Let’s Be a Movie or Book About Mother Russia

I’m Tolstoy. I already wrote it. Repeatedly.

I’m the romantic triangle at the center of every plot.

I’m Vasili, Sasha, Mikhail, Anton, Misha, and Alexi, the lead characters. Elena and a bunch of Russian fraus round out the cast. There is no one named Boris unless he is a Major or above, and a real dick.

I’m the British English accent they speak in, if they don’t actually speak in Russian.

I'm a pretty, nublie Russian lady, just barely out of my teens, who posts racy, suggestive selfies on the internet with the hopes of landing a rich man. American, European, Arab, Chinese, any man will do as long as he's rich and can take me out of this miserable hellhole.

If there is no God. then all is permitted!

I am fate looming heavily over everyone and everything.

r6, Dostoevsky.

The Russians seem very big on fate.

R9, ya think?

Tea.

... in the samovar.

I’m the Russian Jew, who is going to get the shit beat out of him by everybody by the end of the story.

I'm the steppe.

I’m the “bad news call to Moscow”, that everybody talks about but nobody wants to make.

I’m the submarine, or cannon, or sailing ship, whatever, that doesn’t work. Why can’t their shit work?

Fur hats.

I'm "In the Russian Style", edited by Jacqueline Onassis. Why did she even give a fuck?

I’m the babushka! I can be found stirring a big pot of something for dinner! I don’t have any lines.

I'm the doomed heroine, unlucky in love and ostracized from my family and my social class. My jealousies and petty insecurities drive the ones I love away and I begin to crack and make rash decisions. Do I hear the train coming?

I'm Julie Christie. She makes me go misty.

I’m Siberia.

I’m also a gulag.

I’m the Russian-made vehicles that always looked dilapidated.

I’m this guy’s wardrobe.

I'm the over crowded room that is the living space of 10 families.

I'm the knout that flew off the frayed rope into the face of the novitiate nun who was fucking the entire priory.

I’m the car-crash video compiler who is cleaning up on Russia’s number one export.

I'm the Russian made planes nobody wants to fly all my maintenance records are fake.

I'm Oleg Menshikov. I play roles meant for men half my age but are given to me because, apparently, I'm the only actor in Russia and the region. Also, I'm not gay. No. Never. See, I even married a woman I'd never met before. So I'm straight, remember that.

I'm the Russian teenage sold into sex slavery in a foreign country against my will.

I am the musical number with happy workers dancing on a tractor or factory floor.

I’m Ivan, the one R3 forgot.

I'm the self pity that permeates the unlikeable characters and their self destructive, morally bankrupt actions.

I am the Cheetos being served at the craft service snack table. Only Cheetos. After all, He did make Russia Relevant Again.

I'm the cheap vodka that keeps everyone drunk and docile.

I’m the Manchurian Candidate who secretly meets with Putin to get his marching orders.

I’m the Amber Room. I disappeared in the aftermath of the War, never to be found again.

I’m a faberge egg, I was purchased in a Baltimore flea market for $20 by people who didn't know what they had. I sit on the fireplace mantle of the buyer, until an elderly academic is invited to dinner and recognizes it. The movie then flashbacks to the egg’s creation and follows it over time to Baltimore.

I’m shopping this idea around Hollywood as we speak.