Before You Die, You See The 0.0: Three Possible Treatments For Pitchfork-Related Thrillers

NB: This is not how bloggers generally dress.

​Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Duplass brothers—the siblings behind last year's cutesy indie Cyrus—were shopping a script for a thriller in which the mother of a recently deceased indie rocker seeks vengeance on a blogger who had snarked in her kid's general direction. The brothers are hoping to get Susan Sarandon for the mom role and Cyrus Jonah Hill to play the blogger, but the really important name is the one of the site where the mean mau-mauing appeared: Pitchfork. Since the brothers have already stolen my idea, I might as well show you some of the "indie thriller" treatments I'd been working on:

1. One morning, a mysterious video appears without warning on Pitchfork.tv. Through a mist of analog hiss and practiced vérité shakiness, a figure slithers toward the camera; everyone who watches it has an hour to figure out what adjectives and comparisons to use in their blog posts. The music sounds like if you put a Japan album in the oven, Shrinky-Dink style, and then played it at the bottom of a swimming pool. Is it more Buffalo Bill or Ariel Pink? When was it shot? Is it good? Time is running out! See Altered Ring once, and never be the same again.

2. A rising young band with strong avian proclivities has their gear stolen from their loft studio. The next day, Pitchfork News receives a lengthy ransom letter from the culprits, clearly written under the influence of significant amounts of mid-grade cocaine. Unless the band will admit, in an exclusive interview with the website, to being completely derivative of Deerhunter, the gang of pranksters will auction their Line 6 processor on eBay for blow money. In theaters this fall: The Falcons and the Snowmen.

3. A critic in Brooklyn downloads a leak of the new Fuck'd Bliss EP from Sendspace. Thirteen minutes later, he's reviewed the album and posted it to his Tumblr. Two tables over, the blank, photographed-in-a-loft stare of a slouching seductress changes to sort of a smirk or whatever. She knows him from Facebook, and knows he's only scanned the EP. Now he's on the run, dodging wall posts and hiding out on message boards, trying to reclaim his pilfered identity. Coming soon: The 3.9 Steps.