Independence Day Monologue

Yesterday I auditioned for student films at Pima Community College. It was a blanket audition for 20 different films. Since I’ve only done one audition before, I didn’t have a monologue ready, so they gave me this one:

Good morning. In less than an hour, aircraft from here will join others from around the world. And you will be launching the largest aerial battle in the history of mankind.

"Mankind." That word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests. Perhaps it's fate that today is the Fourth of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom... Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution... but from annihilation. We are fighting for our right to live. To exist. And should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day the world declared in one voice: "We will not go quietly into the night!" We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive! Today we celebrate our Independence Day!

You might recognize it as the monologue from Independence Day. Now, there’s no way I’m going to pull off a monologue that even Bill Pullman couldn’t salvage. But I tried. And failed miserably. Imagine reading the above monogue and getting most of the words wrong, with absolutely no expression in your voice, thinking the whole time that you should have stayed home and watched Dawson’s Creek in bed eating bon bons. You have a good starting point of how bad the monologue came out. Since I have no improv training, I wasn’t able to perform it the way I wanted to. The way it should have been performed. In the movie, I mean. This is what the President (Bill Pullman’s character) should have said:

Good morning, I’m the President of the United States, but some of you may remember me better as Lone Star from the movie Space Balls.

In less than an hour, we’re going to wrap up this train wreck of a movie that’s already run about an hour too long. Will Smith is going to say “Aaah, hell naw!!” a few more times. Jeff Goldblum is going to keep doing that annoying Jeff Goldblum thing that he does, and I’m most certainly not going to win an Oscar for this monologue that I’m performing right now.

Mankind—that word has a new meaning for us today. No longer will it simply refer to the creepy WWE character played by Mick Foley. The word will instead come to be an amalgam of two different words: “man” and “kind.” Perhaps we should all be a little kinder to each other, but not to the aliens, because that would be silly.

Perhaps its fate that today is the Independence Day, and that the movie is called Independence Day, and that it was released on the Independence Day. Yes, fate, or some kind of genius marketing scheme. From this day forward, should we win, the Fourth of July will no longer be an American holiday, but a worldwide one. Except for the French, whom you will notice are conspicuously absent from the group of fighter pilots. Pussies.

Let’s face it people, we’re all gonna die. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but those are fucking aliens we’re up against, with fucking laser beams. They are single-minded in their purpose, which is to wipe our asses of the map, and most likely feel no pain. I mean, let’s say hypothetically we defeat these bastards. There’s probably another wave waiting behind that one. We’re fucking screwed people. Pray to whatever god you believe in. Not like it’ll do any good, cause the aliens probably took them out first.

Smoke if you got ‘em!

Way better, right? This actually inspired me to begin work on a new screenplay called ID42: Cinco de Mayo. More on that later…