To: Robert John Miller
Monday, October 2, 6:30 a.m.
Subject: Project Request, Quick Script Turnaround
Dear Robert John Miller,
It’s a whole infestation of ants, and if you had killed them when they were small then they wouldn’t have destroyed the city, but the ants grow larger—large enough that killing them seems wrong, maybe, but that’s what you have to do. That’s the whole thing. It’s a play, with some special stage effects (mostly people in ant costumery, not real ants that are lab-grown to become huge, which could inadvertently trigger the literal scenario we’re trying to warn against), but I’d also love it as (potentially) a musical, though I know that’s a big ask. Also, the ants are slimy. More like ant-shaped amphibians, really. I think that would have more resonance, if the ants are slimy. I’m going to say the ants have to be slimy, for all of this to work.
Sincerely,
Robert John Miller
To: Robert John Miller
Monday, October 2, 6:34 a.m.
Subject: re: Project Request, Quick Script Turnaround
Dear Robert John Miller,
Your idea for a slimy-ant-inspired musical is absolutely top notch, and I’m going to fast-track it. I’m going to write the idea on my big magnetic dry erase board, and I’m going to label it with a Post-It note that says “URGENT,” and I’m going to put a magnet on the Post-It in case the stickiness wears off. That kind of redundancy is, I think, demanded for what, I think, is a very important project, with something important here at heart, re: Camus, “rebellion is nostalgia for innocence.”
I’m going to quote this out at two weeks of work, but I’m also going to ask to budget in two additional weeks of overages off the top, so that we don’t get bogged down in a back-and-forth in case ant research becomes overwhelming. I’d like the opportunity to achieve a certain verisimilitude re: ant behavior, ant sliminess, how ants behave in colonies (analogous to human cities?). Do ants love? CAN ants love? These are questions that must be answered to achieve that resonance to which you refer. Pending research my best assumption is that, given the right environment, ants are really eight-legged people.
My fear is that, should we avoid these questions, we are apt to leave an emptiness in our audience where their hearts should be. Let us let this become the kindling that ignites our souls.
Yours,
Robert John Miller
To: Robert John Miller
Monday, October 2, 7:35 a.m.
Subject: re: re: Project Request, Quick Script Turnaround
Dear Robert John Miller,
My Camus is rusty, but if it’s necessary for the ants to be rebelling, in your version, let’s be extra wary of the broader implications. I’m afraid of anything getting too political. What I had in mind was really more of a pretty straightforward Pandora’s Box-type monster mash. About the importance of stopping things before they start. About 15 minutes in, I’m thinking it’s just ant slime everywhere. The first five rows would be a splash zone and we’d hand out cheap ponchos like it’s Maid of the Mist, like on our trip to Niagara Falls.
I guess, if you have to, I guess—if Godzilla got by as a metaphor for the proliferation of nuclear weapons, then that’s fine, we could give the ants nukes, and maybe that’s what causes the slime, so that works and it’s subtle-ish and that’s fine. But then I worry we’re being derivative, and regardless please just don’t push it. If there’s a broader metaphor you have in mind, something about the military-industrial complex or something, I don’t think I can sell this to our primary sponsor, which (this was going to be a surprise)—I already did. I sold this out as a USO tour. I got a fucking USO tour lined up already. So please just do this for me, please. I didn’t want to reveal my hand, but I’m just trying to give this one to you as a gift, before I go to anyone else. So please, please, just accept it. Accept the gift. It could lead to a lot more work for you.
Also, yes on the budget and overages. Research is obviously required as, for example, ants (exclusively) have six legs. (You were probably just thinking of spiders, or maybe it was a typo?)
Sincerely,
Robert John Miller
To: Robert John Miller
Friday, October 6, 11:32 p.m.
Subject: re: re: re: Project Request, Quick Script Turnaround
Dear Robert John Miller,
First, no. Though rare, I have seen eight-legged ants out in the wild. In fact, there is an eight-legged ant hill outside of my apartment right now. I have spent the bulk of an entire research day studying them and capturing one (photo attached). Suffice to say, they are 33% more ferocious than regular ants, which makes them ideal for our purposes, I think.
I do love, however, (despite your “rusty Camus”) your idea to tie in Camus as a scaffolding for some sort of rebellion. I think that ties in perfectly for an ant-love-type story arc as, re: Camus (again, great idea you have here), “rebellion cannot exist without a strange form of love.” So far, my research suggests that ants can, and often do, love, and quite vociferously.
The question is, though, to WHAT do the ants REBEL? Their own extermination, comes the obvious response. But I’m thinking, too, that a more quotidian element may have more of a mass appeal. Perhaps the ants, in their slimy, ferocious, eight-legged mutant state, also have increased intelligence. They still drone mindlessly in colonies—which is to say, an analog to human cities—but now they have an awareness of their own self-imposed drudgery, which makes them sad, and thus the love-story rebellion.
Let me explain by way of example:
Yesterday, while doing research for this very project (THANK YOU! I very much need this right now), I met a necessary thirty-second task that involved my desktop printer. I had to do some scanning and sending for documentation purposes. My “thirty-second task” went something like this:
So I’m thinking maybe the ants are kind of like that, maybe.
Please also find the opening two scenes, attached, for (working title) “Aunt Attack.”
Yours,
Robert John Miller
To: Robert John Miller
Friday, October 6, 11:43 p.m.
Subject: re: re: re: re: Project Request, Quick Script Turnaround
Dear Robert John Miller,
You have very obviously taken a photo of a spider’s legs taped to an ant’s body.
You didn’t even bother to hide the Scotch Tape.
What’s more, what makes an ant ferocious is not the number of their legs, but the fierceness of their pincers.
I am not paying for a single day of you taping insects together. (Although, sincerely, I am impressed you were able to capture and kill both a spider and an ant—while leaving their legs and entire bodies intact, such that you might delicately remove and reassemble them—on such short notice. Or do you have some sort of weird bug collection just, like, on hand?)
Regardless, while I obviously have not had time to read them, I corrected what I hope is an erroneous typo in your title and just sent the pages up. Please tell me I haven’t made a mistake.
Sincerely,
Robert John Miller
To: Robert John Miller
Monday, October 9, 9:32 a.m.
Subject: wtf
Dear Robert John Miller,
The people at the USO are giving me hell. They have informed me that I have sent them two scenes of small-ish women playing hockey, preparing to defend their nieces and nephews?
I told them I sent the wrong file.
Please do not continue fucking with me.
Sincerely,
Robert John Miller
To: Robert John Miller
Friday, October 13, 10:45 p.m.
Subject: re: wtf
Dear Robert John Miller,
Again, no, I have sent you nothing in error, and—I really, really hate to state this so bluntly, but—if you keep questioning my fastidiousness I am apt to quit. I simply will not—cannot—produce work while being constantly questioned, harassed, etc., and in such an irritable tone.
I will answer your queries below, but first, more importantly, I am worried about you. You sound stressed. And you say you are going through hell, and I am worried about you. Look: A friend of mine has survived hell so many times and now she has chocolate nibbles.
That’s her reply whenever I complain. She just says, “I have survived hell so many times and now I have chocolate nibbles.” It’s like a code between the two of us. It means, “Chill. It will be OK.” And you know what? So far, I’m still here.
And it’s not a metaphor. Here are the ingredients for the dark, sweet, maple-peanut butter treats called “chocolate nibbles.” They are delicious. (Note that you have to freeze them):
It’s funny that she’s come up in this conversation, though, and this is relevant. Just last night we were having an in-depth philosophical debate about: Would you rather have your top limbs replaced with cheese sticks you could nibble on at any time and they regenerate, or your head replaced with a helium balloon you could inflate and float around (but do note the increasing cost of helium)? She was adamant that she would choose the former if she could replace the cheese sticks with chocolate nibbles (that’s how this all ties in, re: chocolate nibbles and going through hell; she is lactose intolerant so the “cheese sticks version” would inadvertently create a much more dire, though probably occasionally useful, use case), to which I said I don’t make the rules, it has to be cheese sticks, and so she wanted to know if the cheese sticks might regenerate if OTHER people eat them, and I said yes I think they would, I don’t think the cheese sticks would be able to differentiate between her eating them and someone else eating them, and then we got into a loop about the moral imperatives of world hunger, and if she would then have a responsibility to feed the world cheese, and how quickly the cheese sticks might regenerate, and if she would still have hands with individual fingers she could use for daily tasks, and if it would be painful, and if so HOW painful, and if she tore off a chunk would a chunk of THAT chunk be able to regenerate if someone ate it so she could still solve world hunger (for the lactose tolerant, at least) and go about her daily life largely undisturbed at the same time?
It’s an important conversation, I think, because this is the type of lateral thinking we need on “Aunt Attack: Part One—Port of Call,” and I have hired her as a research assistant, which means we will have to double our overages upfront.
Now, as to your accusations that I have photographed “a spider’s legs taped to an ant’s body” and have spent my rightfully billable hours “taping insects together,” in what would surely take the average person a week but somehow I, theoretically, managed to do in the better part of an evening (and for which, were that to be the case, it marks something to be applauded for expediency and ingenuity and at great expense, and to leave it at that, having to find someone to teach me how to go about it on such short notice)—these accusations are patently false. Even your own argument falls apart upon the barest inspection. If I had taped a “spider’s legs” to “an ant’s body”—which I certainly did not—then I would still not be “taping insects together,” nor pulling things out of “my” (NOT “weird,” it’s actually award-winning) “bug collection.” Spiders are neither bugs nor insects, but arachnids. They are totally different creatures, ipso facto.
But back to “Aunt Attack,” and here perhaps you will be cheered in some sick way that I do have one small concession. There may have been a miscommunication between myself and our newly hired research assistant. I had outlined those first two scenes, beat by beat, to set up a showdown between humans and those ants you are going on about so exhaustedly. Unfortunately, thanks to the help of Grammarly, the message became a bit garbled: the phrase “Jockey Battalion” became “Hockey Battalion.”
Fortunately, however, the story is better for this happy accident, as it lends itself to a climactic Act One transformation—in which our heroes trade pucks and sticks for equine delights. And surely you already see how broadly enchanting aunts on horseback will be—as they will then have eight “legs,” which makes them both the perfect foil to our antagonists (that’s a pun) and grants them, possibly, the ability to infiltrate the ant colony, seamlessly undetected.
Who better to meet our eight-legged foes than their own human/horse-world analog? I think, too, a shift in philosophical mode from existential to Classical (a la “Trojan horse”) would be more broadly uplifting and help with ticket sales in these trying times.
Now, of course, I know exactly what you’re thinking, and the answer is: Cranes.
We will use cranes, or some similar crane-type apparatus, to get these blade-sheathed women saddled up on horseback without fear of accidentally ripping the horses to shreds. Even one dead horse is too many. (If the budget allows, I’d still lobby to have the horses armored, at least withers to croup and down the barrel.)
Yours,
Robert John Miller
To: Robert John Miller
Friday, October 20, 11:45 p.m.
Subject: re: re: wtf
Dear Robert John Miller,
In yet another happy accident, I will need a new research budget to determine how many cranes (the bird) it takes to lift four to six small-ish women, each donned in approximately 20 pounds of hockey gear, onto horses. I trust the metaphor is absolutely clear and in need of no more explanation, as the scene has become essential to push our story forward.
Yours,
Robert John Miller
To: Robert John Miller
Friday, October 27, 5:05 p.m.
Subject: Quitting
Dear Robert John Miller,
Despite my best efforts to be in constant, transparent communication with you, I am afraid I have to ask you remove my name from this project. We have lost two horses we borrowed today (it’s not so grisly; they simply fell into the ice). Also, I would like to be reimbursed for several grosses of (surprisingly ornery, now deceased) birds.
Yours,
Robert John Miller
To: Robert John Miller
Monday, October 30, 6:03 p.m.
Subject: Sick Joke?
As I write this, presently outside, a group of approximately four-foot men, each heavily armed and all of vaguely Slavic origin, are wearing horse costumes and demanding to ravenously feast on my pile of dead cranes. They are being very kind about it, offering in exchange a truckful of peonies (my favorite flower), but I question their motives and am suspicious that all of this is some esoteric dig at my expense.
I should hope, should you have an issue with my work, that you would at least have the common courtesy to contact me directly and state your feelings bluntly, that we might work things out in a manner more professional.
Are you really so small, so petty, as to go to such elaborate means at such great cost to humiliate me in my own home, all because you suspect me of perhaps a few earnest mistakes, of perhaps embellishing a few arbitrary qualifications, of perhaps undermining an exercise that at its origin is already a cataclysmic misstep, of perhaps recruiting a local real estate aficionado and anthusiast to delicately place bits of bugs together under a microscope, like that scene from Ghost but with ant bits? Wouldn’t it be enough for you, should any of these poor accusations have merit, that I degraded myself to solicit that help, that I now have made promises of a certain nature that I must soon deliver upon despite a total and complete lack of physical attraction, just to stay in my home?
Do you truly think you can do anything to hurt me, a person who already has nothing in this world except a handful of chocolate nibbles—the ingredients to which I purchased on credit and the proportions of which are still an enigma to me—and a growing list of repugnant favors owed to my landlord?
Yours,
Robert John Miller
To: Robert John Miller
Monday, October 30, 6:05 p.m.
Subject: I’m Sorry
Dear Robert John Miller,
Please forgive me and excuse this late email. I am sensing some frustration and, for whatever role I’ve played in that, know I am truly sorry. I hope we can continue our swift and congenial working relationship, as I have very good news. The ants are out (unforeseen turf wars among enlisted entomologists and arachnologists) BUT, as of this morning, I have sold your “Horses on Ice” concept with great fanfare.
In fact, we’re thinking a full push in the buildup to the Winter Olympic games. Think horses ski jumping. Horses luge-ing. Horses racing teams of dogs. Horses in bobsleds. Horses skijoring (an obvious throwback to St. Moritz).
I have presently organized a committee and, preliminarily, we’re thinking ponies of approximately 12 hands will have low enough centers of gravity to avoid the potential of a “falling into ice” scenario you’ve properly warned us about before any disasters have happened. As early as this evening, please expect to take delivery of a mob of Bosnians, for training and rehearsal purposes. What’s more, I have been promised that horses DO eat birds, so on your invoice please do not mention the cranes but simply list them as “horse food” and it will clear accounting that much faster.
Sincerely,
Robert John Miller
To: Robert John Miller
Monday, October 30, 6:08 p.m.
Subject: Ugh
It appears our notes may have crossed paths. Please ignore previous email.
Yours,
Robert John Miller
Robert John Miller's work has appeared in Hobart, Necessary Fiction, X-R-A-Y, Peregrine and others. He has been a Best of the Net nominee and currently lives in Lake Charles, Louisiana. More stories are online at robertjohnmiller.com.