TROTfilm
Novograd Republic
Novograd Republic
From: Richard D. Erlich, Director of Development
Subject: Trump Project (working, "Lubyankan Candidate")
Draft 6
cc:
Natasha Fatale, Extra-Special Thanks
Boris, sweetheart!
Congratulations
on your upgraded title, improved credit, and the draft for Acts I and II The Lubyankan Candidate. I talked with Natalia from
the Money people, and she loved it, loved it.
Now
about your team's suggestion for "opening up the film for an international
epic of apocalyptic proportions, ending with the live-action/CGI destruction by
massed artillery fire and/or nuclear bombardment of Seoul, Pyongyang, Tokyo, Kyoto,
most of Guam, Burbank, Beijing, and Vladivostok, climaxing a neoMabley/McKee
five-act structure." Natalia says she is happy your team has read a book —
I pointed out it was at least two books — and she says she'll appropriate the
budget if we can attach the Strugatsky Brothers for the final draft and
Eisenstein and Kubrick to co-direct. I pointed out they were all dead, and she
responded with "Da" and a long silence while she glanced through your
team's receipts for "development," especially the research into Kompromat by "honey trap."
(And, by the way, my name is spelled "Erlich," not
"Ehrlich," and you and your crew have one week to pay back the 500,000
rubles I did not approve for "Sonia
Shlyukha, consultant.")
Anyway,
you're not getting blockbuster budgeting, so figure one more act, giving a
Beginning, Middle, and now End. Let me suggest, very strongly, a climax where
Fearless Leader decides the point of the exercise was to show the world he can
make an American President — and then, pardon the pun, trump that by unmaking
him.
You've
already established some "buyer's remorse," in a manly sort of way,
in Comrade Supreme Commander. The peripeteia,
as the Greeks said, will be an intimate but powerful (and cheaply shot) scene
of the Leader's watching one last meandering speech by Trump, taking a thumb
drive out of a secret compartment and holding it up — and handing it over while
saying quietly but manfully to The Aide, "Destroy him."
We
test-marketed some of the actual Kompromat
(with faces masked) and got thrown off X-Tube for violating community
standards, so tone down glimpses of the salacious stuff. What remains is an
expandable or contractible "procedural" and "courtroom
drama" as Mr. Trump's money affairs are spread over the Internet, and
steely-eyed accountants "follow the money." This could become boring,
but given the sheer chutzpah of the scams it will be fascinating … or will be
unless your crew really are as dumb and untalented as Natalia thinks you are.
(Get that money back, or heads will roll figuratively and knees broken
literally.)
The
denouement — the final tying up of loose ends — can be a large-ish or small
scene of the swearing in of the former VP as President Pence, or the former
Speaker of the House, as President Ryan, depending on how many people you want implicated
in the "procedural" and "courtroom drama." It should be in
the Oval Office, watched on television by President Putin, with the last shot
of Putin watching the show in his private office, and the preceding shot making
clear that there are no cameras visible in the Oval Office.
I
have tremendous enthusiasm for this project, and I'm sure you and your team
will come up with an End of The Lubyankan
Candidate every bit as fascinating as the Beginning and Middle.
Or
else.
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