Cartoon scripts, spec scripts and serials ...
Except for fragments, I am also missing the following spec scripts. Most of these were written and posted in serial format on various websites.These websites have all been scrubbed off the face of the !@#$ earth.
Clinton, Clinton, I’ve been Thinking (1995-1999)
No story arc. Pretty much a bunch of surreal sketches about 1996 Presidential campaign, and the endless investigation that continued before, during and after. Ken Starr, Clinton, Monica Lewinski … it pretty much wrote itself. [fragments recovered]
The following three scripts had a loose story continuity. I wrote them in serial form, then attempted to edit them down to something episodic and producible. Saw it as an animated cartoon, but could also have worked as live action.
THE BIG DAMN MEDIA SATIRE TRILOGY
Revenge of the Son of the Glass Teat (1995)
The world is disappearing up its own self-absorbed asshole. There’s a simple explanation: aliens are stealing our media. Their spaceship resembles an enormous glass teat. But Elvis and Bigfoot overcome the aliens, take control, return from space and set humanity free. At least for now.
Koreshan (1996)
Jack Getz is a single parent who lives with his two sons in the dilapidated family hotel he inherited in Florida. A cartoonist, his once promising career is on the skids. A few years back, Walt Disney Studios fired him for putting suggestive images in Alladin -- yeah, he's that guy. After that stunt, Jack's career took a downward slide to progressively crappier ad agencies, print shops and huckster promotion firms. Salvation comes: a golden cash cow. Jack is hired by an emerging global media empire. The CEO is Mr. Haack -- a South African composite of Rupert Murdock and other media tycoons. Unknown to Jack, the aliens are using Haack's corporation as a front to launch their new product. Agents from the Okinawan independence movement tell him about the alien plot. They inform him that, instead of writing whiz-bang cartoons about cosmic battles, he actually has to fight one for a change. Jack thinks it's bullcrap -- until he discovers a vast underground network of tunnels left over from the last human civilization 20,000 years ago. The aliens have used us before. Jack stands up and fights. Or he doesn't. There's some kinda resolution, but I forget. Once again, Jack gets fired.
Me, Robomonkey (1997)
Haack releases the test version of the alien product -- User Generated Media -- a black box that the aliens plan to install in every human home. (An all-purpose, home entertainment center/replicator) Robomoney is the cute, helpful intelligent agent designed to make it easy for the humans to use the product -- just tell him what you want, and he grabs it for you! But Robomonkey escapes the virtual world and wreaks havoc in the real world, thereby derailing the aliens’ plans.
CHARACTERS
Ethan Haack -- the South African CEO of Haackworks Media. He resembles Sydney Greenstreet.
Jack Getz -- cartoonist, writer, loser. Basically, Jack is to me what Kilgore Trout is to Kurt Vonnegut.
Supermodel -- a model with superpowers. She's bitter about the loss of her native Hong Kong to the PRC.
Robomonkey -- an intelligent agent who escapes the alien's virtual world in a parody of "Altered States."
Highway Woman -- a mild-mannered woman who transforms into a Fury of Vengeance at the sight of a lack of courtesy.
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The aliens weren't trying to take over the planet or kill us. The aliens looked on humanity as a media market. They wanted market share. I thought that was a fairly original idea. John Carpenter's "They Live" touched on similar territory -- but his aliens were symbols of all-pervasive capitalist mind-control. My aliens were media tycoons -- period.
ReplyDelete"User-generated media" (UGM) is basically a box that resembles a cross between a flat-screen, 3-D TV and the replicator on "Star Trek." It has access to any content that's been created since the beginning of time. It scans your responses, stitches something together, and shows you exactly the dream you want to see. If you want "Casablanca" to have a happy ending, you got it. The system seamlessly integrates product placement in your dream. It materializes the consumer crap you want to buy -- and instantly charges your credit card.
ReplyDeleteUGM is my howl against the death of story-telling. It's "user-generated." It's the ultimate in masturbatory entertainment.
ReplyDeleteThe infernal machine provides story-telling -- without the storyteller. It takes audience surveys, alternate endings, focus groups and passive people-meters to the Nth degree. With UGM, there's no gap between audience response and gutless media pandering. Second by second, the machine panders for you, and shows you exactly the dream you want, never rattling your cage, never shattering your expectations, never taking you outside yourself. And above all -- never letting an author tell you an honest story.