‘50 Shades Of Grey’ As Imagined By 6 Film Directors

Indie film auteur Gus Van Sant recently submitted an audition video for Focus Features’ 50 Shades of Grey film adaptation. He filmed a scene starring Alex Pettyfer as Christian Grey and an unknown actress as Ana. Focus is currently working on hiring a name director to bring their own vision of the novel to the screen.

These are our suggestions. Here’s EL James’ S&M fantasy as imagined by some of Hollywood’s finest — and Michael Bay.

Woody Allen

Christian and Ana lie in bed. It’s her first time and she’s feeling conflicted about it — in a purely existential sense.

Christian: (fidgets nervously): The last time I was inside a woman was when I visited the Statue of Liberty. Just kidding, yesterday. I was inside a woman yesterday.

Ana: (lies on his bed, wearing his robe) I’ve never cared for the Statue of Liberty, in a symbolic or a structural sense. I don’t really “get” 19th century architecture, but I’m from Philadelphia, where our buildings are older than God. We still believe in God there.

Christian: God, I hate everything you’re saying, but my existential attraction toward you symbolizes our inherent doom, and doom speaks to me. I can’t help it. I’m Jewish.

Ana: You’re always so wrapped up in your own identity. Don’t you stop to consider anything else? (Drops the robe and points to her…eh, um…nether areas.) Take a moment to examine this. It’s structure. Don’t you think it has a definite negative capability?

Christian: It looks like Kierkegaard, but sexy.

Ana: How do you mean? I’ve always found the Scandinavians so dreadfully boring. When it comes to philosophy, I prefer the pre-Socratics. They were in touch with the spirit.

Christian: I’m not much for the Greeks. I don’t get into that NYU undergraduate intellectual posturing, all of those eighteen-year-olds trying to figure out what Plato “meant” by the cave. You know what he meant? Suffering, that’s the only universal truth. And masturbation. That’s the cave I can get into.

Ana: (starts to the robe back on) So, you won’t be needing this then?

Christian: I didn’t say that. Now get over here and make Plato proud.

Kevin Smith

Christian: It’s just like everyone else’s fucked up lives are in constant motion, and I’m fucking stuck in neutral, you know. Everybody I know is fuckin’ married with fuckin’ kids and got boring, but fuck that shit. I’m making my own life on my own fuckin’ terms, regardless of how shitty everyone might think I am.

Ana: That is an amazing series of life observations that nobody has ever had before. I would like to embark on an aggressively sexual relationship with you that you will undoubtedly tell your friends about later in excruciating detail.

Werner Herzog

Christian and Ana are in the Andes, hauling a large boat up the side of a mountain, representing the brave futility of humanity and the burden of our dreams.

Christian: Do you see the boat? Have you really looked at it, in order to examine its puerile nature?

Ana: I have not. I don’t believe this is a significant boat.

Christian: It is only significant insofar as we believe it to be significant.

Christian grunts as he struggles to hold onto the rope. A number of Native South Americans quietly die in the background, ignored by Christian and Ana. Christian continues to pull onward, aware of his utter hopelessness. It makes him hard.

Christian: We are like this boat. We are like this jungle that surrounds us, savage yet untouched. The jungle is the most honest place on earth, because it cannot hide its true being.

Ana: Do you believe me to be savage? I’m only 22. I’ve never even been kissed. I am innocent.

Christian: You are not innocent. You just have not yet realized your purpose, the fall from grace that awaits us all. The destiny of man isn’t survival. It’s madness. Even the chickens are mad. Look at them. Watch how they stare at us with their erotic blankness. I find them sickening, and when I gaze into their flat, ghoulish eyes, I understand the horror that awaits us all.

Ana: What horrors await me? I was promised ropes and chains.

Christian: You want the rope? Then you drag this boat.

Michael Bay

A military helicopter appears outside their window mid-coitus, because why the fuck not.

Ana and Christian (in unison): Shit!

Christian: Get behind me. I’ve always loved you.

Ana: But we just met yest-

Christian: Shh. I’ll keep you safe.

He approaches a curtain, which dramatically flaps in the wind in a way a curtain facing a helicopter wouldn’t. Like ever.

Christian: Come and get me, you fucking pussies!

Ana (to herself): Oh my goddess, he’s incredible. I’ll probably do it with him again right before things start inevitably exploding. I wonder if he and my dad will butt heads in the future?

Christian goes flying off the balcony and lands on the helicopter, engaging it in hand-to-rotor combat. He totally wins.

CLOSE on the helicopter exploding. Christian flies back into the room, executes a perfect stunt roll right into Ana and re-enters her, all in one fluid movement.

(Director’s note 6/23: Heh, fluid. Also, can Ana turn into a robot for no reason like the blonde girl from Revenge of the Fallen? That was pretty hot. Maybe she can be a secretary. We’ll get some coverage of her doing hot chick stuff in Miami later.)

Lars Von Trier

Christian finds Anastasia in a pile of askew clothing on the bathroom floor, stroking the balloon he gave her a few months prior.

Ana: As all man turns to ash, a cancer will accost the barren lands.

Christian: Are you okay? What’s happening?

Ana (voice deepening): Your God is a superstition. He wields your cock as a mechanism of inevitable human rot.

Christian (to himself): This is strange. I’ll see where this goes instead of calling for help.

Ana (voice rising): The dank void within me shall engulf the whole of the cosmos!

Her eyes become crazed, as she makes a sizable incision into her palm while staring right at Christian’s pelvic area.

Christian: Honey, I’m concerned.

Ana: MY WOMANHOOD IS THE SUMMONER OF THE PLAGUE.

Terrence Malick

The scene opens with the Big Bang, the universe’s first orgasm and the Divine burst that gave life to our characters. A series of screensaver images and scenes of somber dinosaurs orient the audience toward a love of the divine, a reminder that grace penetrates us all. All Hail the Father, the Son and the Holy Fuck.

We greet our characters as Christian stands silently in a field, wearing overalls and a straw hat. He’s even chewing on a piece of straw. His ethereal wife dances around him in eternal celebration of divine love. Christian will never speak. He’s the strong silent type. He speaks through the wheat. That’s hot.

Ana: (whispers) I want to know you. I want to know what made you and see the hands that molded you from clay. What are you made out of now? What is inside you? I want you to see what’s inside me and to see me as He does.

Christian: (wind blows through the wheat)

Ana: What is this love that loves us? I can’t comprehend this desire that’s inside me. All I can feel is you, you that destroys me with passion. You are my creation and my sin, the God that possesses me. We are created with love, yet we fill each other with pain. Why? Why isn’t love enough?

Christian: (buffalo trample upon the wheat)

Ana begins to twirl in God’s radiant sunlight. She cannot look at him and beholds the sky instead. CLOSE on birds forming a V in the distance.

Ana: You’ve changed somehow. You want to hurt me. You were made to hurt me. I hear you, even when you are silent. Your silence is where God lives. Where are you God? Where were you when I needed you to loose me from my binds? I have transgressed. I have sinned. I am punished.

Christian: (dies, but in the wheat)

Ana: Amen.