The Michael Richards Controversy
A Skit

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FADE IN:

INT. MIKE'S/SUSAN'S HOUSE -- EVENING

MIKE an African American, early twenties is talking with SUSAN, Hispanic American, early twenties on the phone and

As we inter cut between them while they talk we learn about their plans for a special evening out.

Susan has her head stuck in the fridge as she talks with Mike.

She pulls out eating some munchies.

SUSAN

So Mike you wanta come out with us to the Comedy
club next Thursday night. There's going to be
a whole gang. We're renting a limo and
everything like.

MIKE
I don't know Sue.

SUSAN
Penny's coming!

MIKE
She is?

SUSAN
Yep and she asked if you were coming!

MIKE
I'm so down for this shit. Who's on stage?

SUSAN
Hang on I'll check...
(pause)
Your going to love this it's your favorite
comedian Michael Richards.

MIKE
This just keeps on getting better.

SUSAN
I loved him on Seinfeld.

MIKE
Yeah like every time he comes in the door he
does something different.

SUSAN
That door thing was such a nod to the
playwright Harold Pinter.

MIKE
What you mean?

SUSAN
Well Pinter's plays constantly had people coming into
rooms and depending how they entered the room
depicted their character. The entrance was also an
expression of entering the world from the womb.

MIKE
That's some serious shit.

SUSAN
Yeah Pinter was heavy and his plays pretty dour but
Michael Richards put a whole bunch of fun into
the idea and made us laugh.

MIKE
You mean like he was birthing us with laughter
every time he entered a room in Seinfeld.

SUSAN
Totally.

MIKE
Do you think Richard's knows all that shit?

SUSAN
Get real Mike, of course he does. I've seen him
interviewed he's a really smart guy. He'd totally
be digging on that shit.

MIKE
I've just had the most brilliant idea.

SUSAN
Tell me.

MIKE
How many of us will there be?

SUSAN
Well with Penny and some of her friends and Sam's
bunch we should be looking at around twenty
maybe twenty five people.

MIKE
Ok that's perfect.
Let's pay Richards a tribute.
We'll make an entrance into the club
ala Richards.

SUSAN
Oh man that's some funny shit right back at him.

MIKE
But do you think he'll get it?

SUSAN
Absolutely that'll just rock his world. That's the whole thing
about comedians. They love it when they have to think on
their feet, improvise like and find the slant on a
situation and make it funny.

MIKE
Your so right. OK let's go in the club all 25 of us and stumble
about, make noise like we are a bunch of kids being born.

SUSAN
Yeah like the noise of birth and Richards will have
the chance to turn that to funny.

MIKE
Yeah that's it. Oh man this will be so good. Hey do
you have a camera so we can record it?

SUSAN
No but Tom has a really nice palm size camera,
I'll get him to bring it.

MIKE
This is so coming together for a seriously wicked night out.

SUSAN
Let's dedicate this night to Michael Richards.

MIKE
Yeah it's a Michael Richards night.

SUSAN
So much fun. I'll let everyone know. Thanks Mike
this is going to be a night to remember.

CUT TO:

INT. DOCTOR'S OFFICE -- DAY

Michael Richard's is talking with a Doctor.

RICHARDS
I don't want anything too strong I still have to go on
stage and perform.

DOCTOR
We have to address the anger you are experiencing
Michael.

RICHARDS
Do you think that is why I'm suffering the
bouts of depression?

DOCTOR
Well it's early days yet but yes I think that is a fair
assessment. These pills are not a cure but they will
buy us sometime until we can get to the heart of
the problem that's causing you to suffer the depression.

RICHARDS
What will they do?

DOCTOR
They are just a mild antidepressant that will work
to lift your spirits.

RICHARDS
Are there any side effects?

DOCTOR
None to speak of. But they are meant to have an
effect on your thinking.

RICHARDS
In what way?

DOCTOR
They may cause repressed feelings to surface.

RICHARDS
But that's good isn't it? I mean that's what we want to
do. Bring to the surface the cause of the anger
that's making me depressed.

DOCTOR
Absolutely. If we can get to the surface and really
address the issues that are causing the anger
then we have a very good shot at healing you.

RICHARDS
And the fear?

DOCTOR
It's part of the anger Michael.

RICHARDS
OK how many should I take?

DOCTOR
The instructions will be written on the label but
just every three hours but no more then that.

RICHARDS
Why what happens if I take more then one within
a three hour span?

DOCTOR
Well it won't injure you or anything but taking
more then one pill will speed up the process and issues
that you are not ready for may well rise to the surface.

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. MICHAEL RICHARD'S HOUSE -- EVENING

Michael is on the phone.

RICHARDS
(laughing)
... and they all ran into the house? That's really funny.
(looks at his watch to check the time)
Shit is that the time? I'm running late gotta
get to the Comedy club. Thanks for the joke
I'll see if I can get it into the routine tonight. Bye.

Michael hangs up the phone and rushes about grabbing his coat and keys and starts for the front door. As he passes the hall table he sees the PILLS, stops, grabs them and stares at them.

RICHARDS
Shit, when did I take the pill?
(looks at his watch )
Shit.
(Looks at the pills)
I gotta get out of here.
(Looks one more time at his watch)
I better take one more just in case.

He pops the pill and exits through the front door.

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. COMEDY CLUB -- NIGHT

Back stage at the Comedy club and Michael is talking to a KOREAN COMEDIAN.

KOREAN COMEDIAN
Caus yos a cracker!

The Korean Comedian laughs like crazy.

Michael is feeling a bit funny and reaches clumsily for a chair to steady himself.

KOREAN COMEDIAN
Hey you alright?

RICHARDS
Yeah just feeling a bit odd.

KOREAN COMEDIAN
Well didn't you think that was funny?

RICHARDS
Look man I'm not partial to race jokes OK!

KOREAN COMEDIAN
Yeah well fuck you, that shits funny.

Michael rights himself and as the Korean Comedian leaves, Michael walks over to the stage curtain to await for his introduction.

He stops beside the STAGE HAND who controls the curtain.

STAGE HAND
Hey Michael.

RICHARDS
Hey George.

Stage hand takes a double take at Michael.

STAGE HAND
You OK Michael? You don't look that good.

RICHARDS
Yeah I'm OK just one of those days you know.

STAGE HAND
Sure we all get them.

Off stage the MC is introducing Michael to the audience.

MC
He's a funny man and you'll know
him from Seinfeld, let's put
it together for Michael Richards.

Curtain is pulled back and Michael Richards walks into the white of the bright lights.

FADE OUT:

This summer I took a European adventure, bicycle ride.

What a trip, plus 40 degrees on the bike, drinking water every 15 secs, riding through Paris, camping in a lightening storm beside the Seine, sweating for days without let up, diving over guardrails to save being run over by a fish-tailing-tractor-trailer, going to sleep in the middle of a French forest at night only to wake in the morning, clamber out of the hammock and notice a sign parked about five meters away that read, 'zone military, danger de la mort'.

In the dark I had inadvertently camped in the middle of a military training zone (I had been riding the previous day, through a very large forest near Fontainebleau when night set in). While trying to come to grips with this odd idea of how to 'start my day' I heard a sharp crack in the woods about 50 meters to my right. I went flat to the ground. Fortunately I camp very stealth with camouflage for the bike and hammock tucked out of sight, in other words I was hard to spot ten feet away (I have practiced this art over the years because I like to urban camp - camping in and near populated areas without being noticed). I listened for movement sound... nothing,  I waited (I'm good at that) and then perhaps after five minutes another crack and then definite movement. Shit, I was into it now. Carefully I peeked through the tall ferns encircling my camp, and yes I could see movement in the brush off to my right now only about thirty meters off.

Heck, now what do I do. If this is a military exercise and I am trespassing on military property and I don't speak French (aside from hi and do you have any chocolate croissants) will I be carted off and interrogated under bright lights in a dark, damp room. No probably not but it was kind of fun to think that (you know that scary kind-of-fun).

However, giving up my position wasn't something I wanted to do. I pride myself on my stealth camping and now I was going to find out how well I had done. Hopefully better then on my first bike trip (a quarter of a century ago) crossing North America when in the dark I camped out on a running path in the middle of the Minneapolis city park and woke to find joggers glaring at me as they waddled past.

For a second I scared the tar out of myself imagining it wasn't a soldier sneaking through the undergrowth but an Axe wielding nut looking for trouble (more of that scary fun). I'll tell you though I had the heart rate up, top gear, pedal to the metal and I was trying to keep pace with my brain calculating the seemingly endless possibilities and my reaction to them. I decided to just stay still and wait. I was ready though for a bit of wrestle in the morning mist but wasn't so sure how that would read - Newspaper headlines 'French soldier attacked by crazed Canadian terrorist' - I was starting to rule out confrontation and give in, claiming 'geeze I thought I was at club Med le Foret'. Unless of course it was that Axe wielding fella again and I was committed to 'aving him and 'ard like.'

More crackling and then scrambling, fast movement sound, like quick steps, UH OH, whoever it is, it's charging - WHAT do I do? - quick think of something - I got it stand up (that's it? STAND UP!!- what about all the previous calculating, those great ideas that included Matrix style slow motion, hanging in the air while I dodged bullets whizzing by my toned and ripped torso - nope just stand up) - so I did, ready for anything, and I yelled, very loudly (not sure where that idea came from - that hadn't been in rehearsal during the waiting period - must have been a knee jerk reaction from the martial arts training years) any how, I YELLED (not sure what it was, rather like a brutal mix of grrrrrrrrrrrrr and rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr) but man let me tell you it had a fantastic effect because it scared the bejesus out of the family of wild boars who where scampering through the woods. They let out some sort of return grunt changed course in one lightening fast movement (rather like wild boar synchronized movement) and where gone crashing through the underbrush leaving me fixed in my Ultimate Fighting stance (I kept part of the Matrix idea) alone in the middle of an eerily quiet French Forest......................................

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Whistling softly and quickly pack the gear and go.

I figured breakfast could wait.

During the rest of the ride I met many wonderful people including a French lady who had been saved by the Canadians during WWII and she cried when I told her I was Canadian and insisted on feeding me (so sweet). I rode through some amazing French countryside, fields of purple and fields of laughing yellow sunflowers. I swam in quiet waters as the sun set and sang a children's French song I didn't know I knew. In the Alps I hiked and ate dainty yet amazingly flavourful alpine strawberries, raspberries and blackberries, wild plums and apples. Saw snow fall in the summer, drank from a mountain stream and sang 'Somewhere over the rainbow.' And I saw on that day, for the first time in my life, the end of a rainbow.

In a field, in a countryside sugared with a freshly
fallen snow, I lay, my breast to the sky, the stars
and a sliver moon. I am warm by decision, comforted by
design and encouraged by this taste, this vastness in
the boundaries that construct my freedom.

Yesterday I shopped the stalls on Via Dante. Christmas
bells ringing from the first Church - Duomo. Cobbled
streets, marble steps, and two story doors. The Sforza
Castle rising in the twilight at the end of via Dante.
I wondered how I had started out and why I had
chosen to arrange this. To stand in the Italian air on
at Christmas time.

But it didn't matter, I was there and as I turned on
my heel to see what was playing at the Teatro Piccolo,
I thought I saw myself. Nineteen years earlier,
startled by the images I was seeing, lost in a world
not yet familiar, trying to contain my excitement in
the pockets of my jeans. Turning and turning trying to
catch everything, hear everything, see it all. A boy
with dreams.

I was being sensitized by memories that clung to the
walls of the buildings, that took shape in the lungs
of my dreams. Maybe I needed to know why I had come,
maybe my search wasn't over, maybe all that I have
done is only a beginning, a small length of the road
that will lead me to another Christmas, turning on
another heel.

That answer I'll know then, but now I know this,
beside me stands a boy that wasn't here when I first
came to this Italian city, a boy that holds his own memories,
his own dreams and the hand of his father. A boy that
has made every step of this journey the answer.

I have traveled far to be here this Christmas day. I
have traveled a lifetime.

I like the soft and flighty feeling of hearts wrapped in the warm comfort of a happy Sunday morning hug.

Mel and I took the train from Brighton to London Bridge and then rode the bikes to the Tate Modern where we had a couple of slides on the Carsten Höller Slide Installation. Rather fun. We then rode up to Belsize and continued to create our new board game (more on that later when the game has been published). Dinner at a restaurant on Marylebone High street and then a ride through the cold and slightly foggy London night to Victoria where we caught the 23:35 to Brighton.

Allow me to elaborate a bit on the Tate and the slide installation.

First - the idea about a thing being labeled art is rather akin to quantum physics .

How so?

In so much so that anything is nameless and unvalued until it is labeled and valued.

A thing is not art until it is labeled art. To label a thing art, that thing (or it's general group (things which are similar including the implications of the statement 'all things are art'!) must at some point be encountered. Once the encounter has occurred the labelling can begin. Encountering does not need to be physical it can be by idea transferred.

I trust we are clear.

A thing is only deemed art when it is interacted with - when someone or perhaps something (jury's out on that one - we can't know for sure if mice have an art world) says 'hey Bill get down from that ladder there and come looky here at this bit of art some prankster has nailed up here on the wall.' Until that point all things are artless . Art only becomes art when someone or perhaps something says 'this is art '.

That idea is similar to quantum physics in the sense that the observer is factored into what is being observed in a quantum physics experiment. In other words the observer cannot be excluded from the experimental results.

Simply put whoever is observing the art is part of the art.

What I am getting at is that once I heard about the Slide Installation I became part of the installation. Thus for the rest of the story you should factor in the above idea and realize also that you too are now part of the Tate Modern Slide Installation .

We get off the train at London Bridge and ride west along the Southbank, slipping past Sir Francis Drake's Golden Hind and the hordes out per una passeggiata on a sunny Sunday in jolly ol' England.

Arriving at the Tate we negotiate parking for the bikes and secure them with two locks to the railings that surround the entrance to a subterranean passage. I am excited like a wee lad at this point as we race past the slow poke pedestrians entering the gallery.

Mel isn't willing to attempt the ten story slide (she's still reeling from having to ride around London on her bike) so she agreed to wait for me on the second floor. I race upstairs past the slow pokes lumbering up and down the stairwell - 'move you slow pokes, can't you tell I'm a headed slidin'! Geeze!' - and...LEAP... I rocket onto the upper most level and there in front of me is the hole in the wall that leads to the ten story slide just waiting for me to dive in and slide down head first . However, there is small queue of five nervous looking individuals humming and hawing about going down - pussies. So I wait - yeah right the waiting lasted about five seconds before I'm bounding up to the gate keeper (or rather in this case the hole keeper) with all the glee the five scaredy cats waiting in line are missing out on.

The conversation with the hole keeper goes something like this - Hi, I notice your sign says that I require a ticket to go down the slide. - That's right Sir (not a good start when the Sir word gets thrown in at the end of the first sentence) - Ah, hmm I don't have one but I love slides and just ran up ten flights of stairs and there are only five people waiting in line, so can I just go? - sorry Sir (real trouble now that Sir is being used at the start of the second sentence) you need a ticket - oh boy here we go I am sniffing out automatic pilot response and I am betting I'm not the first want-to-be-slider questioning this ticket deal - ok one last try - I understand the ticket thing, but can you just pretend I showed you my ticket, after all the slide is free, and I'll just slide down quick like - I'm sorry Sir (there's that Sir for the third time) you need a ticket - ok where do I get this precious ticket for the free slide - down stairs Sir, on the first floor (I noticed a smirk of devious pleasure on her face with that last bit of info) - you mean I have to go down ten flights of stairs, probably have to queue up for the ticket then race back up another ten flight of stairs and present the ticket for the FREE slide before I can go on the FREE slide? - yes Sir!

Right enough of this shite and I'm off flying down the stairs four at a time - it's easy if you know how to use hand rails - get out of the way you slow pokes, man on a slide mission coming through - and onto the first floor!

Half a block queue - ok I am quickly figuring out the best way to queue jump when along comes Herbert-the-queue-monitor-guy barking out the news that anyone lining up for the slide tickets will note that the tickets will only apply to the three oclock slide - it's 1:30 now and I have to be five miles away at Belsize in half an hour. I can't wait around an hour and a half to slide - given the time to run back up the ten flights of stairs, queue up and slide down I am already late for the Belsize meeting - ok time to dump the puck in and crash the boards.

Hi, I singingly shout out as I abandon the queue and approach Herbert-the-queue-monitor-guy - I heard what you said about the slide tickets and I was just up at the slide and well, heck you know there were only five people in the queue and the girl guarding the slide wouldn't let me go saying I needed a ticket and what what and - yes Sir (shite Sir right off the top) you need a ticket - yes I understand the I-need-a-ticket-concept-for-the-Free-slide, but heck I just ran up and down twenty flights of stairs and I am willing to do another ten if you would just radio up and tell her that you have a man coming up who is in a desperate hurry and to just let him have a slide - I am sorry Sir we can't do that you need a ticket - yes yes I understand that but there's hardly anyone sliding and I'll be fast - I'm sorry Sir - wait maybe you didn't hear me NO ONE IS USING THE SLIDE - I am sorry Sir we have issued nine hundred tickets and those people are going to want to go on the slide - ok but their not here now and I'll be fast - yes Sir but they will be arriving - what? you're saying nine hundred people are just going to show up as I jump on the slide - yes Sir - come on you know as well as I do that's not likely - well Sir I just can't let anyone without a ticket onto the slide that wouldn't be fair to everyone else and there would be complaints - right I can imagine that now 'hey that guy sliding down the slide hasn't got a ticket, that's not fair' - how is anyone but you, me and the hole keeper going to know I don't have a ticket? What - are all the gallery patrons going to elect a ticket inspector? Hey everyone who doesn't have a ticket but wants to go on the slide this guy just went down the slide and doesn't have a ticket - I am sorry Sir you need a ticket.

Ok so now the time has come to pull out the trump card (the fib with a hint of truth - in this case the hint of truth is that there are planes and Canada exists) - look I have to leave to get on a plane to Canada in twenty minutes and this is my only chance to ride the Tate Slide - Sir - look I promise I won't tell anyone about the ticket, not on the way up to the slide, on the slide, in the gallery, on the way to the plane, on the plane or while I am in Canada, please!!! - come with me Sir, I shouldn't be doing this but I'll make an exception this one time - right like I'm going to come back and do this all over again but hey I heed the one time warning - and low and behold Herbert-the-queue-monitor-guy takes me to ticket office jumping the half block queue and gets me a ticket - wow cool.

I run two at a time stairs up to the top, put on the helmet, knee pads and hand the hole keeper my fancy ticket - thank you Sir and she doesn't take the ticket - ah don't you want the ticket?- no you may keep it - huh???? I just did thirty flights of stairs so that you could look at the ticket?!!!

Anyhow I shuffle my feet into the sack (she wouldn't let me go down head first), lie myself flat on my back and launch down ten flights of slide - weeee - ok the weeee lasted about one level of slide before I went ho hum and started thinking about the colour of my socks - I landed on the first floor with a not so much as a screech but more of a slow slide stop- snore!

I was then greeted by Herbert-the-queue-monitor-guy who apparently waited to see how I got on - I took a quick look over at the queue and without him there seemed to be chaos - and how was the ride Sir? - hey great thanks - well I suspect you had better dash now? - huh why? - your flight Sir- huh? - to Canada - oh right yes and I was off to the second floor were I gave Mel the free ticket - apparently the free ticket worked even for the little two story slide (there was also a one story slide) - quick we have only ten minutes for you to slide and then ride five miles through the London traffic.

Well needless to say we were late but hey Mel thought the ride was scary and exhilaratingly - but then she refused to jump off the cliffs in the Alps and swing on the trees.