The Purge script

Hello, patrons! As I mentioned in my State of Renegade Cut Media update on YouTube, I am offering lots of behind-the-scenes posts for FREE to all my patrons pledging $1 or more from now on. Again, this is a FREE post, and you will not be charged for this. Below is the script to my most recent Renegade Cut episode on The Purge.  If you watched the episode, you might notice that the script version is noticeably longer. I sometimes get carried away with my writing and end up cutting bits and pieces before (or sometimes even after) recording to be more concise.

If you were ever curious about what my final scripts look like, wonder no more.

THE PURGE

1:00/16:30 – Framed as religion/May
God be with you all/Soul cleansing like sacrament of Reconciliation

3:18/16:40/19:40/36:30 – Poor can't afford to defend themselves/Not in our neighborhood

11:00/17:40 – Just remember all the good the Purge does

13:00 – Ritual

16:00 – Government officials ranking 10 are immune

26:40/44:30 – Racial

31:38 – Intro

33:07/1:00:00 – Freaks

41:10 – Dogtags

1:10:00 – A nation reborn/America born in violence

THE PURGE: ANARCHY

5:22/1:33:00 – New Founding Fathers

7:00 – Who dies tonight? The poor.

11:18 – God

20:35 – Freaks

24:34/1:13:22 – Trump family

55:20 – Violence

1:25:00 – Race

THE PURGE: ELECTION YEAR

3:30/1:19:00 – Priest candidate

4:00 – Founding Fathers

24:00 – Violence

24:14/41:38 – American imagery

26:19 – Party in the USA

31:00/54:00 – White Power /Actual Nazis

1:28:30 – Fountain lyrics

[MUSIC CUE: Leviathan to 4:25]

AUDIO 1

[31:38] The Purge, The Purge: Anarchy

and The Purge: Election Year are 2013, 2014 and 2016 films
respectively, all written and directed James DeManaco. [Anarchy 5:22]
In the near future, a new political party called The New Founding
Founding Fathers control the government of the United States of
America. [Anarchy 55:20] Under the guise of combating the crime rate,
they have instituted an annual Purge – a twelve hour period in
which laws do not exist, save for the a few minor exceptions.
[Election Year 4:00] The New Founding Fathers not only permit murder
but encourage it, espousing a psuedo-science that claims human beings
require this night – this release – in order to be functioning
members of society.

[3:00] The rich benefit from this
financially, spiking insurance rates, for example, [26:00] and the
poor – unable to afford security – are disproportionately
murdered during Purge night, prompting many to question the true
motives of The New Founding Fathers.

[clip of Election Year 4:49]

AUDIO 2

[13:00] The first film is a microcosm
of the social science experiment of The Purge. A family has become
wealthy by selling expensive security systems to suburbanite families
who are afraid of Purge rioters. [26:44] The young son in the family
allows a homeless man inside, [33:10] prompting upper class hunters
to besiege the home. [45:58] They family is forced with a series of
moral choices about protecting themselves and protecting the homeless
man, which makes them question The Purge for the first time. [Anarchy
41:53] In the second film, a group of strangers attempt to survive in
the city, all of them having different reasons for why they are out
on Purge night.

[Anarchy 1:13:30] They are eventually
kidnapped and “sold” as prey for the wealthy. [Election Year
3:48] In the third film, a Senator running for President on an
anti-Purge platform must escape [Election Year 1:30:02] an
assassination attempt and ritual purging. [Election Year 1:41:55] In
the end, the senator is elected president and vows to use an
executive order to immediately end the Purge. The trilogy ends up on
a hopeful note.

AUDIO 3

[Anarchy 54:27] Reading criticism about
The Purge films, audiences have been quick to chime in that the
system as outlined since the first Purge film does not entirely add
up [Anarchy 55:24] if it were utilized in the real world, both in
terms of the fictional public acceptance of such a system and also
its efficacy. [Anarchy 56:14] Legalizing murder and other crimes for
one night a year would not actually greatly reduce crime for the
remainder of the year because that does not take into account the
actual causes of crime.

[19:45] The so-called experts from film
series claim that human beings simply need to have an outlet for
their rage, and that alone will remove crime. [27:01] In terms of
crimes of passion, negative emotions cannot simply be expelled one
night and not be seen again for an entire year. Many crimes happen in
the moment without much premeditation. [29:37] That would be
remarkably inaccurate as it pertains to human emotions. [Anarchy
5:37] In terms of crimes of necessity, meaning committed by the poor
in order to improve their station, one cannot effectively loot a
year's worth of goods in one night, [Anarchy 11:04] especially not
safely, considering there are roving bands of masked murderers about.
[Anarchy 50:04] Many crimes exist out of persistent need – not want
– and that cannot be placated by allowing a brief free-for-all.

AUDIO 4

[Anarchy 48:35] The drug trade would
not simply dry up. Addictions cannot be suppressed all year, and drug
dealers would not shut down operations for 364 days and then reopen
business for only one day. [Anarchy 48:58] Criminal organizations
simply could not afford to close up shop even if it meant engaging in
their activities legally for one night a year. [Election Year 10:50]
Not to mention the fact that much of America's drug problem is not
homegrown but rather foreign – [Election Year 24:03] meaning people
who would not be subject to the fictional America's Purge laws. Also,
foreign-born terrorism would not cease for the same reason.

[Election Year 11:57] The Purge films
present a world in which the worst that happens outside of Purge
night is someone may or may not steal a candy bar [Election Year
26:39] and then go on a murder rampage later that night. It just does
not add up. [Election Year 24:14] Further, the idea that America –
regardless of how high the crime rate was immediately before the
Purge – [Election Year 41:36] would adopt such a policy not only
legally but SOCIALLY – is ludicrous. [Election Year 2:49] People in
the first Purge film are completely accepting of this new way of
life. There is some dissent, but it isn't until the third Purge film
[Election Year 3:07] until the public actually starts to move against
it, many years after its implementation.

[clip of 11:00]

AUDIO 5

[Election Year 42:29] However, with all
of that said, The Purge series is not attempting to make a realistic
portrayal of society. This is a form of sci-fi called [title] social
science fiction. [Election Year 42:50] It is less concerned with
technology and more focused on how humans interact with one another
as a community. [Election Year 43:20] It is not graded on its
accuracy like hard sci-fi. It aims to caution and criticize, often
through hyperbole. It's NOT so much that The Purge is somehow exempt
from [Election Year 1:01:56] criticizing its exaggerated, impossible
vision of the future. Rather, its exaggerated, impossible vision of
the future is key to what it is trying to say about human morality.

In Logan's Run, the idea that it took
this long for someone to realize that Carrousel is not actually
renewing people is ludicrous. It doesn't matter, though, because
Logan's Run is not a predictive film – a lie that needs to be held
up to scrutiny. What is important is the message that a utopia
requires its people to sacrifice something in order to live in
perfect harmony, and sometimes that sacrifice is too great. Soylent
Green is a little hard to swallow too. So many people had to be
involved in the production of this food that the idea the population
could remain blissfully unaware that it is actually made from human
beings is a little far-fetched. But again, that's not the point. The
film is about dehumanization, and we see this represented by seeing
humans used to feed other humans.

AUDIO 6

[Election Year 26:52] I could list
dozens of examples. The point is that a film's far-out social science
premise is not reliant on its efficacy. [Election Year 42:48] The
MEANING of a far-out social science premise is to explore the human
condition and to comment on more grounded problems that we actually
face. [Election Year 43:11] Writer-director James DeManaco is not
taking a BOLD STANCE against the legalization of MURDER – [Election
Year 43:25] that is simply the lattice upon which to hang other, more
practical issues in the real world. We need not take this so
surface-level and so literally.

[Election Year 3:19 Social science
fiction and film in general is like a mirror reflecting society, but
remember, a mirror is not accurate. It inverts the images, like a
glove turned inside out. [Election Year 4:10] It's like seeing a
portrait of George Washington in this scene and then [Election Year
43:10 SLOW] a grotesque caricature of Washington in this scene.
[Election Year 1:42:06] The Purge superficially resembles the world,
but it does not need to realistically portray it to convey
information.

[clip of Election Year 3:05]

[MUSIC CUE: Philip Glass]

AUDIO 7

[33:30] So, let's give these films the
benefit of the doubt and determine what The Purge may be trying to
say. All three films were written and directed by the same man.
[33:56] This isn't a shallow political allegory by committee – it's
the singular vision and politics of one individual. [57:50] If
nothing else, it's ambitious and not diluted by a team of
screenwriters, all with different political leanings, as that has
lead to mixed message films in the past.

[Election Year 2:56] The Purge is an
allegorical tale about America's rigged socio-economic systems and
violent culture. Powerful corporations donate to political campaigns,
which marry the interests of the law and business. [Election 11:37]
In the third film, for example, the de-regulated government allows
for insurance companies to drastically raise the premium on Purge
insurance for small [49:55] businesses immediately before the chaos
begins. People who profit from de-regulation and a looser definition
of law find new success during the Purge [Election Year 50:40]
whereas people without means cannot even afford security.

[clip of 16:39]

AUDIO 8

[Anarchy 26:11] In the second and third
films, working class Americans who cannot afford powerful security
systems are unable to defend their homes from the Purge, [Election
Year 15:41] and those who cannot afford insurance must make the
difficult choice between allowing their livelihood to burn or risking
their lives in defense of what little they have. [Anarchy 24:33] The
de-regulated price of medication forces an old man to sell himself to
a wealthy family to provide a better life for his loved ones.
[Anarchy 20:36] In short, the policies of The New Founding Fathers,
including The Purge, disproportionately harm the poor. The films make
this case time and time again.

[Anarchy 1:13:29] This is not entirely
unlike the way powerful economic interests in the government create
hardships on the poor that would not exist otherwise, like the
deregulation of banks and pharmaceutical corporations. [Election Year
3:15] Medication is terribly expensive in America when compared to
many other developed countries, for example. [Election Year 6:00] The
third film even takes aim at the National Rifle Association and
politicians who are funded by them.

AUDIO 9

[26:40] The Purge series only
indirectly alludes to race in the first two movies and more
explicitly references the races of characters in the third. Racial
disparities in poverty result from cumulative [44:30] disadvantage,
as the effects of hardship in one area sphere over into other
spheres. [Anarchy 1:48] Poverty results not from a single source but
from a cumulative process: any type of systemic disadvantage makes
one vulnerable to other disadvantages.

[Anarchy 2:50] According to The
National Poverty Center, a nonpartisan research center at the
University of Michigan, [Anarchy 6:47] in the United States, one of
every three African American children and one of every four Latino
children live below the poverty line, [6:05] which is two times
higher than the rate for white children. [12:38] Whites report better
overall health than blacks, Latinos, and Asians, even after
controlling for poverty, education, and unemployment.

AUDIO 10

[25:36] In America, racial minorities are statistically more
likely to be convicted of the same crime committed by a white person.
There are consequences to felony conviction beyond incarceration,
such [26:43] as challenges entering many occupations after release,
not to mention losing the right to vote and therefore change public
policy. The Purge films address this rigged system indirectly, not
[1:18:23] referencing such statistics but showcasing the races of
those who are purging and those who are victimized.

[12:18] In the first film, we center on an advantaged, white
family who has profited from the need for enhanced security due to
the Purge. [25:35] The potential victim is a black man. [34:48] His
pursuers are a group of young, white people who refer to the black
man as a swine and refer to themselves as coming from “good”
families. [7:40] The only other black character in the film is this
woman who has almost nothing to say throughout the film. The
semiotics of the film are clear in what is being conveyed. [36:30]
The upper middle class father remarks “These things aren't supposed
to happen in our neighborhood” – [3:09] suggesting that he is
comfortable with it happening elsewhere so long as it never touches
his suburban world.

AUDIO 11

In the second film, we see downtown during Purge night, a place
where characters claim everyone goes to Purge. The disparity between
the mostly white suburbs and the inner city are more clearly defined
in this film. Those being hunted – including but not limited to
racial minorities – are being auctioned off by an exclusively white
party. This man voluntarily sells himself to a white family to help
his loved ones. The horrific, historical implications should be
clear. The leader of the resistance in the second film is black, and
the new leader in the third film, the homeless man from the first
film, is black too.

[Election Year 3:10 SLOW] In the third film, during the anti-Purge
montage, we see a close-up on this t-shirt, made to resemble Black
Lives Matter shirts and slogans. [Election Year 31:00] The assassins
are wear white supremacists and [Election Year 31:41] wear swastikas
and other white power logos. [Election Year 4:00] We also get a look
at The New Founding Fathers, and not surprisingly, they are all
white.

[clip of Election Year 5:30]

AUDIO 12

Religion is even more explicitly
referenced in the film. During Purge night, the warning says “May
God be with you all.” The Purge has become a tradition, and people
have grown accustomed to it as part of their ritual. In the first
film, the ritualism of their society is paralleled by the father's
daily ritual of how they conduct their dinner, individually reporting
on daily news. By the third film, the connection between the Purge
and spiritualism becomes clearer, as the Purge has become dogmatic,
justified as being condoned by God. It has become its own religion.

[11:18] Purgers mockingly wear the word
“God” on their masks in the second film, and the presidential
candidate for The New Founding Fathers is a Minister. Nobody ever
said these films were subtle. The Minister believes that the Purge
cleanses us of our sins, much like the sacrament of Reconciliation.
The marriage between religion and politics has always been an uneasy
part of American culture – a country partly built on Puritanism –
the traditions so ingrained in our government, how our laws are
influenced by dogma, that it's difficult to imagine an America
without it. The misuse of religion is highlighted in The Purge films,
as a Minister holds a kind of black mass for his murderous
supporters, preaching a psuedo-science psychology about humans
needing the Purge to be cleansed. [Election Year 6:04] In the third
film, Senator Roan asks “Is murder our new religion?”

AUDIO 13

In the church, The New Founding Fathers
sing a hymn that sounds grotesque at a glance, and one might think it
was an invention of the film, but it's actually a hymn called “Praise
for the Fountain Opened” – more commonly called “There Is a
Fountain Filled with Blood” – by 18^th century writer
William Cowper. Religion, of course, can also be a force for good.
It's probably not a coincidence that the leader of the resistance and
only major recurring character in all three films is named Dante
Bishop – his first name a reference to the writer of The Divine
Comedy, and his last name a reference to the clergy. His second in
command is named Angel.

I didn't think much of the first film
Purge film when I originally saw it three years, and I thought The
Purge: Anarchy was, at best, an acceptable if unimpressive thriller.
But watching all three Purge films in November of an election year –
THIS election year especially – actually made the experience
surreal. The disgusting villains are almost believable. The movies
have somehow aged well – an uncommon feat – and have become much
more terrifying.