A Proposed Miniseries
ONE
JULIET: (In voiceover, as images flick by on the screen of her and Kodak Picture Machine at university, drinking together at parties, etc) We were young, we were passionate - perhaps we were too hasty. But I felt myself drawn to Kodak Picture Machine from very early on...
(Scene change: Juliet's house. The Rolling Stones are playing in the background, and Juliet and Kodak Picture Machine are sitting on Juliet's couch, kissing passionately)
JULIET: Oh Kodak Picture Machine! I don't think I've ever felt this way about a man before! But do you think we're taking things a litte too fast?
KODAK PICTURE MACHINE: Share and enjoy your pictures with everyone you know!
JULIET: Kodak Picture Machine! Are you really suggesting what I think you're suggesting?
KODAK PICTURE MACHINE: Everyone you know!
JULIET: Kodak Picture Machine - I like it!
(They both kiss and collapse onto the couch. There is a whirring sound, and a CD rolls from out of the depths of Kodak Picture Machine and into the dispatch box)
KODAK PICTURE MACHINE: Share and enjoy your pictures with everyone you know!
TWO
JULIET: (Voiceover) With Kodak Picture Machine, I went farther than I had with anyone else.
(Scene dissolves to an image of a double bed. Beneath the sheets there is a fair deal of rustling.)
JULIET: Oh! KPM, I never knew you could do...
KODAK PICTURE MACHINE: Enjoy! Enjoy! Enjoy! Enjoy! Enjoy! You! You! You! You! You! Enjoy! Enjoy! Enjoy! Enjoy!
(There is the whirring sound of pictures being developed and printed)
JULIET: Yes! Yes! Yes! Oh!
Kodak Picture Machine, that was soooo good!
(Both emerge from under the sheets, Juliet's arms around Kodak Picture Machine)
KODAK PICTURE MACHINE: Share and enjoy your pictures with everyone you know!
JULIET: Yes, me too, Kodak Picture Machine!
KODAK PICTURE MACHINE: Enjoy everyone you know!
JULIET: *Gasps* Are you suggesting...
KODAK PICTURE MACHINE: Share everyone you enjoy!
JULIET: (Stroking his metallic surface) You are...
KODAK PICTURE MACHINE: Enjoy everyone you share! Enjoy everyone you know!
(Close up of Juliet looking extremely thoughtful)
THREE
(Fade in to double bed, same shot of rustling sheets, etc. Various voices come from beneath the cover)
VOICE 1: Oh!
VOICE 2: Yes!
VOICE 3: Wonderful!
VOICE 4: Yeah, baby, yeah!
ALL: Yes! Wow! Give it to me! Ah! Oooh! Yeah! (etc, etc.)
KODAK PICTURE MACHINE: Share! Enjoy! Pictures with everyone you know! (Frantic sound of pictures being printed, disks being burned, etc) Share and enjoy your pictures with everyone you know!
JULIET: Oh, KPM, you're not a man - you're a machine!
(Eventually, HARRISON FORD, BILL CLINTON, JANE FONDA, BRIGITTE BARDOT, JULIET and KODAK PICTURE MACHINE emerge from beneath the sheets).
ALL: Whew, that was great, wonderful, yeehaw, exhausting, I love you guys, (etc).
KODAK PICTURE MACHINE: Enjoy everyone you know!
JULIET: And so did I, honey... so did I!
(After a pause)
BILL CLINTON: Can I have some icecream?
(Fade out)
FOUR
(Juliet is sitting on the beach in a bikini, with her arms around Kodak Picture Machine, who is sipping a daiquiri)
JULIET: Oh, Kodak Picture Machine - this has been so lovely - and now that we've decided to tie the knot - who are we going to invite to our little ceremony?
KODAK PICTURE MACHINE: Everyone you know?
JULIET: Are you sure?
KODAK PICTURE MACHINE: Everyone!
(They kiss passionately)
FIVE
(TEXT: Several years later...)
(Scene: toddler boy and girl are fighting over a toy)
BOY: (Clutching toy) Enjoy!
GIRL: (Pulling at toy) Share!
BOY: It's MINE!
GIRL: No, it's MINE!
(Enter KODAK PICTURE MACHINE)
KODAK PICTURE MACHINE: Share and enjoy! Enjoy and share! Share and enjoy with everyone you know!
(Reluctantly the boy gives the fluffy toy over to the girl and they start playing peacefully)
SIX
(Fade to: Kitchen table, where an older boy and girl are sitting, doing their homework)
GIRL: Daddy - English is hard! What's a preposition?
KODAK PICTURE MACHINE: And!
BOY: Daddy - how do you turn a noun into a verb?
KODAK PICTURE MACHINE: Enjoy!
GIRL: Daddy - what's the difference between hieroglyphics and the Phoenican Alphabet?
KODAK PICTURE MACHINE: Pictures!
BOY: Daddy - what's Italian for one?
KODAK PICTURE MACHINE: You know!
GIRL: Oh, Daddy - is there anything you don't know?
KODAK PICTURE MACHINE: Know!
BOTH: DADDY! STOP IT!
KODAK PICTURE MACHINE: Share and enjoy your pictures with everyone you know!
(Cut to Juliet, sitting alone in the bedroom, weeping softly over pictures of her and Kodak Picture Machine and the children at the circus)
SEVEN
(Juliet and Kodak Picture Machine are standing by the road, waving, as their children hop on the bus for school. As soon as the bus leaves, Juliet turns to Kodak Picture Machine.)
JULIET: Kodak Picture Machine! You know, we just can't go on fighting like this! It could just be time to...
KODAK PICTURE MACHINE: Share!
JULIET: We just can't anymore, Kodak Picture Machine!
KODAK PICTURE MACHINE: Enjoy!
JULIET: Oh, we've had some good times together, Kodak Picture Machine - but they're over now! All we do is fight!
KODAK PICTURE MACHINE: Your pictures!
JULIET: Kodak Picture Machine, we'll always have the memories. You know we will.
KODAK PICTURE MACHINE: Share and enjoy your pictures with everyone you know!
(Juliet turns away from Kodak Picture Machine so he can't see the tears in her eyes.)
KODAK PICTURE MACHINE: Know! Know! Know! Share and enjoy your pictures with everyone you know!
EIGHT
(Kodak Picture Machine stands alone in front of the bathroom mirror. A dry razor sits on the sink, and hot water runs endlessly out of the tap into the plughole).
KODAK PICTURE MACHINE: Share and enjoy! Share and enjoy! Share and enjoy! Share and enjoy! Share and enjoy! Share and enjoy! Share and enjoy! Share and enjoy!
(Each time he repeats this phrase, another photograph of him and Juliet sitting together at the beach clicks into the box at his bottom. A camera close up on this box reveals that he must have done this hundreds of times).
KODAK PICTURE MACHINE: Share and enjoy! Share and enjoy! Share and enjoy! Share and enjoy! Share and enjoy! Share and enjoy! Share and enjoy! Share and enjoy!
NINE
(Kodak Picture Machine stands alone at the top of a cliff. In a desolate voice, he says what any man (or machine) would say in such a situation).
KODAK PICTURE MACHINE: Share and enjoy your pictures with everyone you know!
END
48 comments:
Well that was profoundly disturbing.
In the beach scene, I was initially going to have Kodak Picture Machine in a bikini as well, but I thought that would have been a little too over the top.
Maybe I've had one two many panadols, but I loved that!
I like to think the Kodak Picture Machine here is standing up for the rights of soulless mechanical automatons everywhere. Machines have feelings too, you know - and all that.
Yes, I know. It was very wrong of me to laugh so hard at the idea of the Kodak Photo Machine having a great romance.
It is delightful though, Tim. I think this is one of my favourites of all your posts. And the best thing about it is that it goes on and on, completely relentless in its incorrigibility.
I can't think of anything negative to say.
Like some kind of weird decadent masochist hedonist, I welcome both flattery and insults. Maybe start off with a couple of swear words and let it flow like a stream of consciousness.
Maybe there can be some sort of competition to see who can insult you the most virulently-?
I'd be interested to see if anybody could insult me in an Ancient Norwegian manner.
How do you say 'Tim T, you are slightly less attractive than the testicles on my grandmother's elderly goat' in proto-Germanic?
So you don't just crave being insulted, you crave being insulted in a multi-lingual manner- a very egotistical, demanding sort of masochistic hedonism! I suppose I could whip something up in Latin, if you like, but Pig Latin, as the parlance of the school yard, is probably more appropriate.
I've always liked the whole biting one's thumb at someone scenario, so, to set the ball rolling, I bite my thumb at you, Sir!
Let's not get hot under the choler.
How about - Pig Latin? Make that Latin, Pig!
I really just wanted to make a pun involving the word 'negative'.
I didn't want to cause an international incident in four languages.
Wait - yes, I did.
Why just four languages? Go for a catastrophe of truly Babelian proportions.
Oi, Tim, I didn't say you could insult me back! But alright, Latin coming up later, since you didn't ask nicely!
Here's a bit of English for you:
Dearest Timt,
You are the dung in the gutter of a plague-stricken street. You are the greenest globule of typhlitic phlegm ever produced. You are a toe-rag clinging, in leach-like manner, to the rotting foot of a gangrenous leg. When the pig spat at the goat and the spittle ran down the goat's hind quarters to settle in the soil, what germinated was you.
Gosh, I enjoyed that!
Ok, I cheated by looking at Latin for All Occasions, but this is irresistable:
Utinam modo subiunctivo semper male utaris!
(May you always misuse the subjunctive!).
Have I won yet?
It was a suggested insult. Yeah, yeah, that's what it was. Nothing more!
Asking for insults could leave me like the Mel Brooks character in one of his early acts.
(BROOKS walks on stage with WOMAN)
WOMAN: I am a sadist!
BROOKS: And I am a masochist.
(Opens arms out wide and faces the woman)
BROOKS: Go on - hit me!
(WOMAN hits BROOKS)
BROOKS: Wait! Wait!
I think I'm a sadist!
I quite like 'typhilitis', by the way. It's like a new keyboard version of the disease.
If you make fun of my typos I really will have to thump you!
That said, my favourite insults are the simple ones, in particular bastard and fascist. Fascist and bastard together are just magic! You can add another F word for extra fireworks, but it really doesn't need it.
How about backhanded, Jane Austen-style insults? I've always been very fond of those.
"I will not say that your mulberry-trees are dead, but I am afraid they are not alive." - Letters.
"In Paragon we met Mrs Foley & Mrs Dowdeswell with her yellow shawl airing out—& at the bottom of Kinsdown Hill we met a Gentleman in a Buggy, who on minute examination turned out to be Dr Hall—& Dr Hall in such very deep mourning that either his Mother, his Wife, or himself must be dead." - Letters again.
Then again, I don't have a Mulberry tree or a Buggy, and am not sure anyone else here does either, so I'm not they may not be applicable.
Backhanded insults are the insults of choice in my family, but one needs a subject of polite conversation with which to engage first. Only then can you slip in the subtle insult at the opportune moment. I'm very fond of the hammer in the velvet glove.
Perhaps we should start talking about something like scones, then the insults will flow of their own accord! Maybe all the participants in the insult exchange (someone join us, please!), could list the things they are particularly self-conscious about first.
Actually, the best insult of my childhood was when K and I learnt how to say "Can you tell me the way to the tourist centre?" in French. We would shout it at my younger sister and she would be driven wild with rage, as she was sure we were saying something very complex and horrible.
"I used my fists to administer caresses" - Robert Schumann.
I'd hadn't heard that one before- it's fantastic.
Not unambiguously fantastic, of course!
"He thinks he's a wit: he's half right" - Christopher Hitchens on P J O'Rourke. (Clever, that one, though it doesn't really make sense when you think about it.)
He's half right politically and also he's half right because he's a halfwit or a nitwit? The words are interesting (just to stray a bit), aren't they? A halfwit is a quantity of wit which seems to cancel itself out, but a nitwit is a kind of wit which isn't wit. And then there's twit... Ah, where's my teapot?
I hadn't thought about the half-wit angle. I thought it was a way for Hitchens to say 'He's a wit, but he doesn't think'. See what I mean, though? It's the kind of druinken insult that is funny, but doesn't quite make sense when you shine the cold, hard light of sobriety upon it.
Random O'Rourke insult by way of comparison:
"Industrialization came to England but has since left." - P J O'Rourke.
Hmmmm. I thought of the halfwit angle straight away, so it made sense to me. I haven't read any O'Rourke. Are you a Wodehouse type too?
A "druinken" insult sounds like a novel bit of fun- like a dunking machine at a German country fair? The insult that's like a splash of cold water- which means it stops making sense in the second after you recover from the devastation of the initial blow.
I'm drinking "gunpowder green tea". Some might say it tastes like gunpowder, but it hits the spot rather nicely, I think.
At the encouragement of Herr Nottlesby, I have been meaning to read some Wodehouse.
I had a recent encounter with drunken humour on the tram, with my umbrella. A tipsy chap and his parade stumbled onto the tram - their mission, I think, was to find a kebab shop at the end of Lygon Street - and when he saw my umbrella, he exclaimed:
"Ah! An electric umbrella!"
I replied with words to the effect, 'What are you talking about? There is no such thing as an electric umbrella, o drunken chap!'
He then went off on a rambling semantic discourse concluding that my umbrella had a button, and therefore it must be electric.
He then had many happy minutes/hours (much the same to a drunkard) opening and closing the umbrella. (I made it clear to him that the bad luck would be on him before hand it over to him).
My sister (the twin) loves Wodehouse. I've been meaning to read some for years at her urging.
Am I unlucky or do you just have a special species of Melbourne drunk? Although it does sound like that chap might have been indulging in something else too... All the drunks I see around are the aggressive, harrassing-women sort. Good on you for entertaining him!
While I would love for Melbourne to be able to claim a monopoly on eloquent drunks, I can't in all justice argue that that is the case. I'm sure that Sydney has more than its fair share of stylish sots. Lenny Lower, for instance.
Oh aye, I'm fucking brilliant drunk.
Pity that I can't quite remember how the next day.
Well, I did read in the paper today that Melbourne is bidding to be the second UNESCO city of literature. I didn't know there was such a thing, but apparently Edinburgh is the first one. I imagine you'll have to have drunken eloquence classes at Melbourne Uni, if the bid is successful. Perhaps there can even be a V.C.E subject!
(By a startling coincidence, I've had one too many glasses of red wine tonight, but, since I'm a reformed teetotaller, that's probably about, oh, two or so!).
Speaking of drunken eloquent, I've met a few bloggers like that. I don't know what it takes to be the UNESCO city of literature. But it sounds impressive!
Sounds like you were teetotterring, which is much more fun than teetotalling.
Nails, you and me both. Sounds like you have a Geordie accent there, by the way.
Word verification was kuntl! Damn thing didn't let me in, though.
There's no telling how much of the blogosphere we owe to alcomahol! Here is where I saw the news of Melbourne's literary ambitions heralded. Naturally the first step is a logo. I don't know though. There's a certain cultural anxiety in having to apply for such a title. I don't imagine Paris or Dublin or New York or London really need UNESCO to certify their literary value.
I was looking for brandy, but the brandy cupboard was bare. I don't like beer and it took me a long time to determine which wines wouldn't give me an almost instantaneous headache. I also, oddly, found the idea of being drunk very unappealing.
You're a very funny chap, but I have to say that I'm not a fan of that last joke.
Oh, it was a joke? Damn, that's the trouble with word play - sometimes you do it and you don't even know about it. Actually, when the word verification didn't let me in I couldn't let it slip by so I added that sentence as clarification not realising it had a second meaning.
*Insert sound of Tim spluttering*
... despite the flat landscape, lack of harbour and inhospitable climate, Melbourne has overtaken us as the place to be.
Inhospitable climate? What the hell is she talking about!
I have to say that I was very surprised that you would say something like that, so it's good to know that it was entirely unintentional. I've just had to see and listen to so much misogyny lately and I was thinking "Oh no! Not the funny, charming blogger too!".
I also love so-called "bad" weather. I hate parochialism. Sydney-Melbourne rivalry- blah!
I'd have to say I'm ambivalent about the kind of 'cultural focus' Anne Saunders is extolling in that kind of article. I don't mind having Melbourne be a UNESCO city of literature; the concept is not much different to having all these other ridiculous festivals of culture.
It's all pretty tokenistic - apparently Melbournians have just devoted a month to comedy, and pretty soon it will be another month to film, and after that another one and a half months to arts and literature. The most annoying aspect of it is putting up with all the fame-whoring of The Age newspaper, which is a major sponsor, and some of the intellectual zombies who frequent these events.
Anyway, London and Paris and New York and probably Dublin, too, have all bid for the Olympic Games, the biggest token-extravaganza of them all!
Anne Summers, not Saunders. Bit of a difference!
For me one of the most revealing paragraphs is this one, nicely positioned after the usual extolling of the "creative class":
As a committed Sydneysider I found it galling that Melbourne is doing all this so well. Every arts venue has cafes or bars where the quality - and the price - of the food (and the service!) are way ahead of comparable places here.
There's the ludicrous idea of the "committed Sydneysider" (is Sydney now comparable to a lover or a child?), but, once you get past that, you find the rub. It's not arts so much as lifestyle. The arts are a nice little accompaniment, but not really the main dish. That's what's so frustrating about this sort of stuff- the shallowness of it. The packaging supercedes the thing it's supposed to be packaging because packaging is easier. Maybe I just hate "hipness"!
In Melbourne what you do have is a really excellent State Library and a public art gallery with a hell of a lot more money than usual. These are things to be grateful for. Hopefully this centre for Books and Ideas will have some good public programs and will spend at least as much on those as has (no doubt) been spent on the logo.
It's interesting though, isn't it? What I find galling is the fact that most of Sydney has to spend hours on our substandard and exorbitantly expensive public transport system to get to these cultural hubs in the first place. The harbour is nice and all that, but real physical advantage, in my book, is a crazy little thing called urban planning.
And to think I just thought you were being very risqué!
And I laughed. [In a horrified sort of way and with raised eyebrow, of course...]
Call it a Freudian slip of the fingers.
Freudian slips of the fingers can be very good.
Being a typist, I have a whole tonne of examples where this happens! A workmate misheard the phrase 'Fair whack of the trouble' and thought it was 'Fair whack of the truffle', a variation of the phrase 'Fair suck of the saveloy'.
The ABC have a doozy on their website; they were talking about the flooding of country town Adanimaby during the Snowy Mountains Scheme. They played some footage of an old news report where the broadcaster read:
And these are the men that are drowning Adinimaby
The ABC typist misheard this, and wrote:
And these are the men that are drowning admirably
As Dylan Thomas should have wrote,
'The hand that typed the transcript drowned a city...
Oh, and this wasn't one of our own mistakes, but an ALP pollie recently talked about the 'parachuting' of celebrity candidates into a safe seat, and said:
I just don't think someone like a Peter Garrett or, you know, God, any other number of celebrities you can think of....
Yeah, you know, God. Old chap, has a beard, votes for the Australian Labor Party and hands out how to vote cards at the local school come election time...
I'm sure I've done a few doozies myself.
Being a phone whore I do quite a lot of terrible verbal slips and sometimes typing ones - I once accidentally wrote 'bitch centre' for 'birth centre'. I can only assume that some midwife ticked me off.
I also have this terrible fear that I will slip up with people's names...like Hunt - that one really worries me given how I swear and my general, er, fondness, for the medical industry. Some names are fucking minefields.
Also, I'm not sure that God isn't a celebrity these days. Certainly gets treated like one - although somewhat harder to prove the existance of.
I kinda imagined God as a Liberal voter. The social policy action seems to fit.
I don't know about that last one. Do you believe in Paris Hilton, Nails? I mean, is there really a justification for the existence of Paris in the laws of the universe?
Paris is one of those quirks of logic - too impossible not to believe in. Such a pity Douglas Adams died before the advent of Paris.
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