#188: "It Was a Good Theory"
Arthur Trope Presents: The Inscrutables
No. 188
“It Was a Good Theory”
The Bollywood deal is off. ‘Miss 4th of July’ won’t be a movie after all, at least not India. Artie said, you have to know when to walk, & he walked. In the end, he got comfortable w shifting the origin story from Ashtabula, Ohio in 1957 to modern-day Puri. And changing the timeline to the start Ratha-Yatra, the Chariot Festival of Lord Jagannath, which only occasionally falls on the 4th of July. He didn’t love the singing & dance routines they wanted to put in - they insisted on a minimum of 4 - but he was getting ok w it. But the last straw came when they mentioned, almost casually, that they wanted to switch the lead role to a man and offer it to Amitabh Bachchan. Artie couldn’t bear to look Syd in the eye and tell her not only was she not going to be played by Felicity Huffman, but the role was going to a man. Even if that man was box office gold. So that’s it. No red carpet premiere in Mumbai and no Gus the Cat animated feature bundled in. Artie’s on his way home. He sketched out #188 at who-knows-what hour last night, probably from the Virgin Atlantic lounge at Heathrow while getting his heels scraped, & even though I try not to read too much into these things, I’ll go ahead and interpret it as a world-weary statement on his disappointment at having traveled the globe & failed to reach his goal. On the other hand, Artie got word that Konishiki loved the sumo comic from last week and he got an invitation from the great sumo champ’s people to visit Tokyo for the September tournament. I guess the panel took off in Japan, bc that + we have two potential licensing deals in the works with Sanrio (the Hello, Kitty people), one for plush dolls & one for pencil cases. Slothrop & Artie are both thrilled at the same time, which makes the universe feel sort of out of whack, but we’ll enjoy the moment. If I know Artie, the wheels are already turning on a “Little Kenji” franchise, with a bundle deal for a manga-style version of Asparagus the two-faced, culturally insensitive, alt-country cat from Cats. -Ed.
