I don’t like to watch Hollywood movies anymore; they do weird things to my head.
I wake from a nightmare where my husband has taken me to a factory and we’re looking around at huge bandsaws and chopsaws….. and then I see the suitcase. The very LARGE suitcase, and I realize that it’s me that will be going inside the suitcase, in parts…. and I look up sadly at him because I KNOW…
::wake up with severe sweats and stomach flailing::
DAMN!! It’s those Hollywood movies. And they’re just recycling everything I didn’t want to watch as a kid anyway these days. The predictable creature in the fog, the perverted serial killer torturer, the ghosts pouring down walls of ill-fated apartments and houses, the girl possessed by an exorcisable demon, the sharks in the water (everybody SCREAM ok?), the bugs and aliens are attacking, blah blah blah blah.
It’s harder to get a truly original script produced in Hollywood these days than to get Kim Jong Il to hand over a nuclear stockpile. Which might in fact make a much better movie, now that I think of it….
Can’t we do more than create plots by spinning Wheel of Fortune’s 20 or so choice elements from yesteryear? I mean they’re doing it like it was magnetic refrigerator poetry:
* * * * * * * * * *
SHARKS
attack
NAGGING GIRL
and
COMIC RELIEF GUY
with
MOBSTER
in
LABORATORY
near
ALIEN CHAMBER
around
LARGE SUM OF MONEY
(That sounds like those LAND SHARKS, Morty, try somethin else.)
Ok,
CHAINSAW HACKER
confronts
COMIC RELIEF GUY
and
HOT PORN BABE
in
SUNKEN WRECK
near
ZOMBIES
in
LABORATORY
attack
NAGGING GIRL
with
CONTAGIOUS DEATH PLAGUE
(Hey, Sid, ya gatta like that one, huh? No?) (Nah.)
COMIC RELIEF GUY
confronts
SCREAMING GIRL
with
HAUNTED HOUSE
from
LARGE SUM OF MONEY
in
SPEEDING BUS
(Nah.) (You sure??) (Yeh.)
ZOMBIES
eat
CHAINSAW HACKER
chasing
NAGGING GIRL
and
HOT PORN BABE
with
LARGE SUM OF MONEY
in
SPEEDING BUS
to
ALIEN CHAMBER
on
DESERTED ISLAND
with
CONTAGIOUS DEATH PLAGUE
(DAT’s it, now you’re tawkin, call up Phil!)
* * * * * * * *
As bad as things have been going, what with Mr. Burton in a possible slump (even the squirrels couldn’t save that Wonka film), 3 or four boxing films all badgering each other for first place, two wraith and ghoul films, Mr. Gilliam belabored with scenery, yet another Exorcist knockoff, and all the rest of what was purportedly alternative that failed this year, I began to look around me at our population and wonder what they found inspiring.
What would actually recharge this failing economy and our flagging creative American genius? There must be some brave new Dancing with Indie Films way to go, I thought naiively. But as I’ve said, I always get my come uppance, and to get it, I had to go to ….. well…. I have to admit it …. Disneyland.
(Yes I finally got dragged to the trappiest place on earth.)
Upon looking around I thought:
I should just give up.
There was nothing but a vast expanse of America at its lowest beer-bellyiest, pink-est, glitter-iest common denominator. I could not have imagined that many ugly people in one place, but there they actually were, all overweight, queued like sheep, all visored and golden-eared, wearing the same ugly T-shirts and shoes and buzzed hair and
…. I can’t really be FROM this place can I?. I suddenly turned French inside, ashamed of this whole country…all the while looking every bit as bad as they did. But I know they aren’t going to get it.
Morty and Sid are right!
I am now convinced that if you just took all the pieces of all the hit box office films from the past 30 years, spliced them in pieces and sold them in a way where people can actually splice them together themselves, say in their own editors, and make them fit into their own DVD-able choices, you’d have a home movie craze that would keep us all entertained right through to the next natural disaster and NO ONE WOULD HAVE TO PITCH ANOTHER FILM. Just make it really small, to be edited and played with say…. PSP size or smaller, even iPod small, and start selling all the bits of film under Coca Cola caps… And no one would have to pitch a movie again.
It’s coming. Mark my words, and someone, somewhere, will make an awards ceremony for them too. Patchwork velvet will be de rigeur.
And I’ll go work for the new foreign film underground.
Gotta get rid of these shoes first.
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