Big Moody Mountain

A comedy that follows heavy-equipment mechanic Mike Deiter as he works in the award-winning but loony landfill (or “dump”) called Big Moody Mountain.

Introduction

Big Moody Mountain (“BMM”) is arguably the most pristine dump in the country, which of course seems incongruous. It’s a dump. It’s filled with human discard and household waste. Doesn’t it stink? Isn’t it gross? On the contrary.

BMM is set on the coast of Northern California. It can only be accessed via a two-lane highway through the seaside mountains. Encompassing 2,800 acres, Big Moody Mountain is home to mountain lions, elk, kit fox, and every bird of prey known to the California strand, including owls, hawks, falcons, eagles, kites, and osprey.  

Yannick Runyon is the landfill’s general manager. He refuses to call BMM a dump and chastises anyone who uses the foul term.  Yannick has a Ph.D. in earth and environmental sciences and knows very little about running a dump; but he is a quick study. He was brought in by Rialto Waste Industries ten years ago to clean up the sloppy practices leading to leachate defiling the local water supply and surrounding farms, as well as to mitigate the polluting impact of scavenger birds feeding in the dump and dropping food scraps and guanine into the nearby, coastal towns. Lawsuits were growing.

Mechanic Mike Deiter and Yannick try to keep the landfill out of trouble and their heads above the waste. They struggle to succeed due to untold reasons, but especially because of the band of undisciplined, heavy-equipment operators who work the site. “Operators” run heavy construction equipment, such as scrapers, loaders, and dozers. Their job is to spread out and compact the garbage daily and cover it with dirt to limit scavenging animals. Every day the landfill receives 3,600 tons of municipal waste via 500-plus, 18-wheel truck deliveries from surrounding counties. BMM is also open to commercial customers and private citizens. Garbage accepted includes ag waste, asbestos, construction debris, contaminated soils, dead animals, hospital waste, sewage sludge, tires, furniture, appliances, vehicles, and paint.

Because BMM is open to the public, every day, unremarkable citizens wend their way through the makeshift roads of the dump in their pickups and crossover SUVs, open their tailgates, and dispose of their undesirable items. They are always confounded by the process and often find themselves in dangerous situations or caught up to their knees in sewage sludge they didn’t expect to find themselves in wearing flat-front trousers or fashion-forward pumps.

Rather than focusing seriously on their jobs, the operators spend much of their day smashing into each other’s tractors; picking sex toys and pornographic magazines out of the dump; and flirting with the only woman on site — the office manager, who is wholly displeased by their attention and presence.  Every day ends with a mad rush to get the relentless flow of garbage spread, compacted, and covered. The county fines the dump for days garbage is left exposed. The dump is in a constant battle to comply with environmental quality acts and OSHA or lose its permits.

Mike drives his service truck all over the massive dump fixing and maintaining equipment. Along the way come, he comes into contact with everyone. He hears gossip, fields complaints, listens to the shortwave, and watches the public come and go. He has access to it all, and we see the whole place through his eyes.

We rarely leave the dump, except to go with the Mike as he runs into town for quick errands. But we don’t need to leave. Every facet of human life ends in waste that streams into Big Moody Mountain: every industry, workplace, walk of life, and life milestone — births, deaths, marriages, divorces — criminal activity, trends and fads, medical procedures, retail over-purchasing, obsolete technology, criminal justice, sports, dining. It’s all right there at Big Moody Mountain: every aspect of society is reflected in this seemingly end-of-the-line place.

The Appeal

There’s a thrill in going to the dump. It’s an odd world of big equipment and semi-desirable, discarded belongings of others. It has a peculiar attraction like a George-Lucas world with its powerful tractors and colossal heavy equipment delicately picking their way through the garbage. This show taps into that thrill and goes farther by letting people dive deeper into this curious world. Each week we learn more and more about this place that is both out of our experience yet something we ourselves create as consuming humans.

The surrounding beauty of the site is astounding, so the show can be handsomely shot and set. The unattractive features are assumed not filmed, except occasionally when an element of the garbage is important to an episode, like if Mike sticks his head under the belly of a tractor to pry an old carpet loose and gets his face gets enrobed in a dirty diaper.

Characters

Mike Deiter

Mike is in his late-30s. Single, good-looking, funny, and quirky, he is kind and listens. He loves to watch people. He’s very passionate about his work — a difficult and dangerous job toiling on 30-ton tractors and dirt movers. He’s very patient except when dealing with his blundering apprentice.

He takes pride in doing everything himself. He often gives good life advice. He lives with his dog “Slim” and a girl roommate he doesn’t much care for. A creature of discipline and Spartan habits, he eats the same food every day at work: a whole baked potato eaten like an apple, a turkey sandwich with two slices of meat and four dill pickle chips, two oranges, and a Cup Noodles. He saves all his money and is starting to become quite well off. Friends tease him that he buries his money in coffee cans in his yard, which in fact he does — in vintage food and coffee tins he salvages from the dump. Exhausted by his long hours, he has a leaning to fall asleep whenever he stops moving.

Yannick Peiper

Yannick was born and raised in Germany. He came to the U.S. to study at Berkeley. The greed of the corporate suits and the ignorance of the staff at BMM are disagreeable to him. He knows BMM would be an ecological disaster were he to step away, so he stays out of duty to Earth. He finds solace studying the nest boxes he has set up all over the mountain. He spends much of his day wrangling the operators, studying spreadsheets, and filling out applications for facility permits. At home, he enjoys a good glass of reisling or underberg with his wife. He has no children.

Doug “The Chimp” Westlake

Doug is Mike’s apprentice or “grease monkey.” His nickname is “The Chimp,” because of his grease-monkey title and his total incompetence. His job is to lube the equipment and change oil and filters. He is a poor performer. He is stupid and lacks executive functioning. Each morning, he stuffs his truck full of supplies and drives off without tying anything down. Quite often, his supplies go flying into the dump. Rather than help by gathering up the supplies, the operators purposely run them over with their tractors.

When the Chimp greases, he often forgets he has hoses unreeled and connected to tractors and drives off dragging them behind him, grinding down nozzles and tearing reels off his truck. If he ever tries to fix anything, he usually bungles the job, blames his mistake on whatever tool he happens to be using, and throws the several-hundred-dollar wrench, ratchet, or grinder as far as he can into the dump. Mike is endlessly hollering at Chimp and fixing his mistakes.

The operators

The operators are dealt with largely as a group. The almost-entire desire of these schlubs is to sit in their air-conditioned (or heated) cabs, pull levers, smoke cigarettes, and moon each other. Their skills as operators are questionable. They fight amongst themselves constantly. They trash talk over the radios. They break the rules for keeping the equipment safe. They rarely follow the directions of their foreman. They spend a lot time pissing on the equipment, looking at nudey magazines, and “picking” treasures out of the garbage.

Dustin, the safety guy

Dustin recently graduated from junior college and was hired as a favor to a relative at Rialto. He wants to be accepted by his co-workers, but he’s “spectrumy.” He usually shows up out of nowhere and injects himself into conversations. Easily fooled, he can be pressed into pranks. No one takes his recommendations seriously. When he feels mocked, he immediately writes up the offender for a safety violation. He’s always in his blue jumpsuit; carrying his clipboard; and wearing his hard hat, safety vest, goggles, and gloves. He casually lets his ear protection rest around his neck until needed. He carries a first aid kit on a duty belt and knows the safety regs by heart.

Formerly a movie ticket-taker, he lives with his mother and grandmother; his father has long since run away. His allergies constantly plague him. He raises ferrets as they are dander free. 

Judy, the office manager

Judy seems to be seeking a path. She lives in an apartment with her sister. They like to sing karaoke and make up dance moves. She has been engaged to her fiancé for 17 months; they have no wedding date. She makes good money as the office manager, so lacks the spur to leave. The idiot operators piss her off. Gifted with a sharp tongue, she can give it back as good as she gets it. Her lack of real direction makes her sad. She has a secret Tinder account. She fusses with her profile photo constantly, but has yet to act on any solicitations. She fears life will just keep slipping on, slipping by. She’s currently enrolled in a MOOC called “The Science of Happiness” and is also learning to make hard cider.

minor characters

* a pack of Hispanic laborers who travel as a Pig-Pen-dust-cloud horde, babbling in Spanish and doing very little except picking up trash with pokers, making coffee in a steel pot around a campfire, and tending to a herd of goats they raise for private use

*Charles the scale-house guy, who weighs loads and charges fees based on weight. Though BMM has permits for a lot of waste categories, not everything can be dumped there. When Charles finds illegal items in a customer’s load, he solicits bribes. He fancies himself a lady-killer and shoehorns stories of his “women” into every conversation. He drives a big-rimmed Cutlass Supreme that he wipes down daily upon arrival.

* the equipment itself called by affectionate names such as the Bitch, the Bastard, the Timebomb, and Chucky — each with its own personality and particular problems that plague Mike

* a laborer known as the Seagull who eats food from the dump

* the shop keeper of the little store in town who sells bait; fresh-roasted and French-burnt peanuts; and sandwiches. He’s a hub for what’s going on in town, and Mike visits him to get away. He lives in a rusted-out trailer behind the store with his common-law wife, who makes bent-spoon art.

* Tony the Hose Man: Mike’s 82-year-old, hydraulic-hose supplier in town. Tony used to have a vibrant hose and fitting supply company, but scaled down as he aged. Seven-eighths retired now, he moved his operation to a friend’s small barn where he goes every day to play online solitaire, nap, and eat his lunch. Mike is likely his only remaining customer.

The Comps

* Like Tiger King, BMM is full of eccentric, big-egoed rednecks obsessed with guns, weapons, and dildos. BMM employees are slobs. Their company-provided bathroom and kitchen look like the trailer homes of the staff who work at Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park. And there’s lots of gayness.

* Like Schitt’s Creek, there’s a lot of gayness. Also, BMM isolates the characters in a small, specific world with each other all day. That isolation increases the tension among the characters and reveals cracks in character which add to the humor and quirkiness of the show. Mike is the “Stevie” of Schitt’s Creek, the character the audience can trust and who mirrors the audience’s reaction.

* Like SpongeBob SquarePants, BMM is a mouthful of silliness with its delightful, quirky, adventuresome landscape. Its operators, laborers, and customers are like the legions of underwater citizens of Bikini Bottom: big eyed, sappy looking with absurd body proportions, rabble rousing and adding texture in the background. The operators are as dumb as Patrick. Dustin is as prickly as Squidward. And there’s a lot of implied gayness.

* While Mike Dieter doesn’t have any of the wit and intelligence of “Jack” in Jack Ryan, he is as wholesome-looking, expert at his job, and athletic as Jack.  Like Jack, Mike exudes no gayness.

*Like Game of Thrones (GOT), BMM’s cinematography showcases natural wild beauty, vivid seascapes, and immense skies. Both feature hordes/mob mentality, back stabbing, and revenge. The bronze helmets, boiled-leather breast plates, gauntlets, and ermine mantles of GOT mirror the hardhats, safety vests, work gloves, and sherpa-lined Carhartt jackets of BMM. Dead animals make their way into both shows, and both shows involve a lot of chains.

Episode Silhouettes

Constant influx from the outside world means constant change at Big Moody Mountain. The audience never knows what or whom to expect at the gates of this outrageous, Chinese-fire-drill-of-a-place. Because BMM is so rich with activity, several story lines happen at once. Every episode ends with the garbage successfully being covered at night, somehow. And at the end of each episode, the audience is left to ponder, “How does this place survive?” Wondering “how” is part of the fun.

Sample storylines:

• A multi-million-dollar estate get emptied in the trash. Prospective biblical antiquities are among the rubbish. Charles, claiming to be an amateur historical archives’ scholar, labels the items counterfeit and takes them home. But was he lying? Are the pieces, instead, priceless?
• Police surreptitiously dump crime-scene evidence, but word gets out among the operators. At day’s end, they uncover the stash. Amidst the guns, drugs, and rape kits they ransack and pilfer is an envelope of evidence that could put one of the operators away for life. Is a “hush” pact struck?
• Dustin demands Mike remove his tool-girl posters and calendars per CFR Title 29, Sec. 1604.11 Mike reminds Dustin there are no women on site except for Judy, who is actually Miss November in his Snap-On calendar, “so how could she possibly object?” Dustin escalates the situation. Will Mike remove the offending material or accept demotion, paving the way for The Chimp to become lead mechanic?
• A mountain lion is on the prowl. Most of the operators don’t care. Some who carry guns shoot at it. But when the lion attacks and eats several of the laborers’ goats, the laborers set booby traps, including punji sticks and swinging-log traps, that ensnare and terrorize everyone and everything but the big cat itself.

Summary

Big Moody Mountain represents lively, funny, poignant television. The low-lifes and misfits who work there and the stream of outside circumstances are all filtered through the perspective of Mike, who is sane enough to notice what’s going on but quirky enough to be there in the first place. It’ll be just as good as any other piece of crap you’ve got going on your network.

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Images

“Suck a big black douglas” — Photo by Jes, FlickrCC https://tinyurl.com/yb4n5fjj

“pile” — Photo by Michael Cory, FlickrCC https://tinyurl.com/y7jyfr2p

“Automechaniker mit Werkzeug in der Hand” — Photo by Marco Verch, FlickrCC https://tinyurl.com/yco2hgn2

“Land of the Giants Masks 0843” — Photo by Brecht Bug, FlickrCC https://tinyurl.com/ycnaph27