The OnlyFans of Anne Frank

It was time for the rubber to meet the road.

An eloquent way of describing what would be an ineloquent moment. You see, in this scenario he was the rubber.

He looked down from the edge of the very tall building to the road below. No traffic. Perfect.

It was time for him to hold up his end of the deal.

The deal?

Well that takes a little explanation.

He is a writer. A very average one at that. For years he wrote his stories and submitted them to publishers and various TV and movie executives for consideration and for years he heard nothing. Hurling his words into the abyss. It began to wear on him.

It wasn’t that he viewed himself as a brilliant writer, far from it. It was just that what he saw on television was equally average. Sometimes well below average. He didn’t understand how some people made a living and some people didn’t. Somehow it all felt so arbitrary.

All he wanted was to leave his mark. To leave something behind.

And then it happened. One of his scripts he sent in to Netflix got a response; The OnlyFans of Anne Frank. The premise being that in an alternate reality Adolf Hitler wasn’t born until the mid-1970’s and the Third Reich didn’t begin their attempt at conquering the world until the early 2010’s.

Anne was born in 2008 and hid in an attic in occupied Netherlands.

His writing style allowed a lot of details to be filled in by the viewer. Definitely from the school of less is more. Think Schindler’s List meets Hogan’s Heroes.

When the call came from Netflix it began with a simple question; “Are you willing to suffer for your art?”

He replied that he was.

“Good” came the reply, “Because you will.”

And he did.

There were three things he needed to agree to before shooting would begin. He would be allowed to cast the show as saw fit, with two notable exceptions.

The first being that Adolf Hitler would be cast as a black man.

The second was that Anne Frank would be a lesbian.

Other than that, he had complete creative control.

Obviously there was some rewriting involved. The whole plot centered around the frustration Hitler felt with a girl in the Netherlands who had over two million subscribers and released daily videos where she whispered about the evil that men do and her strong desire to be with a girl. It was dark humor at its darkest.

When the media caught wind of the fact that Hitler was going to be black and Anne Frank a lesbian the backlash was predictable. And then some.

Netflix was prepared for the firestorm, it was something that they had not only expected but counted on. They jumped on a conference call with the writer and paraphrased something that Henry Rollins once said; “We are a misery-making machine. Entertainment has perfected the art of causing suffering. Pain is our collective GDP.”

Attempting to be viewed as one of the team, he shot back a quote from Huxley; “What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?” The Netflix staff on the call smiled and nodded and jotted down the quote so they could Google inclemency after it was over.

When the first trailers for the show were released, one of which featured a very animated Hitler comically raging about their inability to find a girl that was so obviously hiding in an attic, fans and critics alike savaged it. They could not see it for what he intended it to be. They couldn’t see the Black Forest for the trees.

Even the little snippet of Springtime for Hitler playing in the background went unappreciated.

A week before it was set to debut he had a visitor from Netflix stop by his apartment to check in on him.

“How are you holding up?” they began.

“Fine” the writer replied.

“You remember the third thing you agreed to?”

“I do” said the writer.

“Well, it’s about that time” the representative from Netflix said. Trying to come up with something comforting he continued with a quote from Tom Dolby; “But maybe that’s how it is with art. You suffer, and in the end, everyone thinks it’s cool.”

“Except nobody thinks its cool” countered the writer.

“They will soon enough. Trust me.”

After his visitor departed he took the short walk to the elevator and went up to the top floor. He then walked up a short flight of stairs to the roof. The door had already been forced open. “Those Netflix guys think of everything” he thought to himself.

He walked through and felt the brisk evening air hit his skin. It was a beautiful night. Overhead a few planes were making their way somewhere else. He briefly wished that he left vapor trails wherever he went.

He looked down from the edge of the very tall building to the road below. No traffic. Perfect.

It was time for him to hold up his end of the deal.

He stepped up onto the ledge and spread his arms. “I get it now El Greco” he said quietly (he knew the man’s full name was Domḗnikos Theotokópoulos but thought in the moment the nickname sounded better). “I suffer for my art and despise the witless moneyed scoundrels who praise it.”

Then he stepped off.