I'm calling you out, Keith.
WHAT
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
What We've Been Up To
What the fuck is WCMU? What have we been up to these past years? Well, in short, anything but idling about!
For my part, I've spent most of the last year stewing in my own piss-sweat (chronic dehydration) in an asbestos-infested garret in which I've been squatting for some months now. My main preoccupation has been diligently avoiding all human contact as I produce page after page of rambling manifestos, conjectural recipes, and "practice" suicide notes, taking only occasional breaks to cast distrustful glares at the beams of light from the outside world as they seep in through the slits in the gable shutter above. There's no heat up here, and the one light bulb burned out about five weeks into my sojourn, but hey. What doesn't kill me, etc.
In the days preceding my self imposed exile I had been making attempts with my friends to get some writing projects off the ground. It's long been our nebulous goal that we write and shop around some scripts for TV pilots, movies, or something in that vein. (Although at this point I seem to be showing promise as a dangerous recluse- I eat very little and I'm quite good at keeping my piss and shit out of the way of where I walk. But I digress.) My compatriots (or cohorts, if you will) in this endeavor were "Imp", and Klein, whose names you yet see listed in the "contributor" section. We were serious about writing- enough so that at one point, the three of us moved out of our respective New England homes and spent a long summer sojourning in an abandoned farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania.
Well, Imp and I did. Klein was never around long, and was usually never to be found during the night hours. But each day at daybreak we'd convene in the farmhouse, Klein returning from whatever mysterious errand had kept him. As Imp and I got accustomed to waking with the first daylight, I'd get used to spotting Klein as he arrived up the long dirt road leading from the state highway about a quarter mile down. His decrepit town car would come rumbling up the way, and I'd see him step out, dressed as always in a fine, grey polyester-silk blend three-piece suit, replete with a vest as dark as pitch and shoes to match, shined to a mirror sheen each and every day. From his vest pocket he would pull a silver pocket watch of his, an ornate ("Downright goddamn showy, if you ask me," Cory would growl, before spitting pointedly on the ground, right at Klein's feet) filigreed number and expensive, obviously of Swiss origin.
We'd meet, talk for maybe a half an hour, agree that we had some promising concepts for writing projects, and then disperse. Each of us had his own "pet projects" to pursue through the long hours of the day, and occasionally we would regroup to collaborate on joint projects, large screen play ideas, etc. We wondered how Klein managed in the intense heat without ever so much as removing his jacket, but the manner of dress seemed imperative to his creative process- kept him in just the right state of mind, I guess. Regardless, he had the hardest time coping with writer's block. Once, he surprised us by leaping up from his chair at the desk in the corner of the room, and in a rage dumping all of his papers, note books, all of it onto the floor. He kicked a metal trash bin as hard as he could, sending it ricocheting across the floor, and before we'd even composed ourselves after the initial surprise he picked up his enormous underwood typewriter (there was no electricity out here) and, with a tyrant's strength of hatred he hurled it as hard as he could into the foundation, displacing several bricks and causing a section of the ceiling above to cave in.
He stomped off out the door, as Imp yelled after him. I hazarded a look at one of the pages that fluttered to the ground near me. On it was a stretch of dialogue from a stage play he had been writing, a romantic and sexually charged encounter between two young people. The last line of dialogue on the page was "what will you do next?" Beneath that he had scribbled furiously "I DON'T FUCKING KNOW!" presumably the moment before his excited tirade. I looked out the window in the front of the house to see Imp yelling after him, "GIVE ME YOUR KEYS. YOU AREN'T GOING ANYWHERE!!" Klein stopped, turned and hurled his keys at him full force, hitting Imp square in the chest. He averted his gaze and turned, not saying a word since his fit began, and stood staring intently at the hills in the distance. Imp was angry, he was yelling, "WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK THIS IS?? WHO THE FUCK DO OYU THINK YOU ARE?!" and so forth. "YOU'RE GONNA THROW SHIT AT ME?!" I was worried, genuinely scared for a moment, that it was going to come to blows. But then Klein about-faced and, after a deep breath and a momentary clenching of his fists, seemed to calm down. I saw him mouth something to Imp, who stopped yelling right away. I couldn't hear what was said. After a long silence, Imp turned and started walking toward the house again, at which point Klein strode to the front of his town car and after pausing for a moment, kicked his car as hard as he could. A loud SMASH indicated that he had destroyed one of the headlights. I dimly made out a "…FUCK!" and he threw his hands up, marched purposefully over to the other headlight, and kicked that one in, too. Imp simply walked on back to the farmhouse, shaking his head contemptuously.
It wasn't always that bad, of course, and usually we had perfectly civil meetings and writing sessions that yielded many compelling ideas. I feel bad that many of them are probably never going to be marketable enough to warrant being purchased by a major studio, and many of them were left unfinished. As the months wore on, and our meager funds dwindled, we found that we were no longer generating the kind of ideas that spurred our love of writing like we used to. There was some friction, and some days would pass where none of us managed to write down a single thing. We talked character bibles, we drafted pilots, short films, and Imp even proposed an idea for a travelogue that we would write as we wandered the country, probably as a means to escape the confines of the decrepit farmhouse. The hole Klein created with the typewriter posed a problem as the weather got rainier, and once a timber rattler managed to slide in through the hole, Imp waking from a nap and screaming bloody murder at the site of the thing one afternoon. We had to evacuate the house for most of that day, until Imp fetched his hunting knife from his jeep and managed to fell it with an expertly aimed throw from about twenty feet away. He was so proud of his kill that he barely remembered to menace Klein over the fact of the hole being his doing.
Toward the end, things were more apparent than ever that our writing experiment was grinding to a halt. Klein fell quiet and hardly ever had anything to add to our meetings. He was later arriving and earlier leaving. Often he would step out of the house to be own his own, while I struggled to write dialogue and Imp tried to do song lyrics, nihilistic ballads in the style of country music. Once in a while, when I was having an especially hard time thinking of anything, I'd look out the window and see Klein on one of his walks. Occasionally I'd see him stoop at a corner where an ancient stone foundation met the corner of an unpaved road leading far and away into the distant countryside. He'd stop, take a look around, as though to make sure nobody was looking. Then he'd produce from his breast pocket a yo-yo of some old world make. He'd turn it over in his fingers once or twice, scrutinizing it with a remote but wistful look of nostalgic longing on his face. Then, briefly, he'd deign to whistle, and as he did so he'd slip the loop on his finger, and give the thing a single, halfhearted toss, but the axle was worn out and it would only climb about halfway back up the string before giving out and danglingly pathetically on the end of its line.
At this moment the whistling would fade to silence, and Klein would only stare down at the toy for a moment before rewinding the string and stowing it back in some unseen confine of his suit coat. Then, with a forlorn air about him, he'd head away down the dirt road into the distant countryside, and it might be days before he returned. Over time his trips got longer and longer, and eventually he stopped coming back altogether.
Imp meanwhile went absolutely batfuck mental about six weeks after I posted the thing about Beakman. I'm not sure what it was, what events might have precipitated his decline into madness, but surely enough one thing led to another and before long he was taking his ancient Honda Nighthawk for week-long rampages through the city. He'd roll into reservation casinos nightly, getting absolutely shitfaced at the roulette tables until he either ran out of money or they kicked him out. His uncanny luck at the tables ensured that he'd enjoy a lengthy stay. His storied lucky streaks began to attract naïve players and instill in them a notion they they too could win it big, but what they didn't understand was that for every top-of-the-world victory Cory enjoyed, there was another crippling and demoralizing defeat waiting just around the corner. Cory would roll in some days with some $30 cash, and walk out about $800 richer. After staggering out into the night, soured on free casino whiskey, he'd rampage into the red-light districts and end up at the losing end of a three-man beat down when he got too pushy with an east European escort. On other occasions he'd land himself at a bus station well after the last shuttle had run, sharing street hooch with homeless derelicts and projecting drunken tirades about the "corporate fascist state" far into the night.
The last contact I ever received from him was in the form of a postcard, arrived about three months after his last sighting near the bus station, addressed from somewhere in Malaysia. Mysterious stains adorned its surface, suggestive of the unimaginably filthy places it had seen in the days before it was finally dispatched. All it said, scrawled hurriedly across a glossy photograph of a Buddhist monastery ensconced in a remote mountain forest somewhere, was "WISH YOU WERE HER." I'm not sure if that was a joke or a spelling error, but either way I took it to be oddly foreboding. This was about a week before Klein and I finally abandoned the farmhouse. Although neither of us said it, the arrival of the note for some reason solidified the idea in both of our minds that Imp was long dead.
For my part, I've spent most of the last year stewing in my own piss-sweat (chronic dehydration) in an asbestos-infested garret in which I've been squatting for some months now. My main preoccupation has been diligently avoiding all human contact as I produce page after page of rambling manifestos, conjectural recipes, and "practice" suicide notes, taking only occasional breaks to cast distrustful glares at the beams of light from the outside world as they seep in through the slits in the gable shutter above. There's no heat up here, and the one light bulb burned out about five weeks into my sojourn, but hey. What doesn't kill me, etc.
In the days preceding my self imposed exile I had been making attempts with my friends to get some writing projects off the ground. It's long been our nebulous goal that we write and shop around some scripts for TV pilots, movies, or something in that vein. (Although at this point I seem to be showing promise as a dangerous recluse- I eat very little and I'm quite good at keeping my piss and shit out of the way of where I walk. But I digress.) My compatriots (or cohorts, if you will) in this endeavor were "Imp", and Klein, whose names you yet see listed in the "contributor" section. We were serious about writing- enough so that at one point, the three of us moved out of our respective New England homes and spent a long summer sojourning in an abandoned farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania.
Well, Imp and I did. Klein was never around long, and was usually never to be found during the night hours. But each day at daybreak we'd convene in the farmhouse, Klein returning from whatever mysterious errand had kept him. As Imp and I got accustomed to waking with the first daylight, I'd get used to spotting Klein as he arrived up the long dirt road leading from the state highway about a quarter mile down. His decrepit town car would come rumbling up the way, and I'd see him step out, dressed as always in a fine, grey polyester-silk blend three-piece suit, replete with a vest as dark as pitch and shoes to match, shined to a mirror sheen each and every day. From his vest pocket he would pull a silver pocket watch of his, an ornate ("Downright goddamn showy, if you ask me," Cory would growl, before spitting pointedly on the ground, right at Klein's feet) filigreed number and expensive, obviously of Swiss origin.
We'd meet, talk for maybe a half an hour, agree that we had some promising concepts for writing projects, and then disperse. Each of us had his own "pet projects" to pursue through the long hours of the day, and occasionally we would regroup to collaborate on joint projects, large screen play ideas, etc. We wondered how Klein managed in the intense heat without ever so much as removing his jacket, but the manner of dress seemed imperative to his creative process- kept him in just the right state of mind, I guess. Regardless, he had the hardest time coping with writer's block. Once, he surprised us by leaping up from his chair at the desk in the corner of the room, and in a rage dumping all of his papers, note books, all of it onto the floor. He kicked a metal trash bin as hard as he could, sending it ricocheting across the floor, and before we'd even composed ourselves after the initial surprise he picked up his enormous underwood typewriter (there was no electricity out here) and, with a tyrant's strength of hatred he hurled it as hard as he could into the foundation, displacing several bricks and causing a section of the ceiling above to cave in.
He stomped off out the door, as Imp yelled after him. I hazarded a look at one of the pages that fluttered to the ground near me. On it was a stretch of dialogue from a stage play he had been writing, a romantic and sexually charged encounter between two young people. The last line of dialogue on the page was "what will you do next?" Beneath that he had scribbled furiously "I DON'T FUCKING KNOW!" presumably the moment before his excited tirade. I looked out the window in the front of the house to see Imp yelling after him, "GIVE ME YOUR KEYS. YOU AREN'T GOING ANYWHERE!!" Klein stopped, turned and hurled his keys at him full force, hitting Imp square in the chest. He averted his gaze and turned, not saying a word since his fit began, and stood staring intently at the hills in the distance. Imp was angry, he was yelling, "WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK THIS IS?? WHO THE FUCK DO OYU THINK YOU ARE?!" and so forth. "YOU'RE GONNA THROW SHIT AT ME?!" I was worried, genuinely scared for a moment, that it was going to come to blows. But then Klein about-faced and, after a deep breath and a momentary clenching of his fists, seemed to calm down. I saw him mouth something to Imp, who stopped yelling right away. I couldn't hear what was said. After a long silence, Imp turned and started walking toward the house again, at which point Klein strode to the front of his town car and after pausing for a moment, kicked his car as hard as he could. A loud SMASH indicated that he had destroyed one of the headlights. I dimly made out a "…FUCK!" and he threw his hands up, marched purposefully over to the other headlight, and kicked that one in, too. Imp simply walked on back to the farmhouse, shaking his head contemptuously.
It wasn't always that bad, of course, and usually we had perfectly civil meetings and writing sessions that yielded many compelling ideas. I feel bad that many of them are probably never going to be marketable enough to warrant being purchased by a major studio, and many of them were left unfinished. As the months wore on, and our meager funds dwindled, we found that we were no longer generating the kind of ideas that spurred our love of writing like we used to. There was some friction, and some days would pass where none of us managed to write down a single thing. We talked character bibles, we drafted pilots, short films, and Imp even proposed an idea for a travelogue that we would write as we wandered the country, probably as a means to escape the confines of the decrepit farmhouse. The hole Klein created with the typewriter posed a problem as the weather got rainier, and once a timber rattler managed to slide in through the hole, Imp waking from a nap and screaming bloody murder at the site of the thing one afternoon. We had to evacuate the house for most of that day, until Imp fetched his hunting knife from his jeep and managed to fell it with an expertly aimed throw from about twenty feet away. He was so proud of his kill that he barely remembered to menace Klein over the fact of the hole being his doing.
Toward the end, things were more apparent than ever that our writing experiment was grinding to a halt. Klein fell quiet and hardly ever had anything to add to our meetings. He was later arriving and earlier leaving. Often he would step out of the house to be own his own, while I struggled to write dialogue and Imp tried to do song lyrics, nihilistic ballads in the style of country music. Once in a while, when I was having an especially hard time thinking of anything, I'd look out the window and see Klein on one of his walks. Occasionally I'd see him stoop at a corner where an ancient stone foundation met the corner of an unpaved road leading far and away into the distant countryside. He'd stop, take a look around, as though to make sure nobody was looking. Then he'd produce from his breast pocket a yo-yo of some old world make. He'd turn it over in his fingers once or twice, scrutinizing it with a remote but wistful look of nostalgic longing on his face. Then, briefly, he'd deign to whistle, and as he did so he'd slip the loop on his finger, and give the thing a single, halfhearted toss, but the axle was worn out and it would only climb about halfway back up the string before giving out and danglingly pathetically on the end of its line.
At this moment the whistling would fade to silence, and Klein would only stare down at the toy for a moment before rewinding the string and stowing it back in some unseen confine of his suit coat. Then, with a forlorn air about him, he'd head away down the dirt road into the distant countryside, and it might be days before he returned. Over time his trips got longer and longer, and eventually he stopped coming back altogether.
Imp meanwhile went absolutely batfuck mental about six weeks after I posted the thing about Beakman. I'm not sure what it was, what events might have precipitated his decline into madness, but surely enough one thing led to another and before long he was taking his ancient Honda Nighthawk for week-long rampages through the city. He'd roll into reservation casinos nightly, getting absolutely shitfaced at the roulette tables until he either ran out of money or they kicked him out. His uncanny luck at the tables ensured that he'd enjoy a lengthy stay. His storied lucky streaks began to attract naïve players and instill in them a notion they they too could win it big, but what they didn't understand was that for every top-of-the-world victory Cory enjoyed, there was another crippling and demoralizing defeat waiting just around the corner. Cory would roll in some days with some $30 cash, and walk out about $800 richer. After staggering out into the night, soured on free casino whiskey, he'd rampage into the red-light districts and end up at the losing end of a three-man beat down when he got too pushy with an east European escort. On other occasions he'd land himself at a bus station well after the last shuttle had run, sharing street hooch with homeless derelicts and projecting drunken tirades about the "corporate fascist state" far into the night.
The last contact I ever received from him was in the form of a postcard, arrived about three months after his last sighting near the bus station, addressed from somewhere in Malaysia. Mysterious stains adorned its surface, suggestive of the unimaginably filthy places it had seen in the days before it was finally dispatched. All it said, scrawled hurriedly across a glossy photograph of a Buddhist monastery ensconced in a remote mountain forest somewhere, was "WISH YOU WERE HER." I'm not sure if that was a joke or a spelling error, but either way I took it to be oddly foreboding. This was about a week before Klein and I finally abandoned the farmhouse. Although neither of us said it, the arrival of the note for some reason solidified the idea in both of our minds that Imp was long dead.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
This one is free, Hollywood
The details of the plot are not important. For the purposes of my dissertation, the following clip I feel arms you with all the requisite context: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHNieMwYbmQ&feature=player_detailpage#t=122s
There you have your typical "guy getting hit in the groin" moment; that the damage was inflicted by an overactive child makes the instance all the more unremarkable. It's the go-to ploy in any comedy that plays off a sort of slapstick element. But I think even a movie like this could afford to take a bit of a gamble and try a new go-to trope. Nothing too extreme, just something to inject a bit of freshness into a formula that is showing its age. My idea for where this film could have gone could work especially well I think because it plays off the actors specifically. This movie, for example, might have benefited from omitting the "hit in the groin" jokes in lieu of something along the lines of, say, multiple scenes of Adam Sandler having a heart attack.
You could have basically the same moment juxtaposed against various backdrops, making for an amusing callback. One scene could, for example, take place in an elevator overlooking Paris: Imagine a version of that trailer in which is included a brief interlude to a shot of Sandler standing in a glass elevator, the window behind him opening up to a picturesque view of the Paris skyline on a clear Spring day- I can picture the plotting vividly- when suddenly he lets out a sharp, anguished grunt, grasping at his chest and sinking to the floor as the mandala of the Place de l'Étoile junction rises prominently in the background. It'd even mitigate the annoyance factor of the trailer's repeated use of the "music goes quiet on the beat of a punchline" trope.
(bouncy pop love song playing)
Once you start a LIE...
... it's hard to STOP.
(Record scratch, followed by silence)
Sandler is in a regally regally decorated Bangladeshi restaurant where a vivd cerise paint job contrasts smartly with a smattering of humbly framed parchment and assorted vases sporting elaborate golden floral designs. Suddenly he clutches his chest, letting out an anguished grunt as he stumbles and knocks some decor and silverware off a table as he sinks again to the floor, dragging the neatly laid out tablecloth down over himself like a shroud. The warm, indirect lighting playing off his face aptly accentuates Sandler's sickly pallor.
It's quite basic, I know, but I hope Hollywood will see fit to lend an ear and try implementing some of these suggestions in the near future.
There you have your typical "guy getting hit in the groin" moment; that the damage was inflicted by an overactive child makes the instance all the more unremarkable. It's the go-to ploy in any comedy that plays off a sort of slapstick element. But I think even a movie like this could afford to take a bit of a gamble and try a new go-to trope. Nothing too extreme, just something to inject a bit of freshness into a formula that is showing its age. My idea for where this film could have gone could work especially well I think because it plays off the actors specifically. This movie, for example, might have benefited from omitting the "hit in the groin" jokes in lieu of something along the lines of, say, multiple scenes of Adam Sandler having a heart attack.
You could have basically the same moment juxtaposed against various backdrops, making for an amusing callback. One scene could, for example, take place in an elevator overlooking Paris: Imagine a version of that trailer in which is included a brief interlude to a shot of Sandler standing in a glass elevator, the window behind him opening up to a picturesque view of the Paris skyline on a clear Spring day- I can picture the plotting vividly- when suddenly he lets out a sharp, anguished grunt, grasping at his chest and sinking to the floor as the mandala of the Place de l'Étoile junction rises prominently in the background. It'd even mitigate the annoyance factor of the trailer's repeated use of the "music goes quiet on the beat of a punchline" trope.
(bouncy pop love song playing)
Once you start a LIE...
... it's hard to STOP.
(Record scratch, followed by silence)
Sandler is in a regally regally decorated Bangladeshi restaurant where a vivd cerise paint job contrasts smartly with a smattering of humbly framed parchment and assorted vases sporting elaborate golden floral designs. Suddenly he clutches his chest, letting out an anguished grunt as he stumbles and knocks some decor and silverware off a table as he sinks again to the floor, dragging the neatly laid out tablecloth down over himself like a shroud. The warm, indirect lighting playing off his face aptly accentuates Sandler's sickly pallor.
It's quite basic, I know, but I hope Hollywood will see fit to lend an ear and try implementing some of these suggestions in the near future.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
On the Subject of Gondola Lifts (script)
"WE BROKE THE CAR"
EXT. CABLE CAR HILLSIDE- DAY
A Cable Car moves downhill along it's route towards a station. The people look out at the scenery, pointing, snapping pictures, etc.
INT. EXT. CABLE CAR DOCKING STATION, HILLSIDE- DAY
Some ENGINEERS look out as the car hovers in toward it's station, but look worried as the car's approach reveals it's remarkable velocity.
With the panicked push of a few buttons, the car violently CRASHES and GRINDS it's way into the dock.
People SCREAM and some engineers YELL, all is in disarray as the scarred car dangles pathetically on it's cable.
INT. MANAGER'S OFFICE- DAY
Two engineers enter, the MANAGER looks up from some paperwork.
MANAGER
What happened?
ENGINEER 1
Well sir... see,
here's the thing...
ENGINEER 2
We were bringing in
the car to dock, and...
ENGINEER 1
...and you're not gonna
be mad, but...
ENGINEER 2
We sorta crashed
the cable car sir.
MANAGER
What!
What happened?
ENGINEER 1
Well sir... see,
here's the thing...
ENGINEER 2
We were bringing in
the car to dock, and...
ENGINEER 1
...and you're not gonna
be mad, but...
ENGINEER 2
We sorta crashed
the cable car sir.
MANAGER
What!
The manager gets up and rushes out to the balcony where he surveys the carnage. As he rushes past, they hurriedly try to explain:
ENGINEER 1
...But the damage is
mostly just superficial!
ENGINEER 2
And the damage to the
passengers is mostly emotional,
they said.
ENGINEER 1
All except that one guy
who got totally
dismembered.
ENGINEER 2
Yeah. That one was unlucky.
...But the damage is
mostly just superficial!
ENGINEER 2
And the damage to the
passengers is mostly emotional,
they said.
ENGINEER 1
All except that one guy
who got totally
dismembered.
ENGINEER 2
Yeah. That one was unlucky.
The manager hunches over the railing, looking with horror at the scene below:
The cable car, now taped off like a crime scene, emits black smoke. Casualties lie on the ground as medical personnel rush around, moving and treating the injured while teams of police are ordered around.
MANAGER
Jesus Christ almighty!
Jesus Christ almighty!
The Manager whips around and grabs one of the engineers (1) by the collar.
MANAGER
YOU. HAVE. RUIEND ME!!
ENGINEER 1
Yeah, well. Honestly
I can't understand how
it got do damaged anyway.
ENGINEER 2
Didn't look to be moving
so fast, really.
ENGINEER 1
'Til it got close.
ENGINEER 2
Yeah and then, you
know. Woah.
ENGINEER 1
Really must've only
been going about 15
miles an hour, tops.
ENGINEER 2
But that's fast enough
with something that big
I guess.
ENGINEER 1
Quite a bit of
velocity on it.
YOU. HAVE. RUIEND ME!!
ENGINEER 1
Yeah, well. Honestly
I can't understand how
it got do damaged anyway.
ENGINEER 2
Didn't look to be moving
so fast, really.
ENGINEER 1
'Til it got close.
ENGINEER 2
Yeah and then, you
know. Woah.
ENGINEER 1
Really must've only
been going about 15
miles an hour, tops.
ENGINEER 2
But that's fast enough
with something that big
I guess.
ENGINEER 1
Quite a bit of
velocity on it.
The Manager lets go, and walks away, defeated.
MANAGER
This will be a PR
disaster. We'll never
recover from this.
This will be a PR
disaster. We'll never
recover from this.
Below, some news reporters can be seen rushing into the scene.
MANAGER
Ahh, son of a god-
damned bitch!
Ahh, son of a god-
damned bitch!
He collects his thoughts for a moment. After a while, one of the engineers breaks the silence:
ENGINEER 2
Well, it's still not as
bad as the disaster in '94.
Well, it's still not as
bad as the disaster in '94.
ENGINEER 1
Yeah. The test failure.
I still have nightmares
about that.
Yeah. The test failure.
I still have nightmares
about that.
MANAGER
But that was kept under
wraps for months! These
goddamned reporters
are gonna have a field
day with this!
But that was kept under
wraps for months! These
goddamned reporters
are gonna have a field
day with this!
A dark look crosses his face. Some reporters spot him, pointing up to the balcony. They begin rushing toward the stairs.
MANAGER
...How did this happen.
...How did this happen.
The Engineers look at each other, but stay silent.
MANAGER
I WANT ANSWERS, GODDAMNIT.
I WANT ANSWERS, GODDAMNIT.
Behind the enraged Manager, a flood of papparatzi can be seen ascending the stairs, crowding round. They flood the manager with questions as camera bulbs FLASH:
REPORTERS
Is it true this is the
work of terrorists?
What do you have to say
about the disaster?
Do you have a comment
on today's tragedy?
etc...
ENGINEER 1
...Well, we thought the new
guy set the lever a
bit too low, but it didn't
seem like such a-...
Is it true this is the
work of terrorists?
What do you have to say
about the disaster?
Do you have a comment
on today's tragedy?
etc...
ENGINEER 1
...Well, we thought the new
guy set the lever a
bit too low, but it didn't
seem like such a-...
He is cut off as the Manager whips round to rush through the crowd of reporters, making his way toward a meek looking engineer who is still standing around with some others on the dock below.
MANAGER
YOU FUCKER!!
YOU FUCKER!!
The Engineer looks terrified as the Manager advances on him.
The Manager grabs him by the shoulder and pulls him over to the wreckage of the car.
MANAGER
YOU SEE?! YOU SEE
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU
DON'T TAKE THE JOB
SERIOUSLY?!
YOU SEE?! YOU SEE
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU
DON'T TAKE THE JOB
SERIOUSLY?!
MANAGER 3
Sir, I...
MANAGER
RAAAAAAAAAGH!!
Sir, I...
MANAGER
RAAAAAAAAAGH!!
The Manager ROARS as he PUNCHES the engineer in the face. The young man crumples to the floor, utterly ruined.
The media crowd around and frenzy at the violence.
REPORTERS
He's gone crazy!
He's going to kill his
employee!
What a scoop!
etc....
He's gone crazy!
He's going to kill his
employee!
What a scoop!
etc....
The Manager turns to face the reporters.
MANAGER
YOU WANT A STORY?! I'LL
GIVE YOU A GODDAMNED STORY!!
YOU WANT A STORY?! I'LL
GIVE YOU A GODDAMNED STORY!!
The Manager TAPS away at some uncharacteristically complex-looking panels near the control lever, and hits a conspicuous red button.
The panel DISCHARGES electricity and BEEPS chaotically.
MANAGER
... I'll see you IN HELL.
... I'll see you IN HELL.
The reporters look in terror at the panel as it goes haywire.
The Manager rushes over and picks up the injured employee.
MANAGER
...Looks like we're in
it together from here on
out, son.
...Looks like we're in
it together from here on
out, son.
He HOISTS the barely conscious man above his head and leaps off the edge of the dock, yelling:
MANAGER
I'VE ALWAYS LOVED YOOOOUU!!!
I'VE ALWAYS LOVED YOOOOUU!!!
The first two engineers look over the balcony, horrified.
ENGINEER 1
He's jumped!
ENGINEER 2
And he's taking Tommy
down to hell with 'im!
He's jumped!
ENGINEER 2
And he's taking Tommy
down to hell with 'im!
The panel BLASTS the reporters with energy, skeletonizing them bloodily.
As the Manager falls to his death:
MANAGER
FFFFFFFUUUUUCK!!
FFFFFFFUUUUUCK!!
INT. SCREENING ROOM
The scene freezes, revealed as only a movie playing on a projector.
PRESENTER
...and THAT is why we
always mind the controls!
...and THAT is why we
always mind the controls!
His small audience looks incredulous.
PRESENTER
...Are there any questions?
...Are there any questions?
One STUDENT raises his hand.
STUDENT
Are you completely insane,
by chance?
PRESENTER
YES.
Are you completely insane,
by chance?
PRESENTER
YES.
END.
Monday, April 4, 2011
I guess something is better than nothing?
"God damn it!" "RRRRRAAAAAAAAAGH!" screamed Officer Dan.
At this, he impulsively swatted at the porcelain lamp on the end table, with greater force than he'd intended, and it was sent hurtling across the room into the wall where it shattered with a cacophonous resound.
For a moment, he stopped short as rage was dissipated by an influx of adrenaline.
In the same instant the Chief burst through the door into the office. His eyes scanned the room as he mouthed a silent "what the fuck," and his eyes fell upon the sad remains of the lamp, following its path of travel to the desk where it once sat, beside which a now red-faced Officer Dan stood, stock still. The Chief's hand gripped involuntarily on the doorknob.
"Aw, you stupid piece of shit!" he hollered.
At this, he impulsively swatted at the porcelain lamp on the end table, with greater force than he'd intended, and it was sent hurtling across the room into the wall where it shattered with a cacophonous resound.
For a moment, he stopped short as rage was dissipated by an influx of adrenaline.
In the same instant the Chief burst through the door into the office. His eyes scanned the room as he mouthed a silent "what the fuck," and his eyes fell upon the sad remains of the lamp, following its path of travel to the desk where it once sat, beside which a now red-faced Officer Dan stood, stock still. The Chief's hand gripped involuntarily on the doorknob.
"Aw, you stupid piece of shit!" he hollered.
Monday, March 21, 2011
"Taking a Trip to the Zipper Factory"
Imagine the following occurrence:
A guy is sitting alone in the dark, lying back insouciantly in a recliner. He's sort of catatonic, you know? Just sort of leaning back and staring blankly at the ceiling, grinning a bit, but he can't really help that.
Suddenly, his friend enters:
"Hey, asshole, we were supposed to meet 10 minutes ago! Now we're gonna be late for the movie! What are you doing in here?"
The guy in the recliner isn't really in a position to offer a cogent response here, so he offers what best he can manage while in the haze through which he is experiencing the world; it comes out sounding like a sort of "Hrrnk." (A tone suggesting as though it was a statement of fact. His face doesn't change at all.)
Of course, his friend has little patience for this:
"What the hell's the matter with you? Y-.."
A sudden clinking of something to the floor draws his attention to a small, plastic bottle which has fallen adjacent the recliner. Picking it up to investigate, he realizes that it is an empty bottle of Nyquil.
"What's this? Huh? What's this? You taking a trip to the Zipper Factory right now? Huh?"
"Hrrnk." is the only answer the boy can give.
His friend seizes a nearby Wallgreens bag, sitting openly on a desk across from the pitiable scene in the recliner. He pulls out a receipt, the date of which is the damning proof that the medicine was bought, and hence consumed in its entirety, sometime in the last 20 minutes.
"You're sick, you know that? You're really sick."
"Hrrnk."
"Well you just sit here and enjoy your little Nyquil trip, you son of a bitch. Thanks for wasting our time!"
As he storms from the room in a huff, his voice can be heard from down the hallway:
"Yeah, no he's not coming. No, you won't believe this, fucker downed an entire bottle of Nyquil. Tells us he'll be ready in 10 minutes, gets fucked on Nyquil instead..."
The voices of a disappointed coterie recede into the distance as the boy sits, immobilized, crying silent tears, his face still frozen in a false expression of joyfully hedonistic profligacy.
And so we have an apt application of a delightful new trope which I highly encourage you to adopt into your regular conversational repertoire: if someone is acting foolish, seems disoriented, or inebriated, pose them a rhetorical, "You taking a trip to the Zipper Factory?" You'll be glad you did.
A guy is sitting alone in the dark, lying back insouciantly in a recliner. He's sort of catatonic, you know? Just sort of leaning back and staring blankly at the ceiling, grinning a bit, but he can't really help that.
Suddenly, his friend enters:
"Hey, asshole, we were supposed to meet 10 minutes ago! Now we're gonna be late for the movie! What are you doing in here?"
The guy in the recliner isn't really in a position to offer a cogent response here, so he offers what best he can manage while in the haze through which he is experiencing the world; it comes out sounding like a sort of "Hrrnk." (A tone suggesting as though it was a statement of fact. His face doesn't change at all.)
Of course, his friend has little patience for this:
"What the hell's the matter with you? Y-.."
A sudden clinking of something to the floor draws his attention to a small, plastic bottle which has fallen adjacent the recliner. Picking it up to investigate, he realizes that it is an empty bottle of Nyquil.
"What's this? Huh? What's this? You taking a trip to the Zipper Factory right now? Huh?"
"Hrrnk." is the only answer the boy can give.
His friend seizes a nearby Wallgreens bag, sitting openly on a desk across from the pitiable scene in the recliner. He pulls out a receipt, the date of which is the damning proof that the medicine was bought, and hence consumed in its entirety, sometime in the last 20 minutes.
"You're sick, you know that? You're really sick."
"Hrrnk."
"Well you just sit here and enjoy your little Nyquil trip, you son of a bitch. Thanks for wasting our time!"
As he storms from the room in a huff, his voice can be heard from down the hallway:
"Yeah, no he's not coming. No, you won't believe this, fucker downed an entire bottle of Nyquil. Tells us he'll be ready in 10 minutes, gets fucked on Nyquil instead..."
The voices of a disappointed coterie recede into the distance as the boy sits, immobilized, crying silent tears, his face still frozen in a false expression of joyfully hedonistic profligacy.
And so we have an apt application of a delightful new trope which I highly encourage you to adopt into your regular conversational repertoire: if someone is acting foolish, seems disoriented, or inebriated, pose them a rhetorical, "You taking a trip to the Zipper Factory?" You'll be glad you did.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Short Takes
Some scenes that I find amusing:
•Someone talking really fast, right before they fall down
•A man is playing with some magnets, delighting in the resistance he feels as he pushes the like poles toward each other. But then, in a momentary lapse of vigilance, he allows one of the magnets to flip around, and the powerful bond latches the two pieces down painfully on either side of his hand, WHAP. Him: "AHH! Fucking god damn magnets!" (To onlookers): Help me get them off!" (He tries, but can't pry them away.) "AAGH, GET THEM OFF GET THEM OFF GET THEM OFF GET THEM OFF!"
•When someone reacts to something you say by making a sort of face with just their mouth, without altering any other facial feature. (Especially if they seem unaware that they're doing it.)
•When one person is really reluctant to fight someone, but they sort end up getting into it anyway. They easily overpower their belligerent challenger, pretty much effortlessly. Like, with a single punch. The other guy is just hunched over, immobilized by the pain of a swiftly delivered blow to the stomach, and he's just sort of emitting a strained, high pitched groan. So, the first guy tries once again to call the thing off. "Hey man," he says. "This has gone far enough." Then the other guy looks up at him, red faced, and barely manages to eek out a strained, "You're a son of a bitch!"
•Someone talking really fast, right before they fall down
•A man is playing with some magnets, delighting in the resistance he feels as he pushes the like poles toward each other. But then, in a momentary lapse of vigilance, he allows one of the magnets to flip around, and the powerful bond latches the two pieces down painfully on either side of his hand, WHAP. Him: "AHH! Fucking god damn magnets!" (To onlookers): Help me get them off!" (He tries, but can't pry them away.) "AAGH, GET THEM OFF GET THEM OFF GET THEM OFF GET THEM OFF!"
•When someone reacts to something you say by making a sort of face with just their mouth, without altering any other facial feature. (Especially if they seem unaware that they're doing it.)
•When one person is really reluctant to fight someone, but they sort end up getting into it anyway. They easily overpower their belligerent challenger, pretty much effortlessly. Like, with a single punch. The other guy is just hunched over, immobilized by the pain of a swiftly delivered blow to the stomach, and he's just sort of emitting a strained, high pitched groan. So, the first guy tries once again to call the thing off. "Hey man," he says. "This has gone far enough." Then the other guy looks up at him, red faced, and barely manages to eek out a strained, "You're a son of a bitch!"
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