but the difference between her dicey relationship with her parents at age twelve might be much worse by age eighteen.  
  
  AUDIO 5  
  The world of children and the world of adults collide in the film, but there is enough disparity to realize why Sam and Suzy want to leave adults behind. Suzy's parents are both lawyers, and their contentious, adversarial marriage purposefully mimmicks a court of law. They're not arguing on behalf of anyone – certainly not Suzy – they are simply coldly sniping and lazing about and being miserable. And when Suzy leaves, they assume this has to do with her personality and her history of losing her temper rather than as an act of rebellion against their deteriorating marriage. Sam leaves the Khaki Scouts – resigns, really – and seems comfortable doing so, considering none of the other children enjoy his company. Who wouldn't want to live in a fantasy land? Who wouldn't want to escape from this? But Sam and Suzy do not just escape from the world of adults. They reinvent it. They engage in what they put together as romance, they cook, they pierce ears and exchange gifts, and they dance around half naked in the super weird underpants dance party. Sam and Suzy do not speak to each other the way adults in romantic comedies often do. They don't make too many jokes, for example. Sam and Suzy speak earnestly and honestly the whole way through the film. They don't have a tragic breakup when Sam cheats on her with someone else, only to realize his mistake. Instead they are just adorably faithful to each other.   
 This is not due to some innocence between them. They are both more evolved than the average child. They are simply...sincere. If romantic comedies are about the trials and tribulations of an adult relationship, Moonrise Kingdom is the anti-romcom. Routine is a key feature of almost every adult character in the film. We meet them in the middle of the daily routines – the scoutmaster instructing the Khaki Scouts – Suzy's parents both in the midst of household chores – the switchboard operator having lunch, etc. The children are introduced differently, either aschewing routine or being instructed in it by adults. The ending wraps up the thematic elements of “end of childhood” well. Suzy lives in a home called Summer's End, and as Autumn comes in the epilogue of the film, she and Sam are engaged in a secretive, not quite legal marital bliss. Yet, the theme of loss of childhood is not equal to loss of innocence or the need to grow up. In the film, we see compromise. We enter into rigid institutions – marriage, routine, and taking care of children. Suzy's smile in the end is not wide or glowing. It is not a smile of victory but more of a sad smile of acceptance.     
 

AUDITION

 AUDIO 1
 Audition is a 1999 film directed by Takeshi Miike. Shigeharu Aoyama is a widower. Years after the tragic death of his wife, he is encouraged by his son to start looking for a new wife. Aoyama's friend in the movie industry, Yasuhisa Yoshikawa, suggests that they use their upcoming casting call to interview women to be the new wife. Aoyama and his friend ask the women questions about themselves – believing they are only there to be cast in a movie – but the questions are covertly meant to see whether or not they would be a good match for Aoyama. After a long search, Aoyama chooses Asami Yamazaki, a woman who looks about twenty years younger than himself. Asami's references from the audition turn out to be fraudulent, but Aoyama pursues her anyway.   
 She pleads with Aoyama to pledge his love only to her. When she disappears, Aoyama tries to find her but only finds terrifying clues about her past. Asami injects Aoyama with a paralyzing drug and tortures him. She cannot accept that he has strong feelings for anyone else, even his own son. Aoyama dreams of a better outcome for his relationship, and when he awakens, his son comes to his rescue, pushing Asami down the stairs and breaking her neck. In Audition, we follow the lonely Aoyama search for a new wife but under questionable methods. We see he is a loving father and otherwise affable. He believes that his desires outweigh any objectification of Asami. He believes that what he is doing is overall “good” and does not recognize what he is doing to Asami – does not recognize that his pattern of behavior falls into a worldview that does not treat women with agency – the ability to act.
 [clip]
 AUDIO 2
 When Yoshikawa and Aoyama discuss what men look for in a woman, the Japanese word for “obedient” comes up multiple times. Also the term “well-trained.” Female sexual objectification by a male involves a woman being viewed primarily as an object of desire, rather than as a complete person. To objectify someone is to strip them of their essential character, experience and needs. Aoyama probably does not consciously think of this. All he knows is that he wants a wife and does not consider the fact that deceiving a young woman into a room with him and lying to her about why she is being questioned reduces her agency – even if she willingly chose to date him thereafter, the circumstances in which they were paired together would always be suspect. Aoyama, much older than Asami, treats her paternalistically, diminishing her role in the relationship for what he doubtless believes is her own good.  
  Taking away the agency of someone does something to the objectifier by making it difficult for him to relate to the other. Aoyama falls for Asami for more than simply her looks – her enjoys reading her essay, for example – but the childlike manner in which she writes and speaks – all a facade as he learns later – is enough to make Aoyama's intentions troublesome whether he realizes it or not. He and his friend discuss traits that a woman should have. One such trait, they say, is youth. This is not an invention of the film, though. Heterosexual male obsession with female youth is provable. Popular online dating website OKCupid mined a lot of data over the years and found something a little...uncomfortable about the difference between how women see the age of men they find most attractive and willing to date vs. how men see the perfect age of women they find most attractive and willing to date.  
  AUDIO 3  
 This is a chart of a woman's age and the men they find most attractive. The ages of women on the left roughly correspond with the age of men they find attractive – whereas men almost always respond that a twenty year old woman or a woman in her early twenties is who they most find attractive and want to date, even at age 50. None of this is surprising, especially to women who are hit on by much older men, but it's good to have the raw data. In one scene, Yoshikawa comments on some women at the bar who he describes as “awful girls, common and stuck up and stupid.” This shows male anxieties and reaction over contemporary Japanese women using traditionally male spaces such as a bar. What makes them “stuck-up” or “full of themselves” – depending on the translation? This is something men say of women who want nothing to do with them. They cannot imagine the problem might be within themselves, so if women reject men, the problem – they rationalize – must be that of the woman. This is certainly NOT relegated to Japanese.    
 Yoshikawa remarks “Japan is finished.” – a hyperbolic reaction to women having fun on their own. In the book Japanese Horror Under Western Eyes: Social Class and Global Culture in Miike Takashi’s Audition, Steffan Hantke wrote: “If we see Asami as a figure in the Japanese tradition of the female avenger, her capacity for violence and destruction is directed against Aoyama as a proponent of a reactionary ideology of the family, if viewers experience a sense of ambivalence about this attack, it may be because we see this family as ‘often already dysfunctional’ and male authority as often already undermined.” This means that even though Aoyama’s desire to find a submissive wife can prove disastrous. Aoyama is not the only one, though. Asami's other kidnapping victim – presumably her ex-boyfriend – may have it worse.    
  [clip]  
  AUDIO 4  
 Asami feeds the man her own vomit, displaying an extreme version of gender role reversal in which the male is subjected to becoming the silent obedient and domesticated pet, who quite literally relies on her for means of subsistence. Aoyama and his friend also discuss what skills that a woman should have. Rather than, say, occupational skills, Aoyama concludes that he wants a wife who has a performative talent, like the ability to sing and dance for him. Asami's worth to Aoyama lies in what she can do for him and how she can help his life. He is ready to marry her only days after meeting her while knowing nothing about her past except what was in her phony resume and a few lies of during their sparse dates. She is...useful to him. He does not know her. Trying to classify Aoyama's feelings as purely romantic and genuine fail when taking these things into account.    
  People and actions are not so superficially simple...as the revelation about Asami should clearly show. Some people who have seen Audition say that it is divided into two parts: a romance movie and a horror movie. Respectfully, that line of thinking displays a complete misunderstanding of what is actually happening in the first hour of the film. Aoyama has tricked a woman into a relationship, and conversely, a woman has tricked the man right back. Her lies of omission are foreshadowed multiple times before the more horrific content begins, and his actions are explicitly dishonestly and suspicious right away. When everything goes sideways in the film, it is not sudden at all. It has been carefully built up over the first hour. If audiences mistakenly see Aoyama's pretense as romantic, it shows just how pervasive these negative social attitudes are, and if audiences mistake Asami's suspicious behavior for innocence, that says a lot about the infantilization of women by men as well. This horror movie is a horror movie in the first act – not just in the end.  
  AUDIO 5  
 Asami does not even torture him because of his lies and unsettling private conversations with his friend. She does it because of her own personal damage that has left her broken, BUT that damage is also the result of being treated as an object without agency – albeit something far, far more egregious: physical abuse. In this case, abuse that has a sexual component. That does not justify her later behavior, but it does explain the links in the chain of abuse. Audition reveals the oppressive nature of certain “traditionalistic” romantic notions which perpetuate dominate gender roles. Aoyama falls into a pattern that he does not even realize is part of negative systemic behavior. Does that mean his torture at the hands of Asami is justified? Nnnnno. Of course not. His insensitivity is not an act worthy of kidnapping and mutilation as retribution. That is not what the movie is conveying, though. We do not have to wonder if Aoyama's participation in a harmful system that existed long before him and will after him deserves to be tortured.    
 We can, however, wonder about that harmful system itself and hopefully come to some conclusions. Sociologist Allan G. Johnson once wrote “If we think about problems like violence [against women] in a way that appreciates both the power of systems and the importance of our role in them, the choice we face becomes clearer. The choice isn't about whether or not to be involved in privilege and oppression. It isn't about accepting blame for a system we didn't create. Nor is it about whether to make ourselves better people so that we can consider ourselves above and beyond sexism as a social problem. The choice is how to participate in this system differently so that we can help to change not only ourselves, but the world that shapes our lives, and is, in turn, shaped by them. Ultimately, the choice is about empowering ourselves to take our share of responsibility for the patriarchal legacy that we've all inherited.”   

DARK CITY

 AUDIO 1
 Dark City is a 1998 film directed by Alex Proyas. John Murdock awakens to find he has no memory. He does not remember his name, his past or the woman he is told is his wife, Emma. He is hunted by Inspector Bumstead, a detective who comes to believe John is a serial killer. John is also hunted by mysterious pale men in dark clothing – later referred to as The Strangers. These “strangers” are alien lifeforms inhabited the bodies of dead men. Their purpose is to experiment on the memories of human beings – exchanging their pasts while they sleep – giving them new identities unbeknownst to them. They are trying to find the secret to the human soul. Nobody in the city is who their memories tell them they are. Their previous identities are lost and constantly changed at the whims of the Strangers. John discovers that he cannot leave the city – nobody can – because they are not on Earth. They are drifting through space, and there is no way out. With the help of Dr. Schreber, John defeats the Strangers, learns to control the city with the powers of his mind and tries to form a relationship with Emma, in spite of the fact that – following a memory change – she no longer knows who he is.
 [clip of John, Jack, Jason]
 AUDIO 2
 Dark City crashes into centuries of philosophical debate and scholarly work on the subject of PERSONAL IDENTITY. What does being the person that you are, from one day to the next, consist of? Do you have a personal identity, or is it all an illusion, a collection of impressions? This subject was discussed in a previous episode, but I only scratched the surface. Dark City presents different experiments and hypotheticals to ponder. The film's focus on personal identity is why fingerprints appear so often in the film. Inspector Bumstead is investigating a series of murders, mistakenly believing that John is a serial killer. The murderer leaves spirals on the victims. Later, Bumstead looks at a spiral while looking at a fingerprint. Fingerprints – a means of identifying a person. A spiral – a dizzying swirl. The film conveys through these images that discovering the secret to personal identity is a confusing maze. People generally believe that they are the same person from day to day. In this scene, John is shown images of himself as a child.   
 People recall what it was like to be a child and believe that child is themselves and not some other, separate person in spite of the fact that that child now looks and behaves nothing like themselves. Belief that that child is only superficially different from the adult is the concept of personal identity: the notion that a person at one time is the same thing as a person at another time. Throughout the film, having no memory and being the subject of memory experiments, John denies what others tell him is his past and that these fragments of memories do not define him. He claims that he simply knows that he is not a murderer. Philosophers would say that John is asserting that there is an essential property to who he is. Now, Dark City is a science fiction film in which the narrative plainly tells us – eventually – about the realness of human beings and realness of their memories, but this fiction engages with a lot of questions that do not presently have a consensus answer.    
  AUDIO 3  
 Let's look at another character for a moment. Is the man who owns the apartment building the same man once the Strangers have changed his memories and made him a newspaper salesman? Is the new apartment building owner with the previous owners' memories now functionally the same man as the one who preceded him? Belief that owner #1 is still exactly the same person as he was even though he no longer remembers his fabricated past life is an example of BODY THEORY: the philosophical concept that states that personal identity persists over time because we are our bodies or that we exist within our bodies. This might be a little misleading based on what we now know about how often our body replaces skin cells, blood cells, etc. Anyway, this man's entire life is different now – not just his occupation but everything he remembers doing. We could say that his new memories are implanted, but his previous memories from when he was the owner of the apartment building were too. What is the essential property that still makes this man – THIS MAN?   
 His brain – part of his physical body – is still there, but it contains completely different data than before. It may as well be a new brain. And this brings us to MEMORY THEORY – the chief subject of the film. Memory Theory posits that your personal identity persists because of a link of memories between the present and the past. Of course, we don't remember everything we have ever done. We have huge gaps in our early childhood memories, and we have trouble recollecting comparatively recent memories too. For example, you might find it easy to remember your best friend's name even if you have not seen them in weeks, but remembering what outfit you wore last Wednesday might be tricky. That does not mean this “chain” is broken, though, because you can most likely remember something you did on Wednesday – that Wednesday version of yourself – even if it is just that you went to work that day, and that version of yourself probably did remember what you wore.   
 [MUSIC CUE]
 AUDIO 4
 So, let's go back to the new owner of the apartment building. By the standards of body theory, there is definitely a new person running the building, but someone convinced by memory theory would say that this body contains the memories previously held by the other man and is therefore the same person. Similarly, when John loses all his memories in the beginning of the film, a believer in memory theory might suggest that he is now a completely different person than his body was before. Let's pretend John actually did commit the murders even though, as the audience, we know the murders were at the hands of the Strangers instead. But let's have an experiment within the film's own experiment. Assuming John actually was the serial killer, once his memory was wiped clean, would be still be morally responsible? Not legally responsible, but morally. How can one hold someone accountable if that someone is not actually the someone from before? Is he the same person following the murders now that everything he ever was is gone – everything that made him John Murdock? Your answer might tell you a lot about where you think personal identity resides.   
 Some philosophers actually reject the notion of a personal identity. An argument against a human being having a personal identity is the skeptical claim is that we have no experience of a simple, individual impression that we can call the self. What is perceived as our personal identity is only a collection of impressions and stimuli. These impressions do not exist in one place and change from moment to moment, and if that is true, then the self is only an illusion. People generally do not want to acknowledge this possibility. We feel so strongly that we are ourselves – whatever “ourselves” are, and while one should not discount such a powerful inclination, a feeling or desire that something just “is” cannot be the sum of one's argument. However, even without any knowledge about the philosophy of personal identity, society tacitly accepts it as fact as a means of structuring our world and our responsibilities. Merely as a way to simplify life, we believe that we are the same people from one day to the next. Bumstead accepts that Emma and John are married even though they were said to have had their ceremony four years ago. Society accepts that Emma and John are still Emma and John years later. Bumstead investigates a series of murders.   
 AUDIO 5
 The murderer, he believes, is the same man on Monday when he killed a woman as he is on Tuesday. When society assigns responsibility to our actions, it passively acknowledges personal identity – not for heady philosophical reasons but as a method of maintaining some semblance of order. If we rejected personal identity, we would also reject responsibility. You can't argue your way out of being arrested by saying that you are a different person now than you were when you committed the crime or that personal identity does not exist, so citizens are under no obligation to pay for their misdeeds. If you believe that people persist in their personal identities, that means you may have obligations towards them. If you do not believe that people persist in their personal identities, that means you simply cannot because they – and you – do not exist the way that humankind cannot help but functionally accept that they do.   
 Personal identity – whether true or false – is a kind of practical philosophy that allows the world to operate. These particular science fiction scenarios do not exist in the real world, of course, but sci-fi allows us to explore our philosophies under unusual situations that test our theories that we cannot test in life. Dark City presents an extreme case of memory theory experiments by giving us a world in which memories are conjured up in a laboratory and exchanged, but the questions that philosophers have about memory theory and the big question of Dark City is the same: Are we more than the sum of our memories? The film says yes, we are. The Strangers are not simply searching for human memories. They have already helped invent and implement a way to make memories physical in these concoctions and interchangeable as well. The Strangers are searching for the very existence of the human soul.
 [human soul clip]
 AUDIO 6
 The Strangers possess a collective mind. They are not individuals in the strictest sense. They do not have individual memories, and because humans do, they believe that they must have souls. Putting aside the fact that humans and the strangers may simply be biologically different, Dark City instead posits that they are different because of the human soul. John tells Mr. Hand that the strangers were looking for the human soul in the wrong place, but he does not give a hypothesis on where it might actually be, which means the movie does not make this attempt either. The “location” of the human soul is a subject of debate even among those who absolutely believe in the soul's existence. Some proclaim that it is connected to the body whereas others say it is physically independent. Director Alex Proyas, who also co-wrote the movie, said that the film sought to an explore whether or not there was a “spark” of identity within people even after stripping everything else away. Belief and disbelief in the soul are ancient – and not just among religions but also philosophers.   
 Plato famously believed in the immortality, once writing in Phædo – a dramatic depiction of the death of Socrates -- that everything has an opposite and everything works in cycles. When something is dark, it was previously bright and will be dark again – he would argue. When someone awakes, he was previously asleep, and he will awaken again. Opposites and cycles. By his logic, being alive is opposite to being dead, and as much as death comes from life, life must too come from death – and if they body no longer functions to allow to life to persist, then something else must, like a soul. Conversely, disbelief in the soul is similarly ancient. Epicurus believed that he are our bodies, and when our bodies die, everything that we are dies too. He was what we would call a materialist. And there were thousands of other perspectives before Plato and Epicurus and thousand afterwards, none of which Dark City really tackles head-on. Instead, it declares that the soul exists by implication. John has no memories at the beginning of the film. Yet, he is still morally repulsed by actions such as murder.   
 AUDIO 7   
 He is able to make judgments not from experience but from something else inside him. The aforementioned building owner turned newspaper salesman uses the same phrase about his life in both instances, suggesting that there is some core to his being that exists outside of his experiences. Dark City does not say why there is a soul – only that there is. The uncomfortable but important evidence of science provides a very powerful case against the existence of a soul that can carry your personal identity once your body fails. Modern brain-imaging technology allows us to see how specific, localized brain injuries damage or even destroy aspects of a person’s life: losses in sight, thought and other sensations.    
 Those who believe they have a soul that survives bodily death generally believe their soul enables them to see, think and have feelings, but if we each have a soul that enables us to do these things after the total death of the body, why do these souls not enable us to see, think and feel when only a small portion of the brain is destroyed? Defenders of the idea of the soul argue that the soul needs a functioning body in this world, but not in the next – which is fair enough if somewhat inconsistent and unsatisfactory. There is certainly more to it, but since Dark City does not go much deeper than that, neither will I – at least not today. Dark City cannot solve the problem of the human soul within its less than two hour runtime, but it does not attempt to do so. The world, instead, creates with a lot of other challenging thought experiments. The that is the “soul” of Dark City.