The following was written by Cass Trumbo, Rogers Ozone Director.
At our Ozone
clubs, we often play silly or gross games, conjuring images of time spent at
summer camp. However, I often lean towards activities that require a measure or
two of creativity. In my bias, that often means the creation involves words.
I love nothing
more than to hang pictures drawn by our elementary students and ask our
teenagers to write a six-word story about it while listening to oddly loud
instrumental music. That has led to such gems as I have hung on my office
corkboard: “Slowly leave something that is loved” and “Gazing serpent gazes at
what was.”
Both of those were
written about a basilisk fighting a robot, pictured in crayon.
One week we played a variation of Balderdash, the game that gives an obscure title or
phrase from which the player must puzzle out meaning (or bluff very well). As I
explained the goal – to either correctly describe a movie plot or to make up a
feasible plot that matches the title – the students were confident. Most
assured me that whatever the movie was, they had seen it.
“Ready?” I asked. “The movie is - The Hudsucker Proxy.“
As they stared, glassy-eyed, at their blank papers, I tried to help them along.
“Who is the main character? Is it the Hudsucker Proxy? Or is the main character
trying to find the Proxy? Maybe destroy it? Fall in love with it? Protect it?
“Is the Hudsucker
Proxy a place? A spaceship? An idea? Is it in Canada? Or in King Arthur’s
Court? Or on a moon of Jupiter? Maybe it’s in each of us.”
Obviously, none
had heard of it. And no one was even close to the actual plot – a mailroom
worker is promoted to CEO because the company’s exec board thinks he’s a
schmuck. One-half of all submissions had
to do with either the Hudson River or a vampire that sucked the heads of
his/her victims.
In both our middle
school and high school club meetings, there were some winners. These were ones
with believable plots that at least tangentially involved a
Hudsucking Proxy.
“Mr. Hudsucker is a jail escape artist who’s
escaped from jail 20 times. And in his worst nightmare, he’s being chased by
the proxyman. Despite the proxyman’s cuddly appearance, he can rip the flesh of
a human with his bare hands. Mr. Hudsucker must escape from him and find his
real world (not the proxy world).”
Very Inception-esque. I’d
watch it. And if the proxyman looks like Mr. Hudsucker (which the definition
would suggest so, though the author didn’t know it), I’d say the title is right
on the money.
“A hunter is attacked by a beast called a
Proxy. So he has to fight back. It takes place in a dark forest where
there is no sight of light! So in the end is he lost forever. But before then
he kills the Proxy on mistake! But it was a good thing.”
The reversal that killing the Proxy was a
mistake makes me think the hunter came to love the beast – or at least respect
it. However, as in White Fang, it would
never work. Also, the fact that he’s lost forever and now alone is quite
disturbing.
“There are only two people left. There is no
one else in the world. And they are on opposite sides of the world. The movie
is about their journey to find each other. When they meet, they are brother and
sister.”
Again, no HP, but
the omission of how everyone on the planet died is captivating, as is the final
twist that the two are brother and sister. Along with the writing, we held a
movie poster competition. The poster for this plot won.
“During a normal shiny Tuesday morning, a
flock of wasps takes over the world. They turn humans into other wasps and the
world becomes ruled by wasps. Only one human survived the Hudsucker Proxy,
and Bill Davidson will take back his land. He will have to survive
these vicious wasps. He is willing to survive and he will. Watch to find out if
this brave man will take back the Earth.”
For me, this is the clear winner. It includes
the HP in a non-detrimental way (too many plots were
horribly transfigured by jamming the HP in). It also sounds like a
smashing movie trailer, with the expert introduction of Bill Davidson. And
slowly enlarging his goal from “his land” to “the Earth” sets it up for a
sequel.
Story is a universal love – its one of the few things that
can communicate beyond language. I’d also argue that a love for certain stories
was crafted and placed in our hearts by our Creator. Watching students exercise
their brains to mimic and, ultimately, freshly create stories of their own is
one of the more rewarding aspects of my job. It leads me to believe that the
students are stepping closer to a better understanding and appreciation of the
drama of God’s story.
