15 Dec 2004
Triple Threat.
I have pretty much abandoned talking about the people I work with, but this afternoon Louis asked me to take a look at the storyboards for a movie he’s working on, and there is no way in hell I can’t discuss this.
Louis is a little odd, a little paranoid, and so pretty much after every encounter with him (“hey, are you working hard or hardly working?”) he emails me to make sure he didn’t offend me in some way. This is one of the reasons I could never be mean to Louis. The other is that he is fully convinced that he is a creative genius, and even if I were to say anything, he wouldn’t believe me and would chalk it up to me not understanding his art.
A few months ago he asked if I wanted to listen to a really cool CD. I said ok. It was his, um, band, playing what seemed to be instrumental Christian rock from 1984 or so. The worst part was that he wouldn’t let me play the CD in my own cube. I had to sit there and listen to it in his cube while he played, alternately, the air guitar and air drums. Thank god he is a little bit retarded and is bad at indicating fake smiles.
He also emailed me part of a short story he wrote in which something supernatural happens, except he didn’t get that far in the story. It was all exposition, and then the dude mowing his lawn hears a boom and sees a guy running around with blood running down his face. But we never know what–ooh, spooky! But it was implied that aliens had landed. Also, he misspelled his own characters’ names. First it was Mickey O’Donnell and then two paragraphs later it was Micky O’Donell.
So it is with great regret that I said yes when he asked yesterday if I’d like to read the storyboard of a short film he’s been working on the past year. He brought it in today and after I looked at most of it, I put it back on the corner of my desk to indicate that I haven’t read it yet just so I can buy myself a few more precious hours of not having to scrape up vague comments that he could interpret into compliments. I don’t think “that’s cool” will get me out of this one.
His movie is the dark tale of a man who has a headache. He takes some of his wife’s medicine (which comes in a bottle) and immediately goes bonkers, running into the yard, taking out the landscapers (spelled “lawnscapers,” by the way), and wreaking general havoc. The pill bottle somehow gets away from him, and the rest of the movie is the guy chasing after the pill bottle, which somehow flies into someone else’s car, gets tossed in a dumpster, is found by a woman whose purse is snatched, etc etc. In the meantime, his wife comes over to deliver some divorce papers, and their daughter says, “Daddy has a headache.” The lady says she has a headache, too, and goes into the bathroom to get some aspirin. However, she finds her husband’s “Ridilin” and asks the little girl, “Is this what Daddy took?” The daughter says no. The woman then freaks out and runs out the door after Daddy, steps behind him as he has all of his wacky adventures!
After he is sidetracked by a Charlie Chaplin impersonator, some cops, and a homeless guy, the big reveal is that the pills the man took turned out to be his wife’s birth control pills.
Oh, dear lord. I have no idea what I’m going to say to him. If y’all have any suggestions, I would love to hear them.
December 15th, 2004 at 15:04
uh….okay. i’m just sitting here blinking at the screen and i have no idea what you should say to him. no way will “that’s cool” be a big enough lie. no way…
December 15th, 2004 at 15:09
tell him the story offended you.
December 15th, 2004 at 15:11
Hey, you know how I am, but I laughed out loud when I read they were birth-control pills.
December 15th, 2004 at 15:28
He totally stole my movie idea! Bastard.
December 15th, 2004 at 15:41
You know, I think I’m going to have to go the logical route and tell him that birth control pills don’t come in a bottle, thus ruining the entire movie. Plus, I mean, he devotes like 10-15 frames to the guy trying to open the bottle, during which one would assume he would read the bottle and see the giant BIRTH CONTROL label that we see in the last frame of the movie.
He did warn me that the ending was “crazy.”
December 15th, 2004 at 16:13
tell him that the subtext of the plot is just too much for the audience he could hope to reach locally and needs to send this idea to Lion’s Gate and Miramax. and then tell him that he should have the protagonist grow boobies about 2/3 of the way through the flick.
December 15th, 2004 at 16:42
tomgost, leaping off yr idea–he’s middle-aged, and it’s his wife’s estrogen/lady hormones, but she’s in some sort of control group, they’re experimental . . . and they DO come in a bottle . . .
kick in some wacky neighborhood misift kids that teach him to accept his new body & i’m in, by god.
December 16th, 2004 at 09:18
the quickest way to diffuse this situation is “wow. that was pretty cool – but you know birth control pills don’t come in a bottle.” he will then become so uncomfortable with the realization that you take birth control pills that he’ll have to leave your cube and never talk about the movie again.
or you can tell him the story that, uhm, let’s call him “mush”, told me about his friend who accidentally took a few birth control pills. actually i guess there’s really not too much to the story. but the guy wound up with a marathon boner and hot flashes.
December 16th, 2004 at 09:20
and by marathon, i mean two days straight.
December 16th, 2004 at 09:21
straight – ha!
December 16th, 2004 at 09:47
I made a movie once (haven’t we all?), and I have to say…Louis’ makes more sense AND seems more fun than mine. Fug! What does that say about me?
Oh, and you could tell him you’ve never heard of birth control pills. This would put him in the uncomfortable position of having to explain what they are. I’m guessing he will opt out of such a discussion.
December 16th, 2004 at 09:53
It’s true–Louis gets props for actually trying to make his movie, unlike the rest of us (except st. louis guy) who just sit back and let the insults fly.
That being said, birth control pills STILL don’t come in a bottle. Labeled “BIRTH CONTROL.”
December 16th, 2004 at 10:11
They should.
December 16th, 2004 at 10:31
i laffed at the reveal too.
you ladies just go crazy w/ the slightest prompting!
hee haw!
December 16th, 2004 at 10:35
Wait…what have been taking then? Sally, if I haven’t been taking birth control pills, what is in that bottle you gave me? WHAT?
Marathon Boner…heh heh. I like hearing that on the commercials for “natural male enhancement,” seek medical help if your erection lasts more than (insert extended time period here). What is a doctor going to do…put you in a room and make you watch episodes of Andy Griffith?
Better question, how are you supposed to put on pants?
December 16th, 2004 at 10:46
You can rid yourself of an unwanted erection by stripping naked and running full steam into a wall. If that fails, be prepared to pee outdoors over the course of the weekend.
December 16th, 2004 at 10:47
i have another boner story that relates to larry’s medical query. i used to work at the patient registration desk in an emergency room. one day, this guy hobbles in all hunched over. he then informs me that “i’ve had an erection for 72 hours. i’ve tried everything, and it won’t go away.” i still wonder what “everything” entailed. i mean, you could really get into a lot of mischief with a 72 hour boner. i made sure to look up his info the next day. he was given a muscle relaxer injection and discharged. probable cause: anabolic steroids.
December 16th, 2004 at 10:50
Someone who reads this blog once went to the doctor because he sprained his penis.
December 16th, 2004 at 10:55
What can I say? She was nineteen, wore horn-rimmed glasses, had a “Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain” t-shirt with the sleeves cut off, and spoke fluent French.
I don’t regret a God-damned thing.
December 16th, 2004 at 11:10
Considering his short story idea; the pills ought to be ‘lady hormones’ FOR ALIENS! That’s why they come in an unlabeled bottle and why they make him all nutty and grow boobies. In the end, when he finally catches up with the alien bottle, and his wife finalyl catches up with him, she realizes taht she really does love him. YAH!
Or you could say, “Beauty movie, not my style though.”
December 16th, 2004 at 13:34
is the movie called Control Freak?
December 16th, 2004 at 14:19
I am dying for a follow-up on this story to find out what you told him.
December 16th, 2004 at 14:23
I second: “Beauty movie, eh; not my style though”, but then I think you should ask if it’s one of those “new wave” movies. [note: not the same as nouvelle vague]
December 16th, 2004 at 15:40
UPDATE!
Um…ok. So I just went into Louis’s cube, and I shouldn’t have worried about what I was going to say. He is dedicated to his craft! He didn’t even pay any attention to me! He did attempt to explain some parts that I apparently I didn’t even read, so that was interesting, but I did point out the thing with the bottle. He said, “I know, I couldn’t think of anything else. I mean, I thought, ‘Well, one time I had shingles,’ and I could’ve used that medicine, but then, I don’t know.”
I pointed out that whatever people take for shingles wouldn’t really be something that would be easily recognizable. Then I asked, “So like, the bottle falls out of the window, and that’s the motivation for the action of the movie?” He said yes.
He also said something like “that part in the lake when they’re in the boat, and then the boat sinks and the thing in the lake that the town thinks is a sea lizard is just a hunk of junk…” I totally didn’t read it close enough.
Apparently I missed out because it was way, WAY more bizarre than I thought.
December 16th, 2004 at 16:14
I just want to point out that the sea-monster-turns-out-to-be-a-hunk-of-junk plot is clearly lifted from The Quest (aka Frog Dreaming): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091810/
Well, it’s not so much that I *wanted* to point that out as it is that I couldn’t stop myself.
Dr. H-Rock
December 16th, 2004 at 16:46
You know if you google “bottle of birth control pills”, you get about a million poorly written stories by children and psychos.
December 17th, 2004 at 09:07
Man, I swear to God this movie sounds like RagTag movie if I ever heard of one! All its missing is the funny fat guy, the latino lover guy, the smart Asian guy and the gay guy.
December 17th, 2004 at 09:16
2004 – Play’n Possum II
June 23rd, 2009 at 15:38
[...] NO, REALLY. He would then examine the turds and, if necessary, administer an enema. 9. I ran into this guy today! He is just as weird as ever. 10. Did you see how many comments there were on that post? [...]