Deliriously Happy (15 page)

So [
Flintstones
director Brian] Levant recruited what he called an “all-star writing team”—TV buddies from shows like
Family Ties, Night Court
and
Happy Days
… Dubbed the Flintstone Eight, the group wrote a new draft … but it still wasn't good enough. Four more roundtable sessions ensued, each of which was attended by new talent as well…

“It flips me out that there were so many writers, and on any other kind of movie it wouldn't have worked,” says Dava Savel, the lone woman in her roundtable. Savel doesn't know if anything she wrote made it onto the screen. “I have no idea if I have one line in there,” she says.

—
Entertainment Weekly

A screeching comes across the sky.

Stately, plump Fred Flintstone stood upon the 'saur's head, bearing a boulder of granite, on which a bird perched, its eyes crossed. An orange dressing gown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild Mesozoic air.

He held his shell aloft and intoned:

—Yabba dabba dooo!

Afoot and lighthearted, he took to the open road, healthy, free, the world before him, the long brown path before him leading back to Bedrock.

Fred repeating to himself, as he ran, the words of an old song:

Flintstones, meet the Flintstones
,

Fred Flintstone never made a lot of money. His name was never in the tablets. He was not the finest cartoon character ever drawn. But he's a
Homo sapiens
.

They're the modern Stone Age family
.

He is simply a human being, more or less.

From the town of Bedrock
,

Stonecutter for the world, tool maker, stacker of meat, player with reptiles and the nation's cave dwellers, balmy, gritty, growling, city of big boulders, Bedrock.

They're a page right out of history
.

It was the best of times, it was the first of times, it was the age of ice, it was the age of lava, it was the epoch of large sloping foreheads, it was the epoch of dictabirds and monkey traffic signals and woolly mammoth shower massages. All the modern inconveniences. He feels the wind on his ears, his heels hitting heavily on the gravel but with an effortless gathering out of a kind of sweet panic growing lighter and quicker and quieter, he runs. Ah: runs. Runs. Keep on truckin'. He outlives this day and comes safe home.

See Dino run. Run, Dino, run.

Let's ride with the family down the street
,

Let us go then, Hominidae, with the drive-in spread out against the sky, side of piquant bronto ribs from the takeout.

Through the courtesy of Fred's two feet
.

What makes Fred run? Wilma, light of his life, fire of his loincloth. His sin, his soul. Wil-ma. Standing with her legs apart, she reminds Fred of Wondrock Woman.

When you're with the Flintstones
,

“Oh, Fred,” Wilma said, “we could have such a damned good time together.”

Have a yabba dabba doo time
,

“Some fun!” Barney said.

A dabba doo time
.

“Shut up, Barney,” Flintstone said.

You'll have a gay old time
.

Once again at midnight nearly, while Fred pondered weak and weary over many a quaint and chiseled tablet of prehistoric lore; while he nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of something gently scratching, scratching at the cavern door.

Someday maybe Fred will win the fight

Nothing's more determined than a cat of saber tooth—is there? Is there, baby?

And that cat will stay out for the night
.

The door was slammed by a thrust of a claw, and then at last all was still. The house was locked, and he thought his stupid cook or the stupid maid must have locked the place up until he remembered the maid was a mastodon and the cook a wacky collection of labor-saurus devices. He pounded on the door, tried to force it with his shoulder; he shouted,

Willllll-maaaa!

And so he beat on, fists against the granite, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

It is with great sadness that I take out full-page ads today in the
New York Times, USA Today
, and
Variety
, though I weep not for myself alone but for the entire film community, for all of show business, and for the billions who depend on it for entertainment free of morality and the pieties of self-appointed spokesmen for God.

I am Demetri Pinot, a name a few of you may recognize from my music-video work, in particular Mandingus's “(I Need a ‘Ho' with a) Big Ho,” which won an MTV music award last year for Best Rap/Hip-Hop based on a Negro Spiritual. Some may also know me as the writer-director of this past Valentine's Day weekend box office champ,
Dead Girls Don't Cry
. But to many of you, I am simply the “hellbound pottymouth” behind
christblood
.

christblood
is my attempt to come to terms with the divine mystery of the Resurrection, and most certainly not “a zombie picture with Jesus as an undead killing machine,” as Mr. William Donohue, president of the Catholic League, recently claimed on his program,
Donohue & Donahue at the Movies
. It is worth noting that Mr. Donohue based his review on an early test screening, before any of the effects were laid in, and yet chose to condemn
christblood
WITHOUT HAVING SEEN A SINGLE FOOT OF THE COMPLETED FILM. Had he viewed the final cut, with its 234 digital effects and Trent Reznor score, perhaps Mr. Donohue would have seen
christblood
for the devout piece of entertainment it is.

In
christblood
, the character Jesus returns from the dead with a vengeance, a mangod on a mission, using his divine superpowers to destroy the Roman soldiers who cast lots for his clothing—and that's just the beginning. Donahue says this is sacrilegious. But how? This is more or less the legend set forth in the Book of Revelation; I have simply combined it with the Resurrection story line for greater dramatic impact. And let's not forget, THE GOOD GUY WINS. (But not before facing off against the entire Roman Empire.) Donohue also found “stunningly blasphemous” the scene in which Jesus “squirts blood from his stigmata into Pontius Pilate's face, apparently melting it.” Again, the final effect is more convincing, but more to the point: What I did was simply physicalize Jesus's spiritual powers, transubstantiate them, if you will, into the kind of state-of-the-art pyrotechnics that today's audiences can truly believe in. As for the “obscene” Mary Magdalene scene, Donohue neglected to mention that she has sex with the apostles, not Jesus, and when he comes upon their grief-driven orgy, he expresses his divine displeasure in no uncertain terms. And for what it's worth, this scene no longer even appears in the domestic release, having only been included as an exigency of the foreign market.

I would like to say, “SEE THE MOVIE FOR YOURSELF AND DECIDE,” but of course that is now impossible. Donohue's campaign against
christblood
has gone far beyond his unprofessional review and well into slander, harassment, and restraint of trade. As a result of his one-man anti-
christblood
crusade, the House of Representatives has attached a formal condemnation of my film to the current appropriations bill, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has banned it from being advertised on city buses, I have been excommunicated, and Bill Maher suddenly isn't returning my calls. In response, my distributor has pulled
christblood
from its Christmas release schedule, and will only screen the film in Los Angeles and Manhattan in a one-week Oscar™-qualifying run.

The Inquisitional reign of terror has not ended there. The premiere of my film at last week's Twin Cities Film Festival was ruined when the projectionist opened the film canisters only to find them filled with blood. I cannot prove this was the WORK OF RIGHT-WING RELIGIOUS ZEALOTS, but
somebody
must have done it, just as somebody bribed my female escort at that event to begin talking in the voice of my dead grandmother at a most inopportune time, pleading with me to destroy
christblood
and devote the rest of my life to prayer. Later the same night, this same somebody filled my hotel bedroom with thousands of frogs—frogs, lest there be any mistaking their origin, which had been professionally trained to croak in unison something vaguely approximating the word “repent.”

There can be only one response to this. All artists of conscience, and particularly voting members of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences, must make a show of solidarity against censorship. And what better way than to nominate
christblood
for the Academy Award in the categories of Best Picture, Best Director (Demetri Pinot), Best Screenplay Adapted from Another Medium (Demetri Pinot), and Best Supporting Actress (Sasha Grey as Mary Magdalene). These nominations would send a strong signal to DONOHUE AND HIS MINIONS and perhaps keep
christblood
in theaters through the symbolically important Easter weekend.

As artists, or those who consume the work of artists, you must be concerned about who or what Donohue will choose to unleash his holy wrath on next. Before you sit down to create or enjoy your next work of challenging art, think of me, lying here covered in black, gurgling sores unseen in the medical literature, and say to yourself, “There but for the grace of God go I.”

Many in showbiz don't have a clear understanding of the writers' demands or the reasoning behind these demands.

—
Variety

OUR BELIEFS

We are artists
. We may not dress all cool like artists, or get chicks like artists, and none of us are starving, quite obviously, but Hollywood screenwriters are certainly artists, perhaps even
artistes
. Okay, maybe we're not cranking out endless
Mona Lisa
s, but what about this Damien Hirst guy with his preschool spin paintings and cows suspended in barbecue sauce? If that's art, then
Ten Deadly
Whispers
, debuting exclusively on DVD this week, is art with a capital
R
(
for strong sexuality and some graphic violence
).

We suffer for our art
. Not in a showy
oh-I-live-in-a-tenement-and-turn-tricks-to-buy-paint-and-have-this-special-tuberculosis-only-artists-get
kind of way. But we suffer just the same. We slave over our screenplays, alone, staring into blank laptops, often blinded by pool glare. And we smoke
real
cigarettes.

We struggle
. We slave collectively over our teleplays, surrounded by fat people, crowded into ancient bungalows cluttered with free candy and soda. We go through all this only to have to listen with a wan smile as some Jeffrey tells us what's wrong with it, letting his bathrobe fall open to reveal he has a carrot up his rectum.

We are not in this for the money
. Management would have you believe that we all make $200,000 a year. That's funny. We wouldn't even
eat
something that cost $200,000, unless it was actually $200,000, drizzled with truffle oil, the way Silvio makes it.
Yum
. The exact amount we receive under this new contract is meaningless to us, as long as it's more. The only reason why we require payment at all is to support those little people we keep telling you about: the assistants, amanuenses, baristas, Rolfers, scarf carriers, sycophants, and erotic muses we need to create our art. Oh, and our babies. And our various charities.