Tragedy struck the gaming world Tuesday night when six players of a tabletop science-fiction military-strategy game were killed at the Dragon’s Den Game Grange on Bland Street. According to preliminary reports from city engineers, the building was not so constructed as to handle the weight of the 187,024-page rule book the players were attempting to consult to resolve a dispute over whether a deciduous tree counted as ½ cover or ¼ cover if the game was set in late autumn. Family members have announced that funeral games will be held in the Consolidated Lead Brick Manufacturing Company warehouse in Chateau, whose floors are rated for a load of 1,850 pounds per square foot.

Sir: Since there has been a bit of a storm over me on social media over the past few days, I thought it would be wise to use your forum to explain myself and address the fundamental misunderstandings that lie behind the vocal objections by certain fanatics.

As a film director, I take pride in my work and my reputation. I believe a mere list of some of my works—Heavens II Betsy, Atlas Shrugged IV: Who Moved John Galt’s Cheese?, Othella the Mare of Venice, and the acknowledged classic Herb and Irv Hit Themselves on the Head with Hammers, for example—would suffice to establish my bona fides as an artist. When, therefore, I make an aesthetic decision, it is not made on a whim. It is a carefully considered choice made on the basis of a sound understanding of aesthetic theory.

No discovery in aesthetics has been more profound than the discovery that the only truly cinematic colors are orange and teal. It has forever changed the way films are made. Now set designers know to paint all walls teal, and costume designers know to specify only teal fabrics, and lighting artists know to place an orange filter over their lights, so that the actors will appear to be orange heads bobbing in a sea of teal. The heads can be made even oranger, and the backgrounds and costumes tealer, in post-production. No other aesthetic is truly cinematic.

Unfortunately, this discovery limits the kinds of actors we can employ. The orange lights will be effective on White actors, and on most East Asian actors as long as they are not from too southern a latitude. But they simply will not work on Black actors. It is not possible even in post-production to make a Black actor’s face look orange in a natural way, according to the highly artificial convention of naturalness that the orange-and-teal dogma requires. This is not racism: it is simple hard cinematic fact.

So it is perfectly true that I posted a sign on the casting office that said “NO BLACKS NEED APPLY,” but this was meant to be a kindness that would spare potential applicants trouble and embarrassment. The paper grocery bag hung by the sign for comparison purposes was meant to be a handy guide that would help applicants know in advance whether they were wasting their time, although it is rendered useless by the thick encrustation of very impolite graffiti that seems to overwhelm every bag I hang up there. In everything I have done, I have been true to my aesthetic principles, but I have also attempted to be kind and accommodating to the people affected by those principles.

I hope therefore, that, having made this explanation, I may be permitted to continue filming my all-orange-and-teal cinematic version of Two Trains Running without the interruptions that have plagued the production in the past few days.

Sincerely,
Monty McCarrion,
Director,
Pantocrator Pictures