The Last Donkeyman

I was thinking about Peter Jackson’s King Kong the other day and realized that even though almost everybody I know disliked it and considered it the definitive Hollywood trainwreck and an ego indulgence, it really didn’t alienate them enough. Most people I know only had an issue with the length, they were actually totally accepting of the bestiality at the core of this story, they just thought there were a couple dinosaur fights too many. So, there was an adventure movie in there that had legitimate mainstream potential, if it had to been trimmed out of what Peter Jackson delivered.

But what I want is a film that really just totally alienates everybody. And I want two levels of alienation. I want to make most people feel wierded out when they see a trailer about a bunch of half-donkey people, but I also want a second wave of alienation to occur halfway through the film to alienate the people who actually still gave it a chance and bought a ticket.

Who would I like to direct my four hour half-donkey epic? I was thinking Roland Emmerich, not because I have immense respect for his work, because I don’t. I’d like him because I would like this to be the note on which his career ends.

I’d like film critics to someday in the distant future still talk about “that German guy who for decades did all those forgettable mainstream PG-13 Hollywood popcorn blockbusters and then turned around and did that wacky pretentious four hour movie about those donkey people. What the fuck was with that guy? He must’ve just snapped or something.”

That would make me smile. I’d be happy with any director who has a pretty safe commercial reputation. Rob Cohen, Simon West, James Mangold, guys like that. I don’t want some guy like that Donnie Darko director guy who already has a cult that’ll find a way to add meaning to anything he craps out. I just want to piss everybody off and leave them scratching their heads for decades. But I would definitely like it advertised like a Lord of the Rings type movie for people who like movies about elves with swords and shit.

Anyway, here’s the movie. Like I said, I figure it would run about four hours and cost well over 200 million dollars to produce. I consider this my Waterworld. I wanted to create a Hollywood trainwreck so brutal that not even Bruce Willis’s character from Unbreakable would survive. Enjoy.

This story will take place in world where all the people have human bodies and animal heads, like minotaurs. They live in a society that is a hodgepodge of ancient civilizations including giant Mayan towers, Roman coliseums, some ancient Greek stuff etc. Most of the people wears loin clothes, but some of the posh people wear togas and all the hunting and fighting is done with spears and swords.

We learn that Laudio (played by Keanu Reeves with a donkeyhead) is one of the last donkeypeople in a small island state that is populated almost evenly by goatpeople and horsepeople.

There is a population of about five hundred people in total who live in this island state that mostly resembles ancient Greece. The whole film will have Laudio doing a Terrence Malick style narration track where he broods about a variety of subjects with a relatively dry remove and compassionate disappointment.

Laudio is a respected soldier in the army and a skilled swordsman, but also a humble and devoted husband to his wife, a goatwoman named Theba (played by Asia Argento with a goathead). She is in the early stages of pregnancy with their first child.

Laudio narrates “Life grows in us all, until it doesn’t. Who’s is life to take? Conception is true birth and war his true baptism.”

We start the film off with a sparring session between Laudio and a goatman soldier named Picus (played by Olivier Martinez with a goathead) in the army. All the other troops are gathered around cheering as they go at it. Laudio shows superior skill in disarming Picus and fighting him into submission. The horsepeople in the crowd laugh at the Picus’s humiliation, the goatpeople look defeated, and the few donkeypeople cheer in exclamation and show that they clearly idolize Laudio.

Picus stumbles off looking embarrassed when his path is blocked by General Kralius (played by Christopher Lee with a older goathead). We find out that General Kralius is Picus’s father and that he is disappointed in him. He advises Picus not to pick a fight that he is not certain he will win. Picus asks his father “Then I am doomed to rarely fight, father, unless there is a way I can beat a man who is stronger and faster.” To which General Kralius replies “There is, it’s called strategy and influence.” And gazes off into the distance with distain at all the donkeypeople gathering around Laudio in joy.

We then get a big party scene later at night. All the people of this horse goat donkey civilization are partying by bathing in giant tubs of wine while high priests burn wicker sculptures of their gods. We see all the factions of the society and see General Kralius socializing with all the grand councillors in their posh togas.

We see some of the common horsepeople and goatpeople arm wrestling at tables and dancing. And then fade into a table where all the donkeypeople are gathered around and one younger donkeyboy keeps urging Laudio to tell a story about a battle they were in, but Laudio says he does not wish to brag and Theba embraces him to show she loves him for his humility, and so the young donkey tells a story about how Laudio showed extreme valour in battle so that we in the audience get more exposition about what an asskicker Laudio is.

Laudio narrates “Men brag of their achievements in war, humility is the more difficult war to fight, the battle against one’s ego, an unconquerable landscape.”

We then get a scene the next day of the high council meeting. Each councillor declares his attendance and we see that it is made up of different representatives from the different regions and they are all horsemen and goatmen except for one lone donkeyman councillor. One of the goatmen councillors with whom General Kralius was hobnobbing at the part the night before puts forward a motion to send troops out to fight the squirrelpeople who are said to inhabit a resource rich island beyond the horizon. The one donkeyman councillor protests, saying that nobody has ever seen the squirrelpeople and that the journey would be too perilous for dubious results; but all the other councillors vote him down and give full power to General Kralius to send his finest battalion. Kralius chooses to send the all donkeymen battalion.

The donkeymen battalion all get into a ship and are given tearful goodbyes. We get a couple of days worth of scenes of them on the ship sailing as the weather gets worse and a typhoon eventually wrecks the ship. Laudio survives and washes up on a little island all by himself.

Back home, pieces of the ship and dead donkeymen wash up back on shore and the people all weep for the loss. We see some scenes where the council kicks out the one donkeyman councillor since he now represents no one.

The council is now deadlocked with an even split between horsepeople and goatpeople and soon war breaks out in the streets and we get a massive riot. Theba goes into labour and gives birth to a donkeybaby. Picus is running around the streets killing and rioting and sees through Theba’s window that she has given birth to a donkeybaby and goes in and kills it, leading to her chasing him through the streets and killing him and then General Kralius killing her and he then gets stabbed in the back by another rioting maniac horseman.

We cut back to Laudio, alone on his own island. He narrates a bunch about reasons to live and love guiding him home as he builds a raft over many months. This montage is intercut with the decay of the bodies of his entire civilization back home who eventually are just dust. Laudio gets his raft out onto the sea and guides his way back home to find the entire civilization empty and rotting.

He just wanders around narrating to himself.

“Did it ever exist?

Did I?

Why?

All the wars I fought, did they happen?

Is victory for the wicked?

What plight bares a non-existent being? Is it the plight of indifference to his own non-existence?”

As he continues to question his own existence he begins to visually melt into the background which begins to look like a bunch of amoebas, the visuals will get more and more blurring until the film is basically Vangelis music with visuals of a lava lamp of scopitonal psychedelic color blends with Laudio’s voice narrating about his existence with long pauses for about the last forty five minutes of the film.

During the last ten minutes of the film the scopitones will very gradually dim to black and in the final moments of the film Laudio narrates

“When a man who never existed contemplates his subsistence to the audience that is infinity, does it listen? Are you listening?”

Then we’ll put the name of whatever pretentious prick who decides to direct this nonsense up on screen in big white letters with really aggressive music that goes completely against the relaxing new age music that has been playing throughout the existential portion of the film.

The End.

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