(Movie: The Scandal.
Scene: a boardroom, any boardroom. Big windows look out on a cityscape. We are too far up to see the little people. At the head of the table: a villain, any villain. Bald, with slicked back hair. A gaunt bony face with three chins. A cold lean ascetic body, rings sunk into a pudgy hand. One eye is ice blue and the other is as black as the abyss. As he speaks he twirls his mustache.
Across the table is a reporter. Just picture a movie reporter -- you've already got one in mind.)
Reporter: The people deserve to know: how did you get this job? Did your mentor, the recently disgraced Director, pull strings to get you to this level? There are rumors that you weren't even in consideration for this post.
Villain: (shrugs) It's not as though I just fell out of the sky.
Reporter: How will you answer the allegations that the CEO, lauded throughout the world for his compassion and inclusiveness, was aware of the Director's atrocities -- the abuse of his subordinates, the workplace harrassment, the children he raped? What do you say to your former co-worker's bombshell revelations about the Director, your corporation, and your CEO?
Villain: The CEO has a bigger agenda. He's got to get on with other things, of talking about the environment and protecting migrants and carrying on the work of the business. We're not going to go down a rabbit hole on this.
Reporter: But according to these allegations, your boss has known for years about the corruption in the organization, particularly in regards to the Director. Why didn't he take action before?
Villain: The record shows whenever there's actionable information, the boss acts.
Reporter: Many critics are calling for him to say something, anything. More strident voices are even demanding that the CEO resign. People are in pain and expecting answers from him
Villain: Quite frankly, they also don’t like him because he’s a Latino.
Reporter: He's an Italian immigrant.
Villain: (shrugs)
Reporter: You were fairly close with the Director. How could you not know about his crimes? He mentored you and promoted you. You even presented him with a major award and acknowledgment of his service at a company dinner only a year or two ago. Is it possible you could not have known, even then, about his reputation?
Villain: (smiling) I wouldn't be so stupid and foolish as to allow him to be recognized.
Reporter: Your organization has taken a aggressive stand for stricter ethics, and for the protection for employees and children. How then should the public feel about your organization as we uncover more and more evidence that your own management has used their positions of trust to flaunt the policies you have in place to protect the vulnerable?
Villain: It’s not just about the us. Let’s look at all the agencies and institutions that deal with children on a day-to-day basis.
***
The Scandal was never produced. The script died in workshop, panned by reviewers for its heavy-handed villain. "His clichéd, boiler-plate dialogue makes a mockery of the serious issues this script is trying to address," one wrote. "Completely unbelievable," another said. "Is this meant to be a melodrama? No one would ever deliver lines like this in this situation." A third said, "This is just the stereotype of a bureaucrat, not a fully developed character."
Unable to find market on the big screen, it was relegated to Chicago's local TV coverage. Viewers were undecided whether it was a horror film or a dystopian black comedy. The most common response was incredulity, because no one actually talks that way in the face of scandal and distress and heartbreak.
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6 comments:
Slap a silhouette of a few movie-goers at the bottom of the screen and over-dub their mocking praise; suddenly the project may have legs again.
the Archdiocese says to stop misrepresenting him :-)
https://www.archchicago.org/en/cardinal-cupich-s-statement/-/article/2018/08/29/statement-of-cardinal-blase-j-cupich-on-misleading-nbc-chicago-report
I do agree that +Cupich's words speak for themselves.
Black comedy is the word for it.
Excellent work, MrsD, though it might work better casting him as a sort of corrupt Elmer Fudd than as an action/thriller villain.
It reminds me of a paragraph that stuck with me from the PA grand jury report, in which the bishop (I don’t even know which it was) was complaining that there had been an unpleasant “incident” because the father of a boy who had been abused had come to the chancery office after seeing the abusers’ name in a newspaper article as celebrating the 25th anniversary of his ordination. The father, the letter said was “irrationally angry.” How anyone could describe the father of a child who had been sexually abused by a priest as “irrationally” angry was inconceivable to me, and told me that the bishop had not managed to wrap his mind around the evil that had been done to this child, and many others. I agree that care for the poor and concern for the environment are big important issues but to phrase it in a way that suggests they are of more import than getting rid of the absolute evil that has been allowed to exist in the church indicates that he (and many others, sadly) still haven’t grasped the true nature of what happened. It treats the victims as statistics, not human beings who suffered.
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