11. Air Bud with Tits

He switched his major from linguistics to film at the end of the first semester of junior year. The way words were aligned in a sentence had always been important to Tim. It was when he took an introduction to film course that he learned film had a language of its own: the montage. He went to the end of semester student film festival and made a few observations. One: the films were terrible. Two: all the actresses from the theater school in the films were beautiful. The only time he’d seen women so attractive was in magazines and on the red carpet at the Academy Awards. His mother always watched the fashion police when he was growing up, but always turned off the show when the host arrived. 

“That [Billy Crystal] thinks he’s funny?” she’d begin. “You know who’s funny? Your father is funny. I married your father because of how funny he is. And just because he’s an accountant doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve the chance to make jokes in grand lights.”

His father would always nod in compliance. He wasn’t a funny man. Tim couldn’t think of a single moment in his entire life that his father made him laugh. It crossed his mind that maybe his father joked around in bed. He liked to joke around in bed…the one time he was in bed with a woman. Maybe it was genetic. The thought made him shake with the ferocity of a soaking wet dog who just ran through the sprinkler on a hot summer day.

“Are you sure you want to switch majors?” asked his counselor. “You’ll have to stay an extra two years just to catch up with the credits.”

“I’m certain that film is my destiny,” said Tim.

“May I ask why?” asked the woman who hadn’t fulfilled her own. 

“The truth is that filmmakers get to be around beautiful women. And linguistic professors get to be around words.”

“Have you ever held a camera or written a story or done anything with film at all?” she asked with judgment in her voice.

“I like movies about dogs,” he said. “And I don’t think there’s enough of them.”

“So you want to be around dogs or beautiful women?”

“I think the world is missing movies that combine both.”

She gave him a blank look. It was a rather condescending look at that. He didn’t seem to mind, though. Tim was conjuring up a movie scene in his head of a dog playing tennis and hitting the ball into a beautiful woman’s cleavage. The woman would laugh and when the dog ran over to the ball, the two would laugh together. He couldn’t let the dog retrieve the ball, though. His movies would be rated PG. There was to be no hint of bestiality at all.

That winter break, Tim read his first book on screenwriting. He loved the ideas of acts and mentors and change. A movie started to formulate in his head as a tangent to his fantasy of the tennis playing dog and the big bosomed woman. On his first day of class, he stood before his professor and fellow students and told them of his dream.

“So,” he began. “You want me to explain the whole movie or just give you the log line? It’s called a log line, right?”

“Yes. The log line will be fine,” said the professor. “And if we have questions, you can explain more.”

“Okay,” he said. “Here we go. A horny female dog sitter turns the group of dogs she looks after into an elite basketball team. Meanwhile, she begins an affair with the young man next door. And I know you said just the log line, but I plan on playing the boy next door. That’s it. That’s the idea.”

The kids in the class burst out laughing. Tim thought this was a good thing so he joined in. The professor stood up and quieted everyone down. Lindsay in the second row raised her hand. Tim pointed her way.
“You wanna make Air Bud but you wanna throw in breasts?”

“What’s Air Bud?” asked Tim.

That night Tim pirated a 720p copy of the aforementioned film. His jaw dropped. Lindsay understood him perfectly. This was the exact movie he was hoping to make: Air Bud with tits. She had vision. She understood his vision. It meant they were destined to work together. She was going to be his camera operator or producer or editor or even co-director and he wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“No. I don’t want to work on your stupid film,” Lindsay said before class.

“But you understand exactly what I want to do.”

“Tim, I was making fun of you. We were all making fun of you.”

“There’s gotta be a way I can get you to work with me.”

Lindsay thought about all the world’s impossibilities. Tim tried to imagine all the things she was thinking. Despite the grand nature they both faced, their minds did not align.

“Okay,” she said. “Film a dog scoring a basket and I’ll make the film with you.”

Tim ran as fast as he could in the opposite direction of the classroom. He went on Craigslist searching for an athletic dog that may or may not already be trained to score a basket. In response, he received three dick pics, a fuck you, and one picture of a healthy-looking golden retriever. The picture came with an address, phone number, and photos of trophies the dog had won over the years. Without telling anyone what he was doing or where he was going, he hopped in his mom’s car and drove to the address with a camera. He arrived three hours later, having rehearsed a three hour Oscar acceptance speech in his head.

Before he got out of the car, he turned on the camera just in case the dog did something spectacular before he was ready. When he got to the door, he knocked three times. A three hundred pound woman opened the door. She eyed him over and stared into the camera lens for a little too long.

“Who the hell are you?” she asked.

“I’m from Craigslist. I wrote to you about the dog.”

“Oh. The dog. You’re gonna have to put that camera away, sweetie pie.”

“Where is the dog? Don’t most dogs come to the front door when someone arrives?”

“Sweet thang, put the camera away if you wanna see the dog.”

Tim turned the camera off and brought it to his car. His gut told him to get in and go home, but if this was his only chance at working with Lindsay he had to take it. So he quickly checked to make sure his camera phone worked. At the very least he could pretend he was sending a text and sneak a video.

“You coming or what, sugar?” asked the woman.

The inside of the woman’s house smelled like gouda cheese. She had wishbones hanging from the ceiling and the only source of light was by candle.

“So can I meet Juniper?”

“Juniper’s in there,” she said, pointing to the only dark room in the house.

He walked up to the doorway and noticed there was a stool with a candle and a set of matches right to his left. 

“Go on,” said the woman.

Having never lit a match before it took him about a minute to light up the wick. A flame burned brighter than it should have. Tim held it forward.

“She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he whispered.

“Go in, sonny boy. Take a better look,” said the woman.

The next day Tim didn’t show up to class. He didn’t show up to class ever again. His parents didn’t even bother to look for him. They were too busy judging dresses at award shows.

Lindsay decided to try and find him. She turned his search into a festival worthy documentary called The Perfect Sentence. It would lead to her having a longer career in film than any of her classmates could have dreamt of. No one understood why she brought back the Air Bud franchise with all her success. More than that, no one understood why it was filled with naked women and given an R rating. But I don’t think Tim would’ve cared about any of this…because he saw pure beauty…whatever that may be…