Not Dead Yet

I'm not dead. Yet.

I've just been busy.

And considering I don't have a JOB-job, that's pretty good.

The NASM Personal Training Certification test is on Wednesday. But instead of going to the library to do some last-minute cramming for it, I'm stuck at home practicing ukulele songs.

See, I was asked to participate in this reading of a screenplay.

Now, I'm trying to be positive here. It's going to be extrememly exclusive. HBO is hosting it and it's going to be in one of their VERY private screening rooms. A bunch of old-time Broadway actors I've never heard of are in it as well. It's going to be like one big gay family reunion.

The problem here is...

...the screenplay is 101 pages of AWFUL.

I mean it. I want to know who greenlit this thing because they are SO FIRED.

Thanks to Uncle Milton's connections, I get invited to this snooty Christmas party every year with a bunch of aging Broadway folks whose ships have each sailed (and, in some instances, sunk) many MANY years ago.

One of these people is a woman named Little Cello. Like the instrument. I got to talking to her at the party last year because I find it easy to charm cougars and didn't feel like abandoning my morals and delving into faux-flirty conversations with a bunch of withered, letcherous old musical theatre men who were eyeing me over their gin martinis.

Anyway, Little Cello has written a screenplay. And I might be perfect for one of the roles! It's the semi-autobiographical story of when she was an actress in the early 80s. A new president was elected and his son just HAPPENED to live in the apartment directly above hers.

She told the charming story of how she met the secret service as they monitored the apartment building. One of them secretly longed to be an actor. She gave a group of them acting lessons and taught them how to articulate and memorize lines and cute little things like that.

Sounds like a charming idea for a little movie, huh?

Not when Little Cello makes this sweet little episode of her life into an absurd Mel Brooks-type movie.

But even Mel Brooks movies make sense. Even they have characters you care about, even if you know they're not "real".

So what starts out as a story about following your dreams and the power of personal expression to change the world quickly dissolves into a shockingly lewd story filled with really vile sex jokes, a chorus of offensively gay men supporting Little Cello (who doesn't seem to realize she was their hag), and ends with a chase through a Buddhist temple in Tibet with Little Cello and her entourage being shot at by Italian mobsters (some of which die but appear three scenes later with band-aids over their wounds). She leads the crew to perform her awful play at the U.N Building before world leaders and diplomants. The story ends with the once-starving actors dressed in 17th Century aristocrat attire being waited on by butlers and servants as they go in for their auditions.

I know what you're thinking. "But Fork, that actually sounds like fun!"

Well, yes, I think it WOULD be fun. If it weren't for the fact that the story keeps dipping in and out of realistic romantic drama land. It doesn't know what it wants to be. It wants to be a big, fabulous production and at the same time, a goofy romance between Little Cello and her Harrison Ford-esque secret service guardian.

On top of this, I've tried to impress upon the director and Little Cello herself that I'm not ACTUALLY a musician. I learn chord positions. I "pretend" to be a real ukulele player.

So imagine my delight when they made me "musical director" and asked me to write an original song for the screenplay. On the spot.

Yeah. Seriously.

I would keep going, but I have to get to practicing. Oh man. This is gonna be nuts.