OPEN ON: Bascom Hill in late summer. Bright mid-afternoon sunlight illuminates Bascom Hall.
Voice Over: We can educate him. We have the course materials. We can make him better than he was before. We can teach him poetry, kendo, piano lessons.
Narrator: In September of the year 2004, the state of Wisconsin embarked on an ambitious and expensive project. Thousands of man-hours and vast sums of tax money were devoted to its completion. Its purpose: the education of a single liberal arts student.
FADE TO BLACK SCREEN
Narrator: Matt Hunziker is the Sixty-Two Thousand Dollar Man.""
CUT TO: Montage of different classroom scenes. In each one, Matt rapidly delivers a response with right hand raised above head.
Narrator: To prepare him for a diversifying global economy, they taught him three month's worth of everything.
Matt: Sigmund Freud. Mitochondria. Eudora Welty. The Magna Carta.
Narrator: They taught him to fight.
CUT TO: Shot of gymnasium. Matt holds a bamboo sword and is surrounded by similarly armed opponents. He fends off all of them simultaneously, then faces center.
Narrator: They taught him to act.
CUT TO: Shot of stage in a small auditorium. Chewing the scenery like a method actor, Matt brandishes a script in one hand and gestures emphatically with the other.
Matt: Get off my plane!
Narrator: They taught him to cite his sources.
CUT TO: Shot of College Library media lab. Matt types furiously at a computer. Camera zooms in on the screen. He's typing a bibliography. MLA format.
Narrator: Now he's going to work ... for the university.
CUT TO: Shot of a small, modestly furnished office. A student sits at a computer while Matt stands behind her, drinking a cup of coffee and giving directions.
Matt: Click on ""Student Center"" ... class search ... anthropology ... click ""search"" ... wait ... wait ... wait...
Narrator: With international intrigue.
Professor: We need you to infiltrate a study ring of German students, Matt. Use your world language skills to introduce yourself, ask them for the time of day and remark on the colors of various common objects in their hideout.
Narrator: With adventure.
Friend No. 1: We've got to get to that art opening before they run out of boxed wine!
Narrator: And with romance...
Matt: So ... like, do you wanna go to a Spoon concert?
CUT TO: Frenetic series of jump cuts. Matt checking his e-mail, formatting a resume, prying bagel out of toaster oven with fork, clipping fingernails. [Fireball fills entire screen, then black again].
Narrator: The ""Sixty-Two Thousand Dollar Man."" Coming May 2009.
Contact Matt - bionically - by e-mailing him at hunziker@wisc.edu.
