A screenplay in the making

Last night, whether it was the influence of Zupan's take-out chicken, the Welsh cheese we picked up to accompany it, or the half-pint of ale, I had a particularly vivid dream, even for me.

I was watching a movie that looked like a Jet Li/Stephen Chiao/Jackie Chan co-production. It had elements of all of their sensibilities and was set in the HK version of the old west. Jet Li was an inept wushu-master hero in training, and he was trying to infiltrate a gang of cattle thieves. They were robbing a supply store, asking the clerk first for six hats, then five shirts, then four filing cabinets, then three cases of dynamine, then two rifles, and finally settling on one hat.

Then the clerk lost it and said, "I know who you are. You're the cattle-rustling gang," and got beat up. The gang started robbing all the other people in the store, before Jet Li's character got fed up, then said, "Here, I know you came for this!" and grabbed... something. In the dream it was important. But the gang went nuts since he'd been lying to them all this time. So they started chasing him.

Eventually the fight led to this tunnel where, through the power of kung fu, Jet Li was going hand-over-hand down the tunnel by climbing this pipe. He'd kick people and fend them off as the gang also climbed the pipe. The Stephen Chiao part of the dream kicked in because there was a second pipe set right above it, and people going the opposite way down the pipe were screaming obsenities at Jet Li's character for nearly causing a traffic pile-up in the tunnel.

Cut to another scene with Karen Mok and Michelle Yeoh trying to figure out the location of a tunnel entrance. They were in a science lab that looked a lot out-of-place in the Old West setting.

Cut to more chasing and then Shu Qi, I think, in sort of a Swordsman II role but that is fairly hazy.

Then Mary Tyler Moore was walking down the street under the guns of other gang members, telling them that if they wanted to get into the tunnel, they had to dig up this driveway.

Back to Jet Li in the tunnel, throwing knives at his pursuers. But since he's kinda inept at this point, he just grazes them. And then I woke up.

Prior to that I dreamt of playing Monopoly at Jon Meyers' house, only it was using a board from some other source and I could not figure out which element corresponded to the Monopoly board. There were also various power-up cards and something about drawing a card to force sex scandals on other players.

In the words of Harry Zell, I should write it. If I don't want to write it, I could direct it. If I don't want to direct it, I could produce it.