Hannah Montana: The Movie (3rd draft, by Tom Stoppard)

From the development vaults of Walt Disney Pictures, dated: February 18, 2008:

(EXT. Crowley Corners, Tennessee - Hannah Montana and best friend Lilly watch cows in a pasture.)

Hannah: Staring at these grazing ungulates, I question my own identity. Are they better off masticating the dew-flecked herbage below them, unaware of the charnelhouse that awaits? Are they secure in the knowledge of their own existence?

Lilly: They are cows, that is all. They are there and then they are not, not not and whatnot. That is their only proof of existence.

Hannah: Schopenhauer says, "Every man takes the limit of his own field of vision for the limits of the world." Are we eternally bound to this corporeal dimension? Is there a hereafter?

Killy: A here, perhaps, not necessarily an after.

Hannah: If there is or there is not, I should like to know then that my ignorance of its irreality is equally and justifiably real.

(Brody approaches, riding a horse.)

Brody: Mornin', ladies.

(The horse shits on Hannah's shoes.)

Hannah: Sweet niblets! I will not have my Manolos sullied by equine evacuation!

(Brody rides off.)

Lilly: Your indignity parallels the canon of Chaucerian excrement, in which the body of all mankind--filthy, selfish, primitive--obeys the ritual of process and transmutation.

Hannah: Chaucer say what?!

Lilly: Now is the time for change, dear Hannah, to modify that pivot where stasis and momentum co-exist.

Hannah: If navigating my career is analogous to food wending its luscious way as locusts through a horse's dank innards, then I must move with haste or become stuck in an endless gastric phase, with no acetylcholine in sight.

Lilly: A person mastering an unbreakable horse is no less masterful than a person not mastering a breakable horse.

Hannah: Or just as masterful.

Lilly: Or masterfully just.

(Lilly exits. From behind a haystack, an older Hannah Montana appears and faces her younger self.)

Hannah: Do I make the right choice? Is my future justified?

Older Hannah: Is anything justified?

Older Hannah/Hannah: Ah...sweet niblets.

(They exit.)

Comments

[Cynthia Nowak]

Hmm, my first comment - which said that this effort at a literary parody was lame - was declined. Censorship at Huffington? Ironic. I'm an English prof, incidentally, who's used Stoppard plays in class, so I might know of what I post. He's also my second-favorite playwright, so I admit to some prejudice.

[salvesons]

Really good Stoppard imitation, thanks. the high mind/low farce, the wordplay, the excessive jargon... reminds me of my college days before I couldn't follow his plays on stage anymore due to their density.

[rjmiller]

That was wonderful.

[Jeff Hendren]

This reminds me of the time I spent describing Britney Spears' film 'Crossroads', as the story of how Britney sold her soul to the Devil to become the greatest blues guitar player of all time. The movies in the alternate universe are pretty awesome, even if Blade Runner became a musical called Replicant(!).

[Charity]

say what you will, but in five or less years, miley cyrus will be an award winning country singer. i know, i know...but she's got the chops. right now, she's a self absorbed, hollywoodized disneyfied 16 year old - but just like justin timberlake, she will surprise us all by breaking out of her teen/tween niche, growing up, and owning a piece of the adult country charts.

[Chrisallalone]

See, I woulda SEEN that movie. Taken the kids, too.