I’d really like to see a prequel to the original Parent Trap. I’d like to have been the Disney executive who looked at the box office receipts for the film and said. “Hell yes! We’ve got a dynamo on our hands here! The cast is in place already and people really wanna know more about these characters! It’s a winner, Walt!”

And if Walt Disney were some sort of bizarro Walt Disney who didn’t hold narrative to a very high level of scrutiny, bizarro Walt Disney would totally greanlight my idea and assign me writers to work on the script. When they walked into the office, this is what I’d tell them.

OK, here’s what we’ve got. We’ve got Brian Keith and Maureen O’Hara. A California rancher and a Boston socialite. Now somehow, they’ve got to meet each other and get married. Let’s go ahead and assume they met at one of those high level debutante balls in New York where socialites are paired with graduates of West Point. I can totally see Brian Keith as a West Point man. Now they fall in love. They get married. They have a perfect pair of twins. Then. SOMETHING HAPPENS.

What?

The writers look at me.

Something SO HORRIBLE needs to happen to these characters that they decide it’s best if they move to opposite ends of the country and never tell their children they have a sibling.

I’ll admit I’m a bit stuck there.

Moving on. At this point, we’re going to need some kind of a “lying montage” to cover the next 14 years of the girls’ lives. Tell the Sherman Brothers to start working on that. Something like “So, do I have another parent?” Or “Identical twins must be kept apart!” would be an ideal opening line.

I think the movie ends with both girls reading an advertisement for Camp Inch in Life magazine, but I’m open to suggestions on that.

What do you think?

The fourth Alex Battles & The Whisky Rebellion live album features performances recorded at Southpaw in 2009. It is available for purchase now on Bandcamp.