High Fruit Grabber is a parable about friendship – because sometimes, you just gotta reach out.
Screenplay
Philipp Stöcklein
Starring, Camera, Costume, Sound, Music:
Philipp Stöcklein & Lukas Crisante
Transcript
I myself have witnessed a fair share of days coming and going, every single one just as unique, yet interchangeable as the one before, their details melting into each other to form what constitutes a life. Therefore, an almost perfectly circular shadow, falling on my face from a pine tree, catching me off guard and lost - not in the woods I was traversing, but in the burrows my mind had excavated bellow - didn‘t evoke much of an emotional response from me. Still, my head turned, allowing an apple to enter my field of view. The fruit displayed an array of strange behavior. It sat - or hovered - at an impressive height, smooching the pines log. Instinctively, I understood: This apple did not appear there naturally. Despite a lack of evidence to support this theory, I remain convinced of its truth.
Soon I found myself comiting an increasing amount of time to revisiting the pine and the apple. At first, one might say, I just enjoyed the solitude of pilgrimage. With each day though, my yearning for it grew stronger, accelerating my once somber steps towards the woods to a madening race. My feet bled and my lungs rattled in agony, forced forward only by a will surrendering to a singular desire.
I started to reach for the apple, but to no avail. The situation was perplexing, since no matter what position I forced myself into, no matter how far I reached or jumped, it remained in a state of specifically not being accessible to me. It made me very angry.
My obsession left me isolated. I started spending every waking minute under the apple tree, only venturing back into civilization when hunger or thirst commanded me to. The few signs of humanity I found in my vicinity disgusted me. The remains of their joys, so dirty and dull, oblivious to the higher
purpose I had found. Bitter and hopeless, I allowed my mind to wander. Its strides took me to a place I had last visited years ago. It made me think of a friend I met there.
In that moment, I decided to write him. He answered immidiately.