A Twilight Script? Truly, We Are Touched By Genius

So through a curious chain of events, the Strawman Blogger found himself at the premier of the new Twilight film. Truly, it was a seminal event in our life. After watching it, a few people came up and asked about our opinions about the movie, and if they should see it. It was a difficult question to answer. So instead, we've written our review in the only medium we can - in our very own Twilight script.

Enjoy.

SCENE I

BELLA and EDWARD are in a field full of flowers. BELLA is resting her head on EDWARD'S lap. They are talking.

EDWARD: Marry me.

BELLA: No.

EDWARD: Marry me.

BELLA: No.

EDWARD: Marry me.

BELLA: No.

EDWARD (frustrated): Why not? Is it because you’re a strong character with deep personal convictions and that marrying a man immediately after high school is a nearly ambitiously stupid cliché that most women have learned to avoid since the late 1960s?

BELLA: No. It is because I am afflicted with Teenage Angst.

EDWARD: Oh

EDWARD and BELLA TALK. At one point, BELLA makes a fairly funny joke that causes several people to audibly chuckle. Rational members of the audience feel a glimmer of hope that the movie might not be utterly without merit.

EDWARD: I love you, Bella.

BELLA: I love you, Edward.

EDWARD makes another joke, but this one is almost terminally unfunny. The glimmer of hope slowly turns to a feeling of mounting dread. EDWARD and BELLA walk off together.

END SCENE

SCENE II

EDWARD and BELLA walk into the school parking lot. JACOB is waiting for them. JACOB looks angry and also full of teen angst. He is not wearing a shirt. Throughout this entire movie, he will never wear a shirt, as though wearing shirts were against some old-time NATIVE AMERICAN tradition. Also, even though he has been cast as a NATIVE AMERICAN, audience members are pretty sure he’s actually HISPANIC. Or some type of CENTRAL or SOUTH AMERICAN. Or something.

JACOB: I’m Jacob. I’m a werewolf, and I love Bella. Also, whenever I walk on-screen, teenage girls in the audience will scream in prepubescent joy, in spite of the fact that anyone with a reasonable amount of human experience will instantly recognize me as THE LEAST HETEROSEXUAL MAN ALIVE.

BELLA: Hi Jacob.

EDWARD: I hate you, Jacob.

JACOB: Hi Bella. Hi Edward. Edward, have you been working out?

BELLA: What?

JACOB: I hate all vampires. This will be a re-occurring them throughout the film, but it will mostly be told through the medium of angry glares. (He glares angrily at EDWARD, then looks him up and down appreciatively). Bella, you’re with the wrong man.

EDWARD: I know what’s right for her. Stay away.

END SCENE

SCENE III

BELLA, EDWARD, and JACOB are at the top of a mountain in the forest. It is dark and it is snowing outside. Bella is wrapped in a blanket and is shivering.

BELLA: Can you believe I was in Into The Wild, which was actually a pretty promising movie?

EDWARD: That does seem difficult to fathom.

BELLA: I am very cold. Someone should hold me for warmth. Jacob, will you come over here?

JACOB: Sure. Is Edward cold, too?

EDWARD: I do not get cold, because I am a vampire.

JACOB (softly): Damn.

JACOB warms BELLA. JACOB and EDWARD have a conversation that causes most teenage girls in the audience to giggle and squirm, which is weird, because it will go down in history as the finest ten minutes of homoeroticism ever produced by Hollywood. Eventually, it is morning. JACOB and BELLA walk outside.

JACOB: I have to go fight the vampires. But first, I love you.

BELLA: Kiss me. It has been at least fifteen minutes since I agreed to marry Edward, and I have a shaky grasp on the notion of fidelity.

BELLA and JACOB kiss. EDWARD walks onscreen.

EDWARD: You think this would make me angry, but unbelievably, I’m not. After watching my fiancee mug down with another man, I will forgive her instantly, and then never mention it again throughout the rest of the film, even though I’m supposed to loathe him. It will be totally believable.

END SCENE

SCENE IV

The VAMPIRES are getting ready for their fight with the WEREWOLVES against SOME MORE VAMPIRES. It is all very confusing, but that is mostly because the majority of the audience fell asleep thirty or forty minutes earlier.

VAMPIRES: Aarrrgghghh!

The VAMPIRES fight SOME MORE VAMPIRES. The werewolves join in.

JACOB: Wow! I am pretty poorly animated. I should look threatening and dark, but instead I look like a cuddly ball of pixels bounced onto the screen. You would think that they would have made more of an effort with that.

VAMPIRES: Actually, no. This film has a cult following among adolescents. Most individuals in the target demographic are still developing cognitively. That lack of judgment, paired with the surge of hormones created during the onset of puberty, will render them unable to make an accurate appraisal of the quality of this film. And anyone who can identify its appalling lack of taste will be persuaded to keep silent due to immense cultural pressures to conform.

JACOB: So this is just a judgment call by the producers, who understand that they are working in a zero-arbitrage situation where the value of the end product is totally disconnected to the hundred of millions it will produce in ticket sales?

VAMPIRES: Exactly.

JACOB: That would explain what happens when I kill a vampire. It’s supposed to be the showpiece special effect of the film, but mostly it just looks like I’m crushing a department store mannequin.

The VAMPIRES and WEREWOLVES proceed to kill the DEPARTMENT STORE MANNEQUINS. Disturbingly, the MANNEQUINS continue to display a greater emotional range.

JACOB: We’ve won!

END SCENE

SCENE IV

BELLA and EDWARD are back in the field. EDWARD is stroking her hair.

BELLA: I’m glad you survived. What happened to Jacob?

EDWARD: He was hurt by a vampire. He will live, but a vampire broke half of the bones in his body.

JACOB (in the distance): Hey! I’ve still got a bone for you.

EDWARD (confused): Whatever. Anyway, Bella, how do you feel about this movie? Do you feel you’ve demonstrated that you can carry yourself as a role model for the young women it’s intended to appeal to?

BELLA: I think that girls everywhere will recognize me as a worthy member of the pantheon of great female characters. Why venerate people like Elizabeth I, Dorothy Parker, or Eleanor Roosevelt? Why not choose me? I gave up my college education for a man I barely know, a man who is locked in a personal struggle against physically harming me, even though it means I will be cut off from any contact with my family, friends, or people who care about me. I will make this decision at a time in my life where I am not quite capable of making good judgments, but will justify it in the name of teenage love. Even though I know that adolescent love rarely survives to adulthood, and that my decision will lock me irrevocably into a life that’s barely more than a cage, I’ll do it willingly, even passionately. In many ways, I will become an unintentional allegory for battered women, a heartbreaking representation of a woman who falls victim to, fights against, and eventually succumbs to an abuser.

EDWARD (sitting up): Yes. You’re a regular fucking Helen Mirren.

JACOB: Who cares? Spike would still kick all of your asses.

MOVIE CREDITS

Austerity Doesn't Work! Long Live Austerity!

Via Megan McCardle, we learn that things just aren't that bad for Ireland. In spite of massive unemployment and crippling budget cuts, they just might be pulling out of their recession.

A bit of background. Ireland was hit hard by the recession, and headline unemployment is currently topping 15%. Perceptive readers take note: This is a bad thing.

In response, Ireland enacted a crushing austerity plan, slashing government payroll and instituting draconian spending cuts. According to the methodology favoured by the right and the ever charming Germans, this should have helped stabilize the economy. Markets would be reassured by Ireland's commitment to tackling it's debt issues, money would be invested, and liquidity would flow.

Alas, such is not the case. Things did not get terribly worse for Ireland, but they didn't get much better, either. Their bonds still trade at rates much higher than Spain, which is in a similar grim situation but didn't care to cut much from the budget at all.

Now, according to cognoscenti like Paul Krugman, there's a simple explanation for this. Savage fiscal austerity only works when you can slash interests rates or devalue your currency. Of course, this isn't much help: interest rates are effectively zero, and not everyone can devalue at once.

McCardle thinks different:

Though meager, they're real. On the same day that the Times was presenting a dire picture of austerity budgets, the Wall Street Journal was running an article suggesting that Ireland may end up a big beneficiary of the cheaper euro . . . a healthy growth rate does seem to at least call into question the notion that failing to do massive stimulus automatically dooms your economy to a tragic combination of stagnation and decay.

We rather like McCardle - she's a healthy dose of sanity in a conservative world that's wandered just a bit far into stark foaming madness for our tastes. But on the face of this, it's just bizarre. Krugman says austerity only works if you devalue your currency, and McCardle retorts that it worked perfectly well for Ireland . . . once they devalued their currency?

And, of course, it's worse than that, because Ireland has no control over their currency at all. They're a member over the Eurozone. If McCardle can prove that the austerity plan has some impact on the trading rate of the Euro, then she's got a leg to stand on. Until then, she's just trawling for Krugman's dataset.