NURSERY
DEIRDRE VOUSCH, late twenties, is breastfeeding her child, BURT. The camera pans back to reveal HARLAND VOUSCH, early thirties, painting a picture of his wife and child.
NARRATOR (VOICE OVER)
Burt was the first and last child born to Deirdre and Harland Vousch. Harland was an accomplished painter of world renown. His wife, Deirdre, was widely regarded as one of the most beautiful women of her generation. She was Harland’s inspiration. His paintings of her hung in galleries from Long Beach to London, Toulouse to Tokyo, Hong Kong to Havana. The birth of their first child, a son, was an occasion of great excitement. The world waited with expectation bordering on hysteria to see the Vousch child, whose pedigree promised a great career as a model, an artist, or both.
For Harland, his wife’s transition to motherhood opened an entirely new universe of possibilities for his paintings, a new period of his distinguished career to capture the essence, grace, and enduring beauty of motherhood.
DEIRDRE, strokes BURT on his head while he continues to nurse. HARLAND adjusts the light.
NARRATOR (Continue VO)
When their son was born, everyone agreed that the child of Deirdre and Harland was beautiful: a work of art in human form. Burt was bright, precocious, and even at such a young age, one could see that he looked to his mother with the same love and adoration that his father did. It was a family full of love and mutual admiration. But then, one day, when the baby began teething, something went wrong.
DEIRDRE winces in pain and jerks the baby away from her breast. She puts her hand to her chest, and then raises her fingers—they are bloody. HARLAND races over and tends to her. She is more surprised than hurt.
NARRATOR
Burt, as it turned out, had been born with a prodigious set of teeth. Teeth that began to come in quite early.
CUT TO NURSERY, NEXT DAY
We see DEIRDRE pretending to breast-feed, holding her baby away from her chest while HARLAND tries to paint her. But somehow the baby bites her anyway. HARLAND races over to tend to her, again. He moves the baby away, placing BURT alone on a table. BURT cries, distressed to be away from his mother.
NARRATOR
While Deirdre had been pregnant, she and Harland had entertained using such names for the baby as Michelangelo, Sidneyo, or Picasso, but now, Harland decided to name the baby, simply Burt.
CUT TO KITCHEN, A FEW YEARS LATER.
HARLAND, DEIRDRE, and BURT (three or four-years-old now) sit at the table. BURT finishes his plate of food, then begins to chew on the plate, taking a bite out of it.
NARRATOR
Burt had a teething period that lasted longer than most children. This was an incredibly stressful time for his parents. If they were not careful, he would eat his toys, his clothes, even his furniture. But they learned that interfering with him was dangerous for, sometimes, being young and not knowing better, his mouth would stray.
CUT TO PLAYROOM
We see DEIRDRE reaching down to take a toy out of BURT’S mouth. She jerks her hand away in pain. BURT looks up, in sorrow. HARLAND comes into the room, and DEIRDRE hides her bleeding hand behind her back.
CUT TO HALLWAY, NIGHT
Light flashes as a thunderstorm rages outside. BURT runs, terrified, down a dark hallway to his parent’s bedroom, where he wakes up DEIRDRE. She soothes him and pulls him into bed with her. They sleep soundly through the storm.
CUT TO MORNING
DEIRDRE jerks upward, clasping her shoulder. HARLAND also awakens. He looks down at BURT who is sleeping soundly. HARLAND tries to pry DEIRDRE’S hand away from her shoulder. She resists as long as she can, until he overpowers her and sees that there is blood on her shoulder. HARLAND turns to BURT, swings him out of the bed by his wrist, and carries him out of the bedroom. DEIRDRE tries to reach her son, but HARLAND keeps them apart. Mother and child scream and weep.
NARRATOR
It was the last straw. To Harland, Deirdre was his most prized and treasured work of art, made by God’s own hands. He would let no one threaten that beauty. Not even his son.
CUT TO FRONT LAWN OF PRIVATE BOARDING SCHOOL.
BURT stands curbside in an oversized suit with a Dolce & Gabbana suitcase. Under his arm are a few art books. He is wearing a restraint on his jaw. HARLAND stands by their Alfa Romeo tapping his feet, flicking his lighter, and chain smoking. DEIRDRE hugs her son, wipes her eyes, and gives BURT bags of trail mix, caramel squares, and saltwater taffy. HARLAND comes over to her and pulls her away. BURT watches as they drive off.
NARRATOR
Harland arranged to send Burt away to school. The rest of his childhood was spent studying. During the summers his father signed Burt up for summer school, so he rarely could come home. During this time Harland was prolific. His best-selling works were always his portraits of Deirdre.
CUT TO STUDIO IN ART SCHOOL
ART STUDENTS stand in silence, watching HARLAND paint another portrait of DEIRDRE, in which she is holding a different baby. When the baby begins to cry and she is not able to soothe him, the baby’s MOTHER steps over, takes him, and calms him. DEIRDRE watches the child move farther away with longing. HARLAND steps in to turn her chin back to an angle he wants.
NARRATOR
For two weeks a year, Burt would come home. These were joyous times for him. He lived for those two weeks that he could see his mother. They sustained him for the rest of the lonely year.
CUT TO KITCHEN
BURT is at the kitchen table. He finishes his meal and begins nibbling at his fork. HARLAND does not notice. DEIRDRE shoots him a look, he stops, and they both smile.
CUT TO DORM ROOM
We see BURT studying at his desk. He is older now, in his early teens. He no longer wears a mouth restraint.
NARRATOR
Burt was growing up to be a normal and happy young man, if not for a few odd habits.
Beside BURT there are a few dozen pencils, chewed almost beyond recognition.
NARRATOR
He did well in school.
CUT TO CLASSROOM
BURT sits in class, chewing a pencil, and raises his hand.
NARRATOR
And he had many friends.
BURT sits on a lawn with a few other students, a teacher watching from nearby. BURT is chewing a huge wad of gum, laughing and joking with the other students.
CUT TO OUTSIDE THE VOUSCHS’ HOUSE
BURT runs up his walk with his suitcase and finds a note on the door.
NARRATOR
One year, there were no summer classes due to renovations at the boarding school. Burt was overjoyed. He rushed home once sessions were dismissed. He could not wait to see his mother. But when he reached the house, he found that his parents were gone. His father had taken Deirdre to the Seychelles, thinking that being around Burt for the whole summer would be stressful for her. He said so in the note he left for Burt. Of course, he had not told Deirdre that their son would be left home alone.
CUT TO KITCHEN
We pan over a floor covered with discarded take-out containers and delivery menus from a variety of restaurants. BURT sits next to an open and empty refrigerator. There are empty bags and containers all about him. He chews on a Tupperware container, looking forlorn.
NARRATOR
His father had seen that the refrigerator was well-stocked, but in his loneliness Burt ate through the food and his remaining budget in one month. As he sat alone on the empty floor beside the empty refrigerator and empty cupboards, inside an empty house, he realized that without love, he too felt empty.
The world was a large and lonely place. All Burt had were these feelings, this pain, an insatiable desire to chomp, and an inexorable hunger to go along with it.
BURT stops chewing and looks upward. BURT goes upstairs and begins to kick at a locked door.
NARRATOR
It was his father that was behind all this, his father who had taken his mother away from him. And now Burt would get revenge.
BURT pries at the door, but he can’t get it open. Finally, he drops to his knees and bites at the lock. The door opens. He enters. On the other side is his father’s studio. There are paintings all over. BURT begins to take bites out of each one.
OUTSIDE THE VOUSCHS’ HOUSE, DAY
HARLAND and DEIRDRE arrive home after their trip. They walk into the house and find it in complete disarray. DEIRDRE calls the police and reports a break in. HARLAND rushes upstairs to his studio. As he goes down the hallway, he sees that the paintings on either side of the wall have been chewed. Bite marks mar the frames and the canvasses. He bursts into his studio to find BURT, disheveled and dirty (he’s been at this all summer), sitting amid a pile of ruined paintings. HARLAND loses control and beats BURT. DEIRDRE tries to intervene, but HARLAND slaps her in the face, then recoils in terror.
NARRATOR
When Harland arrived home and found all his works destroyed, he went mad with rage. He beat Burt senseless. When Deirdre rushed to help her son, he struck her too. Suddenly horrified that he, by his own actions, had harmed his beloved wife and risked damaging the appearance of his most important inspiration, Harland decided that the situation was simply unacceptable. Something drastic had to be done.
OUTSIDE THE VOUSCHS’ HOUSE, NEXT MORNING
HARLAND carries BURT out and throws him to the curb. BURT lies there, stunned and shocked, sucking his thumb. As he lies there, his father comes in and out, tossing the ruined paintings down on top of him.
CUT TO THE VOUSCHS’ BEDROOM
DEIRDRE is locked inside, pounding on the door to get out.
NARRATOR
Harland disowned his son. He threw Burt out of the house with the paintings he had ruined, along with the weekly trash and recycling. Then he took Deirdre and moved away, hoping never to see his curse of a son again.
OUTSIDE THE VOUSCHS’ HOUSE
BURT is still on the curb, now sucking on the corner of a painting. HARLAND drags DEIRDRE out of the house. She tries to reach BURT, but HARLAND throws her into a waiting limo. They drive away.
OUTSIDE THE VOUSCHS’ HOUSE, NEXT MORNING
NARRATOR
Burt waited outside his house all night, but his parents never returned.
Time lapse. BURT remains, unmoving, in the midst of the pedestrian traffic, weather, and passage of the season. Leaves begin to fall. Finally, three ART CRITICS walk by, stop, and stare at the paintings on the ground. For a long while they are silent, assessing.
ART CRITIC 1
This work, it is astonishing!
ART CRITIC 2
Breathtaking! Pure genius.
ART CRITIC 3 picks up one of the paintings and looks through a large bite hole in the canvas.
ART CRITIC 3
This is marvelous. Boy, who did this?
BURT
I did.
The ART CRITICS look at each other, aghast.
ART CRITIC 1
This is revolutionary.
ART CRITIC 2
How much do you want for these paintings?
BURT
Well, I don’t know. I’ve never sold—
ART CRITIC 3
You’ve never sold a painting!
BURT
No. I’ve been in school and my parents—
ART CRITIC 1
He is undiscovered.
ART CRITIC 2
Well, of course he is. We have not heard of him, have we?
ART CRITIC 3
That means that we have discovered him! Imagine what this will do for our careers!
All three ART CRITICS reach into their pockets, pull out cash, and give it to BURT. He sits there watching as the bills fall down into his lap, landing there among the leaves and litter that have gathered there. The day passes and the ART CRITICS bring more and more people to the curb. until all the paintings have been bought, and BURT’S lap is filled with hundred-dollar bills. With all that money, BURT goes to an art store to buy more canvasses and paints, then he puts them on the doorstep with a bow and card that reads, “For Dad. I’m Sorry. Love, Burt.” Then he waits. He sleeps on the doorstep beside the blank canvasses. Night comes, followed by morning, and still his parents have not returned. Crestfallen, he gets up and begins to wander down the street.
CITY PARK, DAY
BURT walks into a park. In the center of the park is a fountain with a stone statue. He climbs up on the statue and begins to bite down on it. A HOMELESS MAN gets up and stares. He continues to stare even after BURT has finished and climbed down. BURT walks through the city, wandering into parks, and eating at any and all sculptures. He walks by wall murals and gnaws at them. As he goes along, people begin to follow him and look at his work. He walks into a museum sculpture garden. It is later in the day now and POLICE OFFICERS follow him into the garden and begin to drag him away, but as they leave by the gates, they are surrounded by an ANGRY MOB OF ART CRITICS.
MOB
You can’t arrest him. He is expressing himself! He is an artist.
MOB
This is artistic repression.
MOB
This is oppression!
MOB
Down with militarized police forces!
MOB
Down with repressive totalitarian regimes!
MOB
Freedom for expression! Freedom from artistic oppression!
MOB
Freedom now! Leave him alone, you fascist pigs!
CUT TO COURTROOM
A JUDGE reads over the notes of BURT’S case, as BURT stands before him.
JUDGE
Well, Mr. Vousch, you have pled guilty to defacing public property, and it is my job and duty to sentence you. But, since the public seems to feel that there is some . . . well, some merit in your . . . in these . . . these . . . Oral Compositions, your sentence will be one hundred hours of community service, and that service will be in the form of using your artistic . . . talents to improve upon this city’s art work. Dismissed.
The JUDGE bangs his gavel, and the ART CRITICS in the room get up and cheer. They carry BURT out on their shoulders.
SCULPTURE GARDEN, NEXT DAY
BURT sits with his legs wrapped around a sculpture and chews idly at it while an enraptured audience watches.
NARRATOR
And so began Burt’s career as an Oral Composer. He quickly acquired a loyal following. Members of art circles everywhere began to talk about the new young visionary:
ART CRITIC 1 (reading aloud what he is writing on a note pad)
. . . on the cutting edge of art. He is a criminal, and outcast, who from the fringes of society brings us a new definition, a whole new paradigm, in which our experience and interaction with what we call art has been transfigured.
ART CRITIC 2
(speaking into a recorder)
He is dangerous, and some would even say he is mad. To many he is an enigma, but what is certain is his art is astounding . . . .
NARRATOR
Soon Burt’s work hit the mainstream. There were knockoffs of his work, cheap imitations.
CUT TO ARTS’ FAIR
CUSTOMERS examine paintings and sculptures with pieces apparently bitten out of them.
NARRATOR
There were even a few people who tried to imitate his methods.
CUT TO A SCULPTOR AT ARTS’ FAIR
SCULPTOR holds up a piece of sculpture. He smiles and we see that his teeth are broken and chipped. A tooth falls out, and the SCULPTOR tries to catch it while keeping his composure.
NARRATOR
But no one had Burt’s touch or his natural gifts.
CUT TO NEIGHBORHOOD STREET
BURT walks down the street wearing a beret and chewing a toothpick. A growing group of critics and fans follow a few steps behind. BURT walks by a house with a sculpture in the front yard. As he stops, the entourage stops. He walks into the yard.
CUT TO SAME YARD, A FEW MINUTES LATER
BURT walks away picking his teeth, the sculpture in the yard behind him, a bite taken out of its base, falls over. The entourage surrounds it and begins to take photographs and notes. BURT walks farther down the street and ducks into his own house—the same as his childhood home. The homeowner at the first house emerges, sees the crowd and the sculpture on its side, and immediately starts taking bids on the new “work.”
OUTSIDE BURT’S HOUSE
A few devoted fans stand outside.
NARRATOR
As his fame spread, Burt became an international phenomenon. He received commissions to do work for corporate offices.
CUT TO TRAFFIC CIRCLE OUTSIDE OFFICE BUILDING
Men and women in suits cut a ribbon and clap at the dedication of an office building. BURT is wrapped around the artwork in front and is munching on it.
CUT TO EXT. BURT’S HOUSE
There are more devoted fans standing vigil outside his house.
NARRATOR
Soon he was asked to do an Oral Composition for the White House lawn. The Metropolitan Museum of Fine Arts gave him a grant to come to their galleries and chew upon anything he wanted, as did the National Gallery, and MOMA.
The public loved him. They said he had breathed new life into the art world. That there had not been such a revolution in art since the discovery of perspective drawing. He was the greatest genius since Sidneyo or Picasso.
CUT TO TELEVISION SCREEN PLAYING A TALKSHOW
ART CRITIC 1 (speaking to a talkshow host)
BURT is the biggest thing in post-post modernism. He gazes upon the artifices and edifices of a capitalist society in decline, where endless expansion into exurbs has led to a collapse in cultural centers, leaving them to decay and rot, in need of rejuvenation, or rather, revolution.
CUT TO GALLERY OPENING
ART CRITIC 2 (speaking to reporters)
Burt strips away the layers of hackneyed neo-classic tropes while permeating the boundaries of what is perceived as the conventional tableau, inviting the viewer on an inward journey, a quest for meaning, reexamining how we as consumers consume art, and how art consumes us, and consumption consumes the subject. This is the inevitable evolution that comes as subject, artist, and art become one, an ontogenesis from self-consciousness to meta-consciousness.
CUT TO NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO STUDIO
ART CRITIC 3
While maintaining a subtext of visual and textual harmonies, Burt Vousch excogitates the contemporary and traditional into a pastiche of past, present, and future, leaving one with a feeling of sublime liminality vis-à-vis a deconstructionist point of view that is also, paradoxically, re-constructivist, posing the question of what is genuine versus what is contrived, what is authentic and what is façade.
FAN GIRL 1 (buying a copy of Seventeen with BURT on the cover)
He’s so dreamy.
FAN GIRL 2
I want to have his babies.
CUT TO ART STUDIO
HARLAND, older now, snaps closed an issue of Time magazine with a picture of BURT on the cover. HARLAND is surrounded by unfinished paintings of DEIRDRE, who looks forlorn. When he hears DEIRDRE coming, he shoves the Time magazine underneath a number of canvasses where he has hidden copies of The New York Times and New Yorker, each with cover stories profiling BURT. DEIRDRE enters, her clothes disheveled. She is carrying a bottle of whisky, and stumbles over to a seat under some lights where HARLAND is trying to paint her.
NARRATOR
Harland did everything he could to keep news of their son from Deirdre. He took extraordinary measures, moving them out into the country, to an abandoned eighteenth-century manor, with no connections to the outside world. They lived off the grid, without modern conveniences. No electricity. No running water. Harland said it was for his art.
CUT TO INSIDE A DARK, DILAPIDATED BARN
The door opens and we see HARLAND carry in another painting and set it atop a pile of paintings in an empty animal stall. The camera pans, and we see one stall after another, each one filled with more piles of unsold paintings.
NARRATOR
When, in truth, he had not sold a painting for years. He was broke, and his creditors were looking for him.
OUTSIDE BURT’S HOUSE
More and more devoted fans gather outside BURT’S house.
FANS
We love you Burt!
NARRATOR
But in time, there was no art work left in the States for Burt. So this young man, who had single-handedly reinvented art, was sent to where he would have enough art for a lifetime: Europe.
CUT TO TARMAC AT EUROPEAN AIRPORT
Cheering fans await Burt.
HYSTERICAL FEMALE FAN
Burt! Eat Me!
NARRATOR
Europe welcomed him with open arms. Crowds of thousands greeted him on his tours. He set to work at a prodigious pace.
CUT TO OUTSIDE THE LOUVRE
We see more PEOPLE gathering outside while the camera zooms through a window and we see BURT working within. Women wave signs outside reading: “Je veux avoir les bébés de Burt” and “Mords moi.”
NARRATOR
Burt snacked on Vermeer, he lightened up Rembrandt, he dined upon Sidneyo’s Last Supper. He licked the Mona Lisa with a grain of salt. He peppered the Sistine Chapel with his mastication, and he bit off David’s testicles with relish.
STREET IN FRONT OF BURT’S HOUSE
The street is completely filled with fans. Burt’s limo is escorted by police vehicles. Helicopters hover above, and the crowds of fans jostle with the paparazzi and security
NARRATOR
But in time, even Europe grew boring to Burt and he came home.
A taxi pulls up to BURT’s house and he gets out looking jetlagged. The crowd cheers and screams. He and his handlers push their way through to his front door and enter. The crowd begins to chant his name.
Time Lapse. We watch as people in the crowd come and go. Police motorcades and airport limos zoom in and out with BURT coming and going.
NARRATOR
The next year there was a tour of Asia, and a year after that, a tour of South America, then Africa, then Asia again. But after his last tour, Burt fell into a deep depression. Although his popularity remained high, and demand higher, he was tired of his Oral Compositions. After dining on the greatest works of the world, what was there left to do? He had money now, prestige, and fame. He had literally consumed the greatest works of art the world had to offer, but he felt empty, lonely. For a while he created no more Oral Compositions. Then of course, interest flagged, something, someone else new came along.
Time Lapse. The crowds outside Burt’s house dwindle. The roadblocks are removed and regular pedestrian and then street traffic resume.
CUT INSIDE BURT’S BEDROOM
BURT looks outside his window. It is raining. A single girl remains. She is holding a sign that says “Eat Me,” the colors running from the rain.
NARRATOR
But still BURT saw his own face everywhere.
CUT TO TOY AISLE AT TOY STORE
BURT walks down an aisle, incognito with sunglasses, fake mustache, and a baseball cap. He looks at an action figure of himself with a spring-action jaw.
NARRATOR
There were Burt action figures,
CUT TO GROCERY STORE, CEREAL AISLE
BURT walks down an aisle and sees his face on a box of Wheaties on the clearance shelf. At the end of the aisle there are costumes of him, including garish masks with oversized moving mouths, marked for discount.
NARRATOR
Burt costumes,
BURT’S HOUSE, OUTSIDE
BURT walks up his steps with his groceries. There is still the GIRL with the “Eat Me,” sign. He motions for her to follow him inside. She does.
NARRATOR
And yet, as long as he was not creating his compositions, the public interest continued to diminish.
CUT TO BOOKSTORE
BURT walks by the Free-Books bin, now with his girlfriend, the EAT ME GIRL. He looks down and sees the biographies about him in the bin.
CUT TO GROCERY STORE
BURT walks by the Wheaties boxes, but they all show someone else.
NARRATOR
Burt was miserable. He felt like he was in a sea of people, and yet, all alone. Yet, he had run out of ideas, out of inspiration.
BURT’S BEDROOM, EARLY MORNING
BURT lies in bed, as if he has not slept all night. Piles of self-help books, including James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, sit on the bedside table, their spines marred with teeth marks. BURT’S GIRLFRIEND is sound asleep beside him. He gets up carefully, so as not to wake her, and walks down the hallway.
NARRATOR
BURT stopped sleeping. He stopped eating. Life just held no more joy for him any longer.
As BURT goes down the hallway, he picks up packages of BURT figurines; there are dozens. The hallway is also filled with magazines and expired Wheaties boxes with BURT’S face, as well as hardback and paperback biographies. There are even cartridges of BURT video games and racks of his clothing line—each piece of clothing with faux bite marks integrated into the distressed design.
NARRATOR
But as he walked down the hallway to the bathroom, stepping over the dozens of Burt Vousch action figures, biographies, magazine articles, and Wheaties boxes that his girlfriend had bought—often before they were thrown away by retailers trying to clear inventory—it occurred to Burt that he had become quite a piece of work himself.
BURT goes into the closet and pulls out one of his most colorful outfits from his own clothing line. He dresses before the mirror. He puts on an outlandish pair of glasses, as well as his signature beret. He stares at himself a long time, a smile slowly forming on his face. His eyes brighten. Finally, he puts his fingers in his mouth.
NARRATOR
Standing before the mirror and gazing at himself, he thought he was more than a piece of work. He was a piece of art. He was artwork. Then an epiphany: the dark clouds of gloom parted and a ray of inspiration shone down on him. Burt suddenly knew what his last and greatest piece would be. It would revive his career, and as he contemplated it, all sadness, emptiness, and loneliness melted away. Even if he tried, he could not have even remembered what they were; it was as if he had not even the faintest memory of sadness, loneliness, or loss. He knew he must set to work right then and there, before the inspiration left him. It would be amazing. It would make his legacy a lasting one, one that would be hailed as bold, courageous, and of course, ingenious. So that morning, before his girlfriend awoke, Burt Vousch ate himself.
CUT TO INT. BURT’S ROOM, LATER
BURT’S GIRLFRIEND wakes up, rubs her eyes, and opens the shades. The camera follows her down the hallway to the bathroom, where we see her enter. Framed by the bathroom door, she makes the horrifying discovery of BURT’S body (OFF SCREEN) and screams.
NARRATOR
But when the police and coroners found him, they decided to leave the body alone. For they knew it was not just a body at a suicide scene; it was art. They knew the inevitable art critics, the collectors, and the paparazzi would want to come and view Burt as he had left himself.
Time Lapse. The POLICE, the ART CRITICS, the COLLECTORS, the PAPARAZZI come and go, framed in the bathroom door taking photos of BURT (OFF SCREEN) in the bathroom. Camera pans back, moving down the hall, fixed on BURT’S GIRLFRIEND, who remains catatonic but shrinking in the growing screen, crowded with people.
NARRATOR
And when they did come, all agreed, that it was the greatest, most breathtaking, most marvelous, and most ingenious work of his entire life; his greatest and most lasting Oral Composition.
FADE TO BLACK