FADE IN:

EXT. SOUTH PACIFIC

YOUNG BROOKE SHIELDS and YOUNG CHRISTOPHER ATKINS are passengers on a VICTORIAN-ERA SAILING SHIP, along with CHRISTOPHER’S DAD WILLIAM DANIELS and GALLEY COOK LEO MCKERN.

YOUNG CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

i miss my mommy who is dead of vague dead parent syndrome

YOUNG BROOKE SHIELDS

well i miss both my vaguely dead parents so shut up i win

WILLIAM DANIELS

Ah yes, I remember the days before good child actors. NOT missing those days. But hmmm, two mostly-orphans on a nineteenth century sailboat, this seems like the setup for some kind of trashy erotic novel...

LEO MCKERN

Ye best be believin’ in trashy erotic novels! YER IN ONE! YARRR!

WILLIAM DANIELS

Really not holding back with the nautical stereotype, are you there Rumpole?

LEO MCKERN

(with parrot and eyepatch suddenly)

AVAST ME HEARTIES! YO HO HO! WEIGH ANCHOR AND HOIST THE MIZZEN!

WILLIAM DANIELS

All right, all right, just settle down and lets start mechanically forcing this movie’s super-contrived premise into place.

LEO MCKERN

Shiver me timbers, the ship is on fire somehow all of a sudden!

WILLIAM DANIELS

Ah. Shall we try to put it out?

LEO MCKERN

No, it’s about to set off the gunpowder! Abandon ship!

WILLIAM DANIELS

The gunpowder? On this small unarmed commercial vessel which is carrying civilian passengers?

LEO MCKERN

Aye, why not! TO THE LIFEBOATS! Come on kids, me and two small children will take a whole ten-man lifeboat for ourselves while my fellow crew plunge helplessly into the sea around us!

They DO THIS. The ship EXPLODES into a MILLION PIECES and by the time the smoke clears, NONE OF THE OTHER LIFEBOATS are ANYWHERE IN SIGHT.

LEO MCKERN

Curses! I suppose I will have to use every navigation technique at my disposal to - eh, fuck it, a plot this contrived we might as well just lounge around until we randomly drift to land.

EXT. ISLAND

The KIDS and LEO happen upon a BEAUTIFUL TROPICAL ISLAND!

LEO MCKERN

Excellent, it’s one of those super-convenient islands that exist in abundance in fiction, with easily-accessible fresh water, permanently pleasant weather, no dangerous wildlife, an abundance of building materials, and tons of delicious fresh fruits that are all available year-round!

YOUNG BROOKE SHIELDS

does that include big juicy sweet fruit which in real life only developed through centuries of artificial cultivation

LEO MCKERN

EXCLUSIVELY that! Maybe the island natives are expert agriculturists? Oh that reminds me, there are cannibals on this island too. You must NEVER go near them, am I clear?

YOUNG BROOKE SHIELDS

don’t worry we won’t

LEO MCKERN

Great!

YOUNG CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

no she means we literally won’t

YOUNG BROOKE SHIELDS

the natives will be brought up like a dozen times but then we’ll never interact with them at all

YOUNG CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

not sure what they’re even in the movie for really

LEO MCKERN

Huh. Oh well, never mind, how about I get you guys some survivalist skills!

He teaches them how to FISH, build SHELTER, make ROPE, pretty much all the skills the plot requires them to have.

LEO MCKERN

Is that everything? Okay then, that’s my plot function served!

(just vaguely dies offscreen, who even cares how)

YOUNG CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

oh no the man who saved our lives is dead

YOUNG BROOKE SHIELDS

should we make some effort to bury him i mean it’s been established that we know about burying corpses so it’s kind of the least we could do

YOUNG CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

naw let’s just leave him to get eaten by crabs and fuck off to a different part of the beach where we don’t have to think about his bloated remains putrefying in the sun

They take the LIFEBOAT to a part of the ISLAND which is quite visibly not a LAGOON. LEO being already HAPPILY FORGOTTEN they frolic naked in the water, swimming right over the underwater camera with just every damn thing on display OKAY THAT’S ENOUGH CHILD GENITALIA FOR ONE MOVIE I THINK, TIME TO SKIP AHEAD A FEW YEARS

EXT. BEACH - YEARS LATER

The two CHILDREN have grown up into BROOKE SHIELDS and CHRISTOPHER ATKINS.

BROOKE SHIELDS

Woo, look at us now! After spending years of physical labor in the island sun away from civilization and modern medicine, we have perfect skin, perfect teeth, no scars or callouses or parasites, even perfectly-groomed hair!

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

Indeed! Observe my ridiculously pristine golden eighties-style perm, and the lack of even a single hair anywhere else on my entire body!

BROOKE SHIELDS

Whereas my long flowing hair has an uncanny habit of sitting modestly over my nipples like Lady Godiva. Until my body double steps in, at which point I just let it allll hang out.

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

But best of all, since they cast a couple of blocks of wood as the young us, our mid-tier Hallmark movie acting skills make us seem like charisma powerhouses by comparison!

BROOKE SHIELDS

(bites lip)

So what do you say, should we start fucking like rabbits? According to its reputation that’s pretty much the only thing that even happens in this movie.

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

(flips through next thirty pages of script)

Um... I wouldn’t hold my breath on that if I were you.

BROOKE SHIELDS

Oh. So wait, other stuff DOES happen in this thing?

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

(flips through another thirty pages)

Not as far as I can tell.

They head back to their SHELTER, which by now they have developed into a THREE-STORY BEACH MANSION complete with JACUZZI and MONKEY BUTLERS.

BROOKE SHIELDS

(ogling Christopher)

Oh Christopher, I don’t know why, but when I stare at your barely-visible muscles and stupid hairdo my head is filled with strange thoughts... what about you? What’s going on in your mind?

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

(actual line)

I wonder what fish think?

BROOKE SHIELDS

Damnit! Curse teenage boys and their notorious lack of horniness and disinterest in sex!

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

Whatever. I’m off to have a random fishing scene which serves no purpose whatsoever.

They wander around. They talk about NOTHING. BROOKE goes night swimming with glow-in-the-dark sea foam and radioactive fish. They bicker about NOTHING. They wrestle on the BEACH.

BROOKE SHIELDS

Okay, this is something, this is at least sex-adjacent. Are we gonna fuck yet?

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

Nope, still a ways off.

BROOKE SHIELDS

Argh, I’m running out of ways to fill in time.

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

What if we did a random fishing scene which serves no purpose whatsoever?

BROOKE SHIELDS

Another one?

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

Another one.

They DO THAT. This manages to kill about NINETY SECONDS.

BROOKE SHIELDS

Okay then, what else. Oh I know, maybe I could waste some time on that pointless go-nowhere cannibal storyline.

She wanders into the JUNGLE and finds a HUGE STONE IDOL.

BROOKE SHIELDS

Hey Christopher, check it out! I think this is God!

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

God? You think a big blood-smeared rock that looks like a Mr. Potato Head that got run over by a bus... is the Christian God?

BROOKE SHIELDS

Apparently? My Sunday school teacher must have been on crack.

INT. BEACH MANSION

One night, BROOKE has a NIGHTMARE.

BROOKE SHIELDS

AAIIEEE!! Oh Christopher, it was horrible, you were poisoned and drowned and dead and crabs were crawling out of your lifeless corpse!

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

Huh, after all the time you’ve spent prancing around me naked, apparently THIS is what makes me finally want to nail you. Go figure. Anyway, let’s finally go to town!

(starts grinding on Brooke)

BROOKE SHIELDS

Ew, no! Despite every indication to the contrary, I’m apparently not ready to get physical with you.

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

Aw come on! Fine then, I guess I’ll just grope you while you’re sleeping then.

BROOKE SHIELDS

Fuck OFF.

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

ALL RIGHT GEEZ WHATEVER! If you’re gonna be like that, seems like I have no choice to go full teenage boy all at once and start masturbating round the clock!

(runs off and starts jerking it)

BROOKE SHIELDS

(gags)

This is us trying to make a sexy movie?! Eraserhead wasn’t this much of a turn-off.

EXT. BEACH

One day our heroes are separately off doing their usual FUCK ALL, when a SHIP appears on the horizon! BROOKE, who is sitting three feet away from the SIGNAL FIRE, doesn’t bother to light it.

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DOOOOO

BROOKE SHIELDS

I just unilaterally decided that we’re better off where we are. I mean look at everything we have! Swimming! Fruit! Plain unseasoned fish! ...Um... a makeshift shack built out of sticks... oh, all sorts of things! Who even needs dumb old things like medicine and proper clothes and music and sleeping in beds and talking to other people and not having sand riding up your crack twenty-four hours a day?

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

FUCK THIS ISLAND AND FUCK YOU. That’s it, I’m throwing a ten-megawatt sulk until further notice, get out of my house!

(hurls her belongings out the window)

BROOKE SHIELDS

Boy, I bet the audience is really rooting for the dumb selfish asshole to hook up with the petulant whiny douchebag right now.

They continue to PUTTER AROUND THE BEACH, but now AWAY FROM EACH OTHER. Then one day BROOKE steps on a STONEFISH!

BROOKE SHIELDS

Oh no! Help me, Christopher!

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

A stonefish?! Oh shit, those things are awful! Their venom causes swelling, intense pain, vomiting, cramps, seizures, and death!!

BROOKE SHIELDS

Ew, no. Don’t you get this movie yet? We only do the pretend, pretty version of anything, so this sting will only cause me to poignantly faint for a while, OoOoOoohhhhh...

(swoons)

CHRISTOPHER blubbers over BROOKE’S photogenic Sleeping Beauty-style coma until she WAKES UP.

BROOKE SHIELDS

Oh, I’m all better now! And now we’re finally properly in love!

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

Thank God. Does that mean we can get to the sex scenes which, for better or worse, are the only reason anybody bothers to even watch this movie?

BROOKE SHIELDS

Yes, at long last let’s do... the thing. The, I don’t know, whatever vague thing we’ve been feeling like doing for a while now!

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

Yeah, I’ll just, like, rub my biceps against your neck or, um...

BROOKE SHIELDS

Hmm, that’s a thought, with our crappy Victorian-era level of sex education, how the hell are we even gonna even figure out the mechanics of this? Maybe if you put your foot in my ear, or...

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

Hmmmnope. You could try rubbing my eyeball with your pinky finger - OW, NO. Damnit! Okay, I’mma try a bunch of different body part combinations until I find one that works, you just... keep the mood going with some dirty talk okay?

BROOKE SHIELDS

You got it. OOH YEAH BABY, OUR CHARACTERS ARE MEANT TO BE COUSINSSSS

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

(rubbing his calf on Brooke’s forehead)

Ew, ixnay on the ousincay! The book was written in a different time, people aren’t into that shit anymore. Try something else!

BROOKE SHIELDS

MMMMM, WHEN WE FILMED THIS SCENE I WAS ONLY FOURTEEN YEARS OLD

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

(putting his nose into Brooke’s belly button)

Not helping!

Somehow they figure out how to put TAB A into SLOT B. They chastely kiss while lying perfectly motionless on top of one another like stacked firewood.

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

What? This is it?! After all that buildup, THIS is our big sex scene?

BROOKE SHIELDS

Like I just said: fourteen years old. There are only so many things they can have me do.

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

Well bring in the body doubles then, Jesus.

We cut to an AWKWARD TANGLE OF LIMBS. A SHOULDER BLADE here, a KNEECAP there. What may or may not be a BUTT CHEEK. What seems like a greater number of ELBOWS than there should be.

BROOKE SHIELDS

For fuck’s sake. This doesn’t even look like sex, it looks like a game of Twister gone horribly wrong.

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

Oh well, if this is the quality of our sex scenes, I guess we’ll just have to make up for it with quantity.

We enter an extended SEX MONTAGE. BROOKE and CHRISTOPHER stroll through the jungle and then they FUCK. They go swimming and then FUCK. They wander the beach and then get SAND in all kinds of INTERESTING PLACES.

BROOKE SHIELDS

Ahhh, this is the life! Just lounging around in paradise, constantly doing this super awesome thing which makes our bodies feel great and will surely have no consequen-

(throws up)

Ulp! That’s weird. Must have come down with someth-

(starts throwing up at all hours for weeks on end)

OH GOD WHY WON’T IT STOP

MONTHS LATER...

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

WHY IS YOUR STOMACH STILL SWELLING IT LOOKS LIKE YOU’RE GOING TO EXPLODE

BROOKE SHIELDS

(clutching belly)

HOLY FUCK THERE’S SOMETHING MOVING AROUND IN THERE!!

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

WHAT?! WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?!?

BROOKE SHIELDS

I DON’T KNOOOOOOWWWWW

MONTHS LATER...

BROOKE SHIELDS

YYYEEEEAAAAAARRRRGGGGHHHH, THIS IS THE END, I AM CLEARLY DYING

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

HEEEEELLLLPPP - WAIT WHAT IS THAT? OH NO NO NO NO NO NO DEAR GOD NO

BROOKE SHIELDS

WHAT?

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

A - A - A FUCKING BABY IS CRAWLING OUT OF YOUR GENITALS!!

BROOKE SHIELDS

WHAAAT?!

(looks)

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

BROOKE SHIELDS

I’M LEAKING A WEIRD NEW BODILY FLUID AND THE BABY IS CONSUMING IT, WHAT IS HAPPENING WE ARE IN THE LAND OF NIGHTMARES

DIRECTOR RANDAL KLEISER

(running in)

Okay, yes, nice job guys, that sure was the right level of terrified confusion for this contrived made-up scenario. But Brooke, remember how you described this movie a little while ago?

BROOKE SHIELDS

Uhm, you mean “pretend and pretty”?

DIRECTOR RANDAL KLEISER

That’s it! So if I could get you to do that whole sequence over, but this time dial the energy waaayyy down to something that’s honestly not the least bit plausible, okay?

We go back to the start of the PREGNANCY SEQUENCE.

BROOKE SHIELDS

Huh. I’m throwing up all the time. And look, now my stomach is swelling up like a basketball.

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

That’s kinda weird. Any idea what the living creature writhing around in there might be?

BROOKE SHIELDS

Beats me. Oh, wait; it just slid painfully out of my vagina. Turns out it was a baby.

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

Oh a baby, nice. Let’s keep it.

They do some more scenes of HANGING AROUND, only now there’s a BABY ADDED IN so it’s at least slightly fresh. One day, another SHIP appears on the horizon. This one has WILLIAM on it and now he has EINSTEIN HAIR.

BROOKE SHIELDS

Hey look, a boat. Should we signal them?

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

Nah. Even though you’d think giving birth by ourselves under a tree would have made us realize that civilization is a fucking useful thing to have around, I figure, fuck it, let’s stay here. After all, nothing bad can happen to us here as long as plot contrivances are on our side.

BROOKE SHIELDS

True. Plot contrivances will always do what we need. Look at the way we just HAPPEN to have smeared ourselves with dark mud seconds before William scanned the shore with a telescope, which was the only way that your glow-in-the-dark hairdo wouldn’t be instantly recognizable to him.

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

Yeah, plot contrivances are basically our bitch by this point, ha ha!

PLOT CONTRIVANCES

(grinding teeth)

Oh REALLY. Is THAT what you think.

(grabs movie script, starts scribbling in it while muttering darkly)

EXT. OCEAN

One day BROOKE and the BABY are out drifting in the COMPLETELY UNANCHORED LIFEBOAT when the BABY happens to throw one of the OARS overboard.

BROOKE SHIELDS

Oh, shoot! I suppose I could swim to the oar and back in about twenty seconds, but instead I’ll call Christopher to come all the way out into the water to get it for me.

She does, but then a SHARK starts chasing CHRISTOPHER! BROOKE hurls the REMAINING OAR at the SHARK’S HEAD, buying CHRISTOPHER the few seconds necessary for him to SCRAMBLE ABOARD, and NOW the family is ADRIFT AT SEA.

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

Oof. That was a BAD plot contrivance.

BROOKE SHIELDS

Well this is gonna be an ugly end. Slowly dying of dehydration at sea, that’ll be slow and full of suffering and leave some nasty-looking corpses.

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

It’s not so bad. The plot contrivances at least left us a little present. Check what the baby happens to have just grabbed off the beach.

BROOKE SHIELDS

(opens baby’s hand)

Poison berries! Enough for two adults to commit suicide with! And the baby’s already swallowed some, so we can skirt around the awkward question of infanticide, that’s nice.

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

(frowns)

Although I guess poison berries aren’t much of an improvement over dehydration. What with the vomiting and bloody diarrhea and extremely painful abdominal cramps-

BROOKE SHIELDS

Hey, pretend and pretty, remember? They’ll just make us go quietly to sleep.

CHRISTOPHER ATKINS

Oh cool. So instead of nasty, it’ll be some people’s completely messed-up idea of romantic. Okay then, down the hatch!

They swallow the BERRIES and then go to SLEEP. But not long afterwards, who should stumble across them but WILLIAM in his SHIP!

WILLIAM DANIELS

Oh no, am I too late? No wait, they’re breathing at least! So the audience can at least choose to believe that these two idiots made it through in the end by dumb luck, hooray!

(pause)

Unless an even worse sequel were to kill the ambiguity, I suppose. But I seriously doubt that such a stupid, lame, gross, BOOORRRING turd of a movie could ever make enough money to warrant a sequel!

RETURN TO THE BLUE LAGOON

You give people way too much credit, buddy.

(canonically kills Brooke and Christopher off)

END.