Untitled Fall Project

A: I still can’t believe our movie totally bombed. Our full-length, big-screen feature debut. A film whose script underwent several major revisions. Years in the making. Market testing the likes of which has only been dreamed. The culmination of our 17-plus years in the industry, and the evil genius of a $20-million marketing campaign. A campaign to rival the likes of…what’s a major military campaign. Like a historical one.

M: I’m giving you my blank stare, from beneath this mud mask.

A: A campaign to rival that of any historical military engagement. A film epic in its scope, breathless in its vision…What else. Bedazzled with celebrity cameos and hair-raising plot twists. In effect, the perfect vehicle. A vehicle to magically transport us from the land of child superstardom to the land of actual human superstardom.

M: The vehicle bombed. We are untransported.

A: Bombed doesn’t even capture the letdown, to me.

M: How about: failed to attract the interest of any person, anywhere, ever.

A: Which is why I’m all flummoxed over here. How could it have failed so bad? What, are we suddenly not totally cute?

M: According to a recent article in Entertainment Weekly, I am the Cute One and you are the Type A Personality.

A: Please. I shit cute for breakfast. Plus I’m taller than you.

M: Yeah by like an inch, and it’s just because you do that creepy thing with your neck.

A: And I’m not Type A. On my Enneagram I’m a Type 3 Achiever with a Type 4 Individualist wing. I am energetic and ambitious, but I have to be careful about becoming a paranoid psychopath. But what were we just talking about, before all the slander?

M: We were talking about how there’s no earthly reason why our movie could have failed so badly.

A: So you’re saying God was involved.

M: If there even is one, at this point. Who knows what to believe anymore.

A: It really fucking bombed.

M: Which, in a way, is almost totally symbolic.

A: Of what? You think we suck?

M: Symbolic like as in, the destruction of our youth and all it has come to represent.

A: Right. And the closing of one chapter as another one is about to begin.

M: More like the total nuclear annihilation of one chapter as another one sort of opens a tiny bit, way over in the corner where no one can even see it.

A: I disagree. College is not a tiny little chapter over in the corner. For many kids, you know, the culmination of years of toil and struggle, running track and joining the Chess Club to round out the application…College is not to be sniffed at. We have our whole lives ahead of us.

M: The lives ahead of us don’t seem that magical, when the lives behind us represent a worldwide market capitalization of like 400 billion dollars.

A: 425.

M: My point.

A: Were you going to make another pitcher of caipirinhas, or should—

M: – Go ahead. But my point exactly. In so far as college is totally gay and who cares.

A: I’m trying to spin the last of my youthful exuberance into some sort of silver-lining deal.

M: Well, whatever, our monthly bank statements still feel pretty thick to me, on account of all the zeros and commas.

A: Right. Licensing deals continue to trickle in from various untapped markets, sure.

M: Although I still say the Astroglide situation was some fucked-up shit.

A: Cart before horse, maybe. But you have to zag when they expect you to zig. I mean duh. But anyways I’m talking about college as a chance to learn and grow. Experience life in the big city, out on our own, so many paths to choose from… How much of this is getting through to you?

M: I’m seeing, what, like four years of homework, walking—on foot—to classes, and pimply shut-ins begging to be our lab partners.

A: I may even decide to become a chef.

M: Ten thousand says you have no idea how to broil something.

A: Hence the learning process. And fuck you. And at least I’m trying, what’s your big plan?

M: Big plan for what? Tonight?

A: No, for like the future.

M: …You mean tonight?

A: Beyond. The future future. Down the road. After this summer, for instance.

M: Look, that crossword puzzle I tried to do in People magazine last week described you as the planner, not me. I’m the one who…I don’t remember now. I’m a person who shares letters with 24 Across: movie title blank It Forward.

A: Jesus fuck. When we start school, we’re totally living in separate apartments. No more of this attached-at-the-forehead shit.

M: I thought we had to live together. Won’t it be too difficult for them to film us, if we don’t?

A: I have no idea what you’re talking about.

M: Duh. The camera crews. Following us around.

A: Again, what are you talking about? Are you doing your Hilary Duff impersonation? Because I’m still not believing it.

M: You are totally being the Hilary, not me. Listen to me as I speak: I’m talking about the people with the mics and the cameras who are going to be following us around campus, documenting our antics, editing our sound bites, and repackaging our lives into 30-minute doses for the target demographic. Hell-fucking-o.

A: Oh my god. We’re going to COLLEGE, dumbass. We’re not going to be on a REALITY show.

M: …

A: There’s isn’t going to be anyone filming us.

M: I don’t understand what you’re saying here.

A: We’re going to be college students. We just wake up, go to classes, do homework, manage our corporation, and fly to Antigua on weekends. That’s it.

M: That’s it?

A: That is it.

M: So we just do this for four years, and then we don’t have anything to sell to people at the end?

A: I feel like we’re having a real moment of clarity here.

M: I am about nine kinds of incredulous.

A: This realization must be very awkward for you.

M: Well I’m sorry, I just feel like if we go to college, we should get something out of it.

A: Um….

M: If we’re not going to be filmed, why are we even going to college?

A: Lots of kids do it.

M: Who?

A: I don’t know. All the kids who didn’t see our movie, I guess.

M: Well, they suck.

A: It took 17 years, but we finally agree on something.