HORRIBLE CHILD, THE MOVIE

I had asked Lawrence Krauser, writer/director of the film Horrible Child (among other things), if he would consent to a blog interview in honor of tomorrow's encore screening of the film. Lawrence, devil that he is, responded in verse, with the results reproduced here. Let it whet your appetite for the film: Horrible Child will screen Wed 7/22 at 8pm.

For the record, it is a a TK Film from Best Ten Dollar Suit Pictures, designed and edited by Larissa Tokmakova, and starring Mike Daisey, T. Ryder Smith, and Paul Willis.

HORRIBLE CHILD, THE MOVIE
by Lawrence Krauser

Horrible went to a movie
And thought it was totally groovy.
Much better than Life
Whose persistent strife
Had lately been Horrible’s curse.
It was hard to imagine much worse.

But the movie, o joy, what delight!
It made all HC’s woe feel all right
Till the titles stopped rolling,
Then Its tears went cheek-strolling,
And HC sat there broken-hearting,
Awaiting the movie’s restarting.

But little did Horrible know
That It had just seen the last show.
With each minute that passed,
It became more aghast
And determined to see it again,
No matter how long till the when.

So It sat in Its seat with Its purpose,
Resourceful as the best of sherpas,
The floor a buffet
Of spilled can and may
With plenty for mouse, roach, and Child
To feast well with manners most mild.

The theatre’s custodial pod
Moved around It with diurnal plod,
Pre-Columbian greet,
Columbus’s fleet –
To Horrible their minds were that green,
Blind to what they’d never seen.

O blissful night spent undetested!
Un-evicted, not even molested!
Such a contrast to home,
It observed as the gloam
Became evening, then midnight, then morning,
And hope Its thoughts began adorning.

And then there was light, and then others -
Calm children, kind fathers, wise mothers
All here for the show -
HC felt in the know
But resisted the impulse to lecture,
Knowing fun is best had sans conjecture.

And then the good darkness descended
Attention to screen was extended
And HC was breathless
Good movies are deathless -
But what was this now that was playing?
Something else? How cruel, how betraying!

A preview it was, not sedition
But HC was dumb to tradition
From the theater it ran
Cursing God, hating Man,
Buying cameras and sets and a phone,
And making a film of its own,

True to its temper and tone.
Every night like a full moon it shone,
For an audience rapt, if alone,
In a theater of mind, home-grown.