Producing : The Dark Side Of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Amazing Ideas For A New Screenplay! by Colin Rowntree

Colin Rowntree

The Dark Side Of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Amazing Ideas For A New Screenplay!

Want to write some dark topic scripts for Wasteland Studios? Here are a few key plot elements from the 1960s Children TV Classic, "Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer" that you can use as plot cornerstones:

1. At one point, the Abominable Snowmonster tries to murder Rudolph in front of his parents by smashing a giant stalactite on his head. As our gentle hero lies facedown, concussed and unresponsive, his own girlfriend—the beautiful, long-lashed Clarice— wonders aloud why the snowman won’t put the little reindeer out of his misery: “Why doesn’t he get it over with?” This was Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, not The Third Man.

2. Meanwhile, back at Santa’s workshop— a phrase that should connote only the jolliest of associations— a dark tale is unfolding. Santa, it turns out, presides over a nonunion shop where underproducing elves are deprived of breaks and humiliated; they dream not of Christmas, but of escape. Poorly constructed toys are thrown onto a bare and frozen island, where they cry and wander. How long have they been there? A year? A thousand years?

3. The voices for Rudolph were Canadian actor Billie Mae Richards. There was a voice for his infancy, his boyhood, and his adolescence, all of them unguarded and gentle—a sweet vulnerability that slayed me. It later slayed Richards: After she realized why the producers had gone with a Canadian—to avoid paying residuals on a work that would become a monster hit.

4. Of all the disturbing things in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, nothing competes with Donner’s rejection of his son. Donner is horrified by the nose, in a “no son of mine” kind of way. One of the numerous readings of the show is that it is a parable about the hardship faced by gay kids in mid-century America, many of whom were rejected by their fathers, their peers, and their teachers.

5. Back at Santa’s little forced labor camp, we are supposed to understand that blond, dreamy-eyed Hermey wants to be a dentist, not a toy maker. (What he really wants to do, in my opinion, is join the drama club, but that might have been too much for NBC.) Foreman Elf—who, come the revolution, will not be dealt with kindly— humiliates him repeatedly. When Hermey tells him, tentatively, that he doesn’t want to make toys, Foreman Elf repeats the phrase in the “sissy” voice that has haunted gay boys down through the ages.

6. Rudolph’s father doesn’t love him! He doesn’t even … want him. Rudolph, too, runs away from home, ultimately finding companionship in Hermey and a prospector named Yukon Cornelius, but he realizes that he is a danger to them because he draws the attention of the Abominable Snow Monster. One night, while the other two sleep, he slips away. In the moonlight, he steps onto an ice floe and sails away from us on the dark blue water, unloved, unwanted, and alone.

There ya go guys! Go make a Sado-masochism script to make us proud!

Happy Holidays from Wasteland - The Darker Side Of Christmas

Kurt Empey

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