by Steve Hakeman
Woody Allen, steal this idea. Please.
Actually, I’m sitting at Mortons, I’ve just ordered the prawn and cucumber salad when it pops into my head, a song we sang when I was a kid, maybe because the last time I ate here, which was yesterday, the beef teriyaki brochette with mandarin sauce was slightly overdone. I’m not complaining, mind you. But this song, it’s about four guys, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego and Daniel, who, according to the Bible, were—and let’s be honest here, pretty much arbitrarily—tossed into a fiery furnace through no fault of their own. You remember the tune. It’s running through my head, and then it hits me like a ton of bricks—this is a picture!
And then I think, wait a minute, Daniel wasn’t thrown into a fiery furnace, he was thrown into a lion’s den, which isn’t exactly a bed of roses either, but that only leaves three guys. Not that there isn’t precedent for three-shots in the biz. There’s Groucho, Harpo and Chico, for one. And Moe, Shemp and
Larry. Or Moe, Larry and Curly Joe, if you’re so inclined. Inexact allusions if you will, but you get my drift.
So anyway, first thing I come up with is a title: Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego & Schwartz! Okay, so we’re back to four guys, more about that later. But it’s a killer title, you gotta admit. And it’s yours, Woody. For the taking. Bear with me, pal.
As for the storyline, you got these three guys who in all probability have something going for them in the way of looks, since they’re relatively nubile in a male sort of way, and bigwig government honchos to boot, you know the type—God’s gift to the three-piece suit and great hair. Now the conflict is, the bossman, Nebuchadnezzar, just happens to be the Richard Nixon of the Old Testament, and the whole nut turns on these Mel Gibson look-alikes refusing to bow down to a golden statue ol’ Neb’s made of himself. Imagine a golden statue of Nixon, if you will.
So Neb orders his secret service to truss up our three recalcitrant amigos, and without further ado, hurl them into the nearest blast furnace, which apparently happened in the original Babylon all the time. This furnace, I should mention, has been heated to meltdown capacity, the end result being the flames consume our trio’s worldly goods in seconds leaving only a fine gray fly ash as a reminder that it ain’t healthy to trifle with The Man, right?
Wrong-o-rama.
What actually transpires, according to the guy who wrote the story (don’t worry, we’re talking public domain here), is they emerge from the furnace to, well, let’s call it universal astonishment. And why not, as nary a hair on their Chaldean Cliniqued craniums is cauterized, not a thread of their Babylonian Brooks Brothers is braised. Voilá!
And, might I add, big deal. I mean, the way I see it, these honchos look so with it, so together, you half expected them to stroll straight out of the furnace anyway and into the offices of CAA, spit in Michael Ovitz’s eye, and saunter back out again with a friggin’ contract in hand, and not just a contract—a favorable contract—front end points, percentage of the gross, you name it! No problem.
In other words, from a dramatic standpoint, from a Hollywood standpoint, something’s missing.
I’ll tell you what’s missing. A schnook, that’s what’s missing. You with me here?
Okay, let’s say Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego probably don’t have any trouble picking up babes (remember, this is the Aluminum Age or something, which I think you can pretty safely assume was pre-HIV), but you can only take so much “pretty face” at one sitting. You can’t expect these three stud-muffins to carry the whole ball of wax on their personally-trained-at- taxpayers-expense shoulders.
The key phrase here is diversity. I mean, what if everybody in the world looked like Mel Gibson? Pretty boring, know what I mean? If everybody looked like Michelle Pfeiffer, that’s another matter entirely. But as far as guys go, the rule of thumb is, you got three hunks, you gotta have a schnook. Which, as far as ratios, is pretty much the opposite of real life, but hey, this is Tinseltown.
And that, if I may be straightforward here, Woody, is where you come in. I know, call it a shameless appeal if you will. But let’s face it, you were born to play the schnook. It isn’t fair, but what are you gonna do? The suits take one look at you and say: “Woody, we love ya big guy, but Mel Gibson you ain’t.” Yeah I know, deep down inside you feel like Mel Gibson. Maybe more than Mel Gibson feels like Mel Gibson. God knows who Mel Gibson feels like. The fact is, it’s an injustice. It’s burdensome. I understand. It hurts. But it’s a living.
So enter Schwartz, that’s you, and we’re even being historically accurate here, because—get this—when Nebie dons his Ban-Rays and looks into the furnace, he says, and I quote: “I thought we threw three guys in the fire.” And when his attorney says, “Yeah, so?” Nebirooski replies: “Then how come there’s four guys walkin’ around in there, butthead?”
You don’t think the entourage does a few double takes on that one?
Now if I may interject here a moment, Woody. You gotta understand the potential for screw-up at this juncture. Adaptation by its nature calls for a little pick and choose, because you gotta consider the story. The story is everything. You know that, I know that. I mean, there’s such a thing as too much concept. Which means sometimes you gotta hold the frickin’ concept in check.
Now the writer’s got Nebie sayin’, and I’m not makin’ this up: “I’m tellin’ ya, there’s four guys in there walkin’ around and one of them looks like a god.” The italics are mine. That part we cut. Reason: a schnook can be a lot of things, but possessing an overall godlike appearance definitely is not one of them. Spoils the effect entirely. You want a god, you get Mel Gibson, and among other things, Mel does not come cheap. But that’s beside the point.
The point is, God has sent down this angel to protect these three bureaucrats (how should I know why; again, you can’t get bogged down in concept) and it turns out to be this schnook, Schwartz. You.
And how does he save ‘em? Hey, do I have to do everything here? I don’t know, maybe he gabs so much he blows the fire out. I mean, he can’t shut up, yadada yadada, constantly flappin’ his yap about Nietzsche and Kierkegaard and Bergman, who of course nobody knows from Adam, and he’s wavin’ his arms all over the place and it drives you crazy, you want to smack him upside the head. Whatever.
Anyway, Schwartz finally makes himself invisible (did I mention he has this power? did I mention I would personally kill for that power?) and we have the three Mels stroll out of the furnace, like it’s been a day at the beach. Nebuchadnezzar, and I think this is understandable, says, “Whoa now, what’s the skinny?” And he and his attorney consult, and wouldn’t you know, there’s a clause in the contract, right there in black and white, that says if the parties of the first part (SM&A) and so on and so on survive the fire without so much as a singed curl, the party of the second part (that’s Nebie) and blah blah awards to the parties of the first part an even better job than the one they had before. And it’s signed by Michael Ovitz.
Okay, so the story needs a little work here.
And this is just the first half hour. The rest of the picture is how Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego start to think they imagined this whole thing with the angel, figuring the reason they survived the furnace is because they’re such great lookin’ studs. Some things never change, huh? But they can’t shake this schnook Schwartz, who’s hanging around because he’s supposed to find Daniel and protect him next, since Daniel’s on the verge of getting dumped, for starters, into a pile of lion doo doo. And there’s all kinds of adventures (like for instance, they run into the Whore of Babylon, played by, I don’t know, Ellen Barkin maybe), and there’s hanging garden jokes, and jokes about Freud, and Yiddish jokes, and therapy jokes, and borscht belt jokes for crying out loud, stuff that, in the right hands, and I think you’ll agree with me here, you got ‘em rollin’ in the aisles.
One suggestion: Alan King. We gotta find somethin’ here for Alan King.
So there you have it. Is this Academy Award material or what? And let’s face it Woody, it’s been awhile. I know people who haven’t even seen “Annie Hall.”
Okay, but is it art? As you and I know so well, Woody, not everything can be art. But it’s something you could have a little fun with. And besides, you never know who’s gonna like what. My 12-year-old daughter thinks “Bananas” is the greatest movie ever made except for South Park. Sam Goldwyn himself said nobody knows anything in this business. So who’s to say?
So anyway. Take it, it’s yours. Enjoy. And if you can’t use it, not to worry, I’ll understand.
I mean, I can always send it to Mel Brooks, knowhudImean?