Mars Needs Drama

For my Playwriting class, I was supposed to use a New York Times article to make three ideas for plays. I found this article about Mars Needs Moms incredibly inspiring for this assignment.

Mars Needs Ideas – A Tragedy

Bob, Jack, and Steve, three filmmakers, sit together around a table on stage. While brainstorming and smoking cigars, they come up with a brilliant idea for a 3-D film about Martians kidnapping the mothers of ungrateful earthling children. The three filmmakers take turns fantasizing about all the money they will make and how they will spend it. They invest $175 million into making and marketing the film only for it to flop. Later, they sit around the same table wondering where they went wrong as the contents of their studio are carried away.

Mars Needs Film Producers – A Comedy

Three producers – Bob, Jack, and Steve – are kidnapped by a space ship full of Martians, transported to their home planet, and dropped into some sort of inescapable chromium zoo. They find that the creative team of The Adventures of Pluto Nash is already there. A little green Martian explains to Bob, in fumbling English, that Mars has a severe shortage of intergalactic family films. The three producers then smoke cigars around a chrome table and brainstorm the idea of Mars Needs Moms, inspired by the adventure that brought them to this strange and mysterious red planet in the first place. They spend $175 million Mars dollars making and marketing the film only for it to flop because of its socially insensitive depiction of Martians.

Mars Needs Film Producers – In 3-D!

A play that will be performed in… 3-D! The story will be the same one mentioned in the previous paragraph, but the audience will pay 30% more for the tickets.

Mars Needs Pixar Animators

The characters of Toy Story quietly watch a bootleg copy of Mars Needs Moms on Andy’s giant television. They feel sort of embarrassed and turn it off.

Mars Needs Action Romance

Bob and his two film-making friends are kidnapped and taken to Mars. They are dropped into some sort of chromium zoo where several slovenly Neanderthals with outdated filming equipment seem to have been stranded for years. Bob and his friends watch in horror as the hideous, green Martian faces gaze down from the space-glass above. Zafronia enters through steel doors and explains, in fumbling English, that the Martians want them to make an intergalactic family film. She has stylish hair and breasts which indicate that she is an attractive female Martian. Bob, Jack, and Steve desperately work together make a film, but it flops in the intergalactic markets. Conveniently, Zafronia has a warship and helps the filmmakers escape during the disastrous premier. She reveals to their surprise that she was just an Earth-Mom that was kidnapped and turned into a Martian. After blowing up Mars, they return to Earth and make the film Mars Needs Moms.

The Zemeckis Technique

Actors will perform Mars Needs Moms on a bare set wearing uniforms outfitted with sensors that record their movements. An avant-garde production for the whole family!

(Image credit: www.joeacevedo.com, home of the perfect Martian woman.)

Bohemian Paradise

            I was somehow pulled into a half-brained scheme to take a bus from Prague to a small town called Turnov in Cesky Raj—otherwise known as Bohemian Paradise. If it sounds like a song by Queen, it’s because it almost is. Full of castles on mountaintops, cottages, and apple orchards, this region of Northern Bohemia inspired many Czech fairy tales about gnomes.

            Mishaps that my friends and I endured on this adventure included missing our bus, riding the train one stop too far, and having to hike to the mountain before hiking up the mountain. We took a long walk through the vacant streets of a few small, rural villages. I found it eerie that each charming cottage with a garden and apple orchard was enclosed by a barbed wire fence.

Near the little train stop where we began our hike, the branches of an apple tree hung over the side of a fence. As some of my fellow hikers devoured the apples and declared them the best they had ever tasted, I recalled the story of Snow White, which could have very well taken place in Cesky Raj.

            Our destination was Trosky Castle, a stone ruin on top of a mountain. We could see the two stone towers in the distance as we trudged on. At the foot of the mountain my friends and I stopped with rumbling stomachs at a cottage with crates of apples and tomatoes at the gate. We said our dobry dens to the people in the yard and were soon joined by an old woman who spoke only Czech. We smiled as she explained the history of Cesky Raj in her native tongue.

She disappeared into her cottage and produced two guinea pigs. I was soon holding a quivering rodent called Kleopatra who seemed ready to wet the sleeve of my jacket in terror. The woman led us into her yard where she kept a caged bird that could imitate the sounds other animals. The Czech woman demonstrated the bird’s ability to bark and meow as I ineffectively tried to pass off the panicking piggy. “She not wants me,” I stuttered in Czech, and the woman smiled and told us that she had eight more guinea pigs in the house.

Once the guinea pigs were safely indoors we decided to get moving while the sun was still out. My friends and I purchased a few apples to thank her as we left and snacked on them as we started up the mountain. Our path was muddy and slippery from recent storms. When we looked back we could see villages and patches of fields beyond the trees.

            When we finally reached the ruins, we entered through the gate of a tall stone wall. Much of Trosky Castle was crumbling and propped up with scaffolding. We climbed up the winding stairs to the top of the highest tower, from which you could look down upon miles of Bohemian forests, fields, and clusters of villages below.

          We left the castle feeling exhausted and hungry. We took a different trail to the bottom, walking down the rural roads past bales of hay and gypsy caravans that seemed to go on forever.

My friends and I stopped at the first pub we found and were startled to find the interior to be a sort of museum of communism. Imagine an Applebee’s, only much smaller, and rather than pictures of celebrities and the retired jerseys of local sports teams cluttering the walls there are framed photos of Stalin and genuine hammer-and-sickle jerseys tacked up instead. The four locals at the other table seemed amused by our presence.

The owner of the pub only spoke Czech and Russian. We told him we were from New York and he nearly burst a blood vessel. He didn’t understand me when I ordered water, but went straight to the tap when everyone else ordered a pivo. In the Czech Republic you get some strange looks when you order water because the beer is cheaper. The only item on the menu that any of us recognized was smazeny syr—a flat, rectangular mozzarella stick that far surpasses its American cousin in flavor.

            We watched him cooking in the kitchen with the door wide open. The man brought us plates of fried cheese and boiled potatoes with a side of tartar sauce. He gave anyone who was finished another rectangle of fried cheese. My friend Emily and I received bananas because Women Need Potassium.

            After we finished our meals we had a train to catch, so my friends and I said na schled to the Stalin-themed pub and made a dash for the nearby train station. We returned to Prague, where no one was surprised by tourists and many people spoke English. In Turnov and the villages we visited, the people didn’t expect visitors and they didn’t understand why it was necessary for me to photograph the molding on their windows. I felt like I saw a glimpse of Czech life and not version that was adapted to suit American tourists.

Click here to see more photos.

A Series of Flashbacks

There are several adventures I had during last semester that never were written about, and I intend to correct this crime immediately. The posts that will follow do not indicate that I am still in Europe, for I am not. I am, in fact, merely reminiscing.

This is why I didn't get the job.

Dear Sir/Madam:

As an undergraduate student at Purchase College, I am grateful to have the opportunity to use my creative writing experience towards your startup website — grateful to be considered for any job at all. I believe that I am an ideal candidate to create content for your upstarting website with a loving and prematurely arthritic hand. I hope to engage you with my copies, thrill you with my copies of copies, and deconstruct the flimsy cardboard structure of “the box” which imprisons the thoughts of many.

Not only am I a mere semester away from being a proud owner of a tastefully framed degree, but I am currently the proud owner of SKILLS and EXPERIENCE. I recently volunteered as the English language proofreader for the Prague-based theological journal Communio Viatorum, for which I worked with theologians to preserve the meaning of their translated works. I successfully undertook this responsibility with no knowledge of theology beyond what a saw in the movie Angels and Demons. Last spring I interned as a Learning Assistant for an American history class and was required to design PowerPoint review sessions gripping enough to almost hold the attention of one hundred students who did not want to be there.

I voluntarily authored the script of the Purim Dragball Masquerade, the lovechild of the Purchase College chapter of Hillel and GLBTU. Two of my short stories have been included in Purchase College’s annual literary magazine Italics Mine. I am accomplished in using the tools made available through Blogger and my personal blog is consistently read by several people.

I hope you will keep me in mind when selecting “fun and creative interns” for your “self-maintaining database website.” Please consider reading the attached résumé and writing sample.

Regards,


Brittany Shutts

Movie Adaptations

After watching Easy A, I realized that my professional direction may be writing teen movies based on books we have all read in high school English class, a project that will challenge my storytelling skills and intellect and give meaning to my life. There may be no nobler task than the dumbing down of celebrated masterpieces for the culturally apathetic youth. I have since set myself to work, diluting beloved literary classics into hollow adolescent clichés.


The Great Gatsby

When Nick Carraway’s family moves to Long Island he discovers that he has a mysterious next door neighbor: Jay Gatsby. The wildest parties at West Egg High take place in Gatsby’s gothic mansion almost every night and his parents never seem to be home. His cheerleading cousin Daisy, her cheating quarterback boyfriend Tom, and her best friend Jordan Baker try to make Nick feel at home as he is sucked into a world of rich kids, crazy parties, and varsity sports. Nick’s relationship with Jordan blossoms as shocking secrets are revealed. What happened at summer camp between Jay and Daisy two years ago? Scandal and secrets unravel without the interference of social themes and symbolism in this gripping new adaptation of a classic story.


Jane Eyre

In Lowood High School, freshman Jane Eyre is the victim of bullies, snotty sisters, and evil principals. When she volunteers to tutor Adele, a glamorous French exchange student, things finally start to look up. Through Adele she meets Eddy Rochester, a silent and brooding senior football star who happens to be part of Adele’s host family. Adele gives Jane a Parisian fashion makeover, and Jane begins to attract Eddy’s attentions. Just when Jane begins to feel happy for the first time, she discovers that Eddy is secretly hiding his insane ex-girlfriend in his locker. Can their relationship survive in this clever adaptation which conveniently ignores the moral questions and Gothic elements of the original novel?


Julius Caesar

In spite of his epilepsy, sophomore Julius Caesar takes the varsity basketball world by storm. While the impressionable students of Rome High School think of Caesar as a hero, his teammates aren’t his biggest fans. Caesar has undermined the rest of the team in his rise to fame and lowered the former team captain Pompey to the ranks of the school mascot. Brutus, Caesar’s teammate and best friend, launches a plan to teach Caesar a lesson he won’t forget. Will Caesar learn what it means to be a team? And why does the janitor who waxes the gym floor keep repeating, “Beware the Ides of March?” The answer will surprise you in this fresh, athletic take on a Shakespearean tragedy that will teach us all a lesson in friendship.

Occupational Fantasy, Part Three

I am employed as an adjunct literature professor at a community college that specializes in the culinary arts. The administration provides me with an office in a former men’s restroom and I move all of my material possessions into the office, including a twin bed. I teach introductory classes with vague titles and the few students who take literature classes to become rounded and critically thinking chefs frequently spend the lectures compulsively sautéing mushrooms or garnishing salmon. The administration considers liquidating the School of Humanities to fund the lucrative new hibachi track, but instead requests new classes with a culinary angle, such as Food for Thought. I am pressured into lecturing a seminar on food writing. For lack of a better plan, I bring in doggie bags from various dining establishments and assign articles on their contents. In my office the peace is occasionally disturbed by an aspiring hibachi chef looking for the men’s restroom, but in my free time I write stories and build cubist furniture.

Occupational Fantasy, Part Two

I am standing in a quiet, empty metro station when I feel a stranger’s hand on my shoulder. I turn and see a man in a long trench coat with wild snakes of hair and suppose that he is either homeless or a wizard. He says that he is a cubist furniture designer and that I will be his apprentice. He will teach me to upholster cubist furniture and restore antique cubist furniture to its former condition, and when he has taught me all that there is to know about cubist furniture I will be the greatest maker of cubist furniture in the world. I say okay. The metro appears and he pulls me inside with great haste. We go to his cubist furniture studio where I choose appropriately coordinating fabrics for each grain of wood. The cubist furniture master tells me that we will have to work quickly through the cubist furniture curriculum because of those who would have me fail. His rival cubist furniture designers have spies everywhere, behind the cubist wardrobe and under the cubist bed. In just a couple of weeks I learn the appropriate skills of a cubist furniture designer and open my own shop where my cubist chaise lounges are purchased by wealthy collectors from all over the world. After a long day of upholstering, I have time to write stories.