ESTABLISHING SHOT/TITLE SEQUENCE

0:00

SEE: Fade in to black; an opaque Smell The Glove-esque album cover void of color and washed in the blackberry jam meringue of crepuscular none more blackness. 

0:03

HEAR, throughout the entirety of this melodious prelude: 

A song called TIGHTROPE

Perfomed by a rock and roll band called THE ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA

From their album A NEW WORLD RECORD 

Music and lyrics by JEFF LYNNE (1976)

0:22

HEAR: Percussive Gong

0:23

SEE: The Big Bang --a massive storm of kaleidoscopic color, blinding light, and exponential heat that cracks the caliginous vacuum and manifests as an expanding panoramic mandala of breathtaking depth and breadth and coruscating beauty that staggers all five senses and renders the spectator stupefied, gobstopped, and near catatonic in light of his own staggering insignificance. No matter how limited or mighty, insolent or influential, said spectator's individual purview may be.

0:24 -- 1:10

SEE: Hubble Stuff --supercalifragilistic telescopic images of stars and black holes and nebulas and planets and moons and comets and asteroids and supernovas colliding and crashing and smashing the face of time and space to take landscapable shape amidst a swirling array of fulminated gas and illuminated dust spanning millions of light years of intergalactic expanse. The camera should slowly pan out as the bel canto swells and then --after reaching a cosmic nadir of sonorous pomposity-- swiftly zoom in to focus on the serendipitous formation of Earth's own solar system before coming to a profound conclusion upon our cloudy blue orb itself and the protein-rich prebiotic consommé that, once ignited by lightning, gave life itself the ways and means to flourish and infest and infect and...

1:11 -- 1:18

SEE: A slow-motion tracking shot from a moonraking astronaut's POV. One that targets our planet in synchronicity with the descending violin étude (and the ascending snare roll) whilst implying the passage of time and the sure but chaotic, stark but dynamic, inexpedient but intelligent, fair but prejudiced design of Darwinian Evolution. An ever-narrowing perspective beginning with the western hemisphere, the northern hemisphere, North America, the East Coast of America, and finally... The brackish inlet of Tampa Bay, Florida.

1:19 -- 1:34

SEE: Camera Dissolves to a close-up shot of a single human spermatazoon as it begins its epic and arduous, dog-eat-dog salmon-run from ejaculate insemination to immaculate fertilization.

Note: We've only got about fifteen seconds to encapsulate this infinitesimal seminal process before the next descending/ascending musical bridge cuts to conceptual cognition and lyrical verse so, we're gonna wanna utilize time-lapse photography and high-tech special effects in order to comprehensively convey our intrepid jizzbot's mindless sense of desperation and heroic urgency as he does his bestest to get jiggy with it while the swarming horde of doppleganger huns and usurpers gets thinned around him.

To wit: "He who is not busy being born is busy dying," and so...

SEE: Sixteen-million tiny but tenacious fish-tailed Myrmidons fend each other off or fall upon their swords whilst simultaneously navigating the fallopian womb's anti-ballistic missile system until only our potential paragon is left swimming for the right to party, plant a fig and a flag, and become somebody. Somebody worthy of a beating heart, a basic brain, and a Christian name, that is.

1:35 -- 3:06

SEE: Still Art and Stock Footage of humanity's highs and lows over the past thirty years or so. Forgoing filmic depictions of in-utero gestation (because unless there's an extended disco remix of TIGHTROPE that I don't know about, time and rhyme won't let me) the optics will drastically/dramatically culminate/fulminate into a sudden/rapid-fire montage of images depicting major historical/cultural events (triumphs and tragedies, if you will) that have impacted, defined, and guided the path of our protagonist's late 20th to early 21st century life span from his improbable birth to his current solipsistic and stillborn insolvency. So far as it all fits in neatly with the jaunty main musical riff (juxtaposed by the largely cynical lyrical content of the tune) of course.

Think Billy Joel's We Didn't Start The Fire, but not that song because we've already got a song. Starting with the botched assassination of President Ronald Reagan (in March of 1981) and going on to include, revere, and ridicule people, places, and incidents like:

A) The Royal wedding of the Prince and Princess of Wales

B) The attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II

C) The AIDs epidemic

D) E.T., Darth Vader, Indiana Jones

E) Sally Ride/Bill Gates/Steve Jobs

F) Michael Jackson moonwalking/Madonna being a virgin/Prince just being himself

G) Bill Cosby/Michael J. Fox/Magic Johnson/Arnold Schwarzenegger/Joe Montana

H) Bernie Goetz/Ivan Drago/Gaddafi/Gary Coleman

I) Bhopal/Chernoybl/Space Shuttle Challenger/Falkland Islands

J) WE ARE THE WORLD/Freddie Mercury/Band-Aid/Bono

K) Michael Jordan/Diego Maradona/Mike Tyson/Jerry Rice

L) Soviet-Afghan war/Osama bin Laden/Margaret Thatcher/Oliver North

M) Roger Rabbit/The Simpsons/Baywatch

N) Berlin Wall/Tiananmen Square/Nelson Mandela

O) Vinyl records and cassette tapes/CDs and DVDs/Tipper Gore

P) Gulf War/Bush/Gorbachev/Milosevic

Q) Rodney King/Oklahoma City/Dalai Lama

R) Bill and Hillary/Newt Gingrich/Bob Dole

S) Waco/WTC bombing/World Wide Web

U) Seinfeld/Friends/The Matrix/Pulp Fiction

V) NAFTA/TWA 800/Monica Lewinsky

X) Columbine/Y2K bug/Bush v Gore

Y) Letterman, Leno, SNL

Z) September 11th, 2001

Note: All of these images should be interposed/interspersed, by whatever means, with a kind of cartoonish sensibility. A Monty Python-esque irreverence for neo-classical/Greco-Roman idealism. In effect, the overall affect should be equal measures evocative, inspring, terrifying, uplifting, and cataclysmic. Corrupted, naturally, and naturally corrupting our protagonist's perception thru the relative lack of black/gay/female/plebian representation.

Instagrammable revisionist fin-de-siècle grandeur, in other words.

Cultural touchstones and fireworks, in lesser words.

3:07 -- 4:14

SEE: The Dark Ages of the Bush/Cheney administration, beginning with:

A) The Shock and Awe invasion of Iraq

B) 43rd's Mission Accomplished declamation

C) Beltway Snipers

D) Space Shuttle Columbia

E) Operation Iraqi Freedom

F) Saddam Hussein

G) Same-Sex marriage

H) Facebook

I) Bush re-elected

J) Katrina/Rita/Wilma

K) Troop surge/Virginia Tech massacre

L) Venus and Serena/Kobe and Shaq/Brad and Angelina/Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan

M) Subprime Mortgage Crisis

N) Barack Obama elected president

O) Tea Party/Fox News/Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert

P) Justin Timberlake/Beyonce/Auto-Tuned pop music/live-action comic book movie people

Q) Fort Hood massacre

R) Royal wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge

S) Osama bin Laden killed

4:15 -- 5:06

HEAR/SEE: When I closed my eyes (closed my eyes) I was so surprised; somebody had thrown me down a line/footage of Marine Private John Hamler's dramatic helicopter rescue from the war-torn ruination of Northern Iraq.

5:07

End of Overture

***

And there you have it, Gerry-mander. The new, improved, and remastered opening to ANTAGONY. Are you sprung? You wanted the best, you got the best. The hottest prose practitioner in the world right now, getting it on like Donkey Kong.

You know what, though? On second thought, and now that I think about it, as a matter of scientific fact, the tune is probably gonna end long before your mind's eye could ever hope to make hay of it all. So, while it's certainly a nice song and all...

Fuckitall. Let's try and forget this whole entire exorbitant/on-the-nose/up-its-own-ass/cock-schlocky onanistic ode to pop-culture exordium ever happened. Okay?

Ain't my style, anyway.

Nor yours, I presume.

Except that this IS my style. So you can go fuck yourself, Gerry, and take a shit with your pants still fastened like you once promised me you'd do lo so many years ago. I'm gonna go ahead and presume and attempt to subsume all and everything I can fucking consume. Including you.

So there you have it, again. You can either bow out now or assume the position, Gerry. It's all gonna come down to me and be left up to you, anyway.

YOLO and yours truly,

John Hamler

The world's coolest fucking writer of all time, motherfucker.

***

© Copyright 2019 John Hamler. All rights reserved.