After The Dark Knight, Spiderman 3, Casino Royale, Alice in Wonderland and The Incredible Hulk, the next logical dark/gloomy/philosophical fictional cartoon strip presented on the big screen would be Winnie The Dark Pooh. Here is a brilliant character sketch I have written for an equally brilliant screenplay, which is to follow…
The dichotomy of Winnie’s character is brought out in the colour of his coat. At first sight, orange seems to be a pretty unusual colour for a bear, but as the deeper inner psyche of Winnie is revealed to us through a series of encounters with the other main characters, more and more layers are added to it. Orange
Tormented by the memories of a troubled childhood, when he was often made fun of by his friends at school for having “pooh” for a name, and lugging around the shameful burden of being a meat eating carnivore in the company of rabbits and donkeys, he always sought approval and social acceptance. The internal conflict seems to be fuelled by an almost Kierkegaardian refusal to accept circumstances at face value, as a result of which Winnie spends his days searching for purity and honesty, which is reflected symbolically in his quest for honey, which again being orange symbolises the ideological marriage between despair and hope.
We can only speculate on whether Winnie was indeed aware of his primal instinct to consume animal carcass but, at an elemental level his love and preference for monosaccharide resin regurgitated by insects seems to hint at a more fundamental moral dilemma which as we delve into murkier depths of existentialist philosophy, manifests itself in a need to steal, conceal, cheat and indulge.
All in all, the Shame of Winnie is as complex and sophisticated a theme as you will ever find anywhere. Anthony Minghella behind the camera and Daniel-Day Lewis as Winnie, Leonardo Di Caprio as the donkey Eeyore, Anthony Hopkins as The Owl, Jack Nicholson as The Rabbit, Sean Penn and Dustin Hoffman as Kanga and Roo, Robert Di Niro as Gopher and Juliet Binoche as Tigger. Watch out for academy award nominations and The General Awesomeness Prize for me.
