EXT. BOOKSTORE NIGHT
A crowded street,
shoppers looking through windows at book displays.
INT. BOOKSTORE
Camera rushes into
store, past shoppers, and continues through STAFF door.
Staff Room is messy and cramped like Staff Rooms
everywhere. Five booksellers argue
around a table. Behind them, a White
Board is visible with the phrases BE NICE, THE ANSWER IS NEVER “NO” and HAVE
FUN.
BOOK GUY points to
the letters on his T-shirt – IAGBTB
BOOK GUY
It Always Goes
Back To Bezos
BOOKSELLER #1
Bozos?
BOOK GUY gives
BOOKSELLER #1 a sharp look
BOOK GUY
Bezos! And he
doesn’t create Amazon.com without being a genius. A game-changer. If a genius changes the rules of the game,
you don’t whine, you play it his way.
BOOKSELLER #1
With this app of
yours?
BOOK GUY
Yes! Santa Claus Ultimate Marketing.
BOOKSELLER #1
S.C.U.M.?
BOOK GUY
For short.
BOOKSELLER #2
Santa Claus? That was so last month.
BOOK GUY
The GIRLS need
time to create it – so we’ll launch right before the 2012 Holidays.
Camera shows the
GIRLS - ELIZABETH (7) and KRISTINA (4) - playing Barbies
KRISTINA
And then your
Barbie cries—
ELIZABETH
And then yours
dries her tears—
BOOKSELLER #2
Your kids can’t
design an app.
BOOK GUY
They’re young, but
advanced. Montessori trained.
ELIZABETH
The hardest part
will be the interface to the controls themselves. After that - easy, peasy.
The letters on BOOK GUY'S T-Shirt now read WWBD?
BOOK GUY
So, what I did,
see, all I did was ask, What Would Bezos
Do?
BOOKSELLER #1
Bozos?
BOOK GUY, angry
Stop that. Look, the Internet starts and it’s like a
tee-ny seedling—
CUT TO IMAGE OF
SEEDLING AS IT SPROUTS
BOOK GUY
—and those
start-ups needed to be nurtured.
Taxes? Taxes woulda wiped them
out. But now? The Internet’s like, like, a weed—
CUT TO BERMUDA
GRASS GONE WILD.
BOOKSELLER #3
A Redwood.
CUT TO
CALIFORNIA’S FINEST TREES.
BOOK GUY
—a Redwood,
growing tall, strong. It doesn’t need
nurturing—
CUT TO IMAGE OF
REDWOODS BEING FELLED.
BOOK GUY
—so California’s
Legislature grows cajones—
BOOKSELLER #3
Shows maturity.
BOOK GUY
—shows maturity,
says Amazon has to pay taxes. If
corporations want to be people, then, by God, they’ll pay taxes like people. Only then - Bezos pays five mill. to put an
Initiative on the ballot to overturn the law.
Our law!
BOOKSELLER #3
Not exactly.
BOOK GUY
But close. Someone who’d orchestrate that? Who, in these economic times, with
firehouses closing, with orphans being turned into the street? When that someone says no way, I’m not paying
my fair share, not like every other California business? That’s brilliant.
BOOKSELLER #1
As brilliant at
your logo idea?
Screen goes wavy.
BOOK GUY, wearing
an Amazon T-shirt, crafts a new logo – writing BOOKS on the whiteboard, then
drawing an arrow from the B to the S, à la the Amazon arrow.
BOOKSELLER #2
But the point of
the Amazon arrow is to show that they go from A to Z. Quickly, with a smile.
You’re linking B to S. Do you
want to make a BS connection?
Wavy screen.
BOOKSELLER #4
What’s your new
idea?
BOOK GUY
S.C.U.M.? It’s a bounty app. It instructs consumers to go to Amazon first, decide what they
want - then come into our store to make the purchase. Bingo! We give ’em five
bucks.
BOOKSELLER #1
That’ll just lose
us money.
BOOK GUY
Amazon made all
their money by losing money! That’s the
model!
BOOKSELLER #2
It’s not very
charitable.
BOOK GUY
I’m not running a
charity!
BOOKSELLER #4
It’s just, doing
that during the holidays seems - miserly.
CUT TO 3 WISE
BOOKSELLERS
Scrooge Scrooge
Scrooge
BOOK GUY
Every man for
himself! It’s the American way.
CAROLS can be
heard coming from the store. It’s
the most wonderful time of the year…
BOOKSELLER #2
But the
holidays? Part of Hanukkah is a
remembrance of miracles—
BOOKSELLER #4
One of the seven
principles of Kwanzaa is cooperative economics – all of us, banding together,
profiting together, collectively.
BOOKSELLER #2
Diwali, the
Festival of Lights, celebrates the victory of good over evil.
BOOKSELLER #3
The Saturnalia of
ancient Rome signaled the suspension of grudges.
BOOK GUY
Grudges…?
BOOKSELLER #1
The most famous
example? The Christmas Truce of
1914. World War I raged, the most
horrific conflict in world history.
CUT TO 3 WISE
BOOKSELLERS, humming
BOOKSELLER #1
In the midst of
the horror, the troops in the trenches declared a cease-fire. It just – happened. Soldiers who had been shooting at each other
crept into no-man’s land. On Christmas
Eve. To exchange gifts – cigarettes,
brandy – to sing carols, play football.
3 BOOKSELLERS
Are you ready for
some football?!
BOOKSELLER #1
These men, who’d
visited horrors on each other hours before, who’d revisit those horrors so very
soon, set aside their poison gas and bayonets.
And in the spirit of the season—
3 WISE
BOOKSELLERS, HUMMING.
BOOKSELLER #1
—embraced.
And you want to violate that history with S.C.U.M.?
Intersperse cuts
of TEAR on BOOK GUY’s face with TEAR on Indian’s face (from the Keep America
Beautiful commercial), cut cut cut cut cut
BOOK GUY
Oh my god. What I was thinking? To create S.C.U.M., release it at the
holidays – the horror! You’d have to be
a cheapskate, a misanthrope—
BOOKSELLER #3
An ass.
BOOK GUY’s T-shirt
shows Bezos’ face with a red slash
BOOK GUY
—an ass to do
something like that. You’d have to be a soulless, parsimonious—
BOOKSELLER #3
You’d have to be a
douche.
BOOK GUY
—you’d have to be
a douche to do that during the holidays.
Forget it. Let’s just go out
there and have fun!
Camera pans down
to ELIZABETH as she picks up the WSJ and starts reading.
ELIZABETH
Amazon celebrates
its massive Holiday effort to pay customers to check prices in brick and mortar
stores before leaving those stores to buy online. Amazon paid $5—
KRISTINA
And then your
Barbie—
Fade to Black
A masterwork! Nicely done!
ReplyDeleteYou crack me up.
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