Sunday, January 4, 2009

Lounge Act bonus scenes!

So, a few years back I decided to write a movie. Then, I made that movie.
during the filming, it was clear to me that the people that provided the money were
1) not writers
2) not visionaries
3) were trying to ease my creativity out of the project any way they could
4) trying to get a job for every stoner pal they had and
5) complete asses.
I struggled with the ruining of my first full length project for quite some time, but ultimately decided to not be angry anymore. every filmmaker worth his or her salt has a horror story, and now i have mine (plus, I got to read the screenplay that the people that ruined my movie were working on next...P.U.!!)

Still, I had to have final say over the characters in this thing, so i decided to kill them off. it was "death Therapy" as Bob Wiley would put it.

So, here we are- it's a little dark, but perhaps it helps to look at it as black comedy- tounge in cheek. I know I laughed a lot while writing it!

And if yyou're interested in seeing the film, it is available online somewhere- but don't buy it! It's not the right edit and they cut me out of making any money on that as well!



In most happy or “Hollywood endings”, if we were to add one more scene or page, we’d find that things weren’t so happy. No one actually gets to have “happily ever after!” the adult human mind shouldn’t even be able to process that concept!
So, It’s liquidation time. I’m tying up loose ends out in the boondocks of the J’Meliverse. Sadly, this means a lot of fictional characters you may or may not have heard of will have to die.
So, I start this experiment by taking out the main characters of my first feature “film”, Lounge Act. While no one actually got an according to Webster’s happy ending in the film, the more I think about these people I created the more I realize they shouldn’t be allowed to continue the sad sorry lives I gave them and think that they’re having a good time. So I’m taking them down a peg.
I would imagine that some psychiatrist somewhere has a theory about a writer that hates his own characters to this extent.
I don’t care. Let’s do some undignified deaths!

1.
It was a Wednesday afternoon, the day before Thanksgiving.
Ringo rolled of out of bed and slipped into the bathroom to gobble down the handful of colorful pills he’d stolen the night before in a daze of tequila and cough syrup fueled excitement.
He stood there, staring into the mirror through bloodshot eyes at his fried blonde hair. He was only a few years shy of 30 years old, but his youth was already shot. He knew better than to look too long at his reflection in the mirror- he didn’t want to see what he thought others saw when they looked at him.
Ringo could hear last night’s conquest rustling in the other room, preparing for the walk of shame. He’d become quite accustomed to hiding in the bathroom until his rough trade left in the mornings.

He’d even taken to hiding beer in the toilets tank.

First there was the rustling, then quiet. This was when it would set in that Ringo wouldn’t be emerging from the bathroom until they were gone. There were 20 minutes of getting dressed, and then the slam of the front door.
It all happened like clockwork.
After the slam, Ringo finished the beer and returned to the bedroom get dressed. The room smelled of sweat and shame and other things to rude to mention. The fair-haired party boy he’d brought home hadn’t asked for protection, so Ringo didn’t use any. Tonight he’d go out to the dark and loud places and do it all again. He’d take the drugs, wave the glow sticks, and stalk the boys that weren’t smart enough to know that he was using them.
He blogged the lyrics to an old Cure song for no particular reason, vomited, and retook the pills he sifted from his own sick.
A few miles away, his mother made a pumpkin pie and waited for a call that would never come…


2.
Joey only ever really wanted two things in life: to be a lounge singer and to find true love. Sadly, he had no idea how to go about either of these dreams and his misguided attempts would lead to him being found naked and dead in a cemetery- In an apparent murder suicide with his best friend Ringo. But that was for tomorrow. Today, he had come as close to happiness as he ever had, and ever would-
Today he rose from bed and told himself that he was turning it all around. He’d had his heart broken by the only woman that had ever come close to loving him back, and he had lost the only job that he’d ever loved. But it felt good. It felt like he was getting a fresh start. The sun was brighter, somehow. Joey decided to take a swim, and found that Jennifer was already in the pool. He usually avoided her, but this morning was different. He jumped into the pool, swam to her, and kissed her. To Joey, it just felt like the thing to do. For Jennifer, it was all she’d ever wanted. They floated there and kissed in the pool on this sunny and unusually warm November morning. For the rest of the day they made love and barely spoke. He was happy, finally, unaware that this was his last day.
He was unaware that his best friend was in love with him.
Today was a new day, the greatest day, you could say- seeing as he’d turn up draped naked and deceased in a cemetery in 12 hours time.


3
Tick-Tock cowered behind the counter of the five and dime and tried to maintain her glamour as she bled allover the blue and white tile floor. She had the cop’s off duty piece that she’d managed to steal thirty minutes before, but only two rounds left. He white blouse was completely crimson now. She held the place where she’d been shot in the gut and tried to forget that and the cries of the girl across the aisle were beginning to annoy her a great deal.
She yelled at the girl to shut up, but couldn’t make eye contact. She did, though, look into the dead eyes of the girl’s mother. The girl cried and held the woman’s lifeless body close to her own.
Tock could hear back up arriving outside. She thought about how much she’d like to shoot her way out of the store. She wished she could apologize to her sons, Cam and Flinch, for giving them up to the system to be raised in foster care. She regretted not having a complete sex change-

for some reason, being shot had given her quite an unladylike erection.

She’d decided that one round would be for the girl across the aisle, and she’d put the last one in her own brain. She couldn’t go back to prison- she looked too good, but as long as she had the equipment, she be going to a men’s facility. And even if she did manage to fight them all off, there was no promise that they would let her continue the hormone therapy. At the end, it was a question of vanity.
It never occurred to her to leave the girl and just take her own life- Not for one second.

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