All cameras on John

John Doe is stuck. He needs a new life, he needs to get out, to reboot himself. His mind is blocked in a sad part of his past ant it’s repeating it like an old VCR that’s stuck on replay. Lately, his existence is down to just surviving the world around him, not even aware of what’s going on outside his brain. For all he knows a meteor might have even landed on earth and destroyed half it’s surface, and he couldn’t care less. He needs to break out.

The sad part is that, well, he can’t. He tries, oh how he tries, but the past keeps coming back to him, hitting him in the face and knocking him unconscious, back to the memories that hurt him so bad. Every minute, every day the same scenes compulsively repeated inside his head, as if his brain is hoping that sooner or later the outcome will change. But it doesn’t. No mater how hard he tries, everything stays the same, he relives the same pain, he does things just as wrong. It’s like he’s watching a bad movie, screaming at the actor not to do this or not to say that, but the actor knows his part, and the silent screams that break his skull are muted, because only the director could ask for another take, and the director is long gone.

The movie was played, the roles were fulfilled, and John remains the only one that doesn’t seem to be able to move on to new role. Everyone left the theatre, and the film gets played back endlessly for the audience of one from a broken projector. And maybe, just maybe, if he watches it long enough, John will eventually forget who the main characters are, and he wont feel the pain in his eyes that appears every time the slides are focused in his eyelids, the pain that almost makes his eyelids moisture. Maybe he’ll even become amused by the movie, realize that it’s been a bad comedy all along, and he’ll give it a bad mark on a rating chart and move along to start a new role, with a whole new cast.

He wishes he could find the director and ask him to change the setting, to change the lines, the lights, the costumes, hoping that it will change the plot also. He wishes to talk to the script writer, to ask him what was he thinking when he wrote such a poor excuse for a dark comedy. But most of all, he wishes to go back and talk with the actor, the one that chose to play the part, knowing that the story was bad, knowing that there will be only one viewer able to appreciate it for what it’s worth. It’s too late now, the scenes were filmed, edited and released, and the viewer saw it way to many times.

It’s not that hard to figure it all out. You should have got the point by now. Yes, John Doe is the actor, and yes, John Doe is the character, and yes, the one and only, John Doe is the faithful viewer that comes back to the theatre every time the show is projected, and forgets to leave when the curtain is drawn. And he needs a new manager, because if he doesn’t find another movie to play in soon, his career will be over and all will have been for nothing. It takes a flop to know what a flop is, but it also takes a flop to truly appreciate a success. It’s time for John to get his time to shine, his fifteen minutes of fame, and the firs step is to burn down the theatre, along with the dusted rolls of film that the projectionist forgot in the machine a long time ago. And scene.