War on Terror: The Movie
Time: 4:37
Initial: GA
IC: AM
OG: W
Activity Recorded: 3792-14
Taibbi, observed awake and pacing back and forth in his lighted apartment all night, calls Weintraub at 4:37 a.m.; the phone answers on the nineteenth ring.)
T: Aaron! It's (unintelligible), you hairy fucking (inaudible)!
W: Uh? Jesus. Matt?
T: Of course it (inaud.), fucking (unint.), ha, ha!
W: What's that noise? Is that the national anthem?
T: (shouting) Hell, yeah, dog! I'll turn it down! (noise diminishes) You know, if you really listen to the anthem, it's really a beautiful song!
W: Do you know what time it is? It's like five in the morning!
T: More like 4:30. What, are you asleep?
W: (sighing) You know, I should have known. Masha called me yesterday from her office. She's worried about you.
T: Worried about me? Why?
W: She says that ever since the war ended, all you do is pace around the apartment all day, blow coke, listen to Britney Spears and move toy tanks and ships around on some huge map you bought.
T: (laughing) Yeah, I guess that's true!
W: And she says you've been reading the Bible.
T: Yeah! Fucking sad book!
W: (sighs) This hasn't been going on the whole two weeks, has it?
T: No? I mean, yes! I mean, who cares? Aaron, listen, I've got this ingenious idea! This one is going to make us high six figures. Are you listening?
W: It's not another screenplay, is it? Because you never even started the last?
T: Aaron, wait, listen, this is a hundred times better than that one. Hang on. (makes prolonged snorting sound) Aaaah? Okay, get this. Feature movie called Who Wants to Be Next! It's got action, airplanes, tits, the whole thing! It can't miss!
W: Okay. Who's in it?
T: Who's in it, Aaron? America's in it, that's who. Okay, listen up. Opening scene. Some shithole suburb in some place like Tennessee. Or maybe Indiana. Whatever! Ordinary house, garage, Ford Aerostar, concrete everywhere?you know, idyllic. Two adolescent kids, the boy's into sports, the girl's all gothed-out and listens to Marilyn Manson, sibling rivalry, but they love each other underneath it all?you know, we're diverse, but we get along! Dad does something security-related for the government that's intellectual, he saves whales for the fire department or something. Mom's that fucking bitch from The Truman Show?
W: Uh? Laura Linney?
T: Right, exactly, Laura Linney! Anyway, they're home one night, ordinary night. Dad's writing a book about Mount Rushmore, mom's working out on the home gym, she's got that serious working-woman look on, you know (wincing) "Just?another?mile!" Jimmy's picking on little Tess because she's got a new necklet with a peace sign on it, he keeps punching her on the shoulder. And then suddenly a gang of Syrian terrorists bursts into the house, all laughing like pirates, and immediately starts tying up the kids and wrecking shit.
W: Who are we rooting for at this point?
T: The family, Aaron, definitely the family! We're with them all the way!
W: And why are terrorists bursting into some random house in the Ohio suburbs?
T: Indiana? Because they're terrorists, Aaron, that's why! That's what they do. Anyway, Mom and Dad come rushing in and they're freaking because the kids are all tied up and crying. And Mom's like, "Steven! Why don't you do something! Get a gun!" And Dad's like, "Lisa, you know I don't believe in them!" And Linney throws her hands up in the air?how useless her husband is! And meanwhile two of the terrorists are checking out little Tess. One of them grabs the necklet and says to the other in Arabic?you can see the subtitles: "Ha, ha, look at this!" And the other one's like, "Peace! The fools!" And right then and there they chop off the kids' heads with a big scimitar, and the one guy palms the peace necklet and they go running out the back door, laughing and carrying the heads?
W: Wait?what did they come in there for in the first pl?
T: ?and as they leave there are arterial blood spurts from the kids' necks and they get all over Mom, who just can't stop screaming, and Dad is all silent because he knows at that moment that she's going to divorce him. There should be a kind of swaying close-up of his face for that shot, his grave, conflicted face should come in and out of focus, you know, like Soderbergh in Traffic?
W: Who is he?
T: Who's who?
W: Dad. Who is he?
T: Oh, I don't know. An everyman type with vague countercultural credentials?Jay Mohr.
W: How about David Spade?
T: Yeah, he'd work, I guess. And he'd do it, too.
W: He sure would.
T: Whatever. (pauses, snorts) All right! Cut to the Oval Office. Jennifer Garner is president! She's having an encrypted videophone conversation with our secret European agent, who's, uh, Stellen Skarsgard, and he's telling her that the EU is behind all the terrorism and that they're using coded messages in ordinary Yahoo chat rooms to give terrorists coordinates they can use to put scrofula and bubonic plague and AIDS in our reservoirs. So Garner turns to chief of staff Don Cheadle and he's like, "We're going to have to intercept those messages." And she'll be like, "But that's a violation of civil liberties! It's unconstitutional!" And Cheadle's like, "It's the only way." And the next thing you see is Garner having her Kennedy-Cuban-Missile grappling-with-a-decision scene, walking alone through the residence at night. She's in skimpy lingerie and you can see her mound clear through her panties, but it's not like it's pornography because, uh, there are all these flags and portraits everywhere.
W: Matt?
T: Meanwhile, Allen Iverson is organizing all the good rappers to weed out the terrorist-sympathizing rappers who include DMX and whose songs are also on the soundtrack, which is produced by Sony. Then from there it's pretty obvious? We invade, and Dad from Indiana is now a killing machine in the Marines and in the end he's bayoneting over and over the Syrian who killed his kids, saying, "I got you, you son of a bitch, I got you!" And then he kneels down and sees that peace necklet around the guy's neck and that's the poetic last shot, a close-up of the peace sign? All the enemies killed?and?and? wait, that's? that's stupid.
W: Matt.
T: Oh, God. I think I'm coming down.
W: You should get some sleep.
T: God, Aaron, I'm sorry, I'll let you go? Jesus, how depressing.
W: It's okay.
T: You don't have any downers, do you?
W: Um? I think I've got some Xanax.
T: How about a Vicodin? You have any of those left?
W: Okay, yeah, I'm not going to lie, I've got a few of those left.
T: Can I have one?
W: All right. Come on over.
T: I'll be there in fifteen minutes. Shit, Aaron, I'm sorry, I don't know what I was thinking.
W: It's okay. We've all been there. And hey, remember, you've got that rewrite work for Canal Plus.
T: (cheerily) Yeah. The cheese documentary. Thank God.