AKA that time I co-wrote & sold a comedy film to Fox.
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In a past life, I sold a comedy script to a major film studio.
The script featured a dildo knife.
Correct, I said “Dildo Knife”.
Now you’re probably wondering, what does a dildo knife even look like. As an astute Redditor observes “I wasn’t quite sure if I should have expected a knife-shaped dildo or a dildo-shaped knife.”
Hahahahaha – that is hilarious! And so true!
But seriously, check out the top Google searches for “dildo knife”.
It is effin’ funny.
Whether or not Catherine The Great owned a dildo knife is undoubtedly up there with history’s greatest mysteries.
But, for real…at its core, the idea of a dildo knife is just pure humor distilled.
In fact, so humorous that you might even try to create an entire comedy movie script around it.
And, basically ten years ago, that’s exactly what two expat co-writers (E____ & M____ ) and I did while working in Vietnam.
Below, I document the comically comic outcome when The Fugitive meets Harold & Kumar meets Southeast Asia meets – obviously – a dildo knife. (Or as a friend affectionately told us: “Locked Up Abroad written by three guys who probably should have been.”)
TL;DR: Two friends and I started a movie script based around a joke involving a dildo knife. We optioned the eventual script (“The Lose”) 1 to Fox but ended up dropping the prop during a re-write. Obviously, the movie never got made but that only means someone can DM me for some great Southeast Asian content, and we can bring back the dildo knife!
Saigon, 2009
The year is 2009. The city is Ho Chi Minh City, or as the real OGs call it – Saigon.
Saigon – Vietnam’s most populous city – was formerly the French capital of Indochina and currently serves as the country’s 21st century commercial and cultural hub.
In 2009, I moved from Canada to Vietnam in an effort to avoid all semblance of adult responsibility.
In the most loose usage of the word possible, I ended up as a “journalist” working for a local English-language paper.
My existence was:
- interview people,
- write soft-hitting non-think pieces,
- drink cheap booze,
- party,
- repeat.
I lived in a 400 square foot nothingburger and subsisted off of $0.50 bánh mì and $1 phở. All of these luxuries fit snugly into my high three-figure USD salary.
Eventually, I parlayed this writing role into a moderately better-paying financial research job at Vietnam’s largest private investment firm.
This firm also employed my aforementioned co-writers (E____ and M____).
In the standard “geez, it’s such a small world” trope, E____ was my former University roommate’s cousin while M____ was a (much older) alumni of said University.
E____ came to Vietnam in 2009 following a brief stint on Wall Street and an even briefer stint in Hollywood. M____ was an Indochina vet, landing in the mountains of northern Vietnam as an NGO worker in the 90s following graduate studies at the University of London’s School Of Oriental and African Studies (or the less bad sounding London SOAS).
Shortly after I started the new job, the three us realized that a) we liked watching movies; b) we liked making jokes; and c) there was a bounty of material to draw from in our day-to-day Vietnam expat existence.
From this genesis (“Let there be jokes”), we turned our Skype chat sessions into a writer’s room.
The Anton Chekhov Connection
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov is one of Russia’s most celebrated writers. Plying his trade at the end of the 19th century, he was a master of the short story format and a leading figure in modern Russian theatre.
One of his most famous rules for writing is dubbed Chekhov’s Gun:
“If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there.”
Chekhov’s admonition was to make sure that a story maintains an internal logic. If a scene, character, idea or object is introduced, it should have a purpose.
A salient (and recent) example of Chekhov’s Gun comes from the legendary TV show, Breaking Bad. In this example, the show flashes a literal Chekhov Gun at the beginning of Season 5. Or, more accurately, an M-60 machine gun.
And famously – SPOILER ALERT – “fires” said machine gun in the series finale.
Now, how is this relevant to my story?
Well, during one of our brainstorm sessions, my co-writers and I became unhealthily obsessed with a joke involving a dildo knife.
The train of thought probably went something like this:
Me: Fun fact I learned today, Vietnam is the world’s 3rd largest exporter of natural rubber.
Reasonable Co-Writer: Um, can we get back to writing.
Me: That’s a lot of dildos.
Reasonable Co-Writer: Dude, seriously. Focus.
Me: Dildos are hilarious.
Reasonable Co-Writer: Not really man.
Me: Ok, how about a dildo knife?
Reasonable Co-Writer: (snickers) Ok, that’s kind of funny. But would it look like a dildo-shaped knife or a knife-shaped dildo?
Me: I don’t know man, what kind of question is that? Anyways, let’s make sure that our slimy villain (“Allen”) stabs our heroic hero (“Scotty”) with a dildo knife at some point.
Reasonable Co-Writer: Yes! And then Scotty could look at the knife wound and say “it’s balls deep.”
Me: (laughs hysterically) Yes!!!! This is f**cking genius!
Reasonable Co-Writer: We should probably map out a plausible plot line.
Me: Guys! Let’s just take today’s win. The story will figure itself out.
Reasonable Co-Writer: No man, let’s create a proper beat sheet and character arcs.
Me: Good session guys, I’m out.
Reasonable Co-Writer: Dafuq?
From this humble beginning, we wrote the first draft of a comedy film that built a plot around the scaffolding of a dildo knife joke.
What is the plot you ask?
Something like “a naive NGO worker travels to Laos and finds himself in deep doo doo when he is framed for murder and pursued by Southeast Asia’s top cop.” 2
As previously noted, think The Fugitive meets Harold & Kumar meets Khao San Road meets – obviously – A Dildo Knife.
Anyways, here is the evidence of Chekhov’s Dildo acting as our North Star when we turned a dumb joke into a proper three-act movie.
First, we introduce the dildo knife with no explanation or context.
And, at the climax, we pay it off with an extremely juvenile joke.
Boooooom!
The Aftermath
Going back to Chekhov’s original advice, a writer should never introduce a superfluous idea, object or character into a story if it doesn’t serve a larger purpose.
The dildo knife was clearly superfluous. Gut-bustingly funny…but superfluous.
When it came to the dildo knife, we were letting the tail wag the dog. In an honest analysis, it served no purpose – other than being objectively hilarious – in the story. The dildo knife easily could have been a kitchen knife, a pen or a metal rod that impaled our hero at the end.
We eventually received professional advice from a Hollywood veteran that we met while in Saigon. He described our first draft as “a sequence of SNL skits loosely strung together” that “while funny” could “never ever ever in the history of mankind be made into a movie.”
With the guidance of our Hollywood friend, Fox International optioned The Lose in 2014.
Unsurprisingly, we were asked to re-write the script.
Many versions later, the dildo knife no longer served the internal logic of the story. And, with a very heavy heart, we had to let it go.
Fast forward to 2019. The option on the script expired two years ago.
No movie was made.
Everyone involved has moved on.
But the memories and, for me, two lessons remain.
Lesson 1: If you are feeling the need to scratch your creative itch but are embarrassed by the unformed idea in your head, remember that some idiots turned a joke about a dildo knife into a movie script that was actually optioned by a major film studio.
Lesson 2: If in the first act you have hung a gun dildo knife on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired used in a stabbing motion. Otherwise don’t put it there!