Cinematic Interlude: There Will Be Trades
Wolffisher Inducements, Diversions, Games, Entertainments & Trickeries, Inc., in association with MONKEYMAX Pictures, presents ...
There Will Be Trades
Written for the Screen and Directed by Bill Lamar Beanerson
Adapted from the novel BALL! by Sinclair Lewis
Starring William A-Beanis—acclaimed star of My Left Bat, Last of the Sabermetricians, The A’s of Innocence, and In the Name of Branch Rickey (and as Bill "The Butcher" Cutting in Harang's Trade to Pork-opolis)—as Damnhell Tradeyou
Nick Swisher as O.F.1.B. Tradeyou
And featuring Monkeyball (best known for his supporting role in Little Miss Monkeyshine) in a dual role as Paul Monkey and Eli Monkey
Score by Johnny Ramone
[Trailer after the jump]
*There Will Be Trades* Theatrical Trailer
Over BLACK—and under a whining, atonal score that punctuates the beats throughout—we hear a THROAT CLEARING COUGH, and then the flat, declarative voice of a Native Son of Southern California:
Damnhell Tradeyou (OS): Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve traded over half our A’s to be here tonight.
EXT., DAY: Somewhere in the Bay Area. The front of a BART train hurtles toward the camera, with a fearsome, keening DWEEOOT–DWUT–DWOOT!
CUT TO: The grimy, but flamboyantly moustachioed, visage of DAMNHELL TRADEYOU—the best-looking prospector in baseball. He has a good face, and a winning smile.
Damnhell Tradeyou: I couldn’t get away sooner because my new prospect was coming to bat at Phoenix Muni—
MEDIUM SHOT: A raw-boned youth in a white polyester Oakland A’s jersey (the name on the back: "GONZALEZ") splintering an ash bat against a horsehide pill.
DUTCH ANGLE: A rain of baseballs falling over an outfield fence. Plastered on the fence is an advertisement for "Doc Stomper’s Old-Tyme Pruno Elixir and Snake-Oil Liniment."
Damnhell Tradeyou (OS): —and I had to see if he could hit.
INT.: A cavernous, dingy public men’s room. Burly subcontractors in Carhartts and hardhats rip a long trough urinal out of its concrete wall moorings with a fractured shriek of metal against stone.
Damnhell Tradeyou (OS): Ladies and gentlemen, if I say I’m a baseball man, you will agree—I’m a franchise man.
LONG SHOT: Anonymous workmen unfurl a great green tarpaulin across an expanse of empty stadium seats.
Damnhell Tradeyou: I run a franchise business.
INT.: Damnhell Tradeyou standing at the end of a long, sleekly varnished executive conference table. Around the table sit cigar-smoking fatcats in expensive three-piece suits. At Damnhell’s side, standing slackjawed, is a genuine young Appalachian hayseed, complete with Oshkosh overalls and a piece of straw protruding from his drooling mouth. He wears his hair in a greasy mullet. A brace of squirrel pelts hang from his belt.
Damnhell Tradeyou: This is my "son" and my protege, O.F.1.B. Tradeyou.
TIGHT C/U: BUD SELIG, a bony, disheveled old man with a preposterous, greasy combover, and a preposterous, greasy grimace.
Bud Selig: You boys are a regular franchise business.
EXT., NIGHT: A haggard old prospector, with a long, white goatee, sits in front of a dying campfire. This is OLD MAN BLESZINSKI. At his side is a dirty, disheveled chimp—ELI MONKEY.
Old Man Bleszinski: My monkey is a poet and a voice for the spirit of the fans. We have a blog.
INT., DAY: Eli Monkey, jumping up and down, hooting, with a handful of what looks to be his own feces. A motley crowd of Okies gapes at him.
Eli Monkey: And you will be cast out and thrust out of contention!
Eli flings a handful of crap—it SLAPS wetly against the wall, spattering the spectators.
C/U: Damnhell Tradeyou, smirking confidently.
Damnhell Tradeyou: I’m fixed like no other minor-league system on the field. I have a string of batsmen ready to put to work.
TRACKING SHOT: Starting from behind and pushing in, a line of a dozen burly young men in the searing Arizona sunshine, hefting bats over their shoulder in Busby Berkeley–esque sequence. All 12 wear white polyester Oakland A’s jerseys. All 12 have the same name on the back: "GONZALEZ."
Damnhell Tradeyou (OS): That’s why I can guarantee to start drafting and to develop the prospects to back my word.
EXT., DAY: Damnhell Tradeyou, with a manic gleam in his eye, sits working the controls of a massive wrecking ball.
Damnhell Tradeyou (OS): I assure you, ladies and gentlemen—
MEDIUM SHOT: The wrecking ball swings across space—and then CRASHES into a nearly-vertical wall of centerfield seats. An explosion of gray concrete and green plastic.
Damnhell Tradeyou: —no matter what the others promise to do, when it comes to the new stadium, they won’t be there.
LONG SHOT: The Oakland Coliseum. After holding for a beat, there is a RUMBLE and a ROAR—and the stadium starts to collapse in on itself in a controlled implosion.
Damnhell Tradeyou (OS): There’s a whole ocean of undervalued players under our noses—
EXT., DAY: A squad of strikingly large and muscular American Legion ballplayers warm up on a jewel-like green diamond.
Damnhell Tradeyou: —no one can get at them except for me!
PULL BACK: We rush dramatically back to show that the ballfield is perched precariously atop a massive garbage dump. The periphery of the dump is ringed in barbed wire, punctuated by various TOXIC WASTE and DANGER–RADIOACTIVE signs.
CUT TO: Eli Monkey and Damnhell Tradeyou, standing along the third-base line.
Eli Monkey: When do we get our winning team, Damnhell?
Damnhell Tradeyou decks Eli Monkey with one punch.
Damnhell Tradeyou: I look at baseball fans and I see nothing worth liking.
EXT. DAY: O.F.1.B. Tradeyou, on his knees at a construction site in Fremont. He kneels before Damnhell Tradeyou, pleading.
O.F.1.B. Tradeyou: Don’t trade me, Damnhell! Please!
C/U: Damnhell Tradeyou, once again in front of the boardroom table.
Damnhell Tradeyou: I see the worst in people.
EXT., DAY: Section 317 of the Oakland Coliseum. Eli Monkey stalks up and down the steep aisles, gesticulating broadly at the crowd of Okies cramming hot dogs down their yawning maws.
Eli Monkey: We have a SABR among us ...
Damnhell Tradeyou follows behind Eli, carrying a tray of overpriced microbrew beers. Each cup is only half full. Eli Monkey stops, senses Tradeyou behind him, and wheels around, pointing his simian finger at Tradeyou.
Eli Monkey: Get out of here, devil!
C/U: Damnhell Tradeyou, once again in front of the boardroom table.
Damnhell Tradeyou: I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed.
EXT., DAY: On a brilliant September day at Wrigley Field, Jason Kendall grounds into a doubleplay for the Cubs.
Damnhell Tradeyou: I can’t keep doing this on my own. With these ... people. [laughs]
CUT TO BLACK over a jarring, atonal minor-chord stinger.
Spoiler alert: Count me among the many who found the ending of the movie implausible and over-the-top when Tradeyou blows up the roster, trades DJ, Crosby, and Chavez for Pujols, Wright, and Santana, and then wades through a torrent of champagne seeping across the floorboards.
21 comments
|
0 recs |
Do you like this story?
Comments
William A-Beanis
I sense a limerick coming on....
I dunno, but if you ask me
each of those cups of Tradeyou's beers is half empty.
by FreeSeatUpgrade on Jan 12, 2008 1:38 PM PST reply actions
that's you can mix in ...
... some Doc Stomper's Old-Tyme Pruno Elixir.
(Ahem. Please note presence of freshly added poll.)
Those are some awesome poll choices
I hope I get to see all of them. I voted for Treasure of the Auto Mall Parkway (Wolff kills Fisher and steals his pallet of blue jeans, only to have them float away on the warming-fueled bay tide). But Citizen Beane and Forst Gump are also inspired ideas.
And Zaidi's petals is gold.
by FreeSeatUpgrade on Jan 12, 2008 2:58 PM PST up reply actions
nice touch with the blue jeans and the tide
... but I think I'd do the same "prospecting" metaphor as I did with There Will Be Trades -- Beane kills his partners/competitors for access to the raw ore of pitching prospects, only to see their arms turn to dust.
Definitely.
I was surprised it's not way out in front in the poll.
Do others not remember the Byrnes incident? Not remember the movie? Just don't think it's funny?
{points illuminated simian finger at Byrnes}
"Ouuut."
Kotsay is Gone.
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/s...
You know what, good.
Let's just get rid of everyone. May as well throw a team at the wall and see what sticks.
by zachmiller on Jan 12, 2008 8:19 PM PST reply actions
We had a few good times with Kotsay.
Good luck to him and sorry to ImaSeasonTicketholder. I know he was a great favorite of yours.
Hatteberg 2.0
This outfield should be...interesting, to say the least next year. Who's even left? With the way things are randomly going, I wouldn't be surprised if Ryan Christiansen ended up back on the team.
by zachmiller on Jan 12, 2008 8:50 PM PST up reply actions
Joey Devine = Huston Street's replacement.
That's certainly the way this is looking.
by zachmiller on Jan 12, 2008 8:54 PM PST up reply actions
Whoops
Posted prematurely.
Kotsay is going to the Braves for Joey Devine...
..I'm getting kind of sad that I have to google all of these new players just to see what they look like.
by zachmiller on Jan 12, 2008 8:20 PM PST reply actions
The Poll is a riot.
Very funny and clever. I voted with the pack for the Forst Gump choice. Best poll I have seen on AN to date.
Has anyone seen this thing?
Talk about a first-rate flick. Went to the Arclight in Hollywierd last week. In a way it was like the first time I really saw "The Godfather". It manages to be long and not particularly brisk, but incredibly compelling from the first minute to the last.
Then again, I have a buddy that didn't like it at all. Said it was "too slow". Of course, this is the kinda guy that looks to The Apprentice as a practical business model.
All that being said, excellent diary. I chose "DTTF" in the hopes that we can see a young William J. Beane regain consciouness in manager Bob Geren's office and say, "Bob? Bob is that you?"
I saw it first session on opening day.
PT Anderson has me at hello, every time, and this is his best film by a long way.
Daniel Day Lewis isn't an actor, he's a psychotic schizophrenic who inhabits characters to a degree that actors could only dream about. He chews the scenery like Larry Davis after a Jenny Craig meal.
I'd heard the stories about how his original co-star bailed on the project after only a week because he couldn't handle Day-Lewis actually physically beating him up, rather than doing 'stage fighting' in their scenes, and I figured part of that was just PR storytelling, but after watching that final scene in the bowling alley, I'm a believer.
Best film of the year, and I didn't think anything could beat No Country For Old Men.
And anyone who thinks There Will Be Blood is too slow needs to just stop going to movies and go to the amusement park already.
If PTA is a personal fave...
what the hell did the raining frogs mean? I totally dig wierd, esoteric shit. That still threw me for a loop. I've seen Magnolia only once, so maybe with repeat viewings...
There's two aspects of it.
Ours is to question why, but the movie is leaving it to us to also try to figure out the how.
I kind of liked to think
That's the only explanation that doesn't require me to suspend my disbelief. I'm positive that wasn't PTA's point, but that's what I went with. I guess it's just something not meant to be explained...like 'Mulholland Drive'.
(Recommend)
Ahh, the perils of being a front-page writer. There is no recommend button. A recommend-worthy diary is EXPECTED.
That quote of Old Man Blezinksi's ("My monkey is a poet and a voice for the spirit of the fans. We have a blog.") could perhaps go up on the AN masthead somewhere.
Music by
Jonny Greenwood, eh? That sounds pretty freakin' awesome to me, man. Oh, and the storyline seems to be fairly novel as well. I had not heard of it, so this is kinda cool.
I know it isn't an option, but I think that the movie, Snatch could be used, as in like:
BB: Well, do you want to do it?
Colleti: That depends.
BB: On what?
Colleti: On you buying this caravan. Not the rouge one, the rose.
BB: It's not the same caravan.
Colleti: It's not the same fight.
BB: It's twice the f*ing size of the last one.
Colleti: BB, the fight is twice the size. And me prospect still needs a caravan. I like to look after me prospect. It's a fair deal. Take it.
BB: Colleti, you're lucky we aren't worm food after your last performance. Buying a tart's mobile palace is a little f*ing rich.
[Realizes his mistake]
BB: I wasn't calling your prospect a tart. I just meant...
Colleti: Ah, save your breath for cooling your porridge. Now, look...
[starts talking incoherently]
Colleti: Right. And the prospect's terribly partial to the periwinkle blue, boss. Have I made myself clear, lads?
BB: Yeah, that's perfectly clear, Colleti. Just give me one minute to confer with my colleague.
[to David Forst]
BB: Did you understand a single word of what he just said?

by 

























