AKA SEAN GUSTAVUS TARJOTO

A scene in a movie I was in, rewritten

gustavustar — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 07:15:18 +0000

INT. BOOKSTORE – DAY
ARTHUR BACH (Russell Brand) stands at the front of a long line at a busy bookstore. A CLERK stands behind the counter. He turns the cover open to the very first page, where it says, “To Arthur – Thank you for making me believe, again.”

CLERK: Next in line please!

ARTHUR places a book on the counter and sees a sign behind it says the book’s author, NAOMI QUINN, will be reading at the New York Public Library at noon.
CLERK: That’ll be twelve-fifty.
ARTHUR hands over twelve-fifty in exact change.
CLERK: Hey, are you Arthur Bach? The guy who gave away 950 million dollars because of a girl?
ARTHUR: Yes, I am. Excuse me, is that tonight? (points to sign)
The CLERK looks over his shoulder at the sign.
CLERK: Yes, but there are many details. How bad is your vision?
ARTHUR: 400/20.
CLERK: Borrow my glasses. (hands over glasses)
ARTHUR: Thank you. (puts them on, reads sign)
CLERK: (packages book and hands it over) I don’t know if you’re a tragedy or an inspiration. All I know is that you’re in psychotic love, man and you’ve gotta chase that love like a commuter train on the first day of a new job.
ARTHUR: I wish I could say keep the change.
CLERK: You appear to need it more than I do.
ARTHUR: Thank you. Here are you glasses.
CLERK: Go get ‘em, Art.
Arthur dashes toward the NYPL.
CLERK: Next in line please.

The NEXT PERSON has a copy of a self-help book.

CLERK: I’ve read that book. It’s good, but. Really, the thing is, if you want inspiration, you just have to look around you.
NEXT PERSON: Ben Kingsley said in the film Hugo, directed by Martin Scorsese.
CLERK: Yes, but he was referring to dreams. It’s eight-fifty.
NEXT PERSON: (pays in cash) You should charge extra for the advice.
CLERK: I’ll ruminate on that. (hands out change) Thanks for shopping with us.
NEXT PERSON: Thank you!

The clerk sees the GIRL NEXT IN LINE just wants to buy a brand new notebook.

CLERK: Come on up.
GIRL NEXT IN LINE: Hey, do you give everyone who buys something, advice?
CLERK: I try.

GIRL NEXT IN LINE: Wow. That’s really cool of you.
CLERK: Credit or debit?
GIRL NEXT IN LINE: Oh, it doesn’t matter.

The clerk completes transaction over cyberspace and takes out a pen and the paper receipt.

CLERK: Sign this one please. (grabs a bag)
GIRL NEXT IN LINE: Oh, I don’t need a bag.
CLERK: Thanks for being green. (puts bag away)
GIRL NEXT IN LINE: Here you go. (Hands over receipts and leaves quickly)

The Clerk sees there are two receipts, one has her phone number.

(scene:

3 HOUR TOUR

gustavustar — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 14:01:00 +0000

FADE IN.

INT. KMART CUSTOMER SERVICE – NIGHT

PETRULA stands in the middle of a crowd of people in line next to the Customer Service desk. The line ends dangerously close to the SECURITY BEACONS. Nobody knows how to step in to it. Shoppers pass and their items trigger the alarms. Wryder ends up being second in line behind ALPHA CUSTOMER. Service phone rings, Petrula picks it up.

PETRULA (holding phone)

Thank you for calling Kmart, how may I help you discover?

(beat)

We close at ten.

(hangs up)

Good, Bye.

gustavustar — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 16:00:05 +0000

The Galactic Times November 6, 2050

gustavustar — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 15:00:06 +0000

The Galactic Times Sunday Edition November 6, 2050

And estimated 1 billion dollars in property damage appeared last week as millions of robots marching peacefully into Battery Park were destroyed by the NYPD.

Meanwhile in Washington, fire department officials blame last week’s riot on a malfunctioning flux capacitor in one GC-43 mobile garbage unit leading the 1 million strong march onto the nation’s capital.

On Tuesday night’s fire and press conference, one out of the two major news networks were present. DC police chief Ramsey Clark-Gore-Bush IV explained, “They’re not going to fix anything — including themselves!”

Robot-costumed Trick-or-Treaters were assaulted throughout the nation. Billy Batson, 10, who lost three fingers and a toy cat, said, “All I wanted was a fucking blowpop and I gotta go to the hospital. Skeez.”

As of Friday, city sanitation workers were still on strike.

He-Man and the Power of Grayskull

gustavustar — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 20:58:17 +0000

I grew up with a beautiful, sexy, hardworking and possibly OCD housekeeper, whose Christianised name translates to Virginia, who feared the lord and saw her duty to her employers as not just to maintain ergonomic order but also provide parental surrogacy, as my mother was still searching for something amid the Macanese urban jungles. I’d shared many stimulating nights of conversation with her in my Masters of the Universe ™ toy tent, and realised how awesome she was one day when the cousins were over.

It was fit for two, I had a lot of male cousins, and I didn’t really want to share it with the dudes. So it was with real sense of duty I suppose that she would slip through the plastic entrance in her modest, familiar uniform, and uncap the .75 liter container of Similac, which I knew I had outgrown.

As I peered through Orko’s ™ cut-out eyes to observe the world beyond the opaque plastic exterior, my cousins were running around with some of the He-Man ™ plastic swords I had left in the magazine racks. If I recall, accurately, the visiting guest ettiquette of the time, I believe my cousin asked his mother if she could ask my grandmother if it was okay to swing the power of Grayskull. She told him he should just ask me directly. I’d overheard and said it was cool with me, I just wanted to be alone with Virginia. I thought we could chill, surrounded by the faded, reversed iconography of He-Man ™, She-Ra ™, Man-at-Arms ™ warding evil away. I never saw it coming. My cousin brought down the non-toxic blade onto the cheap toy plastic I had so tragically believed could shelter a sense of intimacy. Fortunately, his form was sloppy, and he had missed Virginia even as I deflected Grayskull’s power with my Similac bottle.

From that moment on, this individual would be known to us as the Naughty Cousin. It was many years later we all realised how unjust a term it was, as his record of offenses in our household started and stopped that same day. As I held back the tears (at such a young age, no less) and stared down the Naughty Cousin, as his mother snatched the power of Grayskull, scolded him and demanded he apologize not only to me but Virginia, I saw shame and guilt crowd his features. He realised what he’d done was naughty. I said it was okay and that I was fine. I believed he was truly sorry, because just before the sword split the cheap dot-matrix print of He-Man’s ™ rippling, belt-guard and torso I saw, something, in his eyes, the thrill of violence. It was a moment of pure psychotic (childhood) mania. Were he older it might’ve been criminal insanity, but he just having fun, and that I could understand. He said he’d realised he had exploited my permission and in some strange associative moment decided to abuse the power of Grayskull against the Masters of the Universe ™, no less with it’s own merchandise. With the cousins and his parents as witnesses, I silently accepted his apology. He surrended the power of Grayskull and I went away with Virginia, far far away.

Even fruit has a place in society.

gustavustar — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 06:34:30 +0000

Even fruit has a place in society.
Anon

Do the earth a favor, open a water bottle.

gustavustar — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 21:32:22 +0000

Do the earth a favor, open a water bottle.
anon

Channeling Your Audition Nervousity by Googling the Director: a Personal Anecdote

gustavustar — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 02:16:21 +0000

I just found out via IMDB my audition is for a film by Tom McCarthy, who directed The Visitor and The Station Agent (with the awesome Peter Dinklage). I was once on the set of Cupid with Bobby Cannavale, really, the day after the Obama election. We were shooting at a mental hospital.

We already have something cool in common. Tom McCarthy was in a film made by Lucas Moodysson, before he went onto to more roles and directed The Visitor. That’s what I’m trying to do – act, make indies.

Plus this character i’m reading is very similar to this short film I was in. I’ve been told it is has strong links to Lucas Moodysson.

I recall, at the time it came out, The Visitor was a film that someone at the Actors Fund highly recommended as good indie to spend your money on (they’re a great place to figure out lots of stuff). Apparently it was out there for 7 months and I totally missed it. Maybe it was because last year I was emotionally reeled in & destroyed, by Lilja 4-ever while simultaneously sneaking through blockbuster films. Ok, back to work.

Historically Relevant Psychos and Other Things I Read About Today

gustavustar — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 07:01:00 +0000

I heard Daryl Hannah’s an intellectual.

i wonder if she ever read a this thing Asimov came up with called psychohistory. Psychohistory is a fictional academic discipline that studies the generational flow of what a culture values based on how they understand the last Big Thing that happened to them. (my friend’s theory) is that culture, though most of the 90s, didn’t have that many real big things, that it just you know, had big movies, some sex scandals, (etc.). this last decade is suddenly getting labeled as the forgotten or lost decade (in these blogs). I mean, hell, I wonder who’s really forgotten. which child was left behind an all that.

anyway, psychohistory predicts that a culture that has been through, say, a huge war, is going to be like, fiscally conservative, and the other way around. i.e. the baby boomers are the opposite, they never saw a big war until the late 60s and 70s. so – they raise all these kids and everything is like The Family Ties where all the Michael J. Fox kids interested in capitalism.

The problem that Asimov wrote into the whole idea with psychohistory is that when a culture knows its supposed to react a certian way, it doesn’t. You know, lots of people hate to be defined. But I love getting an explanation (through a film, or a book or – rarely – a bit of news) of why somebody is the way they are in the world, and then having to figure out how to make it real, using personal experiences and stories. Between all the crazy people in my neighborhood (not to say my building), the hardworking people at the manager’s office, the gigs, the sideline gigs, and the wandering alumni around the city and the bright folks I know on the internet – you know, the star trek fanfiction writers and cultural studies bloggers and then, my family, the only thing they have in common is my ass.

what’s in a name (part i)

gustavustar — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 10:02:00 +0000

I had conversation last year with someone who isn’t an actor about how actors have a cool job. we serve as avatars or icons or something. though it’s different now, I figured from the (brief) days of actors making up screen names (once referred, long ago as a stage names) are gone, and whatever you have to say about actors in the new economy (which never existed) it is a job, that, unlike other vocations means you have to have a grip on how to use your public image. for me, i used a phonetically accurate spelling for a year while i was making shorts and acting in shorts and even shot two days of principal photography on a feature film with Drew Barrymore and Justin Long (which i hear is a reallly dirty movie) and it’s all under a slightly unusual name that serves a very singular purpose to fixate our attention on the historical definition of the stereotype – you know, the part that says it’s all based on fonts.