Other People's Stories From My Fiction Workshop And How I Would Make Them Into Movies

For more great humor like this, check out the Dopple Gang's writers on www.CampusWord.com, the best collegiate media site today (this article originally featured on www.CampusWord.com on 4/3/08)

1. Samurai Cowboy, by Jack Takashi, Senior Finance Major

Their Version:  Jack-san, a Japanese orphan, is found on the doorstep of a police station during a blackout.  When the lights come back on, he is awake for the first time and cries. He is taken in by a policeman, but he is eventually confronted by a hardened criminal claiming to be his brother during a summer home from college abroad.  While back home, he re-connects with his Asian roots and is forced to choose the past he wants so he can get his economics degree while still being a righteous, crime-fighting force who honors his adoptive father.

My Version:  In the days of samurai swords and revolvers that needed to be cocked, a lone Japanese samurai is sailing across the seas in search of his daughter.  On his way to San Francisco, he is pushed South into Mexico, where he must make his way through hundreds of armed banditos, who are firing pistoles and having mustachioes.  After a brutally long kung-fu sword-and-gun fight, he leaves a trail of bloody sombreros all the way to the Texas border, where Tommy Lee Jones and Clint Eastwood help him learn how to use guns. Eventually he makes his way to Tombstone, Arizona, and kills Kevin Costner.  At the end, he finds his daughter already knocked up by Clint Eastwood (betrayal and sadness!) and commits ritual suicide, dishonored and disgraced, showing how no one in America really respected the cultural heritage of Kung-fu sword-fighters until the modern era (touching and enlightening). 

2. The Fourth, By Jenna      Tierney, Junior Gender Studies Major

Their Version:  A group of girls from the same small town in Jersey are all at separate colleges. They have a reunion over the Fourth of July, only to find their one friend who didn't go to college is involved with drugs and sexual experimentation.  They soon all got involved in a world of self-delusion and self-medication, searching for enlightenment. They find each other, either as friends, lovers, or enemies.  A surrealist journey into the mind of young people during their most formative years.

My Version:  A neuro-degenerative brain disease, only transmitted by sexual contact, is sweeping across college campuses.  A group of three girls return to their hometown over the Fourth of July weekend…only to start lezzing out and getting high! They find out (gasp!) they're infected, except for their one friend who didn't go to college!  Back in their home town (which is NOT Jersey, but instead outside LA where everyone wears skirts and/or nothing), the non-college friend is totally smokin' and wicked smart.  She wears glasses.  She is reading a book when her three friends try to eat her brains because they have STZDs (Sexually Transmitted Zombie Diseases) and the smart friend has to run.  Eventually, Jeff Goldblum kills her ex-boyfriend and they have to run into the heart of the city to find a cure!  They find it, and totally bone.  Her friends zombie-lezz over the end credits.

3. Death to All Robot Grizzly Bears, by Ned Haskins, Freshman Computer Science Engineer 

Their Version:  A bunch of Robot Grizzly Bears from space invade earth.  Only Jason Statham and Clive Owen are British enough to stop them.  Will Smith gets killed in the first five minutes.  Peter O'Toole is governor of England and asks the two badasses to save the world.  They begrudgingly agree and do. At the end, Clive Owne gets back with his ex-wife (Bridget Monahan) who was captured by the bears and forced into bondage and skimpy outfits. Before the credits roll, Statham is really drunk and kicks the Bush twins out of bed, claiming it was the only time he has not enjoyed a threesome.  A giant robot grizzly George W. Bush/Cheney amalgam bursts through his wall, and Statham says, "Crikey!". Fin.

My Version:  This cannot be improved. 

4. The Quest for Firewater, by Georgianna Huntsman, Senior Linguistics Major

Their Version:  A touching tragic-comic tale about the first Indians to attempt fermentation, this story chronicles Winged Hawk as he tries to develop an understanding of chemistry as well as addiction in a culture that views most science as superstition. 

My Version:  Indians, using magic Indian stealth powers, steal all the booze from Spanish conquistadors.  The Spaniards, angry and hungover with nothing to take the edge off, projectile vomit all over the natives' land so nothing can grow (FAMINE!).  Then they charge on their armored horses with gun powder and slaughter the drunk Indians.  Only one survives- the nameless badass who grows up to invent moonshine that is four times as potent as normal moonshine.  He sells it to the Spaniards, who drink too much and get sick and then he single-handedly scalps every last one.  Using the gold on their ships, he buys back Manhattan Island and finds the last of the Mohicans.  He outlaws booze and barter, and Indians prosper, living in peace with the land, using all parts of the still-non-extinct buffalo. Mother Environment blesses them all with the gift of reincarnation and all the Indians come back as Kimono Dragons.  Al Gore never makes An Inconvenient Truth.

By Michael J. Weingarth