the other day i received a letter inviting me to my next high school class reunion. since the last one was held at a bar 7 miles outside of town in a wood-paneled room usually reserved for remote-control car racing, and featured all-you-can-drink bud light and ham sandwiches, i was guessing anything had to be one step classier. i was not disappointed. this one is being held at the next fanciest meeting space in town: the bowling alley. i have been to many events in the bowling alley including graduations, weddings, funerals (fine, i'm kidding about the funeral in a bowling alley, but you get the idea). at the last reception, i drank free all night because the kid behind the bar apparently recognized me from being a freshman when i was a senior, and we were both in band or some similar extra-curricular for only very popular people like me... and the kid behind the bar, who i cannot remember for the life of me, but with whom i pretended to be very chummy because it got me free g&t. (sad and unethical, i know, especially since the drink cost $1.50 full price.)
so i'm very excited to bowl and drink with my former classmates. but more importantly, my blogmate and i are thinking that somewhere in this lies a great story for a dark indie film about small-town america. enter the somewhat surly but creative n., our shortest-acronymed friend with a film degree. n, how would you spin this? shy, vaguely-awkward-in-high-school guy finishes college and lands solid career in large midwestern city, making him leagues more successful than his llama-farming classmates, who comes home to his reunion with his lovely city girl on his arm, and has some sort of angst about his roots? loud but still awkward girl made briefly popular in high school for winning some obscure competition (for this purpose, maybe the regional pig-roping championships?) who comes home after some similarly moderate amount of success, wondering why nobody will acknowledge said success in favor of reminiscing about her days as the pig princess? naturally there has to be the once-popular girl who slept with everyone who is now fat and drunk somewhere in a corner, and a gaggle of flannel-wearing mullets getting riled up about nascar. for artsy effect, can we add a tall blond lawyer taking in the scene, beer in hand, with some repeated one-liner like "yup..." while staring into the distance like he's thinking something meaningful?
but i'm not the film genius. n, you're on your own. i would employ my more creative blogmate, who dreams of being a film critic in another life, but she went to a high school especially for smart people. her high school memories do not include an in-school garage where you can tinker with your truck and call it education.
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6 comments:
My own problem with this is that I can't come up with a decent ending. I'm thinking about going in three different directions:
1. End the film with a massive, very bloody, shooting spree. (Shot in slow-motion, Scorsese-style)
2. Big-city protagonist finally realizes he is not so different from these people after all; end with the entire ensemble line-dancing. (Billy Ray Cyrus has a small cameo earlier)
3. Just when things couldn't get any more awkward and horrible, we reveal that the whole movie thusfar is an imagined tale being told by our hero in a dimly-lit big city bar. The protagonist and friends laugh and laugh as they mock small-town life, and sip their 9 dollar drinks with a feeling of deep satisfaction and pure sophistication.
It never dawned on me, through 10 years of friendship, the true reason I held tall blonde lawyer in such high regard...until now: I needed an artsy effect on my journey through small town usa. Indeed, I would classify that effect as pacifistic existentialism. And that’s exactly what this film needs.
That, and the overused one-liner used with blank stares into nothingness. In the past, "Yup..." was preceded with "Word...", which itself was preceded with "Moo..." I think the blonde lawyer should use all 3, and for the film’s ending, an agreeable talking cow floats into the room, making peace with everyone and enjoying a heart-wrenching laugh (That's called "foreshadowing"!)
I don't know his reason for choosing these words, except for the fact that they are all monosyllabic. And, perhaps, in the end, that's what really matters.
you guys are fantastic.
n, does it offend your sense of cinematic decency if we work in all three of your proposed directions? i'm not sure how, but i can't bear the thought of losing a shooting spree, billy ray, or 9-dollar drinks. maybe while billy ray leads the ensemble in line dancing, either the floating cow or the pacifist existentialist lawyer opens fire on the whole scene, right before the fade back to the big city?
nate, i've never been able to pin the title for the tall blond lawyer in twenty-some years of knowing him. pacificist existentialist is perfect! we once had a conversation to the effect that his one-liners are his version of the whole kurt vonnegut "and so it goes" thing. although it does also bear an eerie similarity to a certain other small-town usa character's penchant for one-liners like "oh, well..." and "hark!" enter another movie about the small ways that generations repeat themselves...
i don't know if this makes me happy or sad, but i have no idea what's going on! i leave town for 4 lousy days and suddenly i can't follow my own blog...
oh no, are we going to run into an rcfog-like situation where someone can't follow along? maybe as our plot line is being developed, we should keep a running cast of characters...
now that i know who the tall blond lawyer is i think i get it... more or less.
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