I see it now:

A based-on-a-true-story movie featuring Piano Man: a frail, mysterious, brooding, quivering-lipped, Schubert-in-his-last-days-of-syphilis figure of unspeakable melancholy, who emerges from the cold, dark Sea of Sheppey (only in the movie it will be called “Innisfree”) in a tailcoat and white tie, clutching his only possession in the world, a tattered and lovingly annotated score of “Memories.”

The story will have redemption, of course. I propose that the mute and amnesiac Piano Man solo in a concert – a concert devised by a lonely widower patroness, Clara, who hears of Piano Man’s story and believes that this young man carries the spirit of her late husband, the great Scottish composer Maestro MacDowil (whose fate was suicide or murder? That is a mystery!). You see, Clara believes that her beloved Maestro is trying to communicate to her from beyond the grave using young Piano Man as a conduit, so she has the asylum arrange a concert in which Piano Man performs the late Maestro’s unfortunately over-arpeggiated Piano Concerto in d minor.

All does not go according to the Clara’s plan, however. In the middle of the concerto’s slow movement, Piano Man spies his secret love in the audience – the ravishingly beautiful Sonja, a St. Petersberg prostitute with a heart of gold, whom he is forbidden by his cruel and manipulative parents (the wealthy Capulitzers) to love. Abruptly, his aphasia lifts, his memory returns, and whereas before, he was only able to express his love to Sonja through music, he finally gathers the courage to proclaim his heart to her in words (recall John Nash in the movie version of “A Beautiful Mind,” whose Nobel symposium consists of an Oscar-acceptance-style speech in which John tells the King of Sweden that really, he owes his seminal contributions in the field of game theory – and his miraculous escape from schizophrenic psychoses – to Love, the greatest thing of all). The score swells to a climactic medley of Andrew Lloyd Webber favorites.

The release of the movie will be immediately followed by “Shine Tour Part the Second” in which David Helfgott and Piano Man play duets that have been especially composed for the occasion by Elton John.

My own birthday was just a couple of weeks ago. I read somewhere that you should stop expecting friends and family to make a big deal out of your birthday after age 12. I was thinking, on my birthday, that it might be nice if we could get over wanting our birthdays to be a big deal. At my age especially, it might be nice if we could think of birthdays as just another day. Might. I still can’t get over wanting my own special day. And by the way, I would have chosen the vice.