Hey, Everyone. "Moriarty" here.
It's been a strange night at the Labs, to say the least. One that has revealed a few surprises to me, and that has me rethinking the role of a few of my mutant creations. Well, one, actually. One you're familiar with. I'm speaking, of course, about Henchman Mongo.
You've stayed here at the Moriarty Labs Spa & Resorts a few times now, Harry, so you know Mongo by sight and smell. He's hard to miss… oversized but somehow shrunken, with his enormous forehead and his prominent pelt, his scars from all the times he's irritated me. I mean, he's damn handy, and he can tunnel like no one's business, but I've never really considered him invaluable to the daily operations of the Labs in regards to AICN.
Until now.
You see, I was preparing for this week's return of the RUMBLINGS FROM THE LABS, and I had my stack of scripts to be read sitting out on my worktable. Mongo was in the room and happened to notice something printed on the spine of one of the scripts. "Ru… Ro… Roll…"
I turned around to watch as he furrowed his massive brow and struggled to sound it out. "ROLLER… BULL. ROLLERBALL."
His beady little red eyes lit up, and he shrieked, "ROLLERBALL!!"
Before I could react, he snatched the script from the stack and bolted from the Labs, screaming the word over and over at the top of his lungs. "ROLLERBALL!! ROLLERBALL!! ROLLERBALL!!"
I chased, but to no avail. I'm more than eight times Mongo's age, and I wasn't genetically designed for maximum scampering, so he pretty much smoked my ass. He retreated to one of his few hiding places in the Labs, the recess under the main stairs. When I tried to coax him out with promises of special treats, he hurled his feces at me. I mean, a lot of feces. I think he's not well.
I finally had no choice but to retreat and leave him to his own devices. For two days, I could hear the sporadic cry, always from the same place. "ROLLERBALL!!" It got fainter and less sure as the hours rolled by, though, until he finally came waddling back into the main Lab this afternoon, the script tucked under his arm, each page coated with a thick layer of his filth. He looked at me with something that fell between confusion and outright betrayal and posed it to me as a question. "ROLLERBALL?"
I snatched the script from him, instantly regretting the actual contact with the sticky, wet pages. "What were you thinking? You can't read."
Mongo puffed up, his pride injured and crossed his arms. It's the first act of open defiance I've ever seen from him. "I can, too. I can read scripts, at least. That's not like real reading."
I had to beat Mongo profusely for that, and I think I may have gone a bit overboard. I'm sure it can be reattached surgically, but that's such a hassle. Anyway… once Mongo understood and agreed that screenwriting is an art form and that it counts as "real" writing, I asked him if he had any thoughts on ROLLERBALL. I figured I wasn't going to be able to read it now, even though I was very interested. I mean, come on… McT… ROLLERBALL… pretty easy call to make.
I remember Harry's enthusiastic review of the first draft of John McTiernan's upcoming MGM remake of the original SF/action classic. The script has been developed quite a bit since then, and the current title page lists Larry Ferguson as the original writer, with revisions by David Wilson and Howard Rodman and current revisions by John Pogue. The Pogue draft is the one that got the stars attached, and it's the one that the studio is using to guide the film into production.
I was surprised when Mongo hopped up onto one of the chairs by the Lab table and crossed his legs, like he thought he was suddenly the guest on a talk show and I was going to Larry King him. I had no choice but to laugh. It was such a human thing to do. I mean, I know Mongo likes the film. I give the henchmen free reign to watch any movie in the Labs. It's the least I can do. When Mongo was first hatched, he almost immediately seized on ROLLERBALL as a personal fave. I decided to indulge Mongo's desire to play and asked him if he could explain his love of the first film to me.
"I don't know… it gets it right. There's just something about it, y'know what I mean? I always loved football, and they took those football helmets with those single bars and somehow made them cool, somehow made them badass. The gloves with the spikes, the motorcycles… you know, the whole scene… it could be really silly. It could seem really ridiculous - grown men on rollerskates, you know? But it tapped into something for me."
I stared at him, mouth agape for a moment. That made sense. That actually made sense. I looked around to see if someone had wired Mongo with a hidden speaker, if maybe Harry Lime or even that goofball Robie had slipped in to prank me. But I know Mongo. I know his voice. For God's sake, I watched him as he said it. I decided to ask him another question and see if it had been a fluke.
I asked him to explain why James Caan was so good in the first one.
"He was a badass. Incredibly cool. Tough guy. Not a pretty boy. I'm a fan of SLAP SHOT and THE LONGEST YARD and this… serious full contact movies. With ROLLERBALL, it's one of those films, but it's SF. You've also got the Corporations that own everything. I look at it as, like, a perfect parallel to Michael Jordan and basketball. Jonathan is Michael Jordan to rollerball. But rollerball isn't professional basketball. It's bigger than sport. Was this based on a book?"
I told him that indeed, the two films are based on an original novel by William Harrison.
"That's just what I love about the first film, and I have no idea if it's in the book. To me, everything's been taken over by the Corporations. They're the new superpowers. They have teams, and I always looked at the teams as taking the place of warfare. They're bigger than sports. In this new script, they relate this… sort of this, 'He couldn't make it in hockey because he was too violent,' like it's just another sport, like it's just a slight step up. They make a lot at the end of the script about how it's the world's number one watched sport, and this whole thing's about how they're trying to get these rich American moguls to come in and support the sport. Well, it's the sport, right? It's the most violent sport, right? Well, naturally, it's an American sport to begin with. This is soooo USA. It's fucking USA up and down. It's violent, spectacle… controlled by corporations. But in this script, they go to the asshole of Russia, of the former Soviet Union… it's like Kazahkistan… whatever… and these guys are shipped over there and somehow get trapped behind enemy lines. It's a bizarre approach to the whole thing."
As Mongo was talking, I flashed back to a night here at the Labs when he had been guzzling Windex and got all rowdy, pitching me film ideas and telling me how things had to be done. At the time, I blew it all off as the ramblings of… well, of a mutant henchman, actually. One of the things he told me about was how he would handle a ROLLERBALL sequel. I reminded him of that night and asked him if he remembered his idea.
"Sure. I would rather see a sequel where Jonathan is somehow changed. He's the man who was bigger than the sport and walked away on top. Suddenly, he's become the corporation. He's become the great white tower, the freak that Houseman was, and maybe it's the story of another Rollerballer. I was thinking that maybe it's his son or something compelling… you know, sort of that STAR WARS mythology type thing… that he now has to discover something about himself and how he's changed, but sticking true to the theme of the corporations and all that shit. I'd even be fine with a remake of that film, but with better technology, where you can smell the oil burning and hear the bones breaking. That script actually gets some of that right. I actually enjoyed some of the scenes about faces getting smashed in, and the rollerball getting smashed into people's faces. They kept using that over and over again, and it works. You can't help but react. They talk about the orbital bones and the cheekbones collapsing, and they get it from every angle. What I liked about this script is that they had point of view cameras for all the players, and you can see how the technology could make it even cooler as long as they stuck to the feeling. The things I liked in this script feel like they've been exactly farmed out from the old movie, like the people pressed up against the glass… very SOYLENT GREEN-looking, y'know, and rabid Asian fans just trying to burn the fucking city down. There's shit circling around, and the ball… and in this one, they've got a goalie that's suspended out in front of it. That's kind of cool, like a spider. That doesn't bother me. They've made it into a figure eight track with what they call 'crash ramps,' which I think is pretty cool. There's two pit areas instead of one with the.. I think it's a neat idea. And they have a whole media center that they describe as making NASA look like child's play. That's a good idea. They do a lot of good things. I just don't understand why they've got to go to the shithole. It's got this whole THREE KINGS vibe, like they're behind enemy lines and they can't get out."
I told Mongo who's cast in the new version and asked if he thinks they're going to work for the film in the roles as written.
"You mean Ice Cube."
I corrected him and reaffirmed that it's LL Cool J who's going to be in the film. Mongo got that frown on his face that he gets just before I zap him with the electric fly swatters we brought back from the Butt-Numb-A-Thon.
"Well, you can't help but love the guy from ELECTION. Boy, I loved the idea of Ice Cube in this film. Boy… I really had Ice Cube in my head. I'd love to see him drive up in the BM'er…"
Mongo startled me by doing a fairly accurate and completely hysterical version of Ice Cube's voice.
"'Yo, jump on, motherfucker.' He's all like that. Damn, I was in love with that. LL Cool J… I guess he fits better with this script, with the ways it doesn't work. I don't know what they're going to do with Chris Klein. In the script, they call him a pretty boy, like he's resisted doing this. He's broke… and this is part of what irritates me. The thing starts out with this street chase, this street luge… it's him, and he's got like speed metal on and his US Hockey gloves, because, see, he's a Hockey player, but his violent temper has prevented him from making it in the NHL. He's the perfect fit for Rollerball, right? Hockey… to rollerball. So… uh…"
Mongo got that thinking face again, the one that looks like he's about to stain something. "I'm just going to call him the Ice Cube character… he shows up at just the right point in this race, right? Chris Klein beats the guy's ass, but just a little. He doesn't kill him. He lets him live. The cops are about to pick him up and he's losing speed and all of the sudden, this fucking BM'er shows up and he throws this seatbelt out. 'Yo, motherfucker, grab on,' right? So Klein grabs on, he drags him away from the cops, and Klein jumps in. We see Cube has this big scar on his arm, and they sort of introduce themselves, and Cube's all talking about Rollerball like, 'Dude, I'm off for a few months, and I've got all this money, and only one more year in the game and I'm set for life, and look at you, all fucking around.' So then Klein decides finally that his life is fucked up and he wants to go play Rollerball."
Now that Mongo was really on a roll, I needed to get him to clarify some things. Remember… I haven't been able to get a clean copy of the script to read yet, so all I had to go by was the description he was giving. "Wait… they get stuck behind enemy lines, right? But isn't Ice Cube already a star? I mean, LL Cool J. He's a star, right? That's how it sounds."
"Oh, yeah," said Mongo. "He's the star of the league. He's like the big guy on the American team."
"So how do they end up behind enemy lines?"
"It's not really enemy lines," he admitted. "I mean, they take a first class flight there, but all around them while they're there, it's the whole subculture of strip mining and the land's wrecked and it's just miserable. The guy with money who's there is just sucking the land dry. They call it 'The Atlantic City Syndrome.' And instead of John Houseman up in the tower, you've got the evil Stoyvanovich dude or Stroyvich or whatever. He's up in the dark tower, always, you know, with the powers that be and the evil looks on his face. Jonathan holds the ball up at him and stuff. It's… that stuff… dude, I'm getting ahead of myself, but can I just go straight to the end?"
By now, I was determined to just see where this amazing stream of consciousness, this raw outpouring of ROLLERBALL reaction, might lead. "Of course. Go ahead."
"He comes out and there's fire on the track and everybody's pissed off and the people are pouring out and Jonathan and the crowd… it's great stuff. I liked it. There's lots of people getting motorcycles driven through them, but in the movie, they wore spiked gloves. That was back then. Now they wear regular gloves and Klein always has his US Hockey gloves on. This is fucking Rollerball, man! He's there for six months. See, here's the thing. He's there for six months. Suddenly, he's JONATHAN E! But he's not Jonathan E! He hasn't earned that. They're all, 'He's bigger than the game!' He's been there six months!"
By now, Mongo was up and on his feet. He was playing his own private plea to Congress at the end of MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON. He was Clarence Darrow in INHERIT THE WIND. He was wound up completely in his rant, and all I could do was sit back and watch. "I mean, please! Michael Jordon took years, man! This kid, he starts out, he's Jonathan Cross. Suddenly, after six months, HE'S JONATHAN E! There's one scene where he's, like, pounding somebody's face in, and it's like his buddy who, like… well, okay, not really his buddy, but more like his former… this is a multicultural team, okay? And he's beating the shit out of him, and the guy looks up, and he's like, 'I'm sorry, Billy!' and in the script it says, 'Then he became a man.' He's been playing Rollerball for six months, he's become JONATHAN FUCKING E, and then he just became a man? What does that mean? Okay, fine. Jonathan E. was a seasoned motherfucker. He was raised to be a Rollerball gladiator. He chose that dangerous life where people die, and their lights blinked out slowly. That's another thing you've got have. I didn't see that in the script, and I don't know… maybe I'm just stupid… but you have to see that. That's one of my favorite things about ROLLERBALL, was when they're eliminated, their light fades. That's important."
Mongo started to mumble here, getting lost in his own private hellish fantasy world as he is often prone to do. I caught a few phrases, but one in particular stuck out. "Mongo, did you just say 'love interest'?"
He began to shriek, as if I had just poked him. He threw his head back and let loose a full primal howl of pain and rage. "Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! But wait… the thing that I was getting at… during the crowd scene at the end, the big game… it gets into this thing, the love story. She's in danger and they cut her line, her gas line, with a blade they snuck in hidden in a glove. 'Watch out! No!' Slow-motion. They get her out just in time, you know, but it knocks Cube into the crowd, and he gets hurt. So then it become a whole gunplay thing. They're trying to kill him, and he's trying to shoot him through the glass, and Jonathan throws the ball through the glass, but it doesn't kill him or anything. All of the sudden, people are kicking the guns out of the hands at the last second over and over again, and this is how the scene happens in the middle of this big crowd scene. The evil giant Petrovich dude and Jonathan E. are struggling over his gun, it goes off, they fall… we don't know who gets shot. That's it. You know? Please. And then there's the love story! It's miserable. It's miserable. It's the most miserable thing about this movie. The love story is with Aurora. Slight Russian accent, it says. They're always working out. They've got, you know, the multisexual shower scenes, and it's not interesting or provocative in any way. It's ROLLERBALL, man!! Who are you trying to attract with that STARSHIP TROOPERS bullshit? She's one of his teammates. They have chicks on the team. Now, I don't care if it's some big steroid using he-man chick… you know, Conan the Bitch… like Nicole Bass off the HOWARD STERN show. If you put her on the back of a motorcycle, and you want Jonathan E. to fuck Nicole Bass, so be it. But you know they're going to get the chick from CRUEL INTENTIONS…"
"Buffy?" I asked.
"No, no… not that one. Not the chick from CRUEL INTENTIONS. The other one. The cartoon girl."
"Pam Anderson?"
"No… no… not Pam… although that's a beautiful cartoon." Mongo began to gyrate in a disturbing fashion, and all it took was me opening the drawer where I keep the electric genital cuff to make him sit back down.
Even so, he kept muttering it under his breath. "I love Pam. I love Pam." He managed to get himself under control before continuing. "Anyway, you know it's going to be a beautiful girl out there playing Rollerball. I don't buy it. I don't want it. I don't need it. It's unnecessary. Don't give him a love story. I like the whole Corporation thing, where they have supplied them with women, and then they took them away at a whim, because the player were just property. They were fighters. They either lived these crazy lives, the lower class, where it's all just people smashed up against plexiglass, or they got to wear fucking suede jumpsuits with bolero hats and fucking ties and shit! Multi-screen fucking split level pad! It's always sunny in Corporate Houston. They're always smiling and walking around. It's a great life. They party, they do drugs. This movie gets part of that right, too. They have special VIP lounges where the women are always naked and stuff. It's cool, you know? But to have the love story on the field and off… it ruins the game. They've got one freak of nature woman in this film, but to have a beautiful love interest… you don't want her playing THE MOST VIOLENT GAME ON THE PLANET! It just doesn't make sense. And then they're somehow shocked when she gets hurt. It just kills it. Then there's the ending where they fly off in their little plane, into the sunset together, waving back at the burning country. They have great chases in this, the reality of the game is cool… I liked reading it. But does it have to be there and so dark and so foreign with the mystery bullshit? I wanted to see that wonderful fake placid American reality, where we've controlled everything, and everything's provided for you. All's you have to do is play the game, Jonathan. No one's bigger than the game, except for Jonathan E!"
Mongo was whipped up into a fever pitch by his own rant, and he began to chant "JONATHAN E! JONATHAN E! JONATHAN E!" as he ran around, trying to rally the other henchmen. I watched as they cowered back from him. He was really into it. I realized that whatever semblence of cogent thought I had glimpsed in Mongo had passed for the day. The scary thing is, his ranting is probably a more honest set of notes than anyone's going to give McT on this film as it gets ready for its June start date. There's still time to make this film really work. If MGM needs him, I am willing to hire Mongo out for the right amount. They'll just need to hire their own special maintainence crew for the room he'll befoul while working.
There's a lot of henchmen here at the Labs who are equally passionate ROLLERBALL fans. I strongly suspect that Harry's enthusiasm for the film might even surpass Mongo's. I hope there's more work being done, and I hope they pay special attention to Mongo's fear of the love story. There's room to really fuck this up. More importantly, though, there's a chance not to. Indeed, there's a chance to make a film here that can stand alongside the original, that can reach that caveman in each of us.
And if Mongo's not an expert on that, then no one is.
"Moriarty" out.
