The Quest for Obscurity

Bobby: It’s all about going on that endless quest and figuring out what we’re all here for.

Viv: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Quiet down, simmer down over there. Just, come on, let me have the floor for a minute. Ok? It’s time to shut up, Bobby boy! Ok, no, that’s old hat. It’s been done, and done, and done. It’s stagnant. It’s boring. They, the audience, they, yeah, they want something more thrilling. They don’t want to be dragged down by a character who bemoans his disillusioned existence for three hours, or in our case twelve minutes. They don’t want a pseudo-intellectual character wandering around practicing armchair psychology, while much more intelligent people in the audience groan and snore. All we have to do is give them entertainment. A lot of moving, shaking, breathing, throw a little sex in there, throw a bunch of adorable couples, and a nerdy guy who ends up getting the beauty, and get the really introspective, humnorless guy to discover love and adventure, and to live it total ecstasy for the rest of his life, all by the end of the movie. Sound good?

Bobby: Oh, Viv, Viv, Viv. Talk about old hat. I can’t do this any more. Let’s call upon our muse.

Viv: No, I don’t do muses. Ok? I just write what I feel. That’s what all the greats have done.

Bobby: No, they have all called upon muses or thought they were calling upon muses.

Viv: I think they were all joking when they told all the critics and the intellegentsia about those things

Bobby: Writers never lie.

Viv: Oh, please. They all live in a fantasy world. They hate the real world. Who can blame them? I hate it too. Don’t you? People are freaks, cowards and jerks 99 % of the time. The rest of the time they’re merely annoying.

Bobby: I can’t think the way you do. I refuse to do it. You’re so unhappy and miserable. You’re always yelling, shouting, cursing and you never have a nice word for anyone. How can you live like that? I really would like to know what has made you so miserable and unable to be nice or positive at all.

Viv: You wouldn’t understand. You’re not like me. No one is. No one ever will be. I’m not special or unique or anything, I was just born out of place, out of mind. I’m not saying I’m a mistake or anything, although many others probably think that, but, let’s be honest, look at the way I look. Look at how I dress and speak. Do you think even if I were positive and easy-going all the time people would care about me one way or the other? I used to try it. I’d be nice, I’d be proper, I’d be sweet anc caring. That was a laugh. I never got invited anywhere. I never got invited to parties or hangouts or dinners or anything. Nope, I didn’t fit in. It was good though, I suppose, I never knew what to say or how to act. I was boring. I know that’s what they all thought. You can hardly blame them. I was always so scared and morose about everything. I always wanted to be a writer, but everything I wrote was about a lonely, disillusioned, forsaken, worthless character who couldn’t make heads or tails out of the most ordinary of daily tasks and reactions. Sometimes they were male, other times they were female. It didn’t matter. It was always the same theme: This character has given up all hope. He or she has resigned himself or herself to the fact that they will and can never be loved because there is nothing worthwhile or exiting about them, and it’s all their fault. They have brought all their misery upon themselves, but they have lived in isolation and lonelioness for so long, they believe it is too late to reacapture any sense of belonging and purpose. Yet they will continue to live, without any serious, well-known addictions and habits, to recede into the background, but later they will rise up and rip everything to pieces because they are jealous of anything they percieve to be better and more interesting than they are. They weren’t deep or meaningful pieices. They were just desperate pleas for attention, and maybe the fact that people would find a longing to belong attractive and depressing, and mistake such gibberish as some kind of brilliance. Well, I submitted the scripts. All of the editors and experts thought it was poor soap opera material at its best, and they’d never watch it. They said the loser had to come to the realization that there was hope in this world even for someone as hopeless and unattractive as them.

Guess what? I became self-confident, no, I became a pompous jerk. If anyone else had done it, it would have been considered confidence, but no I was arrogant. I was mean. I was pathetic. I was hopeless. What else was new? So, that’s why I’m so mean. It’s not a good enough reason, I know. Doin’t I know it? You dislike me, well try being me for a day. I’ll try being you, maybe then we’d have a little more empathy for each other.

Bobby: All I get out of you is your sense of self-indulgence.

Viv: Well you have no empathy or understanding for anyone, do you? Nope you know it all, everyone who is struggling is just a whiny whimp, and should pull themselves up by their bootstraps and just be able to find a prupose for your life. Well thank you, Dick Cheney, Jr! Your arrogance, but no people like you, you’re just confident.

Bobby: That’s not what I’m saying. Allow me to explain myself a little further. May I? Thank you. Now, this is an old world, correct? Of course it is. It’s been around a long time. None of us know how long exactly but it’s been a while. So, we’ve established that fact now. I don’t much care for the establishment of facts, but it must be done or we’ll lose all sense of what we’re discussing here. Now, say, 6,000 years, we’ll go with that figure. Does that sound ok? Of course it does. See, we’re going along very smoothly here. People have been miserable, angry, dependent, whiny, and pathetic for at least that long, but they all find something in their lives. Even the mean, nasty ones found something to do, they made a little money and they had some moments of happiness. Now, perhaps, you’re not very good at anything or for anything, but I have to believe even a person as worthless as you can find something in your life to enjoy. You must find some hobby and go with it, for it. Have with it. Do whatever you please or like with it

Viv: Now, I’m beginning to know exactly why I’d rather write something that the masses enjoy. Listen, I’ve been through all kinds of pain and suffering. Pain and suffering you will never know. Ok? Maybe I’m not a tortured genius, or an intellectual, as we both dream of being but aren’t, but I’m not an awful person. I drew a pretty ugly picture of myself before, and it’s true: I don’t like myself or how I come across to others, but I’m alive and I’m not too mean to others. Yeah, I’ve said some unforgivable things about others, things I can never be truly and fully sorry for since I enjoyed them so much at the time, but I can endeavor to do better in the future. Ok? So shut it. We’re both below average individuals who don’t know squat about anything, which is true about anyone. I don’t care if you went as far as the third grade or if you have a plethora of Ph.D.s. It doesn’t matter. We’re all blind when it comes to the things that matter the most: the feelings of others. You’re right I yell too much. I curse too much although I haven’t cursed since we began this conversation, if you can call it that. No, this isn’t very good. It isn’t good at all. Want to do something with me?

Bobby: I don’t think I’m ready. I don’t think I will ever be ready for your way of thinking.

Viv: You may be right. Yes, yes, you probably are. We can’t continue to do this. We can’t continue to pretend that we can ever understand each other.

Bobby: Do you think that having endless conversations with each others, where nothing is truly said, can benefit either party?

Viv: No, but we have to endlessly seek some sort of resolutuon in our lives, or something along those lines. I’m not completely sure of what I’m saying.

Bobby: Well, let’s get back to the film ideas.

Viv: Right. Well, let’s shoot for the mainstream. Let’s sell this.

Bobby: No, no, we have to continue to live in obscurity, that’s as real as it’s ever going to get.

End