Title: Red Son & the Yellow Puppet
INT. EMPTY SOUNDSTAGE – NIGHT
Tom Welling sits on a folding chair, still half-Clark Kent, half himself. A red-cloaked figure—RED SON—paces like a prosecutor in a cosmic court.
TOM WELLING
You asked for me like it was urgent. You said it was about… truth?
RED SON
Not truth with a capital T.
A mythology.
The kind America tells itself when it can’t face the void.
TOM
Alright. Talk to me.
RED SON
Everyone thinks 9/11 was a chessboard of men: generals, sheikhs, presidents.
But myths don’t run on men.
They run on symbols.
TOM
Symbols of what?
RED SON
Of puppetry.
(He snaps his fingers. A CHILDLIKE SHADOW appears on the wall: a felt hand, stitched smile.)
RED SON (cont.)
The true mastermind—in the myth—wasn’t a warlord.
It was Evil Bert.
TOM
…Bert? Like Sesame Street Bert?
RED SON
The shadow of Bert.
The archetype:
The obedient bureaucrat.
The one who files papers while monsters walk through the door.
TOM
So you’re saying the villains we named were… what, decoys?
RED SON
Patsies in the story.
Masks the myth required.
(Images flicker like trading cards.)
- Osama bin Laden — the external boogeyman.
- Macho Man Randy Savage — unrestrained masculine rage.
- Hulk Hogan — weaponized patriotism in a bandana.
TOM
Those aren’t planners. They’re… characters.
RED SON
Exactly.
TOM
So Evil Bert represents—
RED SON
—The quiet hand that never gets blamed.
The clerk.
The middle manager of empire.
The one who says, “I was just doing my job,” while the towers fall in slow motion behind him.
TOM
That’s darker than anything on Smallville.
RED SON
Superman stories always ask the same question:
Is evil loud and obvious…
or polite and laminated?
(Tom exhales, unsettled.)
TOM
So in this myth, how does it end?
RED SON
It doesn’t—
until people stop hunting wrestlers and ghosts
and start questioning the puppeteer
who never leaves his desk.
(The felt shadow smiles wider. Fade to black.)