Creative Writing and Monologues and Projects
On the Topic of Life Goals
I want to make a gritty reboot of Scooby-Doo. I mean, really gritty. It'll be like a "where are they now?" sort of thing. Real gritty, you know? Like, Daphne is a stripper at Fred's skeezy club in downtown LA. Velma runs a meth lab in the basement; Shaggy and Scooby are the drug mules. Fred is venturing into organized crime and at some point the Mystery Machine will get shot up in a police chase. After so many years of trying to help the cops the team realized that mystery solving just doesn't pay the bills. They had to make a living somehow and all their dealings with the criminal underbelly of the city put them in contact with some major players. I bet Fred would be the mastermind. He was always the one with the complicated plans in the TV show after all, so I bet he'd make these elaborate deals and power plays against various mafioso. Of course, the plans would always go awry because Scooby messed something up – but Scooby's dumb luck and a "scooby snack" or two would make it all work out in the end. Oh, and I'd kill off Scrappy-Doo as soon as I got the chance. I always hated him. I don't know, I guess I just have a lot of free time to think about this kind of stuff. Who the hell would want to make a gritty reboot of Scooby-Doo? Probably just me.
I really want to make a gritty reboot of Scooby-Doo, but I can't. I'm still just a film student. I don't have those kind of resources yet. I don't have the know-how. I don't have the connections. It takes a lot to make a tv show or a film. Next time you watch a movie, and everyone else gets up to leave the theater, wait and watch the credits. Count. Just try to count all the names in the credits. It takes literally hundreds of people to make a film and they all need to get paid. It is unfathomable. Absolutely insane. But, eventually, eventually I'll make that gritty reboot. There would be interest in it anyways. I figure enough people still grow up with Scooby-Doo that they’d want to watch it. I mean, I'd watch that movie. I'd watch the hell out of that movie. That's why I want to make it. I feel like too many producers and directors, these days, just don't like what they make. So many crap-tastic films come out every year: you just know that during filming those directors woke up every morning after hitting the "snooze" button - at least three times – before going to work disgusted by their 27th remake of Halloween or Texas Chainsaw Massacre only with more boobs and gore than the last one. How many different Michael Myers and chainsaws do we really need? As many as the studio wants, I suppose.
Maybe I should do a reboot of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Not a remake, but a sort of re-imagining, you know? The whole thing is about a demented family that kills and eats stupid teenagers, right? I could do something with that. Totally. Let's see…well, the family is all male, so we'll make them all female for starters. Maybe instead of a leather facemask, one just wears a lot of make-up. Instead of being real creepy looking and inbred they'll be pleasant and proper, but we'll keep that gross corpse-like grandfather. That bit is always good for a laugh, even if it is a bit grotesque. I think it'll be a nice sort of statement about gender roles in horror films: a decrepit corpse of a paternal figure loosely in control of pleasantly psychotic cannibal women that run around a Texan farmhouse killing teenagers with blatantly phallic chainsaws and hammers and meat hooks. It's brilliant is what it is.
I should make that film. I can't wait. Like I said, right now, I’m still just in school. All I can do is get my degree out of the way as fast as possible. All I can do is read about film and art and get the most out of being here. After that, I’ll be able to make my venture out into the film industry and create my very own Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I guess I'm really just drawn to the idea of re-doing stuff that already exists. Just because one filmmaker made a film one way doesn't mean it should end there. I don't mean plain remakes, I hate those. I think that anything one person builds another person has the right to tear it right down and rebuild it however they like. Take Beowulf for example. The classic epic tale of Beowulf fighting off the terrible creature Grendel and going on crazy adventures and fighting a dragon and all that. See, the story is all good and cool, but it's all from Beowulf's point of view. There was this writer, Tom Gardner, and he thought like I think: let's tear it down and build something new! So he wrote a book called Grendel - see, its the story of Beowulf, but from Grendel's point of view. Grendel gets to explain his murderous rampage and his mommy issues. We get to see this whole other side of the story that we never saw in the original. Margaret Atwood did the same thing, only different: she wrote this book called The Penelopiad, you see, it's all about The Odyssey but its told by Odysseus' wife, Penelope, looking back on her life after she died and went to Hades. In The Odyssey we never really hear from Penelope; in The Penelopiad, she finally gets her say about everything.
It's really…. postmodern. I guess. Do you know what postmodernism is? It's really cool. Basically, if existentialism asks, "why am I alive?" then postmodernism asks, "why do you presume there is an answer to that?" It seems a bit nihilistic, sure, but it forces you to think about the concept of meaning and assigning meaning. There is this famous postmodern art installation by Joseph Kosuth that goes by the name "One and Three Chairs". There is a chair, a picture of that chair, and an enlarged dictionary definition of the word chair. This piece begs the question: how can we possibly have a single and concrete definition of "chair"? After all, each of the three chairs is a valid representation of "chair". Meaning is flexible and inconsistent in everyday life and we take it for granted: no one thinks about the meaning they've assigned "chair" but this installation makes us realize how fragile and relative that meaning really is.
Of course, always take these sorts of ideas with a mountain of salt, or else you'll go mad. The very concept of realizing that our entire library of meanings barely means anything at all could send an individual into a complete downward spiral. We're talking complete nihilism. If our lives can mean anything, then our lives can mean nothing at all. If Scooby-doo means can mean justice, then Scooby-doo can mean corruption. If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you. Oscar Wilde said that. Brilliant author and you've got to admit: he's got a point. In fact, this is why a lot of intense questions of postmodernism and nihilism and existentialism are posed in joke form. Difficult stuff to digest but it makes you laugh in case the question frightens you.
Take this one, for example: Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side!
I've always had a sort of love/hate relationship with this joke. Well, I guess it is really an anti-joke. First of all, who is this chicken and why should I care? Is this chicken actually important or is it just some random chicken we, the audience of the joke, have just magically stumbled upon? Is it a magic chicken? Does it belong to someone? Does it have a family or some sort of story? WE just don't know. WE get absolutely no contextual clues about this chicken or the situation. All we get is "why did the chicken cross the road?" But, this is entirelyx intentional. We're supposed to either fill in our own answers or cope with the fact that there might not even be an answer. This is a postmodern exercise really. Just like defining "chair" we are faced with defining "chicken". It isn't a red chicken, it isn't one with spots or funny feathers, it isn't short or large, its just a "chicken" and whoever is telling the joke is manipulating our minds into filling that ambiguous chicken-sized gap with whatever we define as "chicken". I guarantee that whatever I imagine that chicken to look like is completely different to what you are imagining right now.
I say love/hate because I hate that this joke it puts us in a position of unwilling agency. Asking that question assumes that we are in some sort of position to actually know the damn answer - yet, we have no idea. Whenever I'm asked, I'm overcome by this sudden wave of guilt and shame: I should know why that chicken crossed the road, and I can't believe that I never took enough interest to actually know why. Great. Thanks, you jerk joke-teller. Now I feel bad. Ultimately, there is simply no way to know the answer. Like I said: no clues or context. It is impossible to know that chicken's motives. We've been faced with an impossible task and I feel nothing but helplessness at my inability to understand this enigma of a chicken. I'm helpless to understand a mere chicken, how pathetic is that? Even if it is a hypothetical chicken, this chicken is still a complete mystery. Behind its imaginary beak and beady eyes lies the greatest mystery I've ever encountered. This simple chicken is suddenly more mysterious and interesting than James Bond. I should make a reboot of James Bond, too. I'll figure that one out later.
Anyways, the joke always gets me frustrated. Why did the chicken cross the road? Why don't we just ask the chicken? Hell, why are you asking me? I don't even give a shit about this chicken. I shouldn't anyways. You know what? Fuck this chicken! But, I digress.
The joke inevitably comes to it's natural conclusion: to get to the other side. Wow. And just the set up alone gave me a lot to think about. Now this punch line? To get to the other side of WHAT? The road? I doubt it. If we have such an enigmatic and abstract postmodern chicken on our hands I think it is safe to assume "the other side" has some deeper meaning to it. Maybe the other side means the afterlife. Maybe the journey of crossing the road is the chicken's life and getting to the other side means its racing towards death… which is pretty depressing for a chicken. But it makes you think, doesn't it? Maybe this is a cautionary tale: don't go through life just to get to the end. Maybe this is cautionary tale: while the road can be filled with cars and hazards that might kill you, if all you do is try to just get to the other side, what's the point? You die anyways. Or maybe, the other side of the road is irrelevant. Maybe the chicken is counting on being hit by a car or truck so it can die and get to "the other side". Do we find out, at long last, that our chicken is actually suicidal? That dramatically changes the question! Why did the chicken cross the road suddenly is transformed into why did the chicken commit suicide? Come to think of it: chickens only have beaks and claws, they can't really kill themselves at all - crossing the road to get hit by a truck could be the only way. And, hell, maybe our chicken really needed to commit suicide, we don't know what its life has been like. Maybe it just can't stand to lay another egg that will only be stolen by a farmer, put into a crate, bought, sold, and fried up with bacon. Maybe it thinks that suicide is the only way out this miserable reproductive slavery. Or, maybe the chicken is really a metaphor for ourselves. Why would we commit suicide? The question is a hard and very serious one, but I suppose masking that sort of deep existential crisis as a chicken joke is a pretty good way of disguising such a serious topic. The next time someone asks you why the chicken crossed the road, I suggest you give a good hard think as to why they are asking about your mental health!
Of course, maybe there is just some food on the other side of the road and our chicken is just a bit peckish. I guess we'll never know - and that is my point. We'll never know the meaning of the joke or the chicken's motives and we have to live with that fact: something has no knowable meaning. All we can do is make up meanings for ourselves. All we can do question existing meanings. All we can do is analyze the chicken's motives. All we can do is tear down our concept of meaning and build it anew and THAT is why I want to make a gritty reboot of Scooby-Doo.
The camera, in a car, pulls into the driveway of a suburban house and parks. The shot lingers and then fades to black.
Thanks for reading.
- Jay
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