Maybe you’re confused. Rooster, Monica, and Bennington Quibbits are birds. Two roosters and a hen. They don’t like the term “chicken” one bit. It’s considered a slur in the sky. They think, they talk, they move in the world in mysterious ways. They’ve been around for centuries, and they’ve seen what human beings are capable of. They don’t have much competition in terms of longevity; only the Minions, who aren’t real, can claim to have not only witnessed but influenced the Crusades, the Paris Commune, the bombing of Dresden, and the invention of the semiconductor. They’re intelligent, and they speak English, but can’t communicate directly with most humans. I still don’t know why, but they insist it’s impossible. I also don’t know why they’ve chosen me, of all people, to be their spokesman. Sometimes I feel like I’m being used, but they’re really nice people and I get along with them.
Rooster, Monica, and Bennington have people names because they are people. This was a difficult concept to explain to my friends and family, so I gave up a long time ago. But now I have to convince a bunch of movie people that the Quibbitses are real and that they have a level of dignity that other “animals” simply don’t. A24 was first, and even though they have a certain reputation (why?), I knew it’d be an uphill battle just to establish the basics of the Quibbitses and why this project meant so much to me.
My columns, all dictated to me by one of the three Quibbitses since 2015, caught someone’s attention in Hollywood recently. I think they might’ve just been really into that movie The Sheep Detectives, but I wasn’t about to ask questions. I just wanted that infinite option; Bret Easton Ellis isn’t totally satisfied with Mary Harron’s adaptation of American Psycho, and he got screwed out of a writing credit and substantial royalties, but he made bank in the 1990s. I’m not precious about the Quibbitses stories—for all I know, half of them are made up. Maybe all? No, I doubt it. Monica and Bennington might bend the truth semi-regularly, but Rooster has always been a straight shooter, if you know what I mean (the Mamas & Papas song). When he says he ran guns in Ulster and met Benazir Bhutto the day she was assassinated, I believe him. Why would a rooster lie to me?
A24 said they wanted me to write the screenplay, “or at least have a go at it,” but as soon as I walk into the meeting, who do I see? The screenwriter. I won’t name him, he’s not important, but without thinking I immediately asked no one in particular, “Why is he here?” This wasn’t the best way to start a meeting with a major movie studio, but I was done. I was tired. Los Angeles is exhausting. It’s like one big film set where you spend most of your time waiting only to intermittently feel like you’re missing the last plane to Australia before the flesh-eating virus comes to kill us all. That’s the best analogy I can make when it comes to filmmaking: being on a set is like going to the airport for 16 hours and almost missing your flight. Your day is “made” when you make it onto the plane.
I wasn’t ready to get back on a plane, but was fed up. These people are all liars, and they’re lying to me. Why? I don’t need them and they don’t need me. This meeting’s a courtesy—I know that even if I refuse the offer, they’re just going to make their own movie instead, without me. It won’t be called Rooster Quibbits, but it’ll star a talking “chicken” and most likely be made for small children and retarded adults. So I was in a lose-lose situation. Not the first time. But did I really need to fly out to Los Angeles just to get punched in the gut over and over? Plenty of opportunities for that in Baltimore, or any major city on the East Coast. It’d probably be pretty easy to get yourself punched basically anywhere in America. People are mean now, and they’re tired—at least that’s what Monica tells me. “Don’t listen to her,” Rooster says, “she thinks she’s a black woman now.” I tried transcribing a bit of Monica’s blaccent, but Rooster advised me that it was in our best interest to leave such an astonishing spectacle to the reader’s imagination.
I thought about all of this as I sat down at A24. Why did they even want me here? Looks like they already got a guy to murder my friends for me. Great, now I have to take the job otherwise someone else is going to come along and fuck it up. What’s his name? “Greg,” he says, “nice to meet you.” This isn’t nice. I don’t think it’s nice. Why is he saying it’s nice? “Meet you.” That’s what I said. “Meet you,” like a moron. Everyone was immediately very confused. I sat down and let them tell me about the movie they wanted to make. It would be “elevated”—they were still using that stupid word—and it would have “horror elements.” I couldn’t resist. “I’m sorry, what are ‘horror elements’?” The executives mumbled, but thankfully, Greg jumped in and clarified it for me. “Rooster’s gonna be in a cockfight. It’s not going to go well.”
I was stunned. They wanted to KILL Rooster? No, it’s just a movie… they go. Where are you going they ask… Outside. I’m going outside and then I’m leaving Los Angeles forever, or at least until the next time someone calls me out here suggesting possibilities of promises of (potential) monies. But this was really too much. Rooster in a cockfight? If they wanted to put him in competition, it should be in the Cannes Film Festival, not a cockfight. Jerry Falwell was right, these people are sick.
—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter: @NARCFILM