UNITED NATIONS/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An eagerly awaited U.S. inquiry is expected to report finding “documentary evidence” that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons programs but no proof of actual arms, a senior U.S. official said on Wednesday.
A darkened screen. Sad, slow ragtime piano music begins to play. Titles appear: “Riq B’uhrns presents… WMD.” An expert appears on the screen, warning about the dangers of mustard gas. We see several black and white photos of choking victims and scary canisters on screen as the narrator talks about gas dispersion and chemical exposure symptoms. The music segues into something equally sad and slow but this time played on a violin. The camera zooms in and pans across the photos in an attempt to make it seem as though there’s more to see here.
Cut to another expert, this one looking uncannily like Donald Rumsfeld with a fake beard. He talks about how the weapons might not have been destroyed. Probably weren’t destroyed. Slightly faster, more jarring music plays as we are shown the same photos as before, but now as negatives and being shaken jerkily to simulate explosions. The expert, beard now dangling precipitously from his chin, goes on to catalog all the various types of known and unknown chemical, biological, and nuclear weaponry that haven’t been proven not to exist in Iraq. The final 30 seconds of The Beatles’ “A Day In The Life” is heard. As it builds to its climax, the photos shake more and more violently, until, with the final piano chord, the photo is ripped away, leaving only frightening blackness.
Roll credits.
Fanny Roborat
12 comments
Finny
September 25, 2003 at 1:23 am
1Dude, if only you had the werewithal to actually produce this as a short film.
Someone give this man a grant!
tim
September 25, 2003 at 9:11 am
2I’d like to see this film too, unless we would have to watch it during pledge weeks for the next 20 years.
Murray
September 25, 2003 at 9:16 am
3That may be good enough for the weenies at the UN, but if you want to convince Americans you need much more. Start with a real action figure, maybe Aahnold or better yet, W in a flight suit. Add lots of explosions, (best if the hero is rushing out of the building, the explosion wells up from behind as an orange fireball, and he dives to the ground just in time). Ragtime music and violins? Come on, Americans need synthesized guitars, heavy drums, driving beat, and loud vocals. To cement public opinion have a man on the street take comments of people emerging from a theatre, “I laughed, I cried, I believe”. And finish the film with the Bush team (Condi, Rummy, W, Wolfy, and Dick) walking abreast, looking triumphant, taken with a long telephoto lens, (so you can see them walking but they don’t seem to be getting anywhere).
There, now you have something that Americans will swallow.
Pat R.
September 25, 2003 at 9:46 am
4They haven’t needed much to convince most Americans to this point.
Chicory
September 25, 2003 at 10:33 am
5I second Pat R.’s comment.
The only reason the public isn’t saying much at present is the “sticker shock” of the ticket - $87 billiion! And counting!!!!!
Dugrless
September 25, 2003 at 5:26 pm
6Off-topic: I highly recommend to readers of this site the “Draft Clooney Movement Gains Momentum” blog entry over at Defective Yeti (http://www.defectiveyeti.com). It reads like something on F.A; I thought for a second I was on the wrong site. Adam, are you moonlighting as a 30-something guy in Seattle?
michael (in DC)
September 26, 2003 at 2:43 pm
7Adam, just fyi from a musicological nerd point of view:
the final 30 seconds of “A Day in the Life” is the final piano chord (played on, I think, 4 or 5 pianos)…the mic stays on as the chord fades for at least half-a-minute.
[ /anal-nitpick]
Murray
September 27, 2003 at 9:55 am
8Actually that cord was created in the pre electronic wizardry age, and as the cord faded they turned the volume up on the mike to match. They said that if some one had coughed they would have blown the monitor speakers off the wall.
michael (in DC)
September 27, 2003 at 1:00 pm
9Murray, I long for the pre-electronic-wizardry age. I love stories like the organ interlude in “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” where they cut up the tapes & threw them in the air before splicing them back together…or the one about Bowie recording the vocal track of “Heroes” in a warehouse loft with one mic in front of him and another 50 feet away for reverb.
Alas, MIDI has made life worlds easier for countless bar & street musicians, but it’s made imagination largely superfluous in big-time rock & pop.
[/old coot rant]
adam
September 27, 2003 at 3:57 pm
10True enough about the final 30 seconds (but if I’d said “final minute,” it probably woulda been confusing).
Mo’ geekiness: As you probably know, if you listen closely you can hear the squeak of a chair or piano bench being pushed back towards the very end of that chord.
And then there’s the dog whistle, which I SWEAR I can actually hear…
Murray
September 28, 2003 at 1:07 pm
11For the ultimate in Beatles geekdom, I needed to contact my good friend John, an Ornithology professor. (Some one who never made it out of the 60s musically)
The orchestral cacophony That leads up to the 33.5 second cord was done with a 40 member orchestra who ran their instruments from the lowest note to the highest, they did it 4 times and the final product was the combination of all of these, to sound like 160 instruments. All 4 Beatles banged away on 2 pianos.
In the song “In my life” the “Harpsichord” interlude is actually a piano played at half tempo, one octave lower, and then recorded at double speed. John figured this one on his own, with a sound program on his computer.
In the song “Rain” one of the background clips is played backwards. (also found on his computer)
michael (in DC)
October 5, 2003 at 4:09 am
12No one’s reading this, but
Adam, finding out you’re a Beatle geek too, I want to marry you (at least since the hot chick in your Washington pics is apparently unavailable)
My late teacher, Raymond Premru, actually plays on A Day in the Life. (he was a member of the Philharmonia Orchestra at the time)…