Y.P.R.: Dear the Gap

Friday, February 28, 2003 | Letters (from)

Dear the Gap

by Josh Abraham

Gap Customer Relations
100 Gap Online Drive
Grove City, Ohio 43123-8605

Dear the Gap,

I’m working on a screenplay for a major motion picture that will be coming soon to a theater near you. I write this letter to invite you, the Gap, into a tastefully arranged product placement. The movie’s working title is Zombies in Khakis As you may have guessed, it’s about Zombies that wear khakis—shouldn’t they be Gap Khakis? Rest assured, it’s a not your typical gory, chop-’em-up horror bloodbath; no, this picture has serious existential symbolism and things like that in it.

Now, the Zombies are your typical zombies — the walking dead, in tattered clothes, covered in graveyard dirt, hungry for brains, etc. But, here’s where the gimmick kicks in: the cemetery is located right next door to a mall. They befriend a teenage girl (to be played by some hot young ingénue—what do you think of Rachael Leigh Cook? I like her.) who teaches them to be hip in a wacky montage of fish-out-of-water, Pygmalion-type relationship stuff. Some laughs, some scares, some tears. She gives them makeovers, she weans them off brains by introducing them to Wok & Roll and Cinnabon. And, of course, she takes them out of their ragged clothes and dresses them in stylin’ khakis. Cinnabon and Wok & Roll are into this project—What do you say, the Gap?

This project has all the earmarks of a summer blockbuster smash: a hot girl, some brain-munching zombies, a rockin’ soundtrack (do you like Blink 182? I have mixed feelings), cinnamon buns, and, hopefully, your plain-front, easy-fit khakis.

Let’s me scratch your back and you scratch mine. Mi casa su casa. Zombies in the Gap Khakis. This story has strong sequel potential (we can even get away with bringing back characters that died!). Also, let’s not forget beaucoup merchandising bucks: Zombies in Khakisaction figures. Zombies in Khakisvideo games. Zombies in KhakisGap khakis.

Okay, I’m not going to browbeat you with it; clearly you realize how great a deal this is for all parties involved. But things move quickly in this biz: Limited-time offer, the Gap. Get back to me soon, babe, I got Old Navy and Banana Republic sweet-talking me.

Gotta go,
Josh Abraham

P.S. I’m currently “in talks” with Steve Buscemi to play the lead zombie, the resurrected corpse of Peter Lorre. He’s “getting back to me, pronto!”

Josh Abraham was born in Algeria in 1913. He spent his early years in North Africa, working various jobs—in the weather bureau, in an automobile-accessory firm, in a shipping company—to help pay for his courses at the University of Algiers. As a young journalist, his report on the unhappy state of Muslims in the Kabylie region aroused the Algerian government to action and brought him public notice. From 1935 to 1938 he ran the Théâtre de l'Equipe, a theatrical company that produced plays by Malraux, Gide, Synge, and Dostoevski. During World War II he was one of the leading writers of the French Resistance and editor of Combat, then an important underground newspaper. Abraham's fiction, his philosophical essays, and his plays have assured his preëminent position in modern French letters. In 1957 Abraham was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. His sudden death on January 4, 1960, cut short the career of one of the most important literary figures of the Western world when he was at the very summit of his powers. No, wait. That was Albert Camus.