Bon Appetit

So now that I won't be a secret agent assassinating people, perhaps I will pursue another quasi-dream of mine: being a movie writer. With the likes of Beverly Hill Chihuahua and Saw 53,235 coming out, I don't see how I could do much worse.

I went to Utah in August to visit the Benders and their parents graciously took us all out to tepanyaki for dinner. As we sat there watching the chef twirl his knives and oil, I thought of a short film I'd like to make.

It would start with a mob boss and his thugs entering a tepanyaki restaurant for dinner. Privy to this and entering through the back of the restaurant is our protagonist, a CIA operative. He stealthily takes out the cook (who is evil) and puts on his uniform. He then rolls out the cart to be used in cooking. The camera pans over the cart to show the viewer the different ways which the operative could kill the mob boss. We see sharp knives of all sorts, vials of poison, and msg.

The dinner then commences and the suspense builds as the agent prepares each course. Every time he twirls a knife you expect him to thrust it into the villain's heart. The camera follows the chef's hand as he reaches for ingredients, barely grabbing the soy sauce instead of the poison. When he squirts the oil into the sliced onion to make the flame volcano, you anticipate him dousing the mobster and setting him afire as well.



And on it would go, just building and building, keeping the viewer guessing about just how the thug will be eliminated. Even when he opens his fortune cookie, he has a worried look on his face, but when the fortune is shown, it's just written poorly and his scowling was simply due to the illegibility of it. Then, after all the buildup and anticipation where the audience expects some sort of elaborate killing, the agent takes out a gun, calmly shoots the mob boss and his cronies, and leaves.

Excuse me while I call my buddies in Cannes.