Here’s the basis for a screenplay I just developed after watching this 18-second KO from Ivica Truscek over Leonardo Zecchi at Final Fight Championship 9 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Don’t worry, if you guys give me any suggestions in the comment section I’ll give you writing credits.
So Leonardo Zecchi gets head kicked in front of a crowd in Eastern Europe and for the few seconds he’s knocked out, he astrotravels to what appears to be another dimension, but all he sees is a chrysanthemum slowly bloom before he comes back to reality. After the fight, he tells his trainer about this vision but it’s quickly disregarded as some sort of hallucination. Next week in the gym he’s going pretty hard with his sparring partner and receives a swift left hook to his head, which renders him unconsciousness on the mat. Leonardo goes back to this dimension and the chrysanthemum finishes bloom and it reveals this cave-like area with dribbling iridescent and multi-color spheres that are creating geometrical holograms in thin air. He eventually comes back from his KO and starts spouting off what he saw when he was unconscious. Once again his trainer disregards what Leonardo saw when he was KOd. When he gets home later that night, Leonardo does a little bit of research of finds that the ‘place’ that he visited is the exact ‘dimension’ and the same ‘self-transforming machine elves’ Terence McKenna has described after he took Dimethyltryptamine (DMT).
The next day he goes to his trainer and tells him what he discovered, and he insists that Leonardo needs to take some time off from being an MMA fighter and possibly go to a doctor to see if he has a brain injury. With his time off, Leonardo makes some dodgy phone calls and eventually gets his hands on DMT. He takes the hallucinogenic substance and finds that he astrotravels to the same dimension he visited when he was knocked out, which is coincidentally the same realm Terence McKenna has described in countless lectures. When he gets to this realm, he sees the same multi-colored ‘machine elves’ and they repeatedly say ‘deja vu’ just before Leonardo comes off the substance. Of course, he’s absolutely blown away that there’s a completely different reality that can only be accessed when he’s either knocked out or under the influence of DMT.
Pretty soon Leonardo finds out that he and Terence McKenna aren’t the only ones that have accessed the alternate dimension. Eventually he finds that every person that crosses a certain mental threshold with DMT visits this realm and through enough research he discovers that these ‘machine elves’ are communicating through holographic imagery, which can convey more information than just vocal inflection.
Leonardo comes to the conclusion that in order to get further in this ‘cave,’ he needs to take DMT and simultaneously get headkicked knocked out. So he tells his trainer about this idea, and he thinks he completely lost his mind. His sparring partner overhears the conversation and agrees to do it that same night, but when the gym is closed.
Later that night, he gets an ample amount of DMT, takes it and then seconds later his sparring partner delivers a tremendous headkick which knocks him out cold. Leonardo travels to this realm again and finds himself communicating with these self-transforming machine elves by creating his own holographic objects to communicate with. He eventually finds out that these things aren’t elves or aliens, but they are his ancestors — and the realm that he’s been visiting is actually the afterlife.
Now switch over to the real world.
His sparring partner is trying to wake him up, but he’s still completely unresponsive. He takes him to the hospital and doctors find that he actually slipped into a coma. Now his training partner has to answer to the police for potential manslaughter charges.
Now switch to the alternate dimension.
Leonardo starts to panic, but then begins to understand what it truly means to be in the ‘afterlife’ and how countless cultures have used shamanic devices to enter this realm and now he’s one of the privileged. Editor’s note: I’m not quite sure what else could happen here, so feel free to give me suggestions.
Going back to the real world, Leonardo’s training partner has somehow talked his way out of a potential manslaughter sentence by providing police emails and texts that prove he actually wanted to be headkicked. Eventually his training partner does research of his own and finds that in order to ‘awaken’ Leonardo from his coma, he must visit the same place through taking an absurd amount of DMT.
He gets enough courage to take the DMT, and he breaks through the threshold and sees Leonardo in this realm. He attempts to rescue him, but he finds that it’s impossible to communicate with him. His training partner knows that the effects of the DMT are wearing off and there’s not much time left, so in a last-ditch effort to revive him, his training partner garners enough strength in the afterlife to headkick him back to reality — and it works.
Switching back to the real world, Leonardo immediately wakes up from his coma, removes the IVs, and rushes out of the hospital to his training partner’s apartment. Leonardo frantically knocks and his training partner swings open the door. Both look at each other in complete dismay and relief.
End of proposed screenplay. The ending could probably use a little bit of work, but that idea was just spawned while I quietly sat inside the Starbucks on Hollywood Blvd. and Western Ave. All I wanted to do is show you this video and it eventually led to all of this. Damn, that’s so MiddleEasy of me.
