Maybe it's time for a new career, Marco: Hollywood! With the Oscars set to air this weekend, we're imagining Rubio in a starring role in each of the nine films up for Best Picture. After all, he's great at pretending — to care about sick people, for example, or that he's just superconfused about that superunconstitutional travel ban. Plus, there's always plenty of bottled water at craft services.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. No need to make anything up here; activists already did it for us. In Three Billboards Outside Miami, Florida, mobile billboards that read, "SLAUGHTERED IN SCHOOL / AND STILL NO GUN CONTROL? / HOW COME, MARCO RUBIO?" were deployed near Rubio's office to urge the senator to engage with gun reform in a meaningful way after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High.
Narrator voice: He didn’t.
Lady Bird. In the Rubio version, this coming-of-age film takes place in 2018 and at a different high school, one where the lives of 17 characters (all of whom were the protagonists of their own stories) are tragically cut short. Heartbroken mothers send letters not to their children, but to their lawmakers, but their pleas reach no one.
Rubio gets on his phone to tweet, congratulating himself for knowing the perfect response to this tragedy: “Thoughts and prayers.”
Gary Oldman in Joe Wright's Darkest Hour.
Focus Features
Get Out. The subjugation of black Americans is the focus of Get Out, literalizing the predatory ways white men and women try to become the people they loathe. But when protagonist Chris is hypnotized into the Sunken Place, he's not alone. Marco Rubio is waiting for him there. Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, is permanently stuck in the Sunken Place, accepting payoffs from conservative groups that place the white man before all else. "Oh no, no, no, no, no, no," he intones, tears welling in his eyes. "The Kochs are so good to us. They treat us like family."
The Shape of Water. Guillermo del Toro's fantastical drama follows a romance between Elisa, a lonely janitor at a secret government research facility, and an "Amphibian Man" being cruelly held captive there. Rubio takes over for Octavia Spencer as Zelda, Elisa's colleague and friend, who helps conceal their relationship. When their boss — an evil, middle-aged, married man who loves guns, sexually harassing women, torturing people, and demeaning people of different races and disabilities — interrogates the pair about the fish man, Rubio immediately snitches on his friend. The government kills and dissects the Amphibian Man, and Elisa is executed after being found guilty of treason in a secret military court. But, hey, what was Rubio supposed to do? He needs this job.
Call Me by Your Name. In real life, after saying he was “deeply impacted” by the mass shooting at the gay nightclub Pulse, Rubio attended and spoke at an event led by Liberty Counsel, a so-called pro-family Christian group that actively hates queer people. So in this film, he plays Oliver, a man who spends most of this film hooking up with Elio, a 17-year-old dude. At the film's end, Rubio calls his former lover to tell him he's engaged to be married to a woman — and also that gay marriage is "ridiculous and absurd," and has Elio considered conversion therapy?
The Post.
Niko Tavernise/Courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox
Phantom Thread. Rubio stands in front of the TV cameras, fumbling. Alma and Reynolds, of the House of Woodcock, stand offstage. They stare with contempt as Rubio makes a fool of himself in the outfit that had just been tailored to him. “He’s a mess,” Reynolds whispers.
Rubio pauses his discussion for a water break, but the glass slips out of his hands, spilling water all over himself. The two pull the man off-camera and strip him of his suit. The camera crew looks stunned as Alma turns to them and says, “It is no business of ours how Mr. Rubio behaves, but he can no longer act like this and be dressed by the House of Woodcock.”
Dunkirk.
Courtesy of Warner Bros.
