Questions About CASABLANCA

Posted on October 28th, 2011 by Adam-Troy Castro

A Remake Chronicles Extra by Adam-Troy Castro

Why are the Nazis so stymied by this freedom fighter who walks around unmolested in this city whose police captain they believe they have in their pocket? Wh…y don’t they simply have a guy ambush him with a hood over his head or a bullet through his brain, then claim ignorance? Are they really that concerned with the letter of the law? Seen from the other side, why is Victor putting such weight on the letters of transit (signed, I note, by a guy who’s not in power)? Does THIS following scenario make sense?

MAJOR STRASSER: (Sneering) I have you now, Lazlo.

LAZLO: No, you don’t. Here are my letters of transit.

MAJOR STRASSER: (Reads the documents, his crest falling) They’re in order. May I validate your parking?

Assuming an authority that trumps Renault and the Nazis, why would these particular letters of transit still be valid when EVERYBODY OPENLY KNOWS that they were carried by couriers who have been murdered and that anybody in subsequent possession of them got them illegally?
And then there’s this: when Rick, Victor and Lazlo get to the airport to meet that plane, it ALL becomes a matter of Rick pulling a gun on Renault at the right moment; but EVEN BEFORE THEN, they meet no authority at the airport who EVEN ASKS FOR THEM. You could argue that the proper place to produce these hypothetical documents is at the destination, but that makes even *less* sense, since no foreign government would be under **any obligation whatsoever** to give a shit about them.

The letters of Transit are so clearly treated as the fascist equivalent of Superman’s kryptonite — i.e., once Victor and Ilsa get them, there is nothing the Nazis can do to stand in their way — that it is possible to point out the ludicrousness of the conceit by imagining an alternate scenario where Rick harbors Ilsa no bad feelings at all.

STRASSER: I need those letters of transit. Victor Lazlo must stay in Casablanca.

LAZLO: I must leave Casablanca to continue my great work.

RICK: (Choosing between them) You know, Victor, I like you more than I like this putz over here. Here, I just happen to have some letters of transit on me. Take them.

LAZLO: (Surprised) Oh, thank you. (Tugs on Strasser’s nose) Boop. (Runs with Ilsa to taxi stand)

STRASSER: (Sputtering) Foiled again!

There is, finally — though this can be hand-waved away — the question, just who is this freedom fighter Lazlo, whose “great work” will be just as influential in exile? Will he be raising money, writing fiery articles, or leaving Ilsa behind again, to return to occupy territories? This is never explained, but one thing’s for sure. If it’s the last option, he might want to think twice before taking more breaks from his crusade to get dressed to the nines and hang out in casino nightclubs.

None of that matters, of course. The movie’s still great. But I am wondering.

Tags: Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart | Category Uncategorized

After the Zombies Passed

Posted on October 26th, 2011 by Adam-Troy Castro

Another Remake Chronicles Fiction Extra by Judi B. Castro and Christopher Negelein.

As we prepare the next Remake Chronicles essay, a look at prior versions of some well-known cinematic heroes, we offer this second of our two Halloween fiction offerings – and apologize in advance, as this is pretty damned greasy even for zombie fiction. Ladies and gentlemen, “After the Zombies Passed.”  Copyright 2011, Judi B. Castro and Christopher Negelein.

Murdock smelled it first. For so many of us, the inescapable stench of rotten meat and napalm, had been so overwhelming for so long that our noses had shut down in sheer self-defense. But Murdock still had a sense of smell to torment him, to damn him into the role of our human bloodhound; and he’d been braced for the horrid whiff, wafting through the ruined steel canyons like a warning that the worst was still on the way. He let us know by puking.

“It’s coming,” he gagged.
 
The armies of the living dead had swarmed our city four days before, devouring or turning thousands of us before shuffling over the horizon. We gathered on rooftops lest they come back and imagined the worst over. We were wrong. All those zombies, eating all that flesh; we’d assumed them incapable of digestion.
 
When there’s no more room in zombies, their shit will roam the Earth.

Screams rose from the streets down below: looters who hadn’t heeded the warnings. The first wave — literally a wave, brown, greasy and steaming like the diarrheic aftermath of last night’s rancid burrito — cascaded up the boulevard, overturning cars, imploding buildings, and overwhelming refugees. Bleached bones rode the surface like nuggets of undigested corn. One poor bastard shimmied up a street lamp, his pants torn from his body and naked legs dangling above the torrent; even as we watched, a ropy ochre tentacle snaked up the pole and violated him, pumping so many gallons of itself into his unlucky intestines that he exploded like a flesh balloon, his pieces scattering atop the effluent like sprinkles on chocolate gelato.

Bruce slammed the detonator, blowing the city’s water towers and releasing millions of gallons of industrial disinfectant into the streets. It cut the worst of the grease, but the spattered gobbets congealed, just as malevolent but with a fresh lavender scent. Copters loaded with tanks of lye came in low over the skyline, delivering their payload, but even they were too little too late. One after another, office buildings went gusher, as the invader realized it could climb stairwells. Hundreds of survivors huddled on rooftops screamed as fresh tendrils of hell-feces invaded their own nether regions. Other pseudopods burst from the slate at our own feet, coiling around our legs and probing our nether-sphincters. The pain was indescribable, but our diapers and butt-plugs held. We sprayed bleach from our packs, driving the goo back, but not away.

Bruce flashed a premature shit-eating grin, then screamed as he realized his horrible mistake.

I closed my eyes and covered my ears and felt one last wave of sweet nostalgia for the days when the zombies, the clumsy, slow-moving zombies, had been the worst crap we’d had to deal with.

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Curse of The Phlegmpire

Posted on October 18th, 2011 by Adam-Troy Castro

A Remake Chronicles Halloween Extra by Adam-Troy Castro

*

A few words of explanation which will be far longer than the actual story, the first piece of reprinted fiction being offered as an extra for The Remake Chronicles.

A bunch of years ago, early in my authorial career, I belonged to a writer’s workshop in Manhattan. Among the members was a young lady who was intensely intimidated the scares and gross-outs of my regular horror submissions. Make no mistake: she was never less than encouraging about my writerly aspirations, but she also said that she dreaded picking up my stories, which were then far more driven by disgusting detail than they are now. She told me that when she began one of my scary stories she endured the early deceptively quiet notes in steadily increasing fear over just when something moist and pustulent and squamous showed up on the page.

One week I had a rather gentle little tale of the sort that wouldn’t have bothered her one bit, and decided to play a little joke on her, in the form of a fake first page that would get right into the bodily fluids in sentence one and get steadily worse as it approached the bottom of the first page, with any luck at all trailing off in the middle of  a sentence that would promise all sorts of gooey nastiness on page two. Of course, there would be no “page two”;” instead of any further incursions on her prissy sensibilities,  there’d be another page one, the first of what would be my actual submission for the week.

Deprived of any need to concoct a sensible narrative, I came up with a suitably disgusting title and an even more disgusting first sentence and typed away, intent on nothing but upping the glistening ante.

Imagine my surprise when I got to the bottom of the page, only about a hundred words into the text, and discovered that I’d come to a perfectly acceptable punch line. I had never intended to actually write a story but had accomplished that feat despite myself. It was for many years the shortest story I had ever written, though I did just a couple of years sell a 25-worder.

Though a favorite of convention readings, and the recipient of many pained if enthusiastic rejection letters – editors loved it, but wouldn’t print it — the story went unpublished for many years until I slipped it into my short story collection, A Desperate Decaying Darkness. It is of course, copyright myself.

Ladies and gentlemen, the accidental story.

*

C U R S E
O F
T H E
P H L E G M P I R E

The Plegmpire lived in an ancient castle overlooking the Beth Israel Rest Home, natural habitat of the dozens of retired cigar-smoking tailors whose rheumy lungs provided him with his nightly sustenance.

On one particular evening, he paused by his window, and listened to the distant sounds of one Ben Wasserstein, age eighty-three, incessantly clearing his throat. “Hocccchhh!” said Wasserstein. “Coff! Coff! Coff! Oy! Hoccccchhh! Coff! Coff! Coff! Oy!”

“Ahhhhhhh,” the Count said portentously. “The Hebrews of the Night. What Mucus they make.”

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