INDEPENDENCE DAY

WHITMORE
Clever.

CONSTANCE
Age was never an issue when you
stuck to your gun.  You were
thought of as young and
idealistic.  But the message has
gotten lost.  There's too much
compromise, too much politics.

WHITMORE
(pointedly)
Isn't it amazing how fast everyone
can turn against you.

Realizing she may be pushing him too far, she hands him
another paper.

CONSTANCE
Well, the Orange County Register
has named you one of the ten
sexiest men of the year.

WHITMORE
You see, substance at last.

An AIDE appears at the doorway.

CONSTANCE
Excuse me, Mr. President.  It's
the Secretary of Defense.

Whitmore goes to the phone, picks it up.

WHITMORE
Yes?  Say that again?

CUT TO:

AN OLD RUSSIAN SATELLITE

Drifting away from us the old Russian satellite becomes
smaller and smaller.  We PAN with it as we SEE it's on a
collision course with something huge.

Suddenly the satellite EXPLODES on IMPACT with the much larger
object that dwarfs the puny piece of hardware.  As huge as it
is, we get the feeling we've only seen a portion of the total.

NEW YORK SKYLINE - EARLY MORNING

A slow crane down from the Manhattan skyline, revealing...

EXT. CLIFFSIDE PARK - NEW JERSEY - MORNING

With the New York skyline across the Hudson behind them, old
men sit in this small park playing chess.  Unlike the others,
DAVID MARTIN is in his early thirties, sixties hippie meets
nineties yuppie nerd.

He concentrates intensely on his next move.  MOISHE. sixties.
smokes a cigar impatiently.

MOISHE
What are you waiting?  My social
security will expire, you'll still
be sitting there.

DAVID
I'm thinking.

MOISHE
So think already.

David makes a move.  Instantly Moishe counters his move.
David furls his brow in thought.

MOISHE
Again he's thinking.

Moishe reaches into a paper bag and retrieves a coffee in a
Styrofoam cup.

DAVID
You have any idea how long it
takes for those things to
decompose?

MOISHE
You don't move soon.  I'll begin to
decompose.

Just as David finally makes his move, Moishe counters again.
David shoots him a look and stares back down to the board.

MOISHE (cont'd)
David, I've been meaning to talk
with you.  It's nice you've been
spending so much time with me,
but...

DAVID
Dad, don't start.

MOISHE
I'm only saying, it's been what?
Four years, you still haven't
signed your divorce papers.

DAVID
Three years.

MOISHE
Three, four.  Move on.  It's not
healthy.

Moishe takes a big puff on the cigar and coughs.

DAVID
Look who's talking healthy.

Suddenly David's beeper goes off.

MOISHE
How many times is that now?  You
trying to get fired?

David moves his queen.

DAVID
Checkmate.  See you tomorrow, Dad.

He gives his father a quick kiss and hurries away.

MOISHE
That's not checkmate I can
still... Oh.
(yelling after him)
You could let an old man win once
in a while, it wouldn't kill you.

CUT TO:

EXT. NEW YORK CITY STREETS - MINUTES LATER

David pedals his bike through mid-town Manhattan.  He arrives
at COMPACT CABLE SYSTEMS.

INT. COMPACT CABLE OFFICES - LATER

His bike hoisted on his shoulder, David squeezes through the
revolving doors. MARTY GILBERT, short, nervous and harried,
comes rushing over.

MARTY
What the hell is the point of
having a beeper if you don't turn
it on?

DAVID
It was turned on.  I was ignoring
you.  What's the big emergency?

MARTY
Started this morning.  Every
channel is making like it's
nineteen fifty.  Snow, static, all
kinds of distortions.  No one
knows what the hell is going on.

David deposits his bike in the kitchenette as Marty tosses his
coke bottle in the trash.  David retrieves it.

DAVID
Damn it, Marty.  There's a reason
we have bins labeled "recycle."

Finding more bottles in the trash, David turns to Marty
accusingly.

DAVID
What the hell is this?

MARTY
So sue me.

Before David can say anything, Marty ushers him out of the
room.

INT. TRANSMISSION FEED - CONTINUOUS

Technicians are working feverishly.  Clearly every monitor is
experiencing varying degrees of signal disruption.  David
moves over to the main console.

DAVID
Did you try to switch to
transponder channels?

MARTY
Please, would I be this panicked
if it was that simple?

David examines the readouts, puzzled.

DAVID
Let's retrofit the dish to another
satellite.

MARTY
We've tried.  It's not working.
It's almost as though they
weren't even there.

David looks up, puzzled.

DAVID
That's impossible.

CUT TO:

A TELEVISION SET

Bad reception.  A hand SMOCKS the side of it.  No use.

WIDEN TO REVEAL:

INT. MOBILE HOME - DAY

Eleven-year-old TROY BRENNON tries to fix the television.
His older brother MIGUEL, seventeen, cooks breakfast.

MIGUEL
Stop it.

TROY
It's all fuzzy.

MIGUEL
You're gonna break it.  Just leave
it alone.  Here, take your
medicine.

Miguel sits a small bottle of medicine and a spoon down in
front of Troy.  Troy pushes the bottle away.

TROY
I don't need it.

MIGUEL
(pushing it back)
Just take it, dick head.
(turning to his sister)
Alicia!  Make sure he takes his
medicine.

His sister, ALICIA, fourteen, hormones kicking in, testing
boundaries, listens to her walkman while putting on too much
makeup.  Miguel throws a dish towel to get her as Troy hits
the television again.

EXT. TRAILER PARK - SAME - MORNING

A beat up pick-up truck comes down a dirt road and skids to a
halt on the gravel next to the Brennon Mobile Home at this
small shabby countryside trailer park.  An angry FARMER jumps
out, slamming his door.

INT. BRENNON MOBILE HOME - SAME

Alicia opens the front door and smiles flirtatiously at the
angry farmers, LUCAS, who marches over.  Miguel edges her out
of the doorway, wanting to handle this himself.

MIGUEL
Morning, Lucas.

Lucas holds a bowl full of rotted vegetables.

LUCAS
You like these!  I've got a whole
goddamned crop full!

Unceremoniously, he dumps them at Miguel's feet.

LUCAS (cont'd)
Where the hell is your father?
You know what time it is?

MIGUEL
He had to re-fuel.  There musta
been a problem.

LUCAS
We both know what the problem is.
He's a damned nut case, is what he
is.  I musta been out of my mind.

Troy SMACKS the television again.

MIGUEL
Troy, stop it!  I swear to God!

LUCAS
Miguel, if he's not in the air in
twenty minutes, that's it.  I'm
getting someone else.

Lucas storms away.  Again, Troy whacks at the television.

MIGUEL
Stop it, Troy!  I swear to God!

Determined, Troy HITS the television again.  This time the
picture goes out completely.

CUT TO:

EXT. SPACE - THE ORBIT - SAME

Rolling over us, the immense under-belly of this enormous
craft obliterates our view.  A loud SCREECH.  Suddenly the
bottom begins to SEGMENT.

Dozens of large sections begins to DISENGAGE, extracting
themselves, twisting away from the larger bilge.

The separated SEGMENTS themselves are enormous.  Slowly they
twist downwards on a collision course to the blue planet
below... Earth.

CUT TO:

INT. WHITE HOUSE - BASEMENT CORRIDORS - DAY

Under a barrage of questions from her own staff, Constance
hurries down the corridor.

AIDE #1
CNN is running a story that we're
covering up some kind of nuclear
testing experiments...

CONSTANCE
Tell them to run with it if they
want to embarrass themselves.

AIDE #2
NASA has been up my butt all
morning.  They want to know our
position.

CONSTANCE
Our official position is we don't
have an official position.

AIDE #3
Connie, what the hell is going on?

Constance escapes into the elevator, turns around.

CONSTANCE
(smiles confidently)
Come on, people.  Would I keep you
guys out of the loop?

AIDE #1
In a second!

AIDE #2
Absolutely.

Before she can retort, the elevator doors close.

INT. OVAL OFFICE - WIDE SHOT - SAME

The President, General Grey, the SECRETARY OF DEFENSE and
White House Chief of Staff ALBERT NIMZIKI are gathered around
the couch.

SEC. OF DEFENSE
At the moment, our satellites are
somewhat unreliable.  Isn't it
possible that thing may just pass
us by?

NIMZIKI
What if it doesn't "pass us by?"
Let's retarget some ICBMs to blow
it out of the sky...

GENERAL GREY
Forgive me, but with the little
information we do have, the only
thing that would accomplish is
turn one dangerous falling object
into many.

Just then the door opens and Constance enters.

PRESIDENT WHITMORE
What's the damage?

CONSTANCE
The press is making up their own
stories at this point.

NIMZIKI
(to General Grey)
Get on the horn with Atlantic
Command.  Let's upgrade the
situation to DEFCON 3.

GENERAL GREY
That's not your call to make, Mr.
Nimziki.

CONSTANCE
Isn't that a little premature?

NIMZIKI
I don't think so.

SEC OF DEFENSE
We're two days away from the fourth
of July.  We have over fifty percent
of our armed forces on weekend leave,
not to mention the troops and
commanders we have in town for the
Fourth of July parade.  We call them
back now, we're sending up a major red
flag.

They go quiet as Commanding Officer from Space Command dashes
into the room.

COMMANDING OFFICER
Our intelligence tells us the
object has settled into a
stationary orbit.

NIMZIKI
Well that's good news.

COMMANDING OFFICER
Not really.

He lays out the diagrams and photos on the table.  Everyone
gathers around.

COMMANDING OFFICER
Part of it has broken off into
nearly three dozen other pieces.

PRESIDENT WHITMORE
Pieces?

COMMANDING OFFICER
Smaller than the whole, yet over
fifteen miles in width themselves.

NIMZIKI
Where are they heading?

COMMANDING OFFICER
They should be entering our
atmosphere within the next twenty-
five minutes.

The room is silenced.  All eyes turn to the President who says
nothing.  Nimziki leans in close to him.

NIMZIKI
Like it or not, we're at DEFCON 3.
Recall the troops and put them on
yellow alert.

CUT TO:

YELLOW LIGHTS FLASHING ON

as an ALARM quickly BUZZES. David leans into frame and opens
the door to the microwave.  We WIDEN to reveal...

INT. DAVID'S CUBICLE - COMPACT CABLE - DAY

David retrieves his home-make cup-a-soup.  We SEE this cubicle
clearly has the David touch; ecology posters, plants, tons of
computers and electronic gizmos.

MARTY
Please, tell me you're getting
something.

Marty enters, looking over David's shoulder as he eats.

DAVID
There's good news and bad news.

MARTY
What's the bad news?

DAVID
You're in meal penalty for
disturbing my lunch.

MARTY
And the good news is you won't
charge me.

DAVID
No.  The good news is I found the
problem and it's not our
equipment.  There's some weird
signal embedded within the
satellite feed.

MARTY
That's the good news?

David slides over to another computer and turns on an
intricate computation program.

DAVID
Yes, because the analog signal has
a definite sequential digital
patterns embedded within it.  When
I find the exact binary sequence
and I apply a phase reversed
signal to that calculated spectra
analyzer I built you last
Christmas, we should be able to
block out the overlay completely...

MARTY
...and we'll be the only guys in
town with a clear picture?  That's
my man.