Several years back, my friend Katie and I came up with an idea for a short film that I’m now putting out into the universe for free—in case anybody with resources and A-list connections subscribes to Mind The Moss. The premise is simple. An old codger buys a plot of backcountry land that includes a lonely mountain. He builds a home there, in sight of the mountain, but the new country estate doesn’t bring him any peace. The constant presence of that goddamn mountain drives the guy mad. He spends hours glowering on the porch, staring at the mountain with gritted teeth. At a family dinner, he starts sculpting his mashed potatoes into a mini mountain. (A little tribute to Close Encounters Of The Third Kind.) Eventually, he stomps into the woods with a gun, to try and kill the mountain. And he falls into a ravine while a squirrel looks on indifferently.
The mountain, as Katie and I see it, is an irrepressible reminder of something that the man does not want to reckon with: That there are tangible limits to his dominion, and some things which are notarized on paper don’t translate to ground realities. Both of us figured that in our current era of wealth inequality and insatiable greed, it was just a matter of time before some billionaire purchased a mountain that many of us know and love. But of all the places where that saga could play out—and all the billionaires who might pony up—neither Moosehead Lake nor Mark Zuckerberg were on my list.
