Thursday, December 27, 2012

My Sequel to Zero Dark Thirty

From Sunday's LA Times:
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the man who imagined and directed the 9/11 attacks, was captured by the CIA in 2003. For the next three years he was subjected to the harshest treatment we could stomach. No other Al Qaeda operative in our custody was subjected to so much.
The result? KSM, as he is known within the intelligence community, revealed nothing about the most valuable thing he knew — Bin Laden's whereabouts. He did not, for example, divulge the name of the Kuwaiti courier who served Bin Laden.

This is not coincidentally the piece of information that sets "Zero Dark Thirty" in motion. Mohammed had trained the courier and knew of his connection to Bin Laden. Instead, he sent agents on hundreds of futile chases, hindering the hunt for Bin Laden rather than aiding it.


The simple fact is you can't reliably separate the gold from the dross that torture yields. "He had us chasing the goddamn geese in Central Park because he said some of them had explosives stuffed up their ass," one FBI counter-terrorism agent said in frustration." 
We begin with the torture. A brutalized KSM resists and curses his torturers, but finally shouts out the goose plot.  The camera pulls back and we're in a room full of FBI agents who, we now realize, were watching the KSM interrogation on film.  A stern-faced senior FBI agent addresses the room.  "Gentleman," he intones, "We're going to need someone to look up inside a whole lot of geese's asses."

Boss FBI man scans the room, as the camera pauses over each young agent silently praying he won't be chosen for this distasteful task.  Until at last, we come to Adam Sandler, man-child, reading an Archie comic and blissfully unaware of all that's just transpired.

I"m still filling in some of the pieces, but here's what will definitely be in ZD 30-II: Wild Goose Chase:
  1. A montage of Sandler chasing geese around Central Park.  He's inept.  At one point, he trips and loses his watch, which was given to him by his father, an FBI legend whose dying wish was for his own boy to join the Bureau.  (Hint: The watch will play an important role later).
  2. Lots of hilarious goose poop jokes.
  3. Sandler befriends a goose, who he names Archie.
  4. A shy, lonely office worker, played by Zooey Deschanel, spends her lunch hours in the park feeding geese.  Zooey and Adam begin to notice each other.
  5. Adam and Zooey talk. She's not at all put off by his whole man-child schtick. After all, she's a little quirky herself. And they both love geese.
  6. Zooey and Adam fall in love. (Note: In a earlier version of this screenplay, Sandler falls in love with a goose, not a human.  Still wondering if this might be better.) 
  7. A head-over-heels Zooey comes early to the park to surprise Sandler.  She observes from afar as Sandler holds down a goose and looks up its asshole.  He looks up and sees Zooey looking aghast.  Heartbroken, she runs off.  He yells, "It's not what you think," and starts to run after her, but, just then, Archie crosses his path. The goose has a mysterious metal object protruding out of its ass.
  8. As Adam weighs chasing girl or goose, a sweet-looking boy approaches Archie with a piece of bread. It's time for the man-child to grow up.  He picks up the boy and squires him to safety.  Then he sprints and tackles the goose, and reaches up its ass and pulls out . . . his dad's watch.  With tears streaming down his face, he puts the watch on.  The camera pulls back to reveal a whole bunch of funny park-goers -- a tourist! someone on roller skates! a man with an afro! a drug addict! -- looking on in disbelief.
  9. Zooey refuses to see or talk to the man she believes is a goose-fucker.  Adam is sad.
  10. Adam sees Zooey in the park. Archie is with him.  She turns and it looks like she might give him a second chance when, out-of-nowhere, The Evil Muslim Terrorists grab Zooey.  
  11. Adam and Archie pursue The Evil Muslim Terrorists.  Holy plot twist! The Evil Muslim Terrorists are not Muslim or Terrorists. But boy are they evil.  It's one of KSM's torturers and the senior FBI agent who assigned Sandler to goose duty in the first place. Turns out they always had a grudge against Sandler's old man when he was at the bureau because he hated torture!  Plus, maybe some outlandish plot involving goose smuggling.
  12. Adam saves Zooey.  Now she understands.  
  13. Adam and Zooey get married.  Archie is the best man. KSM (Aziz Ansari, who else?) is at the wedding too, wearing his infamous white t-shirt.
  14. As the credits roll, we see lots of hilarious takes of KSM  being brutally tortured and making up other outlandish plots interspersed with scenes of Archie at the wedding getting really drunk and dancing with hot babes!  The closing joke: A hungover Lindsay Lohan wakes up, her bridesmaid dress crumpled on the floor of her trashed hotel room. She coughs . . . and goose feathers come flying out her mouth!
I'm convinced my sequel will be much better than the original.  Feel free to help me suss out the plot a little more in the comments.

5 comments:

  1. I would have suggested Chris Pratt, based on his hilarious man-child work in Parks & Recreation, but apparently he's already in ZD30? And it's a serious role? So now I don't know what to think.

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  2. Where does Rob Schneider fit into this?

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  3. Can Rob Schneider play Tom Friedman?

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    Replies
    1. This is a beautiful idea. Producer credit is yours, if you want it.

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  4. Sure, thanks. Could you credit me as KMU when this becomes a blockbuster? :P

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