The Pitch--It’s a Hit!

Washington, D.C. The Mall. Night. Throngs ooh and ahh to a spectacular Fourth of July fireworks display. Among the holiday revelers are four spectacularly attractive White House summer interns: the studious yet ample-breasted Veronica; her wrong-side-of-the-tracks yet earnest boyfriend, Zack; Zack’s rich high school quarterback buddy, Trevor; and Cheryl, a small-town beauty queen who, interestingly, also has large breasts. Cut to . . .

. . . the shores of Chesapeake Bay, later that night. Veronica, Zack, Trevor and Cheryl lounge around a bonfire, chugging bottles of Zima and sharing chilling stories of presidential improprieties they’ve witnessed firsthand. Cut to . . .

. . . the Beltway. Passing the bottle, Zack drives Veronica, Trevor and Cheryl home. Without warning, something darts across the road, directly in their path--whomp! To their horror, they discover they’ve hit and killed a dog. But not just any dog. A cocoa-colored Labrador retriever with a tag that identifies him as Buddy, care of B. Clinton, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington, D.C. The president’s dog! Everybody freaks. Veronica insists they tell the cops. But Trevor knows that ‘fessing up could ruin their incredibly promising futures.

Another car suddenly rounds the bend and slows to a stop! The driver, Ned Bundy, just happens to be an acquaintance of the others. The totally creepy Ned wanted to be a White House intern, too, but he failed the psych evaluation. He ended up interning at a nearby factory making large gleaming gaffing hooks, the kind used by commercial fishermen and mass murderers.

While Veronica and Cheryl distract Ned with their shrink-wrapped sweaters, Zack and Trevor fling Buddy’s carcass into the Tidal Basin. Splash! Ned drives on, only a little bit suspicious. The others breathe easier. Trevor persuades them to tell no one, to carry the secret of poor Buddy to their graves. Cut to . . .

. . . the Fourth of July, exactly one year later. What were once four future leaders of America are now four human wrecks, their friendships destroyed by the haunting memories of a dead dog in the middle of the road.

Cheryl sells freeze-dried astronaut ice cream to tourists at the National Air and Space Museum.

Trevor sits around all day in his trust fund condo in suburban Maryland, watching bad TV while drowning his guilt in one Zima after another.

Zack has moved to Baltimore to work on a fishing boat--the Red Herring--where he frequently uses a large gleaming gaffing hook to snag soft-shell crabs.

Veronica, meanwhile, has joined the French Foreign Legion. Returning home on leave from Algeria, she finds a handwritten note wedged in her door. It reads, “I know what you did last summer at the White House.” At first she fears it has something to do with that one Saturday afternoon shortly after her internship began, when the nice Secret Service man let her into the Oval Office with documents for the president to sign and she exited 20 minutes later, minus her socks. But then she flips the note over. A scream of utter terror escapes her throat. There, on the back of the paper, is a bloody paw print--Buddy’s paw print! Cut to . . .

. . . Trevor’s condo. Trevor lounges on a beanbag chair, nursing a Zima, watching “Jerry Springer,” when the doorbell rings. He starts to get up when the phone rings. Veronica’s on the line, scared spit-less. “Somebody knows,” she tells Trevor.

A man stands there, his face obscured by a fur-lined parka even though it’s 101 degrees outside. Except for the gleaming gaffing hook in his hand, he looks exactly like Nanook of the North. Trevor grunts sarcastically, “A little early for Halloween, isn’t it, dude?” That’s when Nanook guts Trevor with the gaffing hook.

Veronica spends the rest of the film trying to save her friends and herself from the mysterious Nanook, who goes around gaffing everybody for reasons that will remain incomprehensible even after the obligatory scene in the third act in which he explains his motives moments before the tables are turned and he himself gets whacked.

Could Ned Bundy be Nanook? Could Zack? Could it be the ASPCA? Or could Nanook be the pet-loving president, bent on revenge?

We won’t reveal the shocking ending, but suffice it to say that the killer’s initials are Kenneth Starr’s . . .

. . . Or are they?