- please email Joe at jf.jf3co@gmail.com for full screenplay.
Logline: (Animation) - A pudgy, young pigeon trains for his first big race as underhanded rivals stop at nothing to insure he fails.
Synopsis:
Family-Animation
Pudgeon, a young overweight New York City pigeon, is blissfully unaware of the challenges that will soon face him. He has spent no time learning how to eat properly or in competition with his peers - however, he is now at the age where he must compete in The Big Race and eating poorly is a huge roadblock.
Wilson, an old landlord, must protect his tenants from the aspirations of Silva, a real-estate developer, who, with the help of his mincing assistant, Gall, wants to buy Pudgeon’s home and knock it down.
Featheruss, leader of the bully crew from the rival “rich kids” coop, is expected to win the race because of who he is - the best of everything. His father, Alagash, will spare no expense to make this happen.
Daisy, the prettiest pigeon of them all, must cross coop lines a la “West Side Story” to find the pigeon of her dreams.
The Shadow, an evil hawk, uses Featheruss and his father to try and get his prized Central Park address back.
Teeder, Pudgeon’s father, needs to carefully draw the line between providing support for his son and letting him grow up and find his way.
And “The Almond Brothers” are just looking to fit in somewhere, man…
What is a young pigeon to do with all this pressure?
The movie starts with Pudgeon and his friends getting into trouble with the school bullies. Mercootio, a dashing young bird, saves them with his ingenuity, but only for the time being. Retribution comes swift and fierce during gym class, with Pudgeon distracted by learning that he has to compete in The Big Race.
After The Shadow visits Pudgeon and tells them to lose the race on purpose, things go from bad to worse when Pudgeon’s father, Teeder, puts his foot down and commands Pudgeon to compete.
Meanwhile Wilson keeps getting bothered by Silva to sell him his building on Central Park. Silva has the resources to continually out-gun Wilson in everything he tries to do to keep the building… his pigeons winning The Big Race is his only hope.
Pudgeon vows to get into shape and become a good competitor to please his father and do his part to save Wilson’s building from the likes of Silva; there are a number of missteps, but ultimately Pudgeon succeeds with the help from his friends and wins The Big Race.
It turns out Pudgeon doesn’t have a whole lot of experience with winning, gets cocky and upsets Daisy… she leaves him in tears - but things get worse when The Shadow kidnaps Daisy in retaliation for Pudgeon winning the race. The Shadow wants to have his way yet.
And things are bad for Wilson too - Silva and Gall released some rats in his apartment and now the Board of Health condemns the whole place.
Pudgeon takes it upon himself to save the girl - he has not learned the lesson of getting help from his friends yet - and sets off to do so. Thankfully his friends see him go and hurry to catch up.
Pudgeon outsmarts an alley cat, so maybe he is wising up a little bit, but he still intends to face The Shadow alone.
The Shadow is too formidable an opponent. But Pudgeon’s friend are there to help - and a few unlikely allies - stand up to The Shadow and save the day.
On the home-front, The Almond Brothers made some adjustments that enabled the police to catch Silva and Gall red-handed trying to sabotage Wilson’s building. They will be going away for a long time.
So, it turns out, Pudgeon faces a challenge, grows up a little, faces some bigger challenges, grows up a lot, then saves the day and gets the girl.
I am sitting in a bar in Texas. At least that’s where I think I am. I woke up here. I have Reggaetron in my head. There’s some cowboy politician on TV. He is shouting. The camera zooms down and he literally has his cock laid across the palm of his hand and is punching it for emphasis. He is stating lugubriously with each thump: “Congresswoman Jones has a desiccated twat! It is barren… devoid of life. This is what I’m bringing to the table!” And he’s right. In a way, it’s refreshing to see this – him punching his exposed, flaccid penis on television – honesty in politics nowadays. The Republicans had a mandate eked out by a marginal victory. To hear them tell it, climbing a short flight of stairs was a Herculean effort comparable to a one-armed child scaling the Himalayas as part of his dying wish. Or the simple act of turning a doorknob described with a mythic embellishment equal to removing a sword from a stone. And then suddenly it was out of favor to speak such fatuous verbal slurry and they popularized straight talk from the gut: this is my dick. This is my opponent’s dick. Any questions? Or: “Listen we all know that we’re all like ‘Fuck Jesus’ and ‘Fuck God’ so we’re not even gonna pretend the teachings of the bible matter anymore; thou shalt not what?” But there’s a reason for that. And it didn’t happen until after they took it a step too far
The ‘pubs were the first to commandeer the Hells Angels penchant for tongue kissing each other as a display of awkward solidarity. Then they kicked it up a notch by having the male members fellate each other. There was a period of time where you couldn’t turn on C-Span and not see some junior congressman blowing his senior with long, slow, determined strokes. And then it caught on like a fever. Well, like a fever in the way that a Glenn Beck rally is considered a fever. Crybaby men using each other to try and validate their masculinity at some overhyped lily-white male whine-fest. They started spreading it around the country. Typically older, white, conservative men engaged in this behavior. Them and Nascar fans and country music fans. And that was it. A flash in the pan. They created a pandemic where their kids thought this was how men were supposed to behave. Super. It was even harder to undo.
A coup jointly led by hardened, battle-scarred generals and homosexual cult icons was what finally did it; both groups knew that the only correction, the only way to send the message to genuinely be who you truly are, to seek truth and enlightenment, was the course-corrective properties of elimination. These two dissimilar parties joined only in their determination to move the collective psyche out of the presentational and representation realms and back into the comfortable hegemony of pure freedom. The plan was executed with surgical precision; Texarkana was chosen for the equal access proximity. Saboteurs in the Beck camped cajoled him to have a “Weekend of the Male Warrior” rally, purported to be sponsored by the Tea Party (being such a loose affiliation it was simple enough just to mention that’s the way it was). This was to take place during a recently created Texarkana 500 Nascar race to christen a newly constructed stadium. For good measure the Country Music Awards were also being hosted at this new, grand complex. The whole thing had an Olympic Village feel. The generals sniggered at the ingenuity and craftiness it took to have all this constructed. Not one vested interest in the event ever once questioned how the bills were footed. Marlboro, Bud Light, some crucifixes and aborted fetus posters, big pick-up truck ads, Miley Cyrus in a schoolgirl outfit being paddled by her father, and ads for the movie forthcoming movie “Suck Barrel, Sand Nigger” were plastered everywhere and people just assumed.
This is the world we live in. This is why we have to do what we have to do. You could hear this come out in various forms on those evenings that the generals and the ‘iconosexuals’, as they fancied themselves, would entertain each other at lavish dinner party/planning sessions. They had the strength of resolve. They had the firm hand of righteousness pressing them forward. They did not falter. And the whole thing went off without a hitch. Midway during each event, during each ceremony, during each misguided festival there would be a deep spinning whir coming to a crescendo and culminating in a bright flash of light assumed to be a stunning display of pyrotechnical wizardry to which Toby Keith once commented on stage “Now that’suh’Merrica, shit!”. And each time the flash came the crowd went wild. Chewing tobacco spit would fly. Half-shirted bimbos would flash their plastic boobs. Crying men would hold hands and praise Jesus, quaking at what they assumed was their own piety. The inaugural year of the Texarkana exposition was declared a wild, wild success.
And here I am awake, alive, my brain a fizzy salutation to the sun as it washes across the bar. I am sitting in a bar in Texas. I remember now. Thank you kindly for the whiskey, stranger… and for the ear. My memory is not what it used to be. Small price to pay but I had to acknowledge that going in. The generals were kind enough to warn me. I don’t mind the other effects. Lots of these cowboy bitches are hot and fucking with impunity seems to suit me well. But I must beg my leave of you; I gotta get to the docks. The new oscillator core is coming off the ship this morning. I need to get it back to Texarkana… bring the machine back online. These misguided asshole fucks ain’t gonna sterilize themselves.
