Help Me Make My Dreams Come True!

DISCLAIMER: I OWN THE RIGHTS TO THIS ORIGINAL WORK!!

In the past week, everyone decided to glaze that one movie that was like a beautiful, unholy synthesis of disparate ideas and tones and performances, ranging from community care to familial love in the face of fascist oppression to what we owe our children, all packaged in a stoner comedy / car-chase-thriller that, to quote Madam Bovary, is as “long as a rifle shot” and feels just as fast or whatever🙄🙄🙄…

I wish more people had seen other movies—ones that were generated by AI, and not the human touch of a singular filmmaker. I’m loving these videos of the women holding big boulders and jumping backwards on that bridge in Vancouver.

Tell me what you guys think of the dog’s actions. Condone or condemn? It’s kind of a fascinating moral question. It really engages with the day’s politics, much more so than certain theatrical releases that wrestle with American ideologies towards immigration and race or something.

Even better, this week saw the release of Sora 2. My day just keeps getting better :) Now I can watch all the AI-generated content I want. In fact, what you’re all here for today is to watch me make something gorgeous.

I’m going to type out a prompt/script I’ve been thinking of. It’s full of images and sounds that have been gestating in my mind for years, but of course could never marshal the budget or manpower to depict them onscreen; genuinely, I think this will change the world. There are scenes in here that I don’t think anyone has ever seen before. It kind of pushes the medium forward.

Someone please put into Sora for me. I want to see how this thing goes. We could be talking Oscars.

“The Bartender’s Burden,” by Nabeel Chollampat

A guy is bartending in a dive bar and then a customer walks in and The Bartender goes, “I guess they just let anybody in here these days.” They laugh and dap each other up and then he pours him a drink. Another man walks into the bar and The Bartender says, “I guess they just let anybody in here these days.” The same thing happens. The Bartender is pouring them both pints of frothy Michelob Ultra. A woman walks into the bar and The Bartender goes, “Huh—I guess they just let anybody in here these days!” The woman laughs and is also served a pint of frothy, creamy Michelob Ultra. She goes to the jukebox and inputs three nickels and we get our first needle drop: “Come On Get Higher” by Matt Nathanson. The volume is insanely loud. A group of four homies walk into the bar. The Bartender hasn’t finished pouring all the pints of frothy, milky Michelob, and he looks up, concerned: “I guess they just let anybody in here these days!” He’s not smiling anymore when he says. He pulls out four more glasses and lines them up, but no sooner than when he pulls the tap does another group of young women walk in. “I guess they just let anybody—” and now another man walks in. “I guess they just let anybody in here these days!!!!” The Bartender is now pouring so much froth, the bar is positively overflowing with froth, and The Bartender can’t even ask the woman to turn down Matt Nathanson’s only real hit, which has now reached an unbearable volume. It also keeps playing on repeat. It won’t stop. At this point people keep filing in and The Bartender, who once took an oath, keeps forcing himself to say, “Huh—I guess they just let anybody in here these days!” whenever someone walks in. He begins to break down, sobbing. He crumples to the floor, which is wet with froth. It’s slick with Michelob. Absolutely drenched in America’s lightest beer, voluminous with milky froth. Through tears in his eyes he can’t stop muttering, “I guess they just let anybody in here these days.” The patrons at the bar begin to sing along to the song. “Come on get higher—loosen your lips. Faith and desire, the swing of your hips, bartender!” They begin pounding on the bar. Instead of “drowning them with love,” they want The Bartender to drown them with froth—frothy Michelob, that is! “Drench me in your beautiful brown froth, big dawg!” yells the first man that came in. The Bartender looks through bleary eyes at his community. His found family. It’s a beautiful sight. He has no choice but to get back up again - Alfred (Batman Begins). He raises his fist: “I guess they just let anybody in here these days, huh?” The patrons all cheer in unison. He gets back to pouring his creamy pints. The door opens one more time. Everyone holds their collective breath. The Bartender, weary, turns to look. No way—it’s Matt Nathanson himself. (No idea what this guy looks like so Sora can figure it out.) He’s shy. Quietly, he says, “I heard they just let anybody in here these days?” The Bartender pauses in the middle of pouring one of his froth-filled pints, laden to the brim with froth. “I guess they do…Dad.” Everyone gasps. Dad? “Yes, he’s my Dad. That’s why I was crying, earlier,” explains The Bartender. “It wasn’t because I was exhausted at how many people were coming in and how I had to keep saying, ‘Huh—I guess they let anybody in here these days!’ each time. Maybe that factored in a bit, I’m sure. But the premier reason for my emotional breakdown was that the song wouldn’t stop, and it kept reminded me of my absent father—because Matt Nathanson is my absent father.” The elder Nathanson looks down—he has so much lost time to make up. So many memories to recreate in the aggregate. But all he wants to do right now is share a frothy, milky, creamy, almost dairy-like pint with his son. The woman goes back to the jukebox and turns the song back up. “Sit down, Dad,” says The Bartender. “Enjoy some of my froth.” The woman turns back from the jukebox and looks into the camera. She says, smirking, “They really do just let anybody in here, huh?”

Now if one of you guys could throw this in the damn thing and see what it spits out. Let me know what Sora 2 comes up with! Really excited to see this out of my head and on the screen.

Ritam’s Footnote

A man is busy cleaning the international space station when he slips on a banana peel and falls out of the window into space, falling past a skeleton with a dog tag on that says Лáйка, falling down towards our gorgeous blue marble of a planet. Fisheye lens on his face as he’s surrounded by a fiery halo and tail upon reëntry (New Yorker Style Guide). Diplodocus heads swivel up from peacefully eating grass to watch a curious light streaking across the sky. Shot of the the dude’s face one last time before pulling out to a global impact, explording the earth in an instant and obliterating everything on board. Pull out even further—A man in a big white beard staring at it all in a crystal ball. He shrugs and holds up a cardboard sign saying “Man makes plans, God laughs.” Pull out even further to a small ant watching all of this on TV. The ant holds up a sign that says “I’m Real God. Just an ant. That’s what I actually am!” Theater lights go up as the audience exits the auditorium. "Wait,” says Sandy to Jason, walking down the neon hallway of the multiplex, “So what was the filmmaker, like, trying to say?” “God,” Jason replies, “who cares? It’s a fucking movie. You always do this. It’s really annoying. You’re not smarter than me, you know.”