WHITE NOISE: YOUR COLLEGE FAMILY

 

at Eclipse Fest Lindy Lenz is receiving a desperately-written text.

Jen R: hey what's that, girl? love-text from your new beau? you can look directly at the eclipse with your naked eyes, right?

Lindy: assuredly not.

Jen R: shit. oh well. i wear sunglasses all the time like Holly Golightly as my look anyway.

Lindy: this is the most beautiful thing i've ever received from anyone:

my dearest Lindy, my moon, this is Bruce Lee, can i be your son? i mean sun. i didn't have a purpose in life until i met you. now i can say with the utmost assurance that my purpose in life is TO CARE FOR YOU. i will DEVOTE MY LIFE to making you feel better, to HEALING YOU. i hope it takes all life cos i'm here for the long haul. i will double-fist the disease out of your body, have that thing legged outta you. if my martial skills don't work i shall study like a master. i shall wear glasses and attend a sleepy East Coast college by a pizza lake. whatever it takes to identify, learn the weaknesses of, and kill your epilepsy. think of ME as your CANE. and then we celebrate with sugarcane oranges at Christmas. love you miss you thank you.

Jen R: i inspired you, eh kid?

Lindy: and then he closes with the cutest emoji, a sandwich emoji. see? it's a turkey sandwich.

Jen R: how can you tell?

Lindy: cos the emoji is a whole turkey with drumsticks and thighs inside two slices of bread.

Jen R and i are at the concert.

Jen R: this is cool, huh. 

me: yeah. we FINALLY get to see Nine Inch Nails after all this time.

Jen R: his last effort was definitely a no-skip album. Trent Reznor live on September 23, 2021 in Cleveland.

me: it's a good thing you bought BOTH sets of tickets cos he canceled the Tuesday show...

Jen R: what's with all our television icons dropping like flies? poor Suzanne Somers, and i don't even like Christmas snow.

me: i can't take it. soon there will be none left. no more nostalgia to grab onto. if i had to describe you in one show, it would be Bewitched. now do me.

Jen R: oh.........let me think about it.........oh yeah, Three's Company, right.

Jen R: i was busy with my glue project, my fingers were all sticky i couldn't pick up the phone, i was collaging Patti Smith. Just Kids is being made into an art film, not a Broadway show.

me: sorry but your art can wait, I REALLY NEED TO KNOW NOW!!! 

Jen R: you crying?

me: yes of course i am. i can't just hum along life like you do. you don't speak to me for four months. again. why? it's a BLESSING everytime you talk to me. i miss our talks about anything under the sun. i adore you. i got you on the back end. you know? i wasn't there when you got married to your husband the luckiest man who ever lived on this or any other planet, i wasn't around, i get to laze and lather and bathe in the butter of the chunks of time with you, not borrowing you but STEALING you AS IF you are my wife NOW. 

Jen R: remember when Chrissy Snow tells Jack Tripper about her "daddy" and Jack of course thinks that's her pimp but it turns out she was referring to her actual father. not only that, her father is an ACTUAL FATHER as in he's a priest!!! hahaha, that was something else.

at the hostel shower.

Luke Russert: i mean we're showering together but we're still not a couple again?

Tai: have some restraint, man!!! platonic friends do this all the time. holy shit the back of your ears are RED LIKE A CHIMNEY!!! do you ever go back there?

Luke: no, that's the problem, I HAVE NEVER WASHED BEHIND MY EARS IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. i know it may seem strange but i've never felt compelled to, it wasn't a priority when i bathed, i always forgot to do that with my ears.

Tai: oh it is so CRUSTY HERE behind your ears.

Luke: i know what it was, i was too busy using the front of my ears to hear my dad's next brilliant talk to notice my floppy backears.

Justin Herbert: i'm backed up.........not because i'm at the 1-Yard Line, because i had one too many Subway All-Meat sandwiches...

Bridget Lancaster: i got a little junk in my trunk.

Keith Dresser: my chest is so big i can breathe easily...

Keith Dresser: so we're making love and i hear a LOUD SLURPING SOUND like a woman sucking oysters.

Leslie Sbrocco: that was me down there giving you a blowjob, didn't you notice?

Keith: i have no middle of my body now...

Dan Souza: i only eat pizza that someone has drizzled with honey over the top...

Pati Jinich: green gold, not gringo...

Hilda at Lucky: i got one of those crone-pair things at work. i got my own supermarket-sirens thing going on with that other gilf in a bluejeans apron who looks like me but with glasses.

Gladyce and Doryce: it always seems to work out that way, dear...

Carla Bley: nope i'm not Carly Simon. the Muppets copied MY hair, okay?!!!

Eye Luggage: White Noise and go.

Jen R: okay THIS is MY kind of movie. with MY kind of people in it...

Don DeLillo: i'm like the David Foster Wallace you've never heard of. the David Foster Wallace if he had indeed joined one of those upper-crusty nose-in-the-air New York City book circles he hated. who met every Wednesday at Tom Wolfe's apartment above Broadway. at least be BELOW Broadway like my apartment, i hated Tom Wolfe.

Sidney Sheldon: me, too!!!

Don DeLillo: i tried to give Dan Brown my manuscript, one of my literary journals, at a party and he turns around and cold-cocks me in the face with his fist full of guacamole dip as his boxing glove.

me: can everyone in the real world speak like this all the time like they do in this film? please? you gotta love the family of an intellectual.

Greta Gerwig: two intellectuals.

Jen R: see that pic up here? that is the type of stuff i draw!!! let's do a graphic novel together.

me: babe i've been waiting MY WHOLE FUCKING LIFE for you to ask me this. your art and my writing, we could do a collab thing...

Jen R: no i mean a Just Kids graphic novel.

me: isn't Just Kids graphic enough?

Noah Baumbach: in case you haven't noticed yet, I wrote this script. these are MY words. i mean they're adapted from the book but i wrote the screenplay in such a way that the author is an afterthought and these just really basically become MY words, MY work, and MY original story.

Camus: it's an Absurd movie but that doesn't mean it's not worthwhile...

Noah Baumbach: i mean it is kinda long...

Danny Elfman: this is my best music since Batman...

Adam Driver: i'm a college professor at one of those quaint East Coast colleges that are like a fishing village.

Bill Cosby: not Hillman.

Adam: very out-of-the-way. students, i will gladly give you an A for some favors for me, this is the '80s.

Adam: Hitler Studies would never fly nowadays. college or otherwise. maybe i should have named it Satire Studies...

Don Cheadle: Elvis and Hitler were the same.........in a very BROAD sense. my last name sounds like an orange company.

Adam: yeah, everyone needs to belong to a group or they die. idols can become idolatry. idols can go both ways. can you believe the stuff the profs are able to get away with nowadays?

Don: right? i mean just this morning i saw a flyer for a class on What Happened When Will Smith Sneezed?

Adam: who teaches that one?

Don: Will Smith.

Don Cheadle: they let anybody in nowadays. Andre 300 from Outkast? are you kidding me?

Adam: hey why is Tommy Lee still on a college campus?!!!

Tommy Lee: just leaving. just came to refill my two kegs of vodka for the day.

Don: we're not out of the loop in society, right? we're still real people.

Adam: oh sure. it's not just a college thing, MY WHOLE FAMILY speaks in this smart-stilted manner.

Greta Gerwig: i am Babette but everyone calls me Baba. DON'T call me Babaette.

Raffey Cassidy: i am NOT a Gilmore Girl.

Sam Nivola: i'm basically the kid-boy version of Noah Baumbach.

May Nivola: i get to work with my brother on set?!!! rad!!!

me: as an '80s lover...

Jen R: i mean you're not even an '80s enthusiast, you're more like an '80s OBSESSOR...

me: this film is me stepping into Heaven, EVERY SINGLE ITEM the family purchases is a famous '80s brand name. this world, this era of time, is plastered on all sides with televisions advertising '80s things, the message here is that THE '80s WERE RAD!!!

Adam: i love that my wife is like a life-size Barbie doing Jane Fonda aerobics in a neon pink room!!!

Greta: it's pink cos it's the '80s not cos it's a girl thing. i think we should let Wilder play with Barbie dolls.

Adam: really?

Greta: trust me on this.........for the money if nothing else, if not for the counterculture of it...

German tutor in his home: think of the German language as a Hollywood car crash...

Adam: what if death is like a neverending silence?

God: that would be creepy. and boring.

Adam: i don't want to die first.

Baba: me neither, that's the point. 

Adam: at least our kids are still young...

Denise: i found drugs taped to mom's hamper.

Adam: who are you now, Denise Huxtable?

Denise: Dylar. 

Adam: why does it have to have DIE in the name?!!!

doctor at home: you would call a doctor at his house at 10PM just because your wife has some shortness of breath?

Adam on his Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman kitchen phone: i sure would. especially if the doctor is Dr. Straface. i mean it's not like Dr. Straface would go out of his way on his own to move up the knee-surgery day just because there was a cancellation.

Adam: honey, do the laundry, the sheets are turning into ghosts of my sucking face.

Baba: put a sock in it, i'm tired.

Adam: this isn't a competition, you're my friend, tenure has crushed so many dreams and divided so many campuses.

Don: i just want a rotunda for my office...

The Airborne Toxic Event: yes, our band is named after this. only UNTIL THIS VERY MOMENT did you FINALLY realize the reference and know why our band was named this. congratulations.

Adam: you gotta admit it's creepy, the fictional train derailment, toxic fumes, and environmental disaster is on the EXACT SAME SITE of a REAL train derailment which spewed forth a black cloud of toxic fumes and an ensuing environmental disaster that occurred in Ohio in 2023.

Don DeLillo: yeah and my book also basically predicts covid...

Adam: i don't know that we need to bring the houseplant but...

Steffie: don't you dare call your youngest daughter useless!!!

Greta: especially not MY daughter.

Heinrich: let's play who sees a red car.........nevermind...

Adam: the gas-station scene, straight out of Friday the 13th.

Princess Zelda: blood moon, i know thee well.

that's Chloe Fineman!!!

computer: you're probably gonna die, but i dunno with 100% certainty, i'm not AI yet. and i'm distracted staring at this VERY HANDSOME AND SKINNY MAN with the heartbreak hair and pulls-you-in acting chops. his charisma is contagious, like a virus.

Don Cheadle: don't think about death, do death. 

Adam: yeah i don't think so.

Don: don't be a weak person who never kills like everybody else. here's a gun, take this gun.

Adam: why does everyone have a gun?

Don: it's the '80s. just in case your wife cheats on you.

Adam: what?

Don: i mean the survivalists.

Adam: don't worry, all cars are meant to be boats.

Iron City: a place straight out of Resident Evil.

Goebel Beer: you mean you couldn't come up with ANY OTHER NAME but that for fucking beer?!!!

ranting man: i've seen you before.

Adam: you have?

ranting man: yeah, i'm you as an old man.

at the supermarket.

Don: you know the Tibetans have an old saying: only dogs go to Heaven...

Adam: i was gonna buy some zigzag meat on a roll but that speck of butcher blood that landed on that woman's face turned me off.

Ear Horn: ...

Don: he died.

Adam: that whale of a man died? someone so large and yet so dead?

Brendan Fraser: i have a name you know. and it rhymes with razor.

Adam: there's something wrong with me.

doctor: i've never seen you in here. you never go to a doctor visit, especially all the planned ones. 

Adam with his shirt unbuttoned: because i'm a man. 

doctor: you have quite the IMPRESSIVE WIDE CHEST...

Baba: don't worry about me, i'm just in my goth phase.

Laertus: this is QUITE THE IMPRESSIVE LONG SCENE here between acting partners. the amount of lines that have to be consumed, learned, and spit out here.

Noah Baumbach: ONE TAKE!!!

Laertus: Adam and Greta are going at it talking to each other as Baba explains the affair for 30 straight minutes with no breaks!!!

Fuerza: enter is a perfectly acceptable euphemism for make love...

Adam: why'd you do it?

Baba: for the clinical-trial aspect of it.

Adam: what were those drugs for?

Baba: fear of death.

Jen R: so they're like benzos.

Eye Luggage: yeah see this makes NO SENSE. a meek person like Prof. Jack Gladney would NEVER do such a thing!!! he would never take a gun and murder in cold blood in revenge for getting cheated on. he would simply quietly swallow the fact that he got cheated on down his throat, never deal with it, and go about his day, go teach his next class...

Tyzik: whoa, this whole neon-motel sequence of scenes and checkout-desk portal play like Kill Bill.

Adam Driver and Raffey Cassidy are naked and fuck in this motel bed.

Raffey: want some chamomile tea after that?

Raffey's GIANT BUTT is completely covered with Adam Driver's dripping cum. she swings her butt side to side in Adam's face as she turns her head and smiles at Adam with a twinkly Cheshire Cat smile.

Raffey: you gotta admit, this is hot.

Adam, guiltily: i shouldn't be doing this. this is not what a teacher does.

Mr. Gray: a pistol? that's a girl gun. i was preparing for a lightsaber. are you visioning in your eye right now me dry-humping your wife on this motel bed?...

Adam: yes.........in a manner of speaking.........and i don't like it.........especially because you have a Russian accent...

German nun headmistress at the Neon Bible Hospital: of course we're atheist nuns, we have a very German take on religion.

supermarket Broadway showstopper ending dancing number.

Noah Baumbach: i made you proud with this ending, Bjork. cast of thousands up your grill.

me: i thought this was gonna be an A&W Restaurant...

LCD Soundsystem: i mean we broke up and REALLY didn't want to come out of retirement.........but.........heavy sigh, whatever...

Bjork: thank you for "New Body Rhumba," i haven't gotten out of bed, kissed my cat husband, the only person i know, and wanted to dance in forEVER...

Baba: oh look, they have Dylar over-the-counter at this supermarket...

Chowder: which shelf is the Pepper X?...

Luke Russert: there's just something about a supermarket. right? there's a celestial vibe to it, the supermarket is what Heaven will look like. it's something to do with the bright white lights, they look like clouds...

Tai: i do yoga in the aisles. those items get checked out a lot...

Luke: you haven't lived until you've eaten a Wise potato chip, they taste like owl.

Tai: g'night folks.