Year of the Pig

Browsing through my notebooks, I see that 2007 was a pretty prolific year (maybe being single all 365 days had something to do with it). I remember sitting down and writing almost every night, usually right after a late-night shredded beef burrito from Del Taco, consumed with a hedonist's deliberate & tarrying delight while watching some shlocktronic favorite like The Creature Walks Among Us or The Reincarnation of Isabel, which is probably why I came up with a lot of titles like Brain Without a Head and Arousal of the Damned - this is what we call "obvious influence," 'though the less charitable (and probably more accurate) view would deem it "derivative crap." Either way, it has to be admitted that this sort of easy transubstantiation can yield some worthy results.

For example:

King Kong → A*P*E

Star Wars → Starcrash

Flashdance → Breakin'

The Terminator* → Lady Terminator

And as everyone knows by now: FernGully: The Last Rainforest → Avatar

See what I mean?

What a lesser world this would be, in my highly prejudiced opinion, were the bastard children of Mainstream Cinema denied their public life, their happy public flickering before the hungry eyes of millions. Derive away, I say, and keep them babies coming (except for The Island, which it's claimed was neither derived from nor influenced by Parts: The Clonus Horror but was in fact a straight rip-off thereof [read about it here]).

Case in Point

No doubt influenced by Stephen King's Cell and the movie The Signal, I came up with the following idea on May 21, 2007:

"a story about a mysterious pulse that blasts out of the TV while everyone's watching Fame Whores, an American Idol-type show; the pulse turns everybody into zombies except people who like Shakespeare; survivors hole up in a cabin in the woods where they're terrorized by a biker gang that's mysteriously escaped zombification"

Of course, I'm nothing if not eclectic in my alchemical approach to storytelling - sorry, kids, it's in my DNA. Which is why I'd have to say that the second part of the story would no doubt be highly influenced by (or flatteringly derivative of) such eerily appropriate source material as These Are the Damned, Mad Max and Straw Dogs, as well as The Day the World Ended, Panic in the Year Zero and Night of the Living Dead (not to mention Last Year at Marienbad and The Madness of King George - whew!).

"But, Diego," you say, "that's more than just an obvious influence or whatever - you're mashing shit up again!" Well, yes, I guess I am. (Didn't I just fucking say my approach to storytelling is alchemically eclectic, etc.? It's like I told the frog when I stinged him: "Sorry, dude, it's my nature." If you don't like it, stop reading this blog and go watch I Am Sam. Again.)

Hey man, I do get the difference - "obvious influence"/"derivative crap" (OIDC) is when you borrow various elements (including the storyline) from a single source and incorporate them at the genetic level in a fresh iteration, as in Play Misty for Me → Fatal Attraction, whereas a mashup is the conscious synthesis of two or more sources into a single entity but for which elements of said sources are directly & grossly constituent, like the Frankenstein Monster, or as illustrated by the following equation:

28 Days Later... + Escape From New York + The Road Warrior = Doomsday

There. Are you happy now?

Anyhoo, I think this "TV pulse" story idea could actually work - or could have, were it not for a) its two main sources of inspiration, Cell and The Signal, (hey, there's a title for you: The Cell & the Signal, kinda like The Agony & the Ecstasy [not really]) and b) the predictably prompt threat of a lawsuit for copyright infringement from one or both authors of those works. Best let this one lie low for a while, maybe deploy it a few years from now when everyone's distracted by the media orgy over Justin Bieber's divorce from Dakota Fanning.

In the meantime, I've got lots more material to develop.

Till next time...

Copyright © 2010 by Diego Baz

* The Terminator itself is the product of this sort of transubstantiation, too - specifically 2 episodes of The Outer Limits: "Soldier" and "Demon with a Glass Hand." More info here.