The Bororo Beatles
Script Extract from The History of the World Backwards
June 2007
CAPTION: The Bororo Beatles
ARCHIVE: Bororo/ Kayapo/Xingu/Yanomami indigenous people of Brazil's Mato Grosso, with straight black hair cut in a pudding-bowl mop-top fringe.
V/O: In the Mato Grosso region of Brazil the mop-topped Bororo and Kayapo people claim descent from Beatles tribute bands whose plane crash-landed in the rainforest on its way to a Beatles convention.
Ext. South American jungle. day
MACCA: I'm just trying to imagine possessions.
GEORGE: A chair would be nice.
JOHN: Imagine a wardrobe.
GEORGE: You could put your shirts in it.
RINGO: If we had shirts.
JOHN: Yeah, we had shirts we could put them in the wardrobe.
MACCA: Or drape them on the back of the chair.
RINGO: If we had a chair.
MACCA: I'm just saying.
RINGO: I know I heard ya.
CUT TO :
THE BORORO BEATLES ARE SITTING TREE-STUMPS THE HEIGHT OF HIGH-STOOLS. FAKE FLOWERS STREW THE FLOOR. THEY HAVE RAINFOREST-STYLE INSTRUMENTS,STRINGED AND PERCUSSIVE. MACCA HAS A PLANK OF WOOD IN SHAPE OF HIS FAMOUS BASS GUITAR BUT WITH ONE FAT STRING ONLY. THEY SING...
NO PLANET B
Tadpole when it gets leggy
Leaves the pond and starts to crawl,
Can't go on the same way anymore.
Pumping oil from where it's safest
Underneath the sand,
New Orleans Olympic Bid Committee,
Miss Afghanistan
Like Caucescu at his barbecue,
Ice Age dinosaurs,
Can't keep doing what we've been doing no more.
[chorus]
In the future
Sci-fi's set in the past:
Backwards History!
The cargo cult was retro market:
Ain't no planet B.
Long time ago in the Amazon
A plane crashed to the forest floor.
The survivors of that wreck all dressed
As Ringo, George, John or Paul.
We worship our Goddess,
She gave us ancestors,
Yoko Ono
Brought together the Fab Four.
[chorus]
In the future
Sci-fi's set in the past:
Backwards History!
The cargo cult was retro market:
Ain't no planet B.