Curse of the Mexican?
I was watching The Expendables the other day, and it occurred to me that Knocked Up is basically Fools Rush In without the Mexicans. I find this particularly intriguing, because Fools Rush In was a box-office flop, while Knocked Up was a huge-ass success and made Seth Rogen a big star - but they're both the same story! What gives?
Maybe movies are more successful if they don't have Mexicans in them. There were no Mexicans in Titanic, and it was the most successful movie ever! Star Wars didn't have any Mexicans in it, either, and look at how well it did. (Maybe people wouldn't have been ready for a Mexican Jedi anyway.) Once Upon a Time In Mexico, on the other hand, had lots of Mexicans in it (I guess it had to), and even though it wasn't a flop, it wasn't as successful as other movies that didn't have any Mexicans in them, like Braveheart and Alvin & the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel.
I think Entertainment Weekly or the FBI or somebody like that should look into this, because if it turns out that putting Mexicans in your movie is gonna cut into your box office, the Jews in Hollywood are gonna want to know.
Screenwriting101 102
I guess Knocked Up is just another instance of a recent Hollywood trend, namely, unacknowledged remakes of 10-15 year old movies. Like The Roommate, which is basically Single White Female, and Skyline, which is a variation on Independence Day (itself a bloated reimagining of all those 1950s alien invasion movies, like Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers).
I guess 10 years is long enough to wait for the General Public to forget a movie, so you can go back and make it again and then say, "Hey, everybody! Come and see my new movie!"
This is a great way to make movies because you don't have to rack your brain to come up with a new plot or story. It's also good news for writers who're constipated in their heads: pick a 10-15 year old movie; rename the characters and maybe switch their gender and/or sexual orientation (e.g. "Bruno the gay Chinese stenographer" becomes "Penny the straight Albanian astronaut"); update the slang, colloquialisms & pop-cultural references; and have everyone smoke way more weed than in the original. Presto! New movie.
I have no problem with this approach, of course, because it lets you skip the part where you have to come up with a new idea and a new story and new characters, etc. and get to the meaty-fun writing lickety-split - woohoo! Not that I have trouble coming up with new ideas, but as Tomás de Torquemada said, "It's not about working harder, it's about working smarter." And this, chilluns, is writing smarter. Plus, there are lots of 10-15 year old movies to choose from! Like Dave and Romeo Is Bleeding and The Meteor Man - and The Silence of the Lambs (no one remembers that movie, so cha-CHING, bitches!).
So you take a synopsis of the movie you're going toregurgitate reimagine, paste it into your favorite word processing or writing program, and go to work - you don't even have to write the synopsis yourself; just go online and scrounge one up. Easy!
To illustrate:
"Clarice Starling Newton Crosby, a top student at the FBI's training academy, lands a special assignment: the FBI is investigating a vicious murderer nicknamed Buffalo Bill Hungry Jack, who kills young women and then removes the skin from their bodies makes hats out of their internal organs. Jack Crawford Lola Dench wants Clarice Newton to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter Sister Norma Jean, a brilliant psychiatrist nun who is also a violent psychopath homicidal maniac, serving life behind bars for various acts of murder and cannibalism shoplifting. Crawford Dench believes that Lecter Norma Jean may have insight into the case and that Clarice Newton, as an attractive young woman man (or hermaphrodite), may be just the bait to draw him out. Lecter Norma Jean does indeed know something about Buffalo Bill Hungry Jack, but his her information comes with a price: in exchange for telling what he she knows, he she wants to be housed in a more comfortable facility. More important, he she wants to speak with Clarice Newton about her his past. He She skillfully digs into her his psyche, forcing her him to reveal her his innermost traumas and putting her him in a position of vulnerability when she he can least afford to be weak."
What could be easier?
Next, the title. Again, it's so easy even a Hollywood studio executive can do it, thanks to Peter Roget - take the original title and thesaurize it, thus:
The Silence of the Lambs ➙ The Stillness of the Innocent
Boom! Done.
It occurs to me now that you could probably make a lot of money writing a how-to book forwanna-be aspiring screenwriters about this tactic - as far as I know, no one's ever posited a method like this to the monstrously titanic & desperately avid army of would-be William Goldmans out there. And who wouldn't want to make a lot of money? I sure would - maybe I'll write it myself: Screenwriting Made Really Fucking Easy.
Two Great Tastes That Go Great Together...
Maybe movies are more successful if they don't have Mexicans in them. There were no Mexicans in Titanic, and it was the most successful movie ever! Star Wars didn't have any Mexicans in it, either, and look at how well it did. (Maybe people wouldn't have been ready for a Mexican Jedi anyway.) Once Upon a Time In Mexico, on the other hand, had lots of Mexicans in it (I guess it had to), and even though it wasn't a flop, it wasn't as successful as other movies that didn't have any Mexicans in them, like Braveheart and Alvin & the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel.
I think Entertainment Weekly or the FBI or somebody like that should look into this, because if it turns out that putting Mexicans in your movie is gonna cut into your box office, the Jews in Hollywood are gonna want to know.
Screenwriting
I guess Knocked Up is just another instance of a recent Hollywood trend, namely, unacknowledged remakes of 10-15 year old movies. Like The Roommate, which is basically Single White Female, and Skyline, which is a variation on Independence Day (itself a bloated reimagining of all those 1950s alien invasion movies, like Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers).
I guess 10 years is long enough to wait for the General Public to forget a movie, so you can go back and make it again and then say, "Hey, everybody! Come and see my new movie!"
This is a great way to make movies because you don't have to rack your brain to come up with a new plot or story. It's also good news for writers who're constipated in their heads: pick a 10-15 year old movie; rename the characters and maybe switch their gender and/or sexual orientation (e.g. "Bruno the gay Chinese stenographer" becomes "Penny the straight Albanian astronaut"); update the slang, colloquialisms & pop-cultural references; and have everyone smoke way more weed than in the original. Presto! New movie.
I have no problem with this approach, of course, because it lets you skip the part where you have to come up with a new idea and a new story and new characters, etc. and get to the meaty-fun writing lickety-split - woohoo! Not that I have trouble coming up with new ideas, but as Tomás de Torquemada said, "It's not about working harder, it's about working smarter." And this, chilluns, is writing smarter. Plus, there are lots of 10-15 year old movies to choose from! Like Dave and Romeo Is Bleeding and The Meteor Man - and The Silence of the Lambs (no one remembers that movie, so cha-CHING, bitches!).
So you take a synopsis of the movie you're going to
To illustrate:
"
What could be easier?
Next, the title. Again, it's so easy even a Hollywood studio executive can do it, thanks to Peter Roget - take the original title and thesaurize it, thus:
The Silence of the Lambs ➙ The Stillness of the Innocent
Boom! Done.
It occurs to me now that you could probably make a lot of money writing a how-to book for
Two Great Tastes That Go Great Together...
No doubt you've heard of (or maybe even read) Seth Grahame-Smith's Pride & Prejudice & Zombies. As a result, readers are now offered a growing catalog of similar works, like Ben H. Winters's Sense & Sensibility & Sea Monsters and Android Karenina, and Seth Grahame-Smith's Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter.
Fuckin' nifty, I say. But what if you took a literary classic and mashed it up with another literary classic (instead of monsters)?
Well, you might get something like The Obscure Mayor Casterbridge (and the French Lieutenant's Woman Who Loved Him). You can bet that if I saw a book with that title at Barnes & Noble or Borders, I wouldn't buy it - I'd get it on Amazon instead, 'cause it'd be 40% off and I wouldn't have to pay any goddamned sales tax.
Now, given the source material, I'd imagine Obscure Mayor'd go a little something like this:
Joshua Farthing, a village milkman, is encouraged to run for the office of mayor of Casterbridge by Oliver Crossbury, a schoolmaster. Desdemona Sweetwater tricks Joshua into marriage by faking a pregnancy, then leaves him. Joshua then falls for Minverva Crossbury, who's unhappily married to Oliver; they have an affair but her contradictory desires (love vs. freedom) prevent any chance at of their being happy together.
The story'd show Joshua’s ambition thwarted repeatedly by the squalid nature of a life ruined by poverty, by the mindlessness of others, and would end with Joshua’s miserable death as representative of the indecency of Fate, of how Fate causes suffering even - or perhaps especially - in the pure of heart.
At one point, Joshua does become mayor, but then his past comes back to haunt him - in a flashback we'd learn that years ago, in a drunken stupor, Joshua sold both wife & child to Cyril Frostproof, a scientist & inventor. Time passes, Joshua accumulates wealth & respect; then his daughter Ingrid shows up, wanting to know what kind of man he is & whether or not she can forgive him for having sold her to Frostproof.
Joshua's downfall begins when he meets Atherton Slipknot, a cynic, who starts to slowly take over Joshua's life (and lovers). Then Frostproof returns to claim Ingrid, just as she & Joshua are beginning to overcome the monstrous gulf between them. Frostproof's removal of Ingrid is Joshua's deathblow - he has nothing left. Geoffrey Firmin-like, Joshua stumbles drunkenly out of town and is killed by a vampire during a rainstorm.
The development of Joshua’s character would progress from initial contentedness through bitter attempts to hold onto what he considers “his,” to total desparation and then dissolution/death. But in interpolated chapters (after Joshua's elected mayor), the spotlight would turn to Ambrose Fogslaughter (a penniless aristocrat) and Yolanda Larchgate (an heiress), who are engaged to be married. They meet Fatima Beach, a former governess (and scarlet woman from Cheapstick), who's employed as a companion to Andromeda Bosphorous (think Judi Dench + Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS) of Kentley House.
Ambrose is immediately taken with Fatima, who reveals to him that she's miserable due to Mrs. Bosphorous and her housekeeper, Glinda Porridge - they're constantly up her ass, attempting to restrict her freedom in the name of making her repent for her sins. Ambrose's infatuation with Fatima becomes an obsession; as an amateur swampologist, he meets her on several occasions at Winston Bog (where she stares at the mud despondently). He wants to help her because he finds her fascinatingly different from other women (the year is 1890), and Fatima, who wipes her ass with social norms, insists on his help.
Meanwhile, Captain Drago Throbbington, a friend of Ambrose's, sympathizes with Fatima but believes she's suffering from melancholia, for which he recommends institutionalization. Ambrose himself starts going through changes at this point, and begins to question his age’s conventions, beliefs, etc. - he urges Fatima to leave Casterbridge and go to Birmingwall, where she'll have more freedom to live an unconventional life. Fatima takes his advice, but days & weeks after she leaves Ambrose can't forget her - at the same time, he feels guilty for even thinking about her, admits to himself that he doesn't love Yolanda, that he's only marrying her for her money, and that their marriage will be nothing more than empty façade.
The narrative'd be constantly interrupted by authorial commentary from a staunchly late 20th/early 21st century perspective, through which we'd watch as Ambrose begins to find the prospect of living life as a dutiful husband/son-in-law mortally unappealing. He backs out of the engagement & follows Fatima to Birmingwall, where he learns that Fatima has run off with Sam Patchgrass, a valet. Alone, despondent, penniless & mad with grief, Ambrose is attacked by a vampire bat outside town, found few days later, buried, then rises from dead as vampire a week later and attacks & kills Joshua.
Or something like that.
Here's a poster for the film adaptation...
Fuckin' nifty, I say. But what if you took a literary classic and mashed it up with another literary classic (instead of monsters)?
Well, you might get something like The Obscure Mayor Casterbridge (and the French Lieutenant's Woman Who Loved Him). You can bet that if I saw a book with that title at Barnes & Noble or Borders, I wouldn't buy it - I'd get it on Amazon instead, 'cause it'd be 40% off and I wouldn't have to pay any goddamned sales tax.
Now, given the source material, I'd imagine Obscure Mayor'd go a little something like this:
Joshua Farthing, a village milkman, is encouraged to run for the office of mayor of Casterbridge by Oliver Crossbury, a schoolmaster. Desdemona Sweetwater tricks Joshua into marriage by faking a pregnancy, then leaves him. Joshua then falls for Minverva Crossbury, who's unhappily married to Oliver; they have an affair but her contradictory desires (love vs. freedom) prevent any chance at of their being happy together.
The story'd show Joshua’s ambition thwarted repeatedly by the squalid nature of a life ruined by poverty, by the mindlessness of others, and would end with Joshua’s miserable death as representative of the indecency of Fate, of how Fate causes suffering even - or perhaps especially - in the pure of heart.
At one point, Joshua does become mayor, but then his past comes back to haunt him - in a flashback we'd learn that years ago, in a drunken stupor, Joshua sold both wife & child to Cyril Frostproof, a scientist & inventor. Time passes, Joshua accumulates wealth & respect; then his daughter Ingrid shows up, wanting to know what kind of man he is & whether or not she can forgive him for having sold her to Frostproof.
Joshua's downfall begins when he meets Atherton Slipknot, a cynic, who starts to slowly take over Joshua's life (and lovers). Then Frostproof returns to claim Ingrid, just as she & Joshua are beginning to overcome the monstrous gulf between them. Frostproof's removal of Ingrid is Joshua's deathblow - he has nothing left. Geoffrey Firmin-like, Joshua stumbles drunkenly out of town and is killed by a vampire during a rainstorm.
The development of Joshua’s character would progress from initial contentedness through bitter attempts to hold onto what he considers “his,” to total desparation and then dissolution/death. But in interpolated chapters (after Joshua's elected mayor), the spotlight would turn to Ambrose Fogslaughter (a penniless aristocrat) and Yolanda Larchgate (an heiress), who are engaged to be married. They meet Fatima Beach, a former governess (and scarlet woman from Cheapstick), who's employed as a companion to Andromeda Bosphorous (think Judi Dench + Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS) of Kentley House.
Ambrose is immediately taken with Fatima, who reveals to him that she's miserable due to Mrs. Bosphorous and her housekeeper, Glinda Porridge - they're constantly up her ass, attempting to restrict her freedom in the name of making her repent for her sins. Ambrose's infatuation with Fatima becomes an obsession; as an amateur swampologist, he meets her on several occasions at Winston Bog (where she stares at the mud despondently). He wants to help her because he finds her fascinatingly different from other women (the year is 1890), and Fatima, who wipes her ass with social norms, insists on his help.
Meanwhile, Captain Drago Throbbington, a friend of Ambrose's, sympathizes with Fatima but believes she's suffering from melancholia, for which he recommends institutionalization. Ambrose himself starts going through changes at this point, and begins to question his age’s conventions, beliefs, etc. - he urges Fatima to leave Casterbridge and go to Birmingwall, where she'll have more freedom to live an unconventional life. Fatima takes his advice, but days & weeks after she leaves Ambrose can't forget her - at the same time, he feels guilty for even thinking about her, admits to himself that he doesn't love Yolanda, that he's only marrying her for her money, and that their marriage will be nothing more than empty façade.
The narrative'd be constantly interrupted by authorial commentary from a staunchly late 20th/early 21st century perspective, through which we'd watch as Ambrose begins to find the prospect of living life as a dutiful husband/son-in-law mortally unappealing. He backs out of the engagement & follows Fatima to Birmingwall, where he learns that Fatima has run off with Sam Patchgrass, a valet. Alone, despondent, penniless & mad with grief, Ambrose is attacked by a vampire bat outside town, found few days later, buried, then rises from dead as vampire a week later and attacks & kills Joshua.
Or something like that.
Here's a poster for the film adaptation...
Pre-order your copy now!
Copyright © 2011 by Diego Baz
Copyright © 2011 by Diego Baz
