After being lustily tapped to create the posters for both “Billions” and “Air Bud: Surf’s Pup,” HBO finally came a-knockin’ at my doggy door to give me the big scoop: They were adapting Mickey Crichton’s original epic poem “Westworld” for the junior screen. But with beaucoup bucks behind it! I asked for nine (9) bucks to do the opening credits, and with a sultry moan, HBO agreed to the deal.
Little did I know they commissioned some bigwig chophouse named Cool Kid Cutz to make an opening credits sequence AS WELL, and they were pitting our cuts against each other to see which one would be the final version.
Cool Kid Cutz sent me their version in an unmarked brown lunchsack, just to play mind games with me:
I was incensed that they would not only try and live rent-free in my bone dome, but that they did the material so little justice! I was determined to show HBO what kind of telescape “Westworld” needed to be.
I ate the entire epic poem and stared at the IMDB page for a whole week to make sure I got all the cast names right. Then I set to work, rubbing my synapses together like creative sticks over a thought fire, and 1 hour later, I made this. I e-mailed it to them straight away, calling it “My opening credits to Westworld — Final Version.”
Anyway, they said, “Close but not quite, dipshit, you screwed up a name” ― and they never told me which name I messed up. So they went with Cool Kid Cutz, whose credits they assured were “lamebrained” and “lame but brainy.”
It’s a travesty, one which I avenged by calling up every cable provider I knew to tell them “It is TV. HBO is just TV, guys. Don’t let them fool you when they say it’s not TV. Because it is.”
Then I climbed into my bedchambers and blew out the candle of my creative spark forever.
