A Taste of The Novelization of Road House 3--Back to Basics

Dalton wanders in to a local wine bar in New York's Greenwich Village. The sound of Dido is playing in the background--if there's one thing that Dalton can't stand more than people who are too stupid to have a good time, it's Dido. Infernal sultry-voiced Dido.

The wine bar had a cutesy name--"Quit Yer Wining"--and it was clearly appealing to the lower end of the wine bar crowd. Terrific, he thought. But he wasn't here to sample a fine Bordeaux. Dalton didn't care for wine at all.

Standing at the door was none other than Dalton's old protege from his days in Memphis--yes, the town where he removed a man's throat with his bare hands in some fight over a lady. His protege was Reuben "Night Train" Parnell, a bouncer who had become legendary in his own right. Night Train had become very high demand indeed.

"See your ID," the bouncer said as Dalton tried to stride past him. Dalton looked at him squarely.

"Forget your old friends?" he asked, grinning. Reuben's face lit up with recognition.

"Dalton!" he exclaimed, "I thought you'd be taller."

Dalton never got tired of hearing that.

Nighttrain

While Andy (who's been trying to get everyone to call him Johnny Vino) was visiting this past weekend, we worked out an outline for the screenplay for Road House 3--Back to Basics. I can say that any fan of film noir, Hitchcock-style twists, revisionist westerns and sweeping epics will absolutely love this sequel. It has a little of everything, and then some. Most of all, it has a new character who will be introduced and perhaps used extensively through montages and flashbacks--Reuben "Nighttrain" Parnell. I'd say "you can't make up a name like that" except we did just that. Andy liked the name so much he's been insisting on being called "Night Train" himself. I'd laugh but I'm crying on the inside.

Of course, this film shouldn't be too expensive to film--with the exception of the set-piece battle in the wine bar (which should be quite expensive, since we'll insist on using real wine and good vintage stuff, for realism), we don't have much expense. Lord knows we won't be spending much on acting lessons! And the frenetic pacing should help us use locations without permits. See, these are the sort of things you learn in the business.

Quantum of Solace--Worst Bond Title Ever???

Having just seen the latest James Bond film I'm reminded of the many rules that guide the films:

1) If you sleep with James Bond, congratulations--you're one of two women to do so in the film. That means you have a 50% chance of ending up with him at the end of the film, and a 50% chance of getting horribly killed. Keep in mind though this also spares Bond the awkwardness of having both women confront him in the end for his womanizing.

2) If you sleep with Bond and end up with him by the end of the film, don't get too comfortable because you'll be forgotten by the next film.

3) If you're the bad guy's top henchman, don't worry--you won't be killed in some boring way like getting shot by a stray bullet or trapped in a burning building. You'll get a long fight sequence with Bond, in which you nearly kill him before he finds some ingenious and clever way to dispatch you.

4) If you're a Bond ally, this would be a good time to make sure your life insurance policy covers getting murdered. Unless you're Felix Leiter in which case you can be sure you won't get to do anything fun because the CIA sort of plays second fiddle to the British Secret Service.

5) While the Americans may have built up the world's most powerful military and largest economy, it's the British who are handling all the world's supervillains. It's a fair trade that Roosevelt and Churchill worked out at the Yalta Conference.

6) Secret agents under deep cover often go around without disguising themselves in any way, and introduce themselves by their actual names--"Bond, James Bond."

7) When meeting James Bond--who has just introduced himself as such--the bad guy and his henchmen won't simply whip out guns and blow him to pieces. Instead, the bad guy and Bond will try to get into some game of wits and double entendres at some high school level (like "your lady friend there came quite easily....IN BED!!!") because really, why break up a nice party?

8) While most other British civil servants have had to deal with salary freezes and budget cutbacks, secret service agents have lived well on caviar and vodka martinis and drive really nice cars. This is because instead of spending their time analyzing intelligence and living among the population in hostile countries, they have to infiltrate exclusive clubs and casinos in Monte Carlo, where real supervillains reside.

9) The real threats in the world are not religious extremists, crazed North Korean dictators or oil-rich despots. The real threats are very wealthy men with groups of mercenary henchmen who are trying laughably unworkable plots to do stupid things like blow up the moon with giant laser cannons or explode a radioactive device in the world's gold supply even though the world hasn't been on the gold standard since the 1930s.

10) When Bond has located the bad guy, or his headquarters, the British don't send in the Special Air Service or the Royal Marines to blow the hell out of him. Instead, Bond has to do it himself (sometimes with the help of the remaining surviving lady friend). This is because the British spent so much on gadgets and martinis that they have no money left to support full scale military operations.

I saw Saw

Last night's film was "Saw" which as you may know involved a guy trying to make things work with his wife and kid. Sure, they had a rough patch, and he had a thing going on with his secretary, but he loves the kid and you can tell he's still got feelings for his wife. And since he's a doctor, he's also got to try and reconcile his own feelings toward mortality and how he treats others, both at work and at home.

And of course this doctor guy is chained to a pipe in some abandoned room (along with another guy) by some madman who is threatening his wife and kid, and ultimately the only way he can get out is if he either kills the other guy in the room or saws his own leg off. Now, I'm the sort of guy who probably would work real hard at sawing my leg off only to realize I sawed off the wrong one, the one without the chain on it! It would have been one of those moments I would have to laugh at, despite the pain and bleeding, because life just sure tosses some ironicality at you from time to time!

As it turns out, Saw had three sequels, which tells me two things--first, the police just aren't any good at catching this killer, which shouldn't be surprising because in the first film the police spend most of their time ignoring warrants and not aiming their firearms properly, and second, audiences love a good "cut off your own limb" movie.

Time Travel

As anyone who knows me can attest, I'm a stong believer in the idea that all government money and private charitable contributions should be diverted towards the discovery of time travel. I mean, provided time machines are in the hands of good guys and not evil robots or Biff from Back to the Future (and its sequels), every awful thing about the present can be prevented. (That is, if you believe in the Terminator/Back to the Future theory on time travel, that you can change the past, and not the 12 Monkeys theory, which says "what's done is done"). We could go back and tell Henry Ford not to name his son Edsel, we can go back and tell Elvis to lay off the snack foods, and we can go back and tell the guy who got AIDS from a monkey to not have sex with humans (once you go ape, you never . . . have sex with people again. Ever.). But most importantly and obviously is the Hitler thing.

Imagine going back in time to Vienna where a teenage Hitler, who was basically the first Emo Hipster artist douchebag, was trying to get his art sold and make it into art school. Imagine saying to the young whiner, "hey dude, your art is really neat and I bet no one understands you, correct? Have you considered going into the film business? You don't even need talent to get into the movies!"

Then of course young Emo Hitler might point out that Hollywood is full of Jews, at which point we'd say baloney, Jews were never really good at show business, they're too busy being football stars and dancers, now come on you angst-ridden teen, let's introduce you to Louis Mayer and the Warner Brothers, none of which changed their names from something far more Jewish. Then Hitler spends the next few decades making weird arthouse films that only beatniks will watch, probably be one of the guys who married Marilyn Monroe (she'd famously say later that Hitler was slightly less brooding than Joe DiMaggio) and maybe end up on a Hollywood blacklist in the 1950s (I could easily see Emo Hitler going communist).

Of course, as is always pointed out in time travel movies, changing the past can have unforseen and not always terrific consequences--maybe with Hitler out of the way the Nazis would have an equally evil but more competent leader, maybe the Soviets would loom as a greater threat, who knows. But the beauty of the time machine is if what you change doesn't work out, you can always go back and fix it again. What could possibly go wrong?

I Fought the Law, and it was a Tie

So last night after work I hop over to Alexandria to visit my friend and his wife and son who just moved down (they didn't need my help with the move, as it turned out, because they lined up some random strangers in the building while I was at work), and as it turns out it was the kid's first birthday party. At this I was all "hey, jello shots for the kid!" but the parents said the strongest thing we could give him was formula. I asked if "formula" meant "kahlua" at which point they changed the subject and showed me around the complex, which has a number of pools, tennis courts, game rooms, and---A FREAKING BOWLING ALLEY. Now, my friend is Polish so I know what you're thinking--of COURSE he moves into a building with its own bowling alley. Right next to a kielbassa stand, no doubt (just make sure the German neighbors don't tresspass, if you know what I mean! Yep, Nazi reference). But it turned out to be a surprise to him as well, which wouldn't be the first time the Polish were surprised (yep, second Nazi reference).

So we bowl a few games, one of which I actually did a 109 (being only a smidgen Polish myself, that's a good score for me) and my friend who hadn't bowled in years despite his ancestral requirement managed to hit in the 130s each game. What made his rolls distinctive was the sheer violence of them--it sounded like the pins were screaming in pain when the ball sent them to their demise. The thing is, he was calm and collected while making these fearsome rolls. I asked if there was something he wanted to talk about, maybe the New Jersey Turnpike traffic got to him or something.

Anyway, I drive home on the Beltway later, and of course it's a maze of construction, blocking and shifting lanes everywhere, and I make the mistake of being several lanes away from the exit I need, so I slow quite a bit to make it and this attracts the unwanted attention of a County Cop. His thinking is--"this guy's a stewed prune, and I'm about to nab me a DUI! On a Monday night! I'll be a law enforcement hero, like Elliot Ness and the guy who ambushed Dillinger!"

So he pulls me over, and tells me I slowed too much on the Beltway and I agreed, not pointing out that there was little traffic and what's with all the construction cones, lock up the real criminals, like them Duke Boys and the fellows who thought it would be a good idea to block so many lanes of a major thoroughfare. Instead, I am agreeable, he asks if I've had anything to drink and I tell him no, but just wait until I get home. He then asks if my eyes "normally go like that" and I point out that I've had nostagmus since I was a kid, so yes. He points out that that could also be a symptom of drinking alcohol, and I simply say yes, though I had nothing to drink that night (which was true). I don't point out that perhaps he has it confused with drug use, because at this point the lack of alcohol on my breath leads him to take my word for it that I'm not drinking and driving, and I really didn't want to have to prove I wasn't on any drugs which would probably require a blood test down at the station or something. Fortunately, he let me go with a warning, which was fair--I shouldn't have slowed down so much on the highway, and would be a lot more careful next time, but really didn't need my driving record messed up over it.

Word of the Day

When coming up with my new favorite "insult word" which is "fucktard" (the reason for this is all the many extra years of my life taking the extra time to say "fucking retard" which is now condensed, freeing me to do great things like paint masterpieces and huck rocks into ponds), it occurred to me that some may take offense at the word "retard" when used as an insult. After all, there are actual retarded people out there who can't help themselves because of genetics, and they end up having to go to Arizona State and take jobs in Marketing (I kid!). But when we use certain "insult words" we only really use them when we know they don't actually literally ring true.

Case in point--someone bumps into your car because they're talking on the cell phone and drinking a smoothie while driving. You want to yell at them "retard!" But on the other hand, some actual, bona fide retarded guy walks his shopping cart into your car, you won't yell "retard!" at them once you realize that you're conveying an accurate description. Or, some guy at a party tries to tap the keg and it creates a geyser of beer foam all over everyone. You yell at him, "you're so freaking LAME!" Then when you see him hobble off on his crutches, you continue, "but I don't mean that LITERALLY!"

So yeah, "fucktard" is back. Figuratively.