Pitching Weekend at Bernie’s III

The scene:  You’ve made it all the way to a mid level drone at a non-descript production house that once made a movie with Shannon Tweed.  It’s your time to shine and show you can craft a movie.  As writer and director, this is your opus.  This is your moment to make your mark for future generations.  This is your vision of Weekend at Bernie’s III.

“So here’s the deal.  Larry and Richard are back and it’s about 17 years later.  Larry has gone as mad as a hatter and has been keeping Bernie’s body in his freezer this whole time.  He talks to him, asks him for advice, masturbates with his frozen fingers, it’s a whole crazy thing.  Richard, on the other hand, has been travelling across America as a salesman with Cutco, killing everyone he can find named Bernie and then trying to do something wacky with their corpses!”

“Wacky how?” asks the producer.

“Oh man, get this.  His first victim, in Hoboken, he tries to take fishing.  He tapes a pole to his hands and gets him in a boat and everything, but then the body tips in and gets mulched by the outboard motor.  I mean, can you imagine?  Aha ha ha!”

“Ok.  And you say Larry masturbates with the real Bernie?”

“Oh yeah, all kinds of zany stuff.  Like in one scene it’s a handjob but because he’s frozen he ends up sticking to him until he thaws out a bit.  And then later a finger breaks off in Larry’s ass!”

“A finger breaks off in his ass?”

“Oh, totally.  And he has to run around the apartment in a panic because he’s afraid he’ll have to explain it to paramedics, but then there’s a hilarious scene when Richard gives him laxatives and he poops it out.  It’s very Dumb and Dumber meets Citizen Kane.”

“I don’t think that makes sense,” the producer says, somewhat to himself.

“Oh, it does.  There’s a joke about Rosebud.  In this context meaning his asshole.  With a finger in it.”

“Ok.”

“So basically Richard and Larry have been out of the spotlight for years because, you know, this kind of depraved corpse shenanigans is probably very damaging to the human psyche.  And obviously, with the murder and corpse masturbation, these guys aren’t healthy.  So they decide they need a weekend retreat to get back into form and maybe find love.”

“And they take Bernie?”

“Yeah.  Both guys agree to leave that stuff behind, the masturbation and murder, but Larry secretly packs Bernie’s corpse and of course, when they get to their little island getaway, who should be there have a family reunion?  A fella by the name of Paul Bernie and his entire family – 56 Bernies in one place at one time and Richard falls back into his killing ways in no time.”

“He starts killing an entire family at their reunion?”

“Yeah!  He starts with Grandma Bernie by tossing her into a lagoon and it just gets funnier from there.”

“Ok.”

“And eventually Richard meets Sally Bernie and there’s this crazy conflict because he thinks he’s falling for her but he still wants to murder her and she’s falling for him, but someone keeps killing her family members which has got to be traumatic.  Meanwhile Bernie ends up being the toast of the town, hosting parties and thwarting a military coup on the island.”

“He thwarts a coup?”

“Does he!”

“I’m going to be honest with you, I’ve never heard anything like this in my life.  This is probably the best idea for a movie that anyone has ever had.  If I didn’t OK this, if I didn’t get on board with you and say ‘let’s film this and let’s start today’ I’d be an idiot.  And I would damn myself to hell.  Let’s make a movie.”

“Fuck yeah!”