THE DYATLOV PASS INCIDENT by Vikram Weet Inspired by True Events WHITE PRODUCTION DRAFT - 01/31/12 Midnight Sun Pictures 73 Market Street Venice, CA 90291 (310) 902-0431 K.JAM Media 2425 Colorado Blvd Suite B-205 Santa Monica, CA 90404 (310) 828-6767 THE DYATLOV PASS INCIDENT 1 EXT. URAL MOUNTAINS - DYATLOV PASS - DAY 1 Helicopter footage of a dozen RESCUE WORKERS searching a snowy pass. An exceptionally tall, desolate MOUNTAIN towers over them to one side, a handful of trees litter the landscape to the other. NEWS ANCHOR (V.O.) This footage emerged from the Ural Mountains of Russia three days ago, where the search is still underway for five missing American students. 2 INT. NEWSROOM - DAY 2 A perfectly coiffed male NEWS ANCHOR speaks to the camera as the footage continues to play in a small window. NEWS ANCHOR Among the missing is the son of real estate magnate John Patrick Halvorsen, who organized and is funding the search. The rescue workers have had no luck locating the Oregon University students - who were making a documentary • recreating another ill-fated trip to the area - although they have uncovered footage from two cameras and a cell phone which they believe were with them. That footage was carefully reviewed by authorities, who decided against releasing it to the public. But today, a group of hackers calling themselves FreedomLeaks gained access to it and posted the footage on their site. The hope was that the tapes might provide an answer to the mysteries surrounding what's known as Dyatlov's Pass. Instead, they seem to have only raised more questions. 3 BLACK SCREEN. 3 FADE UP TEXT: ONE MONTH EARLIER 2. 4 INT. APARTMENT - DAY 4 A sparse, unkempt two bedroom apartment. JUSTINE KING, 21, talks directly to the camera. She has a casual demeanor and style that belies her fierce intelligence. Justine stands in front of a pile of equipment - steel-framed backpacks, trekking poles, snow shoes. The wall behind the equipment is plastered with BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOS, MAPS, and NOTES. The photos show a snowy mountain pass, hikers, others that look like crime scene photos. The maps are of Ural mountains, east of Moscow, and have paths traced across them. In her right hand, Justine is holding a creased, official- looking letter. JUSTINE My name is Justine King. I'm a psychology student at the University of Oregon. In 2008, I saw a news report about 30 elite scientists that had gotten together in a remote area of the Ural Mountains in Russia. They were hoping to solve a mystery that had baffled the world for fifty years. It has become known as the Dyatlov Pass Incident, after the leader of an expedition there in 1959 named Igor Dyatlov. They failed. But I was riveted by the story. So when my favorite professor, Dr. Kittles, assigned the class a project on that very same incident, I couldn't believe it. I mentioned it to my best friend, Jenson, a film student, and he said we should make a documentary about it. So we applied for a grant. She holds up the letter, and lets loose a beaming smile. JUSTINE (CONT'D) We got it. 5 INT. PROFESSOR KITTLES’S OFFICE - DAY - INTERVIEW 5 PROFESSOR MARTHA KITTLES, a petite woman in her late 40’s, is smartly dressed and seated in front of a bookshelf in her office. Sunlight streams in from a window to her right. (CONTINUED) 3. 5 CONTINUED: 5 JUSTINE (O.C.) Okay? Prof. Kittles nods and forces a smile. JUSTINE (O.C.) (CONT'D) Tell us what happened. SMASH CUT TO: 6 ROLL CREDITS OVER BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOS OF NINE RUSSIAN 6 HIKERS - IGOR DYATLOV, ZINAIDA KOLMOGOROVA, LYUDMILA DUBININA, ALEXANDER KOLEVATOV, RUSTEM SLOBODIN, GEORGYI KRIVONISCHENKO, YURI DOROSHENKO, NICOLAS THIBEAUX-BRIGNOLLEL, AND ALEXANDER ZOLOTAREV - FIRST IN INDIVIDUAL HEADSHOTS OUTDOORS AND DRESSED FOR EXTREME COLD - CULMINATING IN A GROUP PHOTO, EVERYONE SMILING AT THE CAMERA, BUNDLED UP AND CARRYING PACKS FOR A LONG TREK. It’s followed by the image of a TENT on a snowy pass ripped open from the inside. The remains of a campfire under a large tree, with Russian OFFICIALS standing next to it. Official reports on faded, yellowing paper, filled in with scrawled Russian words. Then the BODIES of the nine hikers, all of them wearing next to nothing - socks, underwear, T-shirts. END CREDITS. 7 INT. PROFESSOR KITTLE’S OFFICE - DAY - INTERVIEW 7 CHYRON: DR. MARTHA KITTLES: PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF OREGON PROFESSOR KITTLES I first heard of the incident when a Russian journalist named Yuri Yarovoi published a fictionalized account of it in a book. 8 INSERT - STILL PHOTO OF YURI YAROVOI’S ‘OF THE HIGHEST RANK 8 AND COMPLEXITY’ (TITLE IN RUSSIAN). CUT TO: 4. 9 INSERT - COLOR PHOTO OF A RUSSIAN CAR WRAPPED AROUND A TREE 9 ON A DESERTED MOUNTAIN ROAD. BELOW THE PHOTO IS A HEADLINE: “Russian author Yuri Yarovoi killed in a car accident on an empty road January 28, 1980.” 10 INT. EDITING BAY - DAY - INTERVIEW 10 JENSON DAY, a good looking kid in his early 20’s with an effortless, unkempt charm, sits in front of two screens displaying the interview footage with Professor Kittles. JENSON Of course they had him killed. CHYRON: JENSON DAY - CO-DIRECTOR; CONSPIRACY THEORIST JENSON (CONT’D) It didn’t matter that he fictionalized it. They didn’t want anyone talking about Dyatlov. 11 INT. PROFESSOR KITTLE’S OFFICE - DAY - INTERVIEW 11 PROFESSOR KITTLES I began using the facts of the incident as a teaching exercise in psychology because we know so much about what happened at Dyatlov’s Pass, so many details, and yet the whole thing is shrouded in mystery. It really is a kind of narrative Rorschach test. If you ask someone what they think happened, you learn more about them than you do what happened that night. JUSTINE (O.C.) What are some of the explanations you get? PROFESSOR KITTLES The cold, rational, scientific answer is a condition called hypothermic dementia. It would account for the group’s partial undress. 5. 12 INT. EDITING BAY - DAY - INTERVIEW 12 JENSON Hypothermic dementia? Yeah, that’s what everybody says. But my favorite is “paradoxical undressing”. What a joke. JUSTINE (O.C.) But that does happen to people with severe hypothermia. They get disoriented, start tearing off their clothes- JENSON C’mon, Justine! These were nine experienced backpackers! They all came down with severe hypothermia at the same time on the same night? They’d been out there for two days already. Why then? 13 INT. PROFESSOR KITTLE’S OFFICE - DAY - INTERVIEW 13 PROFESSOR KITTLES An avalanche is another common answer. Usually from someone with control issues, seeking to impose a rational order on an irrational situation. JUSTINE (O.C.) It would explain the tent. PROFESSOR KITTLES It would, if they heard- 14 INT. EDITING BAY - DAY - INTERVIEW 14 JENSON That’s even stupider than “paradoxical undressing.” If they heard an avalanche coming, why did they stay away from the campsite for three hours with no shoes? 6. 15 INT. PROFESSOR KITTLE’S OFFICE - DAY - INTERVIEW 15 PROFESSOR KITTLES But the truth is, there are innumerable answers to the question. Many students project their own fears into it. 16 INT. EDITING BAY - DAY - INTERVIEW 16 JENSON The Russian government- 17 INT. PROFESSOR KITTLE’S OFFICE - DAY - INTERVIEW 17 PROFESSOR KITTLES I expect my students to do more than just find a believable explanation. 18 INT. EDITING BAY - DAY - INTERVIEW 18 JENSON Aliens- 19 INT. PROFESSOR KITTLE’S OFFICE - DAY - INTERVIEW 19 PROFESSOR KITTLES I want them to put themselves in the place of those people, to try and understand why they did what they did. 20 INT. EDITING BAY - DAY - INTERVIEW 20 JENSON We’re going to find out the truth. 21 INT. PROFESSOR KITTLE’S OFFICE - DAY - INTERVIEW 21 PROFESSOR KITTLES Even though they'll never find it. JUSTINE (O.C.) What do you mean? Professor Kittles smiles at her, just off-camera. PROFESSOR KITTLES There is no truth. (CONTINUED) 7. 21 CONTINUED: 21 FREEZE FRAME. FADE TO: 22 INSERT: STILL IMAGE - A MAP OF THE WORLD, BUT TIGHT ON A 22 SPECIFIC AREA, SO THAT THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST IS EVIDENT IN THE BOTTOM RIGHT, AND THE URAL MOUNTAINS OF RUSSIA IN THE TOP LEFT. JUSTINE (O.C.) So the first leg of our journey will take us from Eugene, Oregon to Chelyabinsk, Russia. Red dots appear on the two cities. JENSON (O.C.) You’re not going to use that stupid dotted red line to show us traveling, are you? A dotted red line begins tracing their path from Oregon to Chelyabinsk. OC, Justine giggles. JUSTINE (V.O.) Our ultimate destination is the Kholat-Syakhl. Another red dot appears in the heavily mountainous region of the Urals. JUSTINE (V.O.) Literally translated... the mountain of the dead. Beat. JUSTINE (V.O.) Seriously. 23 INT. APARTMENT - DAY 23 Same apartment, but this time shot on a real camera. JUSTINE So we found an audio engineer- (CONTINUED) 8. 23 CONTINUED: 23 The camera pans to the left to reveal DENISE EVERS, a petit girl with a boom in her hands. She is a bit of a tomboy, but curvaceous enough to be seductive at the same time. JUSTINE (CONT'D) Denise Evers. JENSON (O.C.) She's the only audio person on campus who can handle the... physical requirements. Denise smiles. DENISE Lot of skinny nerds in the audio department. Jenson lets the camera linger on her for a moment, until Denise rolls her eyes at him.
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