CHING CHONG

My first thought on looking at this month's title: REALLY? Someone's in a very Chinese New Year mood..

Racked my head thinking what I could POSSIBLY write for this opic, but figured: hey. For such a mad-sounding title, might as well go completely mad!

And so:

MY FIRST REJECTION LETTER

or: WHY EVERYONE IS MISSING OUT ON THE BEST SHOW OF THE MILLENIUM

Ref No: 756/34/A4/323
Date: 2nd February 2010

Sanctuary of the Weird Pictures,
No 15A, Weird Mansions,
Jalan Bougainvillea 12,
Section 9, 45000 Petaling Jaya
Selangor Darul Ehsan.

Dear Mr. Terence Toh,

RE: PITCH FOR THE AMAZING SEXY ADVENTURES OF CHING CHONG

We respectfully refer you to the above matter and your many, many, MANY letters to us, most notably those dated 11 January , 15th January and 18th January.

2. We thank you for the interest you have in our fine quality programming, but it is with sincere regret that we will have to turn down your pitch for The Amazing Sexy Adventures of Ching Chong, so described by you as ‘an amazing, sexy, adventure-filled television series that will be sure to sweep the Grammys next year.’ (By the way, Grammys are for music, Emmys are for television.) The reasons for these are as enclosed.

3. Mr. Toh, TV Pendidikan prides itself for providing top-quality educational content for primary and secondary school age students, with particular emphasis on helping them to pass their examinations. From this, it is clear that your pitch, which you yourself describe as ‘Pulp Fiction meets The Dark Knight meets American Pie’ is unsuitable for our programming. We at TV Pendidikan feel that showing a series with such a heavy emphasis on car chases, decapitations and ‘women with laser turrets for breasts’ is not only distasteful, but conflicts with much of our other programming, most of which are aimed at teaching good values such as honesty, loyalty, and brushing your teeth regularly.

4. We take offence to your so called ’morality’ segments and ‘Very Special Episodes’. Firstly, we do not think that the planned morals for your episodes will be very beneficial to children, particularly those of Episode 4 (‘It is alright to trust strangers if they are attractive’), Episode 15 (‘Always say thank you when buying crack’) and Episode 32 (‘telling lies might make those you love turn into three-headed werewolves who want to hunt you down and kill you.’) We feel that these so-called morals may actually have the reverse effect and encourage bad behavior in children.

5. It also seems to us, Mr. Toh, that your planned Episode 13, in which Ching Chong and his friends teach children lessons on ‘the power of love’ by going undercover in a strip club, is nothing more than a flimsy excuse to get as many actresses to parade around in skimpy outfits as possible. (By the way, your sketches for costume design on that episode are tasteless and rather vulgar. I do not think any outfit can stay on a person’s form if it has that many ‘peekaboo holes’ and ‘tasteful slits’ in it. And I am here referring to your plans for the male cast! I appreciate you ‘trying to decrease the wardrobe budget’, but there are more tasteful ways of doing so.)

6. We also feel that your characters need serious work. We object extremely strongly to ‘Homo-Dude’, whose superpower is to ‘have sex with dudes’ and ‘The Baby-Stander’, who ’derives her psychic powers from assaulting children’. And we object to your most of your female (and some male) cast having names like ‘Domi Natricks’, ‘Takoff Macloths’ and worst of all, ‘Sexi binti Sexualle’. This has been done to death in films like James Bond and Austin Powers, where the writers at least put SOME effort into making these innuendo-filled names.

7. And do not get us started on your main character, Ching Chong, ‘char kuay teow seller by day, DVD seller by night, Qi gong trainer on weekends, and superhero on a freelance basis’. Quite frankly, he is the most offensive racist caricature we have ever seen, and to show him on air would definitely result in protests from the Chinese community. We take particular offence at his many ‘dramatic exclamations’: (Excerpts included)

CHING CHONG: Oh, by my mother’s bound feet! (Episode 4, Scene 32)
CHING CHONG: By the bak kut teh of my stall in SS17! Something evil is afoot! (Episode 5, Scene 2)
CHING CHONG: By the delicious flesh of dogs! I forgot my watch! (Episode 14, Scene 4)
CHING CHONG: Holy tiny penises! We’re doomed! (Episode 20, Scene29)

All these, combined with his super-abilities (‘Bruce Lee kungfu’, ‘super maths and ultra accounting’, ‘hunger to eat anything’ and most bizarrely, ‘super-inability to pronounce the letter ‘R’) would only perpetuate negative stereotypes against the Chinese and would be hurtful to the 1Malaysia spirit. We also thank you for your suggestion, but we highly doubt that we have the budget to hire Jet Li or that he would even consider playing such a putrid, horrible character.

8. We also highlight this scene from Episode 9, where Ching Chong takes on the super-villain Robo-Bangla, another character we take offence at:

ROBO-BANGLA: HA! HA! HA! I will cut out your heart and roast it on a fire to eat while I am slacking off my job and harassing your local women!

CHING CHONG: (angry) Over my dead body, you bloody stinking Bangla! You wretched donkey! All of your kind are alike, robotic or not! Evil, twisted beings, who misuse our kindness to do horrible, criminal crime!

Mr. Toh, we remind you that donkeys are hardworking, loyal animals and the RSPCA will definitely take offence at them being compared to in this manner.

9. Another issue is Ching Chong’s sidekick, Cripple Boy. While we applaud your attempt to highlight the struggles the disabled face everyday, we do not think it necessary for Cripple Boy to make references to his handicap in EVERY line of his dialogue, even in scenes when he is in mortal peril or making love to the ‘bodaciously bodacious Harelip Girl’. There is such a thing as overdoing it, Mr. Toh, and you have clearly, clearly overdone that. You have overdone it so much there ought to be some kind of award for you.

10. Finally, we take issue at your proposed plots and storylines. You have clearly not done any research at all, and we highly suggest you go for a few classes in a film school before writing any more pitch suggestions to us. Indeed, looking at your pitch, we are unsure if you even have the slightest hold on reality at all. Some of us are in the opinion you are in actuality a drug-addled schizophrenic writing this in a straightjacket from Hospital Bahagia. Where did you get the idea that the tears of orphans could be used to melt holes in concrete vaults? (Episode 47, Scene 12.) Or that kungfu masters were so powerful their blows can shatter reality, bring down buildings and cure cancer? (all through the series) This is not a Bollywood movie we are making.

11. We also respect your decision to show viewers a ‘gritty, realistic feel of the legal system in action’, but we feel to devote an ENTIRE THREE PARTER arc to witnesses being cross-examined, exhibits being tendered, and finally, the trial being called off due to the judge falling sick is completely unnecessary, and frankly, dull.

12. The only storyline we thought showed promise was the climax of Episode 26, where Ching Chong risks his life to join the Fellow Boat of Ten to toss the Cursed Bracelet of Curses into the Fiery Mountain of Fire Flames, but we have to admit this seems oddly familiar and we have seen it somewhere before, though we cannot remember where.

13. We do not have the budget for all the ‘killer automatons’, ‘tap-dancing Rottweilers’ and ‘model skyline of Kuala Lumpur, only painted pink and with Ching Chong’s face on their façade’ you deem so necessary for your episodes. We also commend your efforts to ‘foster a love of literature among your viewers’, but we think episode 15, a so-called crossover with Romeo and Juliet (where Domi Natriks makes love with Macduff, who does not even appear in that play!) to be overly obscure and frankly, not make much sense.

14. Your romance scenes actually showed some promise, and we were struck by the beauty of some of your lines. That is until a quick trip to my associates Mr. Google and Mr. Yahoo woefully informed me that all you did was copy the titles of N’Sync songs and add ‘baby’ at the end. Mr. Toh, if you are going to plagiarize, may I suggest you choose less cheesy sources.

15. It is therefore for all those reasons that we must regretfully (not really) turn down your manuscript. We wish you all the best in your future endeavors, and although we think you have a interesting interest in the business of television, we would like to suggest you perhaps try your hand at other pursuits, perhaps to expand your creative horizons. We respectfully suggest you give cordless bungee jumping or alligator wrestling a try.

Yours sincerely,

FELIX Q. HENDERSON
DIRECTOR OF PROGRAMMING
TV PENDIDIKAN STUDIOS,
MALAYSIA.

PS. PLEASE stop sending naked photos of yourself as ‘incentives’! You have already caused three secretaries to quit and one director to have a nervous breakdown!