Dreams, a Window To the Soul

I had the most amazing dream last night, and it would be a crime not to share it. What follows is a full account of an actual dream that I actually had:

I am at a comic convention, and there is a booth where you can meet Jerry Bruckheimer. There is no line, and he looks lonely, so I go over to talk to him. He is very excited to see me, and says I would be perfect for a role in his upcoming Prince of Persia movie. He immediately calls Mike Newell over the phone and describes me, and Mike agrees with his assessment, so he offers me the part of “Heinrich the Space Nazi.” I refuse the offer based on three criteria: One, it’s a terrible idea; two, I’m not an actor; three, I don’t want to have millions of Prince of Persia fans hating me because I’m the goddamn Space Nazi that ruined their movie going experience. Jerry looks disappointed, but gives me his autograph and I walk away. I look at the paper, and notice Jerry has sketched a drawing of me shooting a gun, while riding on a giant gun, which is being shot by a third, even larger gun. The way he managed to actually depict this logic-defying concept in a way that was immediately recognizable impressed me, and I began to think that if anyone could pull off a red-headed Space Nazi in a Prince of Persia movie, it was Jerry Bruckheimer.

I took the offer, and was immediately flown out to Scotland. Jerry wanted to show me an old castle where they were going to shoot a scene from the movie. He walked me around, excitedly pointing out each step of the parkour choreography. “And here, the prince runs on this wall, jumps that other wall, and when that wall collapses, he jumps on another wall!” Jerry’s enthusiasm is adorable, but on a more subtle level, deeply alarming.

As we leave, I am following his car on a Scottish freeway through countryside that looks exactly like Southern California. I want to voice some concerns about the movie with him but, perhaps fooled by the scenery, I remember that it’s illegal to use your cell phone in California. I pull up beside him and gyrate my fist, the universal hand signal for “roll down your window.” As we speed down the freeway side by side, I shout at the top of my lungs how strange it is that we are shooting a movie that takes place in Persia in a Scottish castle. “Don’t worry,” he bellows back, “we do this kind of shit all the time!” He then instructs me to take the next exit.

We follow some sleepy mountain roads for a while, which eventually become dirt roads, which eventually become no roads. Finally Jerry stops at a disgusting bog and gets out of his car. He says we are going to have to swim here. “No fucking way,” I calmly explain to him, “we are going to get so fucking dead doing this.” He explains that if you float on your bag most of the way, it’s actually pretty easy to get to the other side without being sucked underneath into a slimy grave. “Why can’t we just take the freeway?” I inquire. He answers by removing his clothes, and duct taped all over his body are bags of pure, uncut, Scottish cocaine. “You can’t get this stuff in the states,” he explains. “In fact, we aren’t actually shooting the movie here, I just wanted to come here to get it.” I told him I wouldn’t help him smuggle drugs out of Scotland, and that I assumed there was also no Space Nazi in the movie. “Actually,” he said, “we still think that idea is pretty rad.” I told him I would have to think about it. I got home, and decided I would take the part after all. But then I completely forgot to call Jerry back.

Eventually the movie came out, and when I saw the Space Nazi I had to admit that he was, in fact, totally rad.