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Characters:
Sweet Lloyd Reporter
Same Pants Lloyd Jerk
Paulloyd and Annalloyd Travelers from Holland
Act One, Scene One: The Film Opens
The lights dim and the projector spills out the opening images of the second annual independent film festival. The project, the brainchild of Midwestern movie mavens David Enright, Dave Waddell and Phil Morehart, features 49 short films, ranging from farcical to bizarre to just plain awful.
Sweet Lloyd has managed to coerce the other three Lloyds into joining him to watch the mixed bag. More importantly, Sweet Lloyd wonders whether they will thank him or hate him when the evening is over. Let's listen to what they're saying.
Paulloyd: So these are supposed to be comedies?
Sweet Lloyd: Last year, the films poked fun at film noir and there were several parodies of TV commercials.
Same Pants Lloyd: So these guys are making their money off of being culture vultures? I could do that. Why didn't we put a movie together?
Sweet Lloyd: I wouldn't say they're making any money off this, Lloyd. It was only $2 a ticket.
Act One, Scene Two: The Audience Responds
The camera pans the Southgate House's performance space. A sizeable crowd, around 300 people, flip through their programs. The camera zooms in tightly on the haiku printed among the film titles. Each haiku lists a Coppola as its director. (Of course, it's clear that the surname "Coppola" has simply been tacked to the ends of the real director's names.) A woman with a squeaky voice becomes confused.
Squeaky: Look at this! All these people have the last name Coppola! How did they get them? Are they all related to Nicolas Cage?
Same Pants Lloyd: (To the Lloyds) That's really fuckin' sad.
Act One, Scene Three: The Films Themselves
The camera moves to the silver screen. The terribly funny How to Make a Cookie Cutter Hollywood Piece of Shit Film features love scenes between men and Muppets, men pretending to be women and Muppets, and even Muppets with Muppets. The crowd applauds. It's amazing what a little sex mixed with stuffed mohair can do for a dramatic work.
Director Andre Hyland's The Straw Snatchers tells the tale of a brain-dead grunge kid who gets his kicks by listening to the music of the spheres by sliding a straw back and forth across the lid of his Dixie cup.
Annalloyd: (laughs)
Same Pants Lloyd: The sick thing is I've known people like that. (laughs)
Body Piercing with Bryce Ogden features an actual nipple-piercing on camera. The piercing itself only takes a moment, but director Michelle Latham's builds up the tension for over five minutes. Finally, the needle hits its mark and runs through our on-screen character.
Paulloyd: I'm never getting pierced.
Same Pants Lloyd: I pierced my own ears and that made me sick.
Annoying Man in the Back: Wooooooooo!!!!!!!
Same Pants Lloyd: Hey, Sweet Lloyd, when you write this thing, would you mention that I told Annoying Man in the Back to shut up!
Sweet Lloyd: Can do.
Act Two, Scene One: The Show Is a Hit
The crowd eats up the Jackie Chan-inspired action in director Jason Barre's Blood Relations. Its story is pure popcorn: A man battles his clone.
Same Pants Lloyd: That rocks.
Sweet Lloyd: Y'know, I think this is really how films should be seen.
Same Pants Lloyd: While smoking and drinking?
Sweet Lloyd: Yeah, but not just that. The tables, the bar atmosphere, it's an event. A lot of people came all dressed up.
Same Pants Lloyd: Not us.
Sweet Lloyd: Not you, you're still wearing the same pants you had on yesterday. (canned laughter)
Market, a grainy, black-and-white epic, attracts the best audience response. In the film, a fat man shops for groceries for his mother. He picks up a sausage and holds it against his crotch, probing shoppers with his meat dildo.
Same Pants Lloyd: Bathroom humor works anytime, anywhere.
Other Lloyds: (laugh and nod in agreement)
Equal, a mock commercial of the sweetener, mixes footage from Nazi Germany, civil rights clashes in mid-'60s America and China's Tiananmen Square conflict. The narration is appropriately droll: Even if the times you lived in weren't equal, at least your sweetener was.
Same Pants Lloyd: That was gold.
Act Three, Scene One: This is the End
Other films don't work as well. The anti-heroin flick, No Second Chances, fails to deliver its message to the crowd. The evening wears on. The three-hour fest has turned into a five-hour affair. The fatigued audience trickles out of the Southgate House. Paulloyd and Annalloyd leave early. (camera fades out)
Act Three, Scene Two: Touched by the Power of Cinema
Same Pants Lloyd and Sweet Lloyd walk to their car.
Same Pants Lloyd: I'm tired. I don't know if they put the crappier movies at the end, or it's just my disposition.
Sweet Lloyd: A little of both.
(Camera moves to close up as Sweet Lloyd turns philosophical)
Sweet Lloyd: Well, Lloyd, they say no good film is too long, and no bad film can be too short. Besides, it gave all these Cincinnati filmmakers a chance to come together and exhibit their work. And isn't togetherness and independent spirit what movies are all about?
Same Pants Lloyd: Shut the @#$%^ up!
(canned laughter)
Fade to black. ©
