Wk. 9 - The Gun Seller

Here's the piece of writing. As mentioned in a previous blog, I'm basing my project on The Gun Seller, a novel by Hugh Laurie, turning it into a 10-12 part miniseries. This is adapted from the last couple of chapters. Obviously it's not formatted or even written for a screenplay, but anyway, here is is:

"I am here to save the world. Honestly. With my gun, with the grenades strapped to my belt, with my whacky army pants, I am here to save the world. I’m here because Morocco is the place to be; Casablanca, of all the bars in all the towns in all the world…yeah!
I came here to be a terrorist, to be An American, to be a patriot hating patriots – a mystery of an enigma – I came here not to break down the fabric that runs society, nor the banks that fund society; I came here to reinforce those wonderful ideals; commerce, capitalism, poor poorer and rich richer, all that jazz.

That’s why they sent me here. Yes, “they” sent me here. They are the bad men, the men in the shadows, the cigarette smoking men who lurk in darkness and add that something extra to conspiracy theories throughout the world. They aren’t just a conspiracy. “They” are real, but “They” are not who we think they are. They’re not government officials, secret societies, men in robes with terrible weapons. They’re bankers, financiers, stock market traders; they are goods manufacturers, short, fat, sweaty men in too-small suits; these are the men that rule the world.

And these are the man who sent me to sunny, sandy Casablanca to maintain the status quo – ironically by disrupting the status quo. Oh yes, you heard me. I’m the sacrificial lamb, so to speak. In gothic novels there was this glamorous bad guy, who was evil and wicked and charismatic (that’s me) and then at the end of the novel, he gets destroyed (that’s in an hour) and the forces of good (that’s “them”) triumph and everything is exactly the way it was before, but now everyone’s happier about it.

It’s an odd psychology, I know, but it’s the way the world works, on a grand scale at least. The only problem though, is I am a poor sacrificial lamb. I’m not wicked or evil; I’m not even that charismatic. What I am is a sap who fitted their needs well and who’s ended up here through coincidence and poor planning.

So we know what they think I’m here to do, but what am I really here to do? Ah, wouldn’t that be so grand, if I could tell you? But I’m not going to tell, so there! I didn’t tell Solomon, I didn’t tell Ronnie; I told Sarah, and Sarah ended up…well…She just ended up not being a good person to tell. So I’ll keep this one my little secret, at least until we see if it pans out the way I hope it will.

Ol’ Carlos is calling for me. Carlos, the heroic leader of the SWORD OF JUSTICE! It sounds like a battle cry from a bad cartoon, eh? Something that would be shouted by a man in spandex before the bad synthesizer music kicks in.

But Ricky doesn’t hate Carlos, Ricky loves Carlos. Not in that way, like in an idolise way. Carlos is standing up for all the things poor lil’ misguided Ricky believes in. Ricky is me, by the way; the name they gave me with the assignment. There was a real Ricky, but he…Yeah, so now I’m Ricky and Ricky loves Carlos and Ricky hates corporations, but according to “them” I love corporations, but really I don’t love corporations. It’s a very confusing business. It really is much like an onion, there are lots of layers, it gets very chopped up, and it often makes one cry.

There’s no sense in trying to explain it all; it’s mostly too convoluted for me, and I was the one who came up with the plan. All I’ll say is that one way or another, this will all end with a bang. Well, that’s saying rather more than I imagined. I mean, I suppose it could be a physical, or psychological or emotional or metaphysical bang; and even though we all know it’ll be physical, it could be a lot of different things making a bang. Bang on the door, bang on the floor, bang in the sky…the possibilities for banging during a hostage negotiation are really endless.

Yes, we have hostages. We have the biggest and brightest of the American Embassy here in sunny Casablanca, crowded in an office, eating strange bread with strange things to dip the bread in; drinking water provided by the hostage negotiation team, ironically better than any of the other water we’ve had here. Maybe they’re trying to make us too comfortable, to that we all take a collective nap, and then they can storm the building on their tippy-toes.
The ambassador is an nice man, not a business man or a prominent buddy of the U.S. president. A career politician; I imagine he’s earned the right to live in sunny Casablanca. But I don’t know, Ricky doesn’t know things, because it’s not his place to know things. Ricky is a good boy from Minnesota, who got tangled up with the wrong girl, then the wrong group, then the wrong side of the law.

There’s Ricky, cropping up in my mind again. Ricky, last known address: Hills. Somewhere. What a way to go out, last known address, somewhere. Tombstone: Here lies Ricky, someone, somewhere, some time. I feel bad for the kid.

I feel bad for all these guys. Saskia and Sofia and Stefan and even Benji, yeah Benji, who insists on calling me a “fucking fuck”, I even feel sorry for him. Because all these little chaps with their little ideologies aren’t really fulfilling their ideological ends. They’re the other charismatic lotharios and lothariettes, rounded up like so many usual suspects, given guns and a fancy, stupid name and sent out to do exactly what their cigarette smoking, bracket-named masters ordered.

There’s no getting out now. I already got out once; I don’t think anyone noticed. I had to knock Saskia out to do it, but I’m not sure she noticed either. Sarah, the last thing I’ll see of this world, before I enter a new world, of one kind or another. It’s not the sight I would have seen, had it been up to me. I lost my interest in that sight a long time ago, but it happened to be the sight that most fits the plan, and whom I don’t entirely mins giving up. I gave her my thing, she gave me hers, and hopefully we’re both on our way to our respective packages’ final destinations.

I’m on my way, but I don’t know about her; about Russel P. Barnes, about Graduate Studies. I don’t know about any of it and so I don’t trust any of it. Especially not Sarah."

Does cynical count as an emotion? I dunno that's what I see. I guess there's a little stuff there about Sarah, and about his main aims, but there's not much of either. Oh well.