Creepy & Crashy

My Dear Princess and Dear Fellow,

As you know, El Jefe is a movie nut. Manda - if anything - even more so. 

A few months ago Jefe said we should make a short film together. He'd had a few drinks and was very excited.

This was last February or March. The COVID protests were going on in Wellington city centre. So I proposed a zombie movie called, "MAGA Zombie" which was about a New Zealander getting bitten by a rabid American and the next thing you know, perfectly reasonable Kiwis start donning red baseball caps and spouting QAnon theories. I thought we could record real footage of the COVIDiots in the city centre and incorporate it. 

You see? I am very satirical. Also zombie movies are cheap to make. 

But Jefe did not like this idea on account of zombie movies being EVERYWHERE. I mean. He has a point. So I shelved the idea. 

But then a couple of weeks ago, I showed him a short clip of the Jonathan Miller film, Whistle and I'll Come To You. 

"That's it! That's the sort of movie we should make!" he said.

He'd had a few drinks and was very excited.

So I thought about it for a while. I've been quite fascinated by the whole Creepypasta phenomenon lately*. As an old person I am aware that I am coming to this at least ten years after young people have lost interest in it, but that's to be expected. 

And so I wrote a short synopsis for a Creepypasta/Whistle And I'll Come To You inspired story about an American couple on a beach realising they are both going mad but not being able to do anything about it. 

Manda responded, "Oh my god I LOVE it! It sounds so creepy and PERFECT!" She then shared a disturbing dream with me that fit right in and which I shall try to incorporate. 

I told her I liked her ideas and that we are both equally f***ed up.

Jefe responded a couple of hours later. "Oh my god I love it!!! And I agree you are both f***ed up!" 

He is very keen to get started on it right away. Caro just rolled her eyes. She knows the three of us are dreamers and it is likely that nothing will come of this other than drinking and chat. 

She may be right in this. But even if it is true, that is quite all right. I like the idea of us working together on something like this. And even if this doesn't result in a film - or worse yet a crappy film - it will still be fun working on it. 

Finally, today's blip is a picture that Caro took last night. Crash has finally figured out that he too, can come in the spare bedroom window to roll around, steal biscuits and say hi. 

I fully expect Caro will wake up one night to find a cat-party going on all around her. 

Maybe we could make a movie about that too?

S.

* I must admit I have come to find this fascinating. From what I can understand these are almost interactive tales of the macabre that the viewer/reader can believe they are part of, just by experiencing the tale. This is whether they experience it as a story, video or game (because it's for Gen-Z, there's a LOT of gaming stuff in there).

At its most dull level it seems to be about young people pranking each other by making fake videos and games that end with a scary jumpy moment. I daresay you may have encountered these yourself. I remember doing a maze game back in the early 2000's that suddenly turns to a screaming face and you sh*t yourself. I wasn't too keen.  

However, the more complex Creepypastas are pretty artistic. There's one about a cursed video game that a writer spent six years on. She planted clues across several websites and gaming forums, even going so far as to create this site herself which has several intriguing mini-stories and the fictional history of a real town in the Czech Republic, as background for her tale.

The writer was in the middle of writing a collection of short stories which would tie all of this together when her cursed video game tale went viral, spoiling her plans. The internet apparently lit up with people putting all the clues together and trying to find the actual game (which didn't exist).

To add to the mystery someone ELSE had actually created some video footage of the game being played. (See, this is how this stuff evolves). 

So in the end, the writer published her short stories with only a slight mention of her cursed video game. In some now-deleted tweets she said, she didn't want to reveal it was all a hoax. She said it was a much more effective piece of art if it were allowed to exist as possible truth in the minds of her audience - even if she never got credit for it. 

I like that.