I'd Ream A Genie

FADE IN:

EXT. DESERT ISLAND – DAY

This is an idyllic tropical island, white sandy beach framed by a lush verdant jungle. A 60s era rocket capsule Stardust One rests on its side in the sand just beyond the surf and various rocks, logs and seajecta form the letters SOS on the beach beside it.

A man in NASA garb, CAPTAIN TONY NELSON – early 30s, tall and of regal bearing – carries an armload of driftwood and other material from the edge of the jungle to complete the second ‘S’. The bottom tip of the ‘S’ is an old bottle which rolls out of place after he sets it. Confused, he picks up the bottle and sets it back in place.

Standing back, admiring his handiwork, he is again bewildered by the bottle rolling out of place. He looks at it then looks around, as if being played by someone.

TONY
What the…?

Retrieving the bottle he examines it.

CLOSE ON BOTTLE

It is made of oxidized brass, purple in hue with gold accents, about a foot tall with a ridged bulbous base about five inches in diameter. The neck is thin, perhaps an inch and a half in diameter with a rounded spout and a stopper with a truncated hemisphere and a golden nipple on top. It is fairly ornate and CAMERA ADJUSTS as TONY considers it.

MEDIUM BEACH – TONY shakes the bottle and listens. Considering it again, he grabs the stopper and yanks on it. It is firmly in place. He looks around again then back at the bottle which he again attempts to uncork. He struggles with it for a moment, stops then tries again real fast as if it could be tricked. It is stuck fast.

ANGLE DRIFTWOOD LOG – TONY considers this fairly hefty piece of driftwood then looks at the bottle. He wedges the bottle into a crook between branches and applies all of his weight to the stopper. It releases suddenly with an audible POP sending TONY hurling backwards into the sand.

TONY – He looks up in wonder as a pillar of smoke arises from the neck of the open bottle obscuring the area before it. The smoke dissipates and a beautiful blond woman in very revealing harem attire appears before him, smiling widely. She is JEANNIE – 2,000 years old but very fit and hot – and she speaks to him in Farsi.

JEANNIE
Amok aluck uncorkage suk, salabeem.

SUBTITLES: Your wish is my command, Master!

ANGLE BEACH – TONY stares at her aghast. He’s either lost his mind or made the greatest discovery known to man. He is mesmerized by her breasts, poking through her flimsy bodice.

TONY
I have no idea what you just said.
This is amazing! Who would have
thought of bottled women?
(sniffing)
How do you stay so fresh in there?

JEANNIE
Deem inute boot ekwipt wida spay
seeos ressa rume.

SUBTITLES: It’s small but has a big powder room.

TONY – He is utterly amazed. He drinks her in as he considers the possibilities.

JEANNIE – She is completely smitten, her wide almond eyes swirling in the deepest adoration as she hangs on his every gesture. She will do anything to please him and awaits his command lustily, hungrily. She steps toward him almost predatory.

ANGLE BOTH – TONY steps back, a little intimidated. He clumsily attempts to divert her ravening. Pointing skyward he speaks to her.

TONY
Helicopter. I need a helicopter.

She smiles at him while he attempts to mimic a helicopter by spinning around with his arms out. He steps back up to her, a little exasperated as she LAUGHS uncontrollably at him. Sensing his displeasure she looks into the sky, where TONY pointed and blinks. Above them a huge albatross swoops in low, depositing a little poop in TONY’s hair.

This causes JEANNIE to burst into peals of laughter, rolling into the sand. TONY on the other hand, inspects the damage to his rapidly fleeing dignity, then wanders over to the surf to rinse off his displeasure. As he cleans his head, JEANNIE appears suddenly beside him, startling him, causing him to stumble back into the surf.

His annoyance is now beyond question and JEANNIE chokes back her laughter lest her master renounce her vintage.
ANGLE BEACH – TONY walks back up onto the beach, his spacesuit soaked, his hair sullied and his genie, not only linguistically challenged but mega-disrespectful. JEANNIE, offering a display of serious judgment, does her blinky thing and TONY finds himself dry and feces free. This improves his attitude considerably.

TONY
Well, that’s better. Just wish you
spoke English…

JEANNIE
Your wish is my command, Master!

TONY
You do speak English.

JEANNE
As you will it I shall make it so. You
have freed me of the lamp – now I serve
only you. Master.

She sidles up to him. His eyes lock onto her breasts again.

TONY
This is udderly amazing. In the 20th
Century, magic. Round, glorious
firm and uplifting magic.

ANGLE TONY/JEANNIE – TONY pulls himself away and considers his options.

SERIES OF SHOTS – MONTAGE SEQUENCE

ANGLE BEACH – DAY – CHOPPER sweeps in low above beach.

FULL SHOT AIRCRAFT CARRIER – DAY – The massive sea city receives TONY’s capsule Stardust One lowered from a chopper.

MEDIUM SHOT AIRCRAFT CARRIER – TONY is received by the crew, saluting the Commander.

EXT. KENNEDY SPACE CENTER – DAY – Establishing shot of the massive facility.

INT. DOCTOR BELLOWS’ OFFICE – DAY – TONY reclines on Dr. Bellows’ sofa as Bellows shakes his head displeased.

INT. DOCTOR BELLOWS’ ANTEROOM – TONY argues with fiancé MELISSA STONE, DR. BELLOWS shaking his head in BG and making notes.
INT. SENATE CHAMBER – NIGHT – TONY addresses a phalanx of stodgy, rumple suited senators, who keep talking over him in this smoky room.

INSERT HEADLINE: Mortem Post – Hero Astronaut Astro-Nut

EXT. TONY’S HOUSE – DAY – MELISSA carries her bags to a waiting cab as TONY follows her pleading. She climbs in and speeds off, leaving TONY standing dejected in the street.

INT. OFFICE DAY – TONY is hastened out the door by NASA security while BELLOWS and former pal ROGER HEALY shake their heads at the fallen star.

INT. BAR – NIGHT – TONY sips a whiskey in this smoky dive while others talk about him furtively in the BG.

EXT. BEACH – DAY – TONY, old and demented, stumbles toward the lapping waves.

PULL IN ON OCEAN – The sea is relatively calm, spotty clouds on the horizon.

PULL BACK REVEALING TONY and JEANNIE back on the beach. He has been projecting this and now looks back at JEANNIE.

TONY
What do I call you? Genie?

JEANNIE
You call me whatever you wish. Jeannie
is fine. If it pleases you.

TONY
Is that it? Is my pleasure your purpose?

JEANNIE
It is that and that alone.

TONY
And you can do…anything?

JEANNIE
If you can conceive it, I can make it so.

CLOSE ON TONY – He thinks this over for a couple of beats. He smiles, then looks at her. PULL BACK TO TWOSHOT – She is utterly ravishing, her left breast, perky and substantial, peeking from beneath her barely fastened top. Her eyes gaze upon him enraptured and expectant. Her every move says, she wants him.

ANGLE TONY/JEANNIE – TONY looks at her and speaks.

TONY
All right. To begin, we’ll dispense with
the wishing. Too Disney. I’ll tell you
what I want, you make with it. Capiche?

JEANNIE
What you wish and as you wish it.

TONY
We’re gonna get along just fine.

JEANNIE
I have no higher purpose, Master.

PULL BACK SLOWLY as TONY lays out his plan.

TONY
Not sure about the ‘master’. We’ll
see if I grow into it. Okay to begin,
you will never be jealous of me. And
as of today, you are bi-curious. No,
bi-adventurous. So we want to have
some nubile and libertine young servant
girls, to feed us, another thing on the list
as we explore these powers of yours.

TONY is lifted gently onto a throne made of driftwood and broad leaves from the jungle by a bevy of impossibly gorgeous naked women (17 to 25) who feed him slices of rare beef (Prime Rib) and butter oozing lobster, while others massage him. He continues.

TONY
Okay. Oh, this is good, delicious.
Hello. My, you’re a big one, or two.
Okay. Jeannie. Just a second, sweety,
Okay, I want the bastards that killed
JFK, uh, in prison. Being raped, gang
raped in prison, for say, forty years…
every day for 40 years. And the bomb
we need to do something about that…

FADE TO BLACK

FIN
For Larry.

Maybury: RIP

FADE IN:

EXT. MAYBURY SOUTH CAROLINA – PRESENT – DAY

THEME MUSIC OVER – THEME is whistled but slow and melancholy – sad.

PULL IN ON a man and boy walking together down a desolate dirt road.

MEDIUM CEMETERY – DAY

The pair wander into a derelict cemetery and stop before a fresh grave. The man is revealed to be OPIE TAYLOR – mid fifties, bald and conservatively dressed. The boy is his son SCOOPER – 10ish redheaded and freckled – and they stare silently at the burial plot before them.

CLOSE ON GRAVE – The headstone reads:

ANDY TAYLOR 1921-2012 Beloved Father, Beliked Uncle, Betolerated Moral Authority – Cornpone Sheriff for 10 Seasons (with reruns)

CLOSE ON OPIE

He sips from a flask he’s concealed in his Bible.

SCOOPER (O.S.)
Pa?

OPIE
Yeah, Scooper.

PULL BACK to include SCOOPER.

SCOOPER
Granpa was mighty old.

OPIE
He lived a long time, son.

SCOOPER
Seemed like he’d never die,
didn’t it.


OPIE
Shore did Scoop. Your ma and
me wondered if he’d ever kick.

SCOOPER
Kick?

OPIE
The bucket – we wondered if
he’d ever kick the bucket.

SCOOPER
That what happens when you die?
You kick a bucket?

OPIE
Not everyone. Uncle Floyd kicked
a state trooper up in Hog Flats. He’s
dead too.

PAN ACROSS GRAVES REVEALING that virtually everyone from Maybury is dead and buried in the same shitty cemetery. Floyd D Barber, Ain’t Bee, Barney Fife, Otis B Drunkard, Goober Pyle, Gomer Piles…

MEDIUM GRAVEYARD

OPIE and SCOOPER shuffle away from the graves and back onto the dirt road, OPIE spitting a brutish lunger onto OTIS’s grave.

OPIE
Pederast.

SCOOPER
What’s a ped a rast, pa?

OPIE
Remember cousin Willy?

SCOOPER
The Boy Scout leader?

OPIE
Yep. Know how he liked to do
tent checks during the jamboree?

PULL BACK FAVORING OTIS’S GRAVE as the pair wander away from the cemetery.
SCOOPER rubs his ass as he responds.

SCOOPER
He did other checks as well. What’s
a prostate?

OPIE
Something Boy Scout leaders shouldn’t
be examining while on bivouac.

SCOOPER
I’ll say.

As the damaged pair leave frame, the soil over OTIS’s grave begins to push up from below, clods rolling aside as the ground opens revealing a very decomposed OTIS – 65 and pickled – as he crawls from what appears to not have been his final resting place.

OTIS
(hocking and hacking)
Powerful parched.

DISSOLVE TO

INT. TAYLOR HOUSE – BEDROOM – NIGHT

OPIE and his haggard wife BUTTY SOO – 46, plain and a trifle flabby – rut it out under the comforter on ANDY’s bed in a fairly uninspired missionary position. BUTTY SOO stares longingly out the window, through the gap in the gingham curtains as OPIE grunts his way to his ineluctable conclusion.

OPIE
Uh, uh, uh, uh, owww.

BUTTY SOO
I told you not to put that in there.

OPIE
Why do you call it that?

BUTTY SOO
What do you want me to call it?
It?

OPIE
I told you what I want you to call it.

BUTTY SOO
Well, it isn’t and it seems silly to
call it one.

OPIE
(finished, he rolls off)
Don’t know what the big deal is.
Prickly Sutton, over in Hamster
Swallow, well his wife calls his…

BUTTY SOO
I know what she calls his, everybody
knows what she calls his. But his is.
Yours ain’t so I cain’t call it that.
(sotto voce)
Magnum. Huh! More like Derringer.

OPIE
I heard that!

BUTTY SOO
Facts is facts, Ope. Ain’t saying it
ta hurt ya.

OPIE
Hey…How do you know Prickly’s is?

BUTTY SOO
Oh grow up. He shows it to everyone.

OPIE
I know – he showed it to me.
(conspiratorial)
He had me touch it.

BUTTY SOO
You touched it?

OPIE
He put it in my hand once when we
were in the locker room. Thought it
was a goldurn snake. Creepy.

PULL BACK THROUGH WINDOW REVEALING the entire cast of the original series zombified and watching this exchange. As one they look at each other and ANDY posits:

ANDY
Well, no brains here. We oughta
head up to Mount Pilate.

They turn and stumble away, disappointed. Gomer shakes his head and it falls off. Hilarity ensues.

FADE TO BLACK


FIN


For Andy