a shot at the title

So I was crying in a corner, just minding my own business when the FedEx guy delivered a letter.

“Have a good day sir,” he said.

“Fuck off”

I opened the letter. It was from Bob Oglesby, Head of Productions at Trainwreck Studios. It read:

“Dear Mr. Less

We read your screenplay ‘The Virtues of Drinking Bleach’ and have a few notes. Please reach out to your agent Pablo Dunbar to set up a meeting. We are having trouble reaching him.

Best Regards,

Bill”

So I finished crying and called Pablo. When he answered the phone, I heard some screaming followed by gunshots. Then silence.

“This is Pablo,” he said.

“Hey! Bob Oglesby has been trying to reach you. Where the hell have you been?”

“Sorry I’ve been in Thailand on the set of the new Paul Schrader film. I’ll reach out to Bob soon.”

That week, Pablo and me drove out to Burbank. When we arrived at the studio, the doors were locked. Out of the third story window, Bob yelled: “Sorry, I’m the only one here. Everyone has COVID.”

Bob threw down a rope and we climbed up. Then he offered us a Bloody Mary.

“No thanks,” I said. “I just got my one month chip.”

Bob shrugged and downed the drink himself.

“Now boys,” Bob said as he sat down behind his desk. “Let’s get down to brass tacks. We all want to make money. A fuck ton of money. And the only way to do that is to give the audience what they want. And they want sex. They want violence. They want full on sexual penetration. They want erect penises. They want sopping wet vaginas. They want tits. They want ass. They want to see EVERYTHING.

Unfortunately we can’t give that to them. We have to abide by what they call ‘rules’. Plus we have to consider the Chinese market. So we looked at your screenplay and said that this is the next best thing. Therefore, after all the sexual harassment lawsuits are settled, we are fully prepared to give this thing the green light. What do you boys think about that?”

Pablo and me looked at each other.

“Sounds good?”

“Good,” Bob said. “But we have a few notes for you. First, gay sex. There’s a lot of it.”

“I assure you that it’s all in service to the plot,” I replied.

“Oh yes, I noticed,” Bob said. “What I mean is that I want more of it.”

“For the film?”

“Yes”

“So you want more gay sex in a martial arts film set in outer space?”

“Yes”

“Anything else?” I asked.

Bob stood up from his desk and looked out the window. “Boys,” he said, “Hollywood is dying. Too many kids on YouTube drinking cat piss for a laugh. Too much internet pornography. Too much competition from the streaming services. The days of good storytelling, of compelling performances, of sweeping scores, of looking at the silver screen in awe and wonder…they are coming to a close.”

Bob paused and looked me in the eye.

“I’m counting on you to save my job,” he said.

I looked over to Pablo, then back at Bob.

“In that case,” I said. “I’ll have that Bloody Mary.”

Randy Returns II: Returning Again: Part 2: Returning With A Vengeance

While sitting around the fire, Dale was free style rapping like a shitty 90s PSA.

Then the first explosions went off. A booby trap was tripped. Dale and I threw on our bandoliers, our machetes, and our AKs.

I tossed an AR-15 over to Nicky. “When in doubt, just spray bullets indiscriminately across that tree line,” I told him. “If they catch you, go ahead and use the weapon on yourself.”

Both Dale and I penetrated deep into the woods, deep into the cold of night. Another explosive went off. Someone, somewhere was close.

“Drop your weapons,” we heard.

We dropped them.

We obviously made shitty commandos.

Dale and I were surrounded by men in black uniforms and state of the art technology. They patted us down and escorted us through the dense woods to a large, portable, tank-like structure that resembled something out of Avatar.

How this structure moved undetected through Southern California is a mystery.

We were brought up to the bridge of this mega tank, and just like when Dale and I faced Honda, we were placed on our knees and presented with a series of theatrics that culminated in a villain presenting himself.

“Cut the bullshit, Randy,” I said. “We know it’s you.”

“Damn,” he replied. “But this tank is pretty cool, huh?”

“What are you and the dumb syndicate up to now?” I asked. “Poison the world’s food supply? Creating a race of super humans for world domination?”

“How did you know?” Randy replied.

“Just leave me out of it,” I said.

Then the black shirts brought in Nicky and placed him in front of Randy.

“We found this asshole with a rifle in his mouth. He didn’t even put up a fight,” one of the soldiers said.

“Damn it dad!” I said. “You were supposed to at least get off ONE shot before you offed yourself!”

“Sorry son,” Nicky replied. “I’m just not very good in firefights.”

Randy spoke up.

“Son? Dad? What’s this about?” he asked.

“Nicky’s my dad,” I replied. “I may die today, but at least I’ll die knowing who my family is.”

“Nicky’s not your dad,” Randy said. “I am your dad.”

“Bullshit,” I replied.

“It’s true! I thought I told you. Guess I forgot 🤷‍♂️. Anyhow, your mom and me were partners in another syndicate before we joined TOILET (Terrorism Or the International League that Engages in Terrorism). Unfortunately it was the 80s, so we were coked up and fucked, then you were born. So she left the syndicate.

Years later, the syndicate wanted to cover up its tracks, so I deployed my other son, Nicky, to kill you and your mother. But then the FBI shot the fuck out that strip club and Nicky got amnesia. After realizing that you were just some loser, the syndicate decided it wasn’t worth spending resources to kill you.

So Nicky, I’m also your father.”

I felt the world disappear beneath my feet. My heart sunk. I knew it was true.

“So what do we do now?” I asked. “I know the truth.”

“Excellent question,” Randy said.

Out of the shadows appeared Anthrax in full battle rattle. “I say we finish the job,” she said.

“Great idea!” Randy said.

“Traitor,” I said to Anthrax.

The soldiers grabbed Dale and placed him up against the wall. Randy took out his flame thrower and began taunting us.

“This has been quite a reunion,” Randy said. “You thought that Anthrax was your friend. You thought that you could stop me. But your plans just went up in flames.”

Randy then unleashed the full wrath of hell onto Dale. There were no screams. Dale just danced around as a gigantic flame before falling to the ground. What was once a man was now just charred, smoldering, remains.

“Was that supposed to scare me? Because I just shit my pants,” I said.

Just then the structure began to violently shake. Then there was a massive explosion and soldiers began to man their stations.

Honda launched her attack.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Randy Returns II: Returning Again: Part I: Returning Harder

*Sorry. Forgot* *that this was an ongoing saga.*

“You know, I lost a testicle too in a savage kidnapping plot,” Dale said to me while we were setting up C-4 explosives.

“Did you get it back?” I asked.

Dale and I were putting up booby traps around his cabin outside of Norco. We knew Honda was going to strike again so we wanted to establish home field advantage.

Nicky (my alleged father) was sitting around the campfire staring down the barrel of his .44.

“No no dad,” I said as I took the gun out of his hands.

All three of us sat around the campfire under the Norco moonlight. The air reeked of cow shit.

“What a god forsaken place,” I said.

Dale took in a deep breath of shit stained air.

“I was born here. I grew up here. I lost my virginity here. I got married here. I got divorced here. Got married again. Got divorced again. Lost everything I had. And never gained it back. I’ll probably die here,” Dale said.

“Probably so,” I replied.

Nicky spoke up. “You know, I’m just glad that you boys are out here to protect me. When the FBI shot up that strip joint, I remember that I completely blew out my pants. Shit got everywhere. When they arrested me, they made me sit in my shitty underwear. Then I cried.”

“Don’t worry about it dad,” I said. “Dale and I have faced Honda before. We know what to expect.”

“By the way,” Dale chimed in. “Who the fuck is Honda and why are we in this mess?”

We all looked at each other and shrugged.

“It’s important to not think too much on this,” I said. “The important thing is that we are family, except for Dale, and that we are all going to help each other out this train wreck we find ourselves in.”

We nodded and started to enjoy the campfire.

Finally I asked Nicky, “So what do you remember about mom?”

He smiled and said, “what a lovely woman. Legs, ass, tits. The whole package. Eyes as blue as the sky. But a warm heart. She knew how to brighten up my day.”

I looked back at the fire and thought that doesn’t describe mom at all.

Finally Dick called.

“Aye lad, I’ve been tailin’ Anthrax all dee. I’m watching her outside a trap hoose n Pasadena,” Dick said. “I donnae think you’ll like who she’s with mate.”

“Randy,” I said.

“Aye”

That bitch, I thought. I knew she was going to double cross me and I fell into her trap. Instead of a battle, we were now facing a war on two fronts.

“Then you might get your M2s, M4s, AKs, AR-15s, 44s, 94, and 22s,” I told Dick. “We’re headed for a Mexican standoff.”

Randy Returns

I was hopping up and down to the sounds of 80s pop phenom Human League when there was a pound on the door.

“Open up! It’s LAPD!”

It was Randy. I wasn’t fooled.

“What can I do for you Randy?” I asked.

“Can you believe they let me out on bail?! I mean, seven vehicular manslaughter charges!! That’s crazy!” Randy said.

He was flanked by his two female henchmen, Anthrax and Honda. As Randy hoot and hollered, the ladies just stood there, arms crossed.

“So Jimmy, wanna do some drugs? I gotta speedball here,” he asked.

“Gee, I don’t know Randy. Isn’t that dangerous?”

“Not at all! Everyone’s doing it.”

He didn’t have to tell me twice.

Eventually I found myself in a daze sitting in the backseat of Randy’s Pontiac between Anthrax and Honda. Randy was driving like a maniac down the streets of West Hollywood when he looked to the backseat. “You see! I told you everything will be alright!” he said.

I didn’t think anything was suspicious.

Finally Anthrax and Honda carried me out of the car and into the back of an abandoned warehouse. I recognized the place. I survived a stabbing there a month earlier. They laid me down in a tub of ice and an overweight German doctor wearing a lab coat and nipple piercings tried to load me up with barbiturates.

However the joke was on them. I was always loaded up on barbiturates.

But then it occurred to me.

“Fuck, they’re gonna harvest my organs.” I thought.

Now, like most people, I’ve had to talk my way out of an organ harvesting attempt before. But this one was different.

It was going to take some skill.

“You know, there’s other ways of making a quick buck,” I said to Anthrax. “You can humiliate yourself in front of complete strangers on the internet like I do.”

But she stood there motionless. So I tried a different tactic: the art of seduction.

“It’s a shame I’m about to die. I wish we’ve gotten to know one another more. But, I guess I should count myself lucky. At least the last thing I’ll ever see is your beautiful face,” I said.

Finally Anthrax uncrossed her arms and adjusted her posture. Clearly she was responding to what I was saying.

“I have a confession to make. That time when you and Randy cornered me behind Dick’s Sporting Goods, pulled down my pants and shoved golf balls up my ass, I thought: ‘I could spend the rest of my life with this woman.’ Well it appears I’ll get that chance,” I told her.

Finally she removed her black Gargoyle sunglasses so I could see her eyes.

“I believe it’s customary to grant a dying man his last request,” I said.

“What’s that?” Anthrax replied. “A kiss? How lame.”

“No. I just want to cop a feel.”

She stood there and thought for a second. Finally she moved in closer, removed the handcuffs from my left wrist and placed my hand down her low cut tank. I then grasped as hard as I could on to her tit.

“Ow my titty!” Anthrax screamed.

I then leapt out of the bathtub and kicked Honda in the coot as she moved in closer. I grabbed her nickel plated .45 and pistol whipped Anthrax unconscious. With both henchwomen neutralized, I moved over to the doctor.

“Nein nein nein!” the man screamed. “Ich spreche kein Englisch. Ich weiß nicht wo ich bin!”

“I don’t want to hear that shit!” I yelled while he stared down my .45. “Where’s Randy?!”

I took the doctor by gunpoint into Randy’s lair. There were computer monitors everywhere with live feeds from CCTV cameras all over the world. Mostly in women’s bathrooms.

There were also scientists everywhere and a shit ton of beakers.

“Well well well,” Randy said menacingly. “It appears that you foiled my plan.”

“This ends now, Randy.”

“No, you can’t stop me. The LAPD can’t stop me. INTERPOL can’t stop me. Not even unadulterated black tar heroin can stop me! You will never catch me Jimmy, so help me GOD!”

At that moment, men in black shirts began pouring out of every dark corner, firing their AK-47s indiscriminately at me. I used the doctor as a shield while I fired back.

In the mayhem, Randy disappeared while a timer began a countdown to 0 before 200 tons of dynamite exploded. As the clock ticked down, I jumped through the glass window, falling 14 stories into a dumpster while the warehouse exploded into a magnificent fireball, lighting up the Los Angeles skyline.

When the police and fire department arrived, I chastised the New York police officer with the LAPD for releasing Randy on bail.

“We didn’t let Randy out on bail. Dat man is dangerous! He escaped weeks ago!” the officer said while shoveling a hot dog into his mouth.

Then a junior officer came running out of the wreckage, claiming they didn’t find the bodies of Randy or anyone else.

“Say, are you sure that you were kidnapped and held against your will and did not just blow up 16 square blocks of West Hollywood because you were high on methamphetamine?” the New York officer asked.

I knew it.

Randy escaped.

We faced off once. But I knew that he’d come back for vengeance.

Dennis Hopper: GOAT

Phil Spector, Carrie Fisher, Stevie Nicks, and the greatest of all, Dennis Hopper, are all on the Mount Rushmore of cocaine addicts.

In case you forgot, Mr. Hopper was the star in over 104,000 films

Dennis Hopper brought an intensity to his craft that has yet to be matched. In addition to his acting, his talents also extended behind the camera as director of such unforgettable classics like The Last Movie, Colors, Out of the Blue, and Chasers (starring a peak form Tom Berenger).

The 1969 film, Easy Rider, Hopper’s directorial debut, kickstarted the “auteur” fad in Hollywood that extended throughout the 1970’s (which ended in 1983 when, again, three people were killed. And again, RIP). Sadly, the 70s saw Dennis Hopper’s acting career more or less flatline, which was likely due to his aforementioned cocaine addiction (which is unfortunate. The decline of his acting career that is. Not his crippling cocaine addiction).

However, there was a Dennis Hopper renaissance in the 1980s, with the height of his success coming in 1986 as the sadistic Frank Booth in Blue Velvet and the alcoholic Shooter in Hoosiers.

Hopper rode this newfound fame on into the 90s and 2000s, saying ‘yes’ to any script that was handed to him. Who can forget the time he fought Keanu Reeves on top of a train in Speed? Or taught Kevin Costner how to act in a bad movie for Waterworld? Or gave the greatest racist monologue in the history of film (written by Quentin Tarantino) in True Romance?

Dennis Hopper passed away in 2010.

No matter the script (remember, he was in Super Mario Bros.), no matter the personal dramas in his life, Dennis Hopper always gave it his all.

He was an actor’s actor.

He was the GOAT.

Michael Cimino, American Hero

Orson Wells, John Huston, John Ford, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan….

Michael Cimino.

Legend

GOAT

The director of the Deer Hunter (1978), who immediately after hoisting the Academy Award for Best Director began work on dismantling a major movie studio by staring production on the Heaven’s Gate (1980)…the greatest Hollywood flop of all time.

The Deer Hunter, Cimino’s magnum opus, is without question one of the great American films. That is if we can call it a “film”. It’s more like a fever dream. Characters drunk as shit drive from Pennsylvania to Washington state, shoot a deer, and drive back…all within 48 hours. Robert DeNiro torches a guy. And the three main characters are forced by a bunch of racist caricatures to play Russian Roulette. It’s an undeniably powerful film that accurately captures the American psyche post-Vietnam.

With the success of the Deer Hunter, Cimino had carte blanche in Hollywood to do whatever he wanted. He chose Heaven’s Gate, produced by United Artists, a story about an obscure dispute in Wyoming in the 1800s and staring a hot, Hot, HOT Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken, and Isabella Huppert (John Hurt’s hot too I guess). It was to be the greatest western of all time, solidifying Michael Cimino as one of the great auteurs.

When production started, problems instantly arose. Doing his best Kubrick impression, Cimino demanded take after take from his actors. He’d delay production to get the perfect shot of the Montana landscape where the film was shot, or demand that sets be torn down and rebuilt to exact specifications. He’d also charge the studio absurdly high rent to film on land that he allegedly owned (respect). The budget soared and United Artist was getting nervous.

Was it all worth it?

Lol, no.

Heaven’s Gate infamously flopped. Critics hated it. And it financially ruined United Artists (the James Bond franchise, arguably their most lucrative property at the time, would ultimately bail them out).

Despite attempts by internet and European critics to say it’s secretly a “masterpiece” 40 years after its release, Heaven’s Gate simply…doesn’t…work. The film looks like shit (sorry Vilmos Zsigmond fans), scenes go on longer than they should, and obviously Michael Cimino was feeling himself a little too much. If wasting money and being pretentious is an art form, then yes, Heaven’s Gate is a masterpiece.

Michael Cimino changed Hollywood. Gone were the days when auteurs ruled Hollywood. It wasn’t until John Landis killed three people (later acquitted) on the set of the Twilight Zone that Hollywood finally put the kibosh on artistic freedom.

Cimino would go on to direct some crap in 1980s, but his legacy was secure. That’s not worth nothin’, and I believe that’s worth honoring.

Michael Cimino passed away in 2016.

While I regard The Deer Hunter to be his finest work, one can’t forget the time Cimino, horribly disfigured by plastic surgery, roasted and mocked the entire crowd at Locarno Film Festival.

Legend