A Futile and Stupid Gesture Page #2

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'Cause that's a deal-breaker.

What do you want?

You want to write your little joke books

your whole life?

- Hello, Doug?

- I'll just keep doing The Lampoon.

- What?

- What?

If you think I'm gonna pay

for another year of college...

No, no, no.

I'm gonna start a real magazine.

A national one, with Henry.

- I'm not doing that.

- I don't have all the details,

but Henry does have a few questions

about his backhand.

Come on. He needs help with the topspin.

- Yes, Mr. Kenney, hello.

- Yeah, hi, Henry.

- Well, I usually play on clay, you see.

- Yeah, on a hard court, you...

Strike one.

You want me to put off law school

for some half-assed scheme?

Oh, this scheme is full-assed.

Why settle for real jobs?

You know, just wind up

behind a desk somewhere?

You know, a magazine needs desks.

The world doesn't need more lawyers

or insurance executives or doctors.

I mean, yeah, okay, it needs doctors.

Thousands. But it also needs us.

Strike two.

Seriously? You a**holes are gonna have

kids play for you the whole game?

A magazine's a tough business, Doug.

You want to be a writer,

write a novel on the side,

something your parents can show off

on their credenza.

I don't need to impress

my parents or their credenza.

Strike three!

The kid's got an arm.

Nice job, guys.

I have things I want to do with my life.

No, you have things

you think you're supposed to do.

What you want to do

is keep on doing The Lampoon.

- Oh, Biomechanics of the Human Bladder.

- Thanks.

I've been looking everywhere for that.

You want me to give up a career

in law to rely on you

and start a humor magazine

which will undoubtedly fail.

It won't. Or it might. It might.

- But this will be big. I can feel it.

- How big?

This big.

You're thinking too small.

It should be a big magazine size.

See? That's better.

I threw something out, you made it better.

That's our partnership.

You don't want to throw that away.

If we're running our own magazine,

we can do anything we want.

- We could publish knock-knock jokes.

- Knock knock.

- Who's there?

- Me.

- Me who?

- Me not doing the magazine.

- That can go in issue one.

- Let me ask you this:

with The Harvard Lampoon,

how many deadlines have we missed?

- None.

- All of them.

- All of them?

- We've never made a deadline.

You really don't think you can rely on me?

- No.

- I challenge you,

name a thousand times I let you down.

- Number one...

- Okay, that's not the point.

Look, I know it's risky, okay,

but why let it end here?

The truth is

I can't do this without you, man.

- Half the time I feel like a fraud.

- And the other half?

The other half, I feel like

the second-smartest guy in the room.

I'm the smartest?

Yeah.

I promise you, it'll be fun.

And the day that it stops being fun,

we'll walk away.

Tempting.

Tempting. Yes!

I looked at your proposal

for Harvard Lampoon.

National Lampoon.

We would license the Lampoon name

from Harvard.

As we say in the proposal,

there is a huge underserved audience

for comedy that speaks to our generation.

Oh, and you think that's what

this country needs is a comedy magazine.

Kids need something to read

while getting tear-gassed.

Ha.

Shouldn't Harvard boys like you

be working on Wall Street

or at some law firm that overcharges me?

What do you want to do with your life?

There's a vast gap between Mad magazine

and the New Yorker...

I'm gonna stop you right here.

- Okay.

- I don't want to waste your time.

- I don't want to waste your time.

- We don't want to waste your time.

We publish Life, Fortune,

Sports Illustrated.

Right.

Magazines about what people

are interested in.

There's no business here.

You'll never sell a magazine.

No one will ever go to a newsstand.

I... I disagree.

Our Time parody, right there,

sold over half a million copies.

- Bored of the Rings sold even more...

- They don't want to waste our time.

Obviously, this Lampoon thing

is not gonna fly here.

So, let's talk about our other idea, huh?

Huh? You want to go first or should I?

- You should take it.

- Okay.

Sandwiches.

- I'm sorry?

- Modern Sandwich.

A monthly magazine devoted to sandwiches

and the sandwich lifestyle.

Henry's idea.

Hey, we are a country divided

in so many ways:

politically, economically, geographically.

But two slices of bread,

some meat, a condiment or two?

That's something we can all agree on.

Right, Jim?

- I'm Frank.

- Let's all be frank.

There is a huge under-served audience

for investigative sandwich journalism.

I... You know, why is it so hard

to find a good tomato?

Are club sandwiches too exclusive?

Modern Sandwich!

We'll run short fiction

and shorter recipes.

Show pictures of pickles

and things that look like pickles,

because Jim, other Jim,

- let's open-face it...

- I don't see the point of this.

The point is,

you don't have a f***ing clue.

You're the kind of people who commute back

and forth from Westport, Connecticut.

And we have nothing to do with you.

F***ing pieces of sh*t.

You have our information.

Oh.

I'm gonna take it.

That one, I would say,

was less promising.

Maybe we need to rethink our pitch.

F*** those guys, you know?

They're just like my dad.

They jerk off to Eisenhower biographies.

Yes, but,

and this is what I love about them,

they have money.

So can we please just pretend for a second

that they and we are on the same side

until after the check clears.

Fine, who's next?

Hmm. Last stop.

We've come to you first

because we are so impressed

by what you've built with your magazine.

Yogurt instead of sour cream.

So simple, yet so brilliant.

You know, they said a Weight Watcher's

magazine would never work.

Now we're moving 500,000 copies a month.

God bless the fatties.

- God bless 'em.

- Yes.

- Listen, I don't want to waste your time.

- Here we go.

Most magazines fail within the first year.

And a laugh rag?

Even Hefner couldn't make that work.

Okay. Look, Mr. Simmons. Matty.

The truth is, we've already got

some offers from the big publishers.

- Your friend just said I was the first...

- No, I was...

But you're our choice

to publish a National Lampoon.

- Yeah.

- Yes.

The big publishers,

they don't get the youth market.

And we checked around, they said,

"Hey, you want funny, you go

to Matty Simmons because he gets funny."

They said that?

Every single one.

You know, I used to write one-liners

for Walter Winchell.

We wuv Winchell.

- Hmm.

- Yeah. Hey.

We were in business,

with contracts and everything,

like real grown-ups.

And remember Alex from Harvard?

Beautiful, out of my league?

Well, we got married

and moved in together.

I promised it'd be the two of us

against the world.

It's charming.

It may not be

the palatial estate you grew up in.

You know I don't care about that.

There's no jockeys' quarters

or chocolate covered chandeliers...

There's still no running water.

Toilet's a mess.

What is Henry doing here?

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