Good stuff

From our pals at McSweeney's (OK, we're not really pals...I enjoy the stuff they put out, they don't know I exist) comes this nice little feature called "Punching Up The Script" where writer Dan Kennedy makes script changes to a well-known movie. Without further ado, here is:

Punching Up The Script: "Car Wash" (1976)

My changes on page 21:

DUANE is dancing around a customer's car acting like he's styling his afro in the newly cleaned and polished car's reflection. The owner, SULLY, frustrated by DUANE's clowning around on the job, comes out of the office and yells at him. Instead of responding with his characteristic hangdog pouting and shrugging, DUANE starts to perform an elaborate Haitian ritual believed to "stain" the soul of any man indicted in the ceremony—in this case, SULLY. As DUANE's playful dancing turns into a foreboding kinetic storm of channeled spiritual bloodlust punctuated with violently mimed self-sacrifice, SULLY's expression of grumpiness fades. In SULLY we now see the eyes of a man facing his mortality head on, facing his fate as a man marked by an island culture's darkest forces. He starts to react to an apparent pain or physical force in and around his neck and face.

SULLY: (Choking.) You ... have ... summoned Loa. The next world awaits. Dark ...ness ...

DUANE: I come in many forms. You have created me. You have called this unto yourself. I am playful and content until someone insists upon his own demise. That is when I appear. Your fear was your wish all along.

MUSIC CUE: "I Wanna Get Next to You" by Rose Royce


Bravo, sir. More here.