Monday, April 8, 2013

Of Mus Musculi and Homo Sapiens


            Roger Sallis and Jason Pierce are fresh out of high school, and want to become filmmakers. They move to Los Angeles and get jobs working on a film set to gain experience. Roger is big and dumb. They both like movies that they think are really deep. They both like to wear skinny jeans, thick-rimmed glasses, and flannel shirts. They want to try and work on their own independent films in their spare time; while also trying to change the ones they work on professionally for what they think is better.

            Roger and Jason are new on a set, after being fired from their old one, because Roger tried to add a big speech at the end of the movie. They meet the crew and get to work.

            They get home to their tiny apartment and publish their newest movie online. They gain no popularity. They talk about the day when they get their big break online, and they can quit their jobs and work on their movies full time for a living. And Roger will buy a hare. Not a rabbit, a hare.

            They get back to work the next day. They’re still a little bummed out by the turnout of their movie. They go on about how nobody appreciates ‘real’ movies anymore.  They get home and watch a movie that nobody’s heard of before, have a conversation about ‘real’ movies.

            Problems begin to arise on the set they’re working at. The female lead is demanding more cherries and her husband is having conflict with the male lead. They get in a fight, knock over some expensive equipment. Roger and Jason try to break it up, but accidently knock over more equipment and end up with black eyes and an even bigger pile of broken equipment. The director yells at everybody and they all go home early.

            Roger and Jason fear that they’re going to lose another job. At home, they start working on making a quick movie over the weekend to try and impress their boss to get him to keep them around. It’s about a guy’s life, from the point of view of various insects. They upload it online. It’s watched six times. Three of them were Roger and Jason.

            They show up to work and try to show the director their movie. He’s too busy to watch it. They get really pushy. He yells at them. Later on his break they surprise him and try to make him watch it. He hates it. He says it’s stupid, that there’s no point in doing the insect thing, and that he wants them gone by the end of the week. They scream and roll around and Roger poops himself a little bit. Jason waits in line for a new phone and gets mugged. He yells at his muggers about how he doesn’t care about anything. They take his skinny jeans. He sits and thinks for a while, and decides that there’s no way this could be his fault, that it must be Roger’s fault again. He goes back to the set and puts on a pair of hot pants he stole from the costume rack.

            He shows up in front of the director in the middle of the scene. He tells the director that Roger alienated the male lead and the female lead’s wife, causing the fight, and that he knocked over the film equipment and dragged Jason into the fight.  The director has no time to evaluate the statement and tells Jason to go fire Roger for him.

            Jason somehow thinks this means he gets to keep his job. He makes up some nonsense about how Roger made a movie about punching babies, and rallies some of the film crew to find Roger. They walk around trying to find him and get mugged.  The muggers take everybody’s skinny jeans and Jason’s hot pants.  They tail the muggers and find out that they’re baristas who work at Starbucks. They’ve been mugging people for their skinny jeans. And they find Roger sitting in the corner, drinking some coffee. He’s at a chain coffee place. He’s a traitor.  The pantsless film crew and Jason drag Roger into an alley and beat him mercilessly for two hours. He gets a few minor scrapes and bruises. Jason cries and tells Roger that he’s sorry but he’s fired. The film crew and Jason go lose a slam poetry battle against the baristas.

            Meanwhile, Roger gets depressed and tries to make an angsty dogma in an abandoned nursery home with some girl. She’s naked and steps on some broken glass. She gets roger’s HIV from the glass. It turns out he stepped on it too earlier, and he’s HIV positive.  Roger Sallis is HIV positive. He becomes a depressed mess and accidently kills a prostitute. He moans and cries and walks around and gets mugged for his skinny jeans while he’s waiting in line for a tablet.

            Roger and Jason don’t find each other again for a while. One day Jason is walking through a mall, and he spots Roger working in a store. He’s not wearing skinny jeans, he’s not wearing thick-rimmed glasses, and he’s not even wearing a flannel. Jason talks to Roger. Roger listens to music people have heard of. Jason screams “MY BEST FRIEND IS DEAD!” He runs out crying.

No comments:

Post a Comment