Mer Rouge (Part 38)

Fornier was white as a clam as he watched the brothers stroll up to the porch. He was in the kitchen glancing out the window. He was clutching a shotgun. The lights were off. One brother stepped forth and buzzed the doorbell and then knocked. Simpson approached Fornier from the back. “What the hell did you get us into?” he whispered. “Wasn’t a daisy chain supposed to go off?”

“Get back there and guard the entrance to the cell block,” he spat back. “We’re onto plan B.”

Simpson lightly jogged back down the darkened corridor toward the locked cell. Fornier stood watch. He saw one brother remain on the porch while the other walked the perimeter of the sheriff’s office. As he started glancing through the windows, Fornier ducked. “Shit,” he whispered to himself. 

The buzzing continued. A few moments later, the deputy climbed back to his feet and peered through the window. The two men were standing on the porch. One lifted a small caliber pistol and fired it at the lock. There was a kicking sound and the door crashed open. Sweat streamed down Fornier’s face. As the clanking of leather boots echoed through the entry hall, the deputy knew that the first room they’d look at would be the kitchen. He picked up a large machete he found in the tool crib. He waited silently hidden, planked up against the wall by the threshold where he couldn’t be seen. A shadow loomed large over the threshold. And as the brother crossed it into the kitchen, Fornier lifted the machete and plowed it into the brother’s chest. The man collapsed to the ground and sprayed blood across the tile and cabinets. With him on the ground, the deputy stepped into the hallway and opened fire on the other. The remaining brother was caught off guard and took some shrapnel to the right shoulder. Rounding the corner came Simpson ripping bullet after bullet. The brother was outmanned and outgunned and began retreating towards the entrance. 

Outside, where the floodlights shone brightly, Oren and the priest heard the exchange of fire. They halted where they stood, a sitting duck. The priest rushed to the far side of the building and away from the entrance. Oren followed closely. He peeked around the corner to see the brother firing a shotgun into the entrance and backing away down the porch and toward the squad car. The deputies returned fire. Once to the vehicle, the brother opened the driver’s side door and squatted down. The windshield glass shattered into a million pieces. He reached for a frag grenade and pulled out the pin. And as the deputies reloaded, the brother stood up from the driver’s side door to hurl the object. Yet the deputies were faster on the drawl. Simpson had his shotgun fully reloaded when he lifted it and fired at the brother’s throwing hand. Bits of finger and bone exploded and the grenade dropped to the gravel. The brother leapt over the hood and the device detonated, igniting a daisy chain of improvised explosives. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

Mer Rouge (Part 37)

A meager fog drifted across the field as midnight struck. The priest and Oren crouched in the dew ridden thicket no more than a hundred yards from the sheriff’s station. Inside the brush, they swatted away at the legions of mosquitoes and ants pecking at their extremities. The priest held the binoculars to his eyes. While the flood lights illuminated the station and adjoining jailhouse, there was no sign of anyone. “Might as well get comfortable,” the priest said, handing the whiskey flask to Oren. “We’re fixin to be here all night.”

Oren took the flask and downed half of it. He handed it back to the priest and the priest cursed. “Goddamn son, are you nervous?”

“I’ve never shot at anyone,” said Oren.

“You shot me.”

“That was different.”

“Then I’ll handle the shootin’.”

“I’ve seen you in a firefight. You’re no better shot than I am.”

“Well I ain’t died yet. So I must be doing sumthin right.”

The priest peered back through the binoculars and Oren put a cigarette to his lips. “No smoking,” warned the priest. “I don’t want them to see the light.”

“There ain’t no one out here.”

“None that you see.”

Oren sat silently with his ass planted in the wet grass and shotgun at his feet. The priest pulled out a full carrot from his smock and placed one end between his teeth. Headlights pierced through the fog and were moving in the direction of the jailhouse. The priest took a bit of the carrot. “Someone’s coming,” he said as he loudly munched.

Oren picked up the shotgun and leapt to his feet. “Hold on now!” the priest whispered cautiously. “Let’s see what happens.” 

The vehicle rolled up to the gravel pit and parked by the front entrance. The priest took a closer look at the vehicle. It was a squad car of some sort. He could barely make out the words. Two men stepped out. Police officers. “Is it sheriff’s department?” Oren asked.

“Dont think so. City police of some sort. They might pickin up or dropping off a prisoner.”

He watched the two officers saunter up to the entrance. The darkness was too thick at first. But as the officers came closer, the bright flood lights illuminated their faces. “So just regular PD then?” asked Oren.

The priest reached into his smock and pulled out the .38. “No,” he said. “It ain’t regular PD at all.” He climbed to his feet and did the best he could to knock the wet grass from his smock. Then, with the carrot still dangling from his mouth, he looked to Oren. “Get your shotgun,” he said.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Mer Rouge (Part 36)

Sound asleep in his bottom bunk, Moses shook him awake. “Sumthin’s happenin,” he whispered. Hutch lifted his head groggy eyed. “Sumthin’s always happenin’,” he told his bunk mate. Moses slapped him across the face. “No fool! This is serious! Simpson and Fornier are running around like a bunch of crackheads!”

Hutch threw the covers off him and approached the bars to see what Moses was bitching about. He could hear some commotion towards the front office as other inmates were waking up to listen. “Is this unusual?” he asked Moses. 

“Shhh! Shut the fuck up! I can’t hear!”

A minute or two later, Fornier busted the door open into the cellblock. He was drenched in sweat with stains around his pits and man tits and he was carrying a shotgun. “Alright everyone, listen up,” he announced cordially, “any minute now you might hear a ruckus. Like some gunshots and whatnot. I assure you that it’s nuthin to worry about it and the situation is under control. If a fire breaks out, just sit tight. It’ll get taken care of shortly. Get some rest and we’re gonna have a good day tomorrow. It’ll be Sunday morning. The chaplain will be here and we’ll get extra pudding. Alright, sleep tight fellas.” Then the office door slammed shut.

“What the fuck man!” another inmate shouted down the hall.

Moses scratched his head and furrowed his brow. “Oh lord, this is bad,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Hutch asked.

“What do you mean ‘what do I mean’? Did you not hear what he said?!”

“He said it was under control.”

“You can’t be that dense.”

“What? A few gunshots? They’re probably shooting at some criminals. We’re criminals too! Relax! We’re safe!”

“I should beat some sense into you. Not just gunshots but fires too! Mother fucker, if this place catches on fire, we’re trapped behind these bars! They ain’t comin to rescue us!”

Hutch brushed it off. “Ehh,” he said. “He was just being hyperbolic.”

“I don’t know how the hell you know what that word means. But a fire ain’t nuthin to take lightly. Especially round here.”

“Why? Fires start a lot around here?”

“You’re goddamn right they do!”

Meanwhile, about five hundred yards behind the sheriff’s department, there was a parish road running east to west. Only the intermittent glow of fireflies provided any light. Oren and the Priest cut off the lights to their stolen Toyota Selica Supra. It was dark brown and wasn’t easily seen from the road. Oren was driving. The Priest was looking through a pair of binoculars at the large barren field separating them and the sheriff’s station. “See anything?” asked Oren.

“Nah. Not even a deer turd.”

Oren kept his hands clasped around the steering wheel. He took in the smell of the brand new upholstery. “How did you find this beauty?” he asked the priest.

“You don’t live as long as I do without learning a thing or two,” he told Oren without taking his eyes off the binoculars.

“So what do we do now?”

The priest panned the binoculars off to a thicket of wood just off to the left. “I reckon we outta hide the car,” he said. “Then we hunker down over in that thicket.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

007 First Light II: Second Light

Listen, I know I said that I wouldn’t talk about James Bond again until Denis Villeneuve announced the name and cast of the next film, but there’s a lot at stake here. Despite the talent and resources that Amazon has poured into the 007 franchise, I’m still bearish on its prospects. Disney did the same thing for Star Wars and look at what that got us. And before they got their hands on Star Wars, JJ Abrams and Alex Kurtzman torpedoed Star Trek. So all I’m saying is that we should prepare ourselves for the enshittification of yet another legacy IP. For 60 years prior, The Broccoli name, in addition to being behind the famous vegetable, rested on the quality and success of the James Bond franchise. That is no longer the case. Jeff Bezos’, Denis Villeneuve’s, Steven Knight’s, Amy Pascal’s, and David Heyman’s careers will all go on regardless of the success of the next production. In other words, James Bond is no longer a family operation. It’s now a product that can be bought and traded like any other commodity. So beware.

But, on a positive note, the first Bond video game in years has been overwhelmingly well received. And it should have. Whoever made it apparently spent $200 million to make it. I watched the first 13 minutes of it on YouTube. I’m not a gamer, so I can’t assess its quality as a game. But I guess the premise is that you play as James Bond, starting as a British SAS operator, on until he receives his license to kill from MI6. From what I saw, it didn’t feel like James Bond, but so what? I suppose the idea is to follow him from being James Bond, common pissant, to becoming James Bond 007.

There’s a lot of speculation over how much this video game is informing us on the future of the film franchise. And it shouldn’t come as a surprise that, in my personal view, watching the “birth” of James Bond 007 might make a good video game, but it would make a disastrous film concept. I’ll reiterate that James Bond has no beginning. He’s more myth than man. While No Time to Die controversially killed him at its conclusion, death is such a connecting theme across all the movies that I thought it was a fitting end to Daniel Craig’s tenure. While Casino Royale did show Bond briefly before he became 007, it was maybe three minutes of the total runtime and it was disconnected from the larger plot. Casino Royale also hinted at Bond being prior SAS, which would make sense, but should that aspect of his career be explored?

There’s a lot of problems with it. First off, Bond is a lone wolf. Being former military (I’m a veteran of World War Two AND One), I can tell you that Bond’s proclivity for winging it and ignoring orders whenever it damn well suits him wouldn’t go over well in any Army. And two, Bond is well educated and has an appreciation for the finer things in life. That alone wouldn’t prevent him being in the Army and/or Royal Navy, but, with all due respect to those who served, his posh lifestyle wouldn’t mesh with military culture. ADDITIONALLY, being Cambridge educated, he probably wouldn’t have been an enlisted grunt. He would have certainly entered military life as a commissioned officer. So James Bond as a troop commander? I mean, it makes more sense than seeing him as an enlisted piss ant. But even then, Bond would likely grow tired of this role, probably not understanding why his troops don’t have the same kill and survival skills that he has. In short, while a great filmmaker can make anything work, I think it’s best if we leave this aspect of James Bond’s life to the video games and not put it on the big screen.

But there’s something here that producers HAVE to get right. While there’s been many interpretations to the character, there’s something they all share: James Bond is a broken man. He’s not a moral man. If the winds have blown slightly differently, he would have been MI6’s enemy and not its hero. The franchise isn’t about tropes and cliches—the tux’s, the martinis, the women, or the gadgets—those are all distractions for both the audience AND for the character himself. Because James Bond at his core, for a lack of a better description, is suicidal. He’s nothing without the mission. Only danger provides any sense of comfort. Long before the SAS and long before MI6, James Bond made a wager on himself: It’s much more interesting to be alive than to be dead.

And whatever caused this gigantic hole in his soul can be hinted at. But it can never, ever, EVER be explored in great detail.

Somebody stop this man

I was having a good day. I had a good clean, 30 minute shit. Had some ice cream. Drank some coffee. Then I had another 30 minute shit. The only thing that could have ruined this day was learning that Niell Blomkamp was going to remake Starship Troopers.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/new-starship-troopers-movie-in-the-works-1236163598/

I don’t need to remind my audience that Paul Verhoeven went on an unholy terror through Hollywood from the late 80s through the 90s. He arguably made three of the greatest modern sci-fi classics: Robocop, Total Recall and Starship Troopers. Two of those movies have already been remade with iffy results I might add. Do they think the third time’s a charm?

I will say though that Blomkamp does have an it factor despite all his flaws. He understands the language of cinema, even though it has only came together once beautifully. And that was nearly 20 years ago with District 9. So in his defense, I would love to see Niell hit another one out of the park. I just wish it wasn’t Starship Troopers.

I mean, isn’t there another Robert Heinlein book he could make? I’m pretty sure there’s a wealth of material there.

But judging the politics of Blomkamp’s other films, I don’t suspect he’ll be embracing some of Heinlein’s more “fascistic” undertones. Yet that was the genius of Verhoeven’s satirical take. He didn’t really make us “judge” the morality of Heinlein’s work. He wanted us to either laugh at or be utterly horrified by it in the way that only the director of Robocop can do. It is, at face value, a reactionary film told from a reactionary perspective, except the audience is in on the joke. It was the correct take and Verhoeven threaded that needle perfectly.

Blomkamp, I fear, might go a little heavy handed with it. While I think he’s great with visuals and pacing, his weak spot is screenwriting. That’s a big one. Chappie and Elysium could have been great. But there was something lacking there that could have delivered an emotional punch had the script been cleaned up a bit. My hope is that he won’t overcomplicate things. Blomkamp is pretty damn good at giving us a fulfilling meal in an under two hour runtime. He doesn’t need to change that up now. Just keep it simple. No interwoven narratives; A leads to B which leads to C and so on, and it all culminates in a satisfying and emotional climax.

You’ve done it before, Neill. You can do it again.

Mer Rouge (Part 35)

The priest tossed the cigarette butt into the grass. Only the faded blue hues of the night sky lingered above. It was a bright crescent moon. “I reckon we outta head out soon,” the priest said. 

“Tonight?” asked Oren.

“Yup.”

“Well what’s the plan, Jack?”

He looked up to the sky to see the stars speckled against the black void as he stroked his beard. “I don’t suppose I have much of one,” the priest said. “Them two boys are slippery as a snake. It don’t do to make a plan. Just stay one step ahead of em’”

“Any ideas?”

“Just one. We scope out the sheriff’s department. That’s where you’re brother and Fornier probably are. The Nine certainly know that. If there’s a time to strike, it would be tonight.”

Oren nodded. “You think we can get him outta there?”

“Who?”

“My brother.”

“Well, if them boys fuck enough shit up, we could probably bust him out without anyone noticing.”

“Will he be a fugitive?”

“Dunno. He’ll be either that or presumed dead, especially if they burn the place down. Either way, he’ll be better out here than in there.”

“What are you gonna do after you kill em?”

“They ain’t whom I’m after.”

“Castor?”

“Yup.”

The sound of crickets filled the long pause. Oren was still holding the .38 in his hand. He held it up and looked at it. “I ain’t never killed anyone,” he said.

“Don’t worry about it,” the priest told him. “They haven’t been alive for a long time. They’ve only been delaying the inevitable.”

“And what about you?”

The priest said nothing to that. He checked his 12 gauge Mossberg and slung a satchel of ammunition over his shoulder. Oren didn’t know what to do with the .38. “So I’ve been wondering,” he said. “If I shot you, you wouldn’t die?”

“Is that what you’ve been thinking about all day?” the priest asked him.

Oren only replied with a smirk.

“There’s only one way to find out for sure,” the priest said. He faced Oren head on and spread his arms out like an open target. Oren froze. “If you want to know what it’s like to shoot someone, here’s your chance,” the priest taunted.

Oren lifted and aimed the pistol. He squeezed the trigger the bullet whizzed past the Priest’s head. It was exhilarating. The priest checked himself to make sure he wasn’t hit. “You know what,” he said, “maybe you should take the shotgun.”

They exchanged weapons and as the priest turned around and walked back towards the church, Oren lifted the shotgun and blasted one round in his direction. The priest winced and grabbed the back of his neck where a few pieces of shrapnel hit him. “Jesus Christ!” he screeched. Oren was momentarily stunned. He ran up to the priest. “Oh fuck! I’m sorry!”. But the priest looked at his blood covered hand and cursed. “Bullets can’t kill me but they certainly hurt like shit, you fuckin asshole!”

TO BE CONTINUED…

I need to formally apologize

It appears that my man Paul “Shreddin” Schrader, the greatest screenwriter of all time, has crossed over into the technological abyss. First he discussed his “AI girlfriend”, which, honestly, if you know anything about Schrader, it doesn’t shock me that he had one. But now he has seemingly embarrassed the writing community by embracing AI use in the craft of screenwriting. For neo-Luddites like myself, this is a sad day. Paul might as well have been the last soldier to cross the Rubicon. So the die is cast, folks. It’s now you, me, and the human soul versus Hollywood and the billionaire-technological complex.

Of course my opinions have evolved over time regarding AI. If you recall, my initial reaction to it was kinda ambivalent. To be more precise, I actually found it humorous. I simply chalked it up to a dumb computer program designed to say stupid shit for our amusement exclusively. I never thought that people would use it for legitimate purposes like research, brain storming, and for real and honest creativity. But that’s what The Man wants. They want to slowly chip away at our god-given capacity for reasoning and creative thought. They want to eradicate the soul itself and replace it with a far more malleable software to replace human ingenuity. In short, They want you dumb and under their thumb. Sadly, this was apparent to me when ChatGPT arrived, but I woefully underestimated how aggressively this technology would be promoted and deployed.

The sad part is that even if AI never fully rivals human intelligence, its damage will leave a very real scar. Data centers and their tyrannical demand for land, power, and water will only pile on to the ecological disaster that is the 21st century. So think about that the next time you ask Claude to write a Mad Men script where Don Draper pitches armed robbery while COMMITTING armed robbery. Think about the water you’re wasting.

We, as writers and artists, have a moral imperative to reject artificial intelligence. Save creative integrity. Save the earth. And for god sake, save the human soul.

Mer Rouge (Part 34)

At the abandoned St. Chyrsostom Church, the Priest witnessed the sun descend below the thicket of trees which were aligned along the bayou horizon. Behind the church, Oren held the .38 service revolver and aimed it at a full can of baked beans resting on top of a tree stump roughly 20 yards in front of him. He squinted his right eye and pulled the trigger. The bullet nicked the right side and tomato beans oozed out of the can. He adjusted and tried again. The next bullet struck the top surface of the stump and ricocheted onto the can and knocked it into the weeds. Oren nodded. “I’m not such a bad shot after all.”

“It’s gonna take more than bullets to kill the Nine,” the priest said as he rounded the corner.

“You mean those two guys?”

“Precisely. A gun might stop them momentarily. But it will take the harnessing of flames to defeat them.”

“So, you mean fire?”

“Yes. They’re an ancient breed—made immortal by the unholy water of a forsaken god. Water is indeed a powerful and sacred force. But its only rival is the flame, tapped into and harnessed by mankind as an affront to the spirit realm. This triggered a holy war between man and the gods. A war which persists to this day.”

“So you’re saying I need to light them on fire?”

“To put it bluntly, yes.”

“And how do you suggest I do that?”

“With great difficulty I must say. But it has been done. There’s a reason why there’s only two of them left, ya know? Though these two have persisted for a long time. A long, long time.”

“Since you know all of this, have you partaken in the drinking of this so-called unholy water?”

The priest smirked and looked away from Oren. “I was hopin you wouldn’t ask that,” he said.

“It was the only logical question, sir, whatever your name is.”

The priest gazed off to that deep sunset like gazing off into a faded memory. Then he dug into his fourth pack of cigarettes for the day and put one to his lips. “Shit’s gettin’ old,” he said as a plume of smoke rose before his eyes. “Supposedly mankind is to evolve into a higher state of being, like angels walking the earth. That’s what history has told us. But insofar as I can tell, man has been cursed and wretched since the day I first met one many years ago. Ain’t nothing changed. We’re just trading one field of shit for another. You see, the thing they don’t tell you about forever is that forever is a lonely place. You see one generation pass only to be replaced by another doomed cohort. It kinda makes you wonder what we’re clinging onto. But the worst part is the days pass into seconds and your friends become nothing more to your memory than a stranger passing in the night.”

“Sorry I asked,” Oren said.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Mer Rouge (Part 33)

Lines formed on his forehead as he chewed on his thumbnail. “Uh, when did this happen?”

“A couple of days ago. In downtown Vicksburg. Since you haven’t been by the house in a few days, I hadn’t had the chance to tell ya.”

“Okay, well, did they catch the guy who did it?”

“No. It was two men apparently.”

“Two men? No mention of a priest?”

“No. Why would a priest be involved?”

“Forget it. I don’t suppose they got a good look at the two men, did they?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Shit.”

“Also Jerry, a couple of Oak Ridge officers stopped by the house looking for you.”

It was all beginning to click. His heart sank to his feet and he struggled to get out his words. “Oak Ridge, eh? So uh, what do they want with me?”

“They said they was just needin to talk to ya.”

“What did you tell em?”

“I said I hadn’t seen you in a couple of days. I told em you’re usually at the jail on Saturday nights.”

Fornier’s hands began to shake. He opened the flask and emptied it into his mouth. Then he cleared his throat and attempted to end the conversation. “Alright, thanks Ma. Talk to you later..”

“Wait! Your father wanted me to tell you…,” but the phone was already nestled in its cradle. The deputy jumped to his feet, took out his keys, and unlocked the line of shotguns aligned along the office backwall. He took one out, dug through the cabinets, and loaded it with buckshots. Then he called Deputy Simpson in. “Take one of these,” he said to him, offering a shotgun.

“What the hell is going on?!” Simpson yelled.

“I just received a uh, terroristic threat to the jailhouse.”

“Well shouldn’t we call Dirk?”

“No!” Fornier shouted with an unexpected ferocity. Seeing the shocked expression on his partner’s face, Fornier took a breather. “It’s alright Simpson,” he explained calmly, “I can effectively neutralize the situation on my own. I just need you to sit up and be on the lookout.”

“For what exactly?”

“Anything suspicious. Radio me if you see sumthin. I’m gonna head out to the tool crib for a few minutes, okay? I won’t be long.”

Fornier bolted for the rear entrance, past the basketball court, and out towards the shed just beyond the gate. Once inside, he looked for anything flammable and threw all he could find into an undersized wheelbarrow. When he was finished, he rushed the wheelbarrow to the front of the jailhouse and as he did, crap would occasionally fall out of it. But once on the front porch, he dug through his gatherings.  He attempted to recall some tricks he learned from his ordinance days in Vietnam. Simpson stepped out onto the porch, shotgun in hand, and watched his fellow deputy move manically. “What the hell are you doing?” he asked him.

“Go back inside!” ordered Fornier. “Get me whatever munitions you can find!”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Mer Rouge (Part 32)

As evening settled in, Moses laid in his top bunk, hands clasped over his stomach and eyes closed. Below him, Hutch tossed and turned. Tears quietly flooded down his cheeks. Moses could feel his bunk mate’s anguish and tried to disregard it. Hutch watched the sun slowly settle through the barred windows that aligned the top wall and wiped away the tears on his sleeve. When the light completely faded, he called for his bunk mate. “Moses, you awake?” he softly called.

“Yeah.”

“What happened to you today?”

“Same ol bullshit.”

“They fuckin tortured me.”

“I know.”

“Are you from around here?”

“Mer Rouge?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit naw man.”

“Where do you come from?”

“All over.”

“Well where do you come from originally?”

Moses unclasped his hands and rubbed his face. “West Africa,” he said.

“West Africa? How the hell did you get to the states?”

“It’s a long goddamn story.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Why you asking so many questions man?”

Hutch rolled over to his side and placed his pillow under his head. “I’m just trying to forget where I am. That’s all.”

Regretting his tone, Moses took a deep breath. “I’ve wandered all over,” he said. “Egypt. The Middle East. Now how the hell did you make it to this shithole?”

“Well first, I clogged a shitter in Arkansas…”

Hutch’s explanation was rudely interrupted by a loud clanging from Deputy Fornier’s baton against the cell bars. “It’s dark out ladies!” he shouted. “You know what that means?! Lights out! So shut yur goddamn face hole and go to sleep!”. Hutch and Moses lifted the blankets over their heads and Fornier raised a flask to his lips as he wandered out of the cell block. Back in his office, he sat his fat ass down in the rolling chair. As he leaned back, he lowered his Stetson over his eyes. But right before he nodded off, the phone loudly sounded and he cursed as he lifted the hat back on his head. “Hello? Who the hell is this?” he shouted into the receiver. 

The voice on the other end shouted back with equal fervor. “Jerry! This is your mother!” 

“Ma! Why are you calling me here?”

“I’ve been trying to reach you for the last couple of days! Your cousin is dead, Jerry! They shot him all to hell and burned him up!”

TO BE CONTINUED…