In 2005, the film Be Cool was released as a follow-up to the cult-hit adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s Get Shorty.  In the opening scene, Chili Palmer disparages Hollywood and expresses remorse for having produced a movie sequel: “the only time I gave in in my life.”  A mordant exemplar of self-deprecating humor, Chili’s lamentation nudges us to examine various other second acts.

More often than logic would dictate, an appalling opening – say George W. Bush’s first term or the canine dromedy Beethoven – leaves us dumbfounded by demand for an encore for which any declination would have to defy the laws of nature.  On the other hand, following a sensation is far more difficult: while most can never ascend to the rarified heights of the original (e.g., Frank Sinatra,Jr.), a select few actually do (see: The Godfather Part II).  Then there are those sequels so God-awful, so heinous that they conspicuously debase their own heritage, like leaving bloody afterbirth on the floor of the Sistine Chapel (think: Caddy Shack II).

It was this kind of desecration that took place on the campus of Kent State University Wednesday evening when 24-year old freshman Quavaugntay Tyler shot himself in the hand during a dispute with two female students.  Sure, there is an element of irony in that Tyler, who is the subject of a campus theft investigation and who served probation in another case, is a criminology and justice studies major.  Beyond that, his sorry escapade failed in any way to measure up to the Kent State massacre of May 4, 1970 wherein Ohio National Guardsmen fired M1 rifles into an unarmed crowd of Vietnam War protestors, killing four students and wounding nine.

Perhaps only slightly less egregious were the recent actions of Army Spc. Ivan Lopez, who shot 19 people — three of them fatally – with his .45-caliber Smith & Wesson handgun at Fort Hood, TX.  Lopez turned the gun on himself long before he could equal the carnage (13 dead, 32 injured) inflicted by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan at the same base in 2009.  Though Lopez saw no combat during his brief deployment, he claimed to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.   Predictably, his psychiatric evaluation uncovered “no violent or suicidal tendencies”, but even if it had, they would have paled in comparison to the Islamic radicalization that turned Maj. Hasan against his fellow soldiers.  The Lopez shooting lacked many of the ostentatious elements (terrorism, Muslim infiltrators, etc.) that gripped the attention of a war-weary nation five years ago and therefore takes its place far behind World War II or even the assassination of Bobby Kennedy.

I once pitched a very novel virtual reality story to a Hollywood agent only to have him condescend that there hasn’t been an original idea since Shakespeare… or the Greeks, he seemed to have forgotten which.   Nonetheless his point was this: everything is rehashed.  Though I disagree with his premise, it is clear that we have become inured to mass shootings; of the 57 so far this year, less than a handful made the national news.  Why not, then, freshen up the plotline?  I have a script, for example, about a guy who walks into an elementary school and doesn’t shoot anybody.  Imagine that.