The January Man

I have a file in Word that I call "XB71," which serves as a kind of database of ideas & titles for movies, novels, instruction manuals, farm equipment catalogs, etc.

Poking around in XB71 today, I see that on January 7, 2004, I came up with Revenge of the Elephant Man, in which it'd be revealed that the Elephant Man and Jack the Ripper were actually the same person. As penance for Gamer and The Bounty Hunter, Gerard Butler should play the Scotland Yard investigator assigned to the case. And I don't know about you, but I think Richard Coyle (Coupling, Prince of Persia) would be perfect as John Merrick/the Ripper.

Five days later (January 12), there's this entry: "Superman vs. the Ice Demons: basically, it’s Superman & Lois Lane in bed, like in that scene in Superman II, and they just yak their heads off like in My Dinner With Andre; at the very end, a pack of ice demons breaks in and attacks, Superman blasts them with his heat vision, then he & Lois go back to their conversation." I don't know, man...to me, this sounds like the perfect date movie. 'Cause after the credits roll and everyone's walking back to their cars, all the women'd turn to their boyfriends/husbands and go, "See? Superman cuddles and talks after sex - why can't you?" Which'd then open a dialogue between significant others that'd last all the way home, after which all the boyfriends/husbands would be like, "Okay, fine: I understand why cuddling & talking after sex are important. Let's go fuck, cuddle & talk right now." But they'd end up falling asleep right after the sex anyway, and all the girlfriends/wives would be lying there all disappointed and thinking, "Fuck you, Superman vs. the Ice Demons..." (What am I, a marriage counselor over here? That's what you get for trying to use Superman vs. the Ice Demons as couples' therapy, dingus.)

It seems January of 2004 was a particularly fruitful month - there are hundreds of entries! For January 26, there's this: "Private investigator WALTER LUNCH is hired by Dr. SHELDON GRASP to find ANTOINE McBORIS, a world-famous poet who’s been missing for several days; rival poet ODIN PADILLA is a prime suspect; over the course of the investigation, Lunch discovers that Death itself is running the city of L.A.; that all the women in L.A. are actually transsexuals; that some people can teleport from one place to another through mirrors; that most people in L.A. have been possessed by the spirits of the dead & have lost their own identity long time ago." I'm thinking this kind of story'd best be told by someone like Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo, Santa Sangre); my second choice'd be Takashi Miike (Dead or Alive, Ichi the Killer). What do you think?

Later on that month, I came up with these titles:

Damien, Priest of the Damned - You can't go wrong with naming your protagonist "Damien" if you're telling some sort of "theological horror" story, right? Built-in subconscious associative factor right there, thanks to the (by now "ho-hum") Omen movies (and/or the story of Damien the Leper [1840-1889]).

The Diary of Figaro - Most people'd assume this is an opera movie, and I guess it could be, but really, you can do almost anything with this title - of course, this being Hollywood, it'd get shortened to just Figaro and the movie'd end up being this saccharine bildungsroman about a plucky CGI mouse named Figaro (no, really?) and his evolution from "zero to hero" over the course of 88 minutes or so. From the producers of Garfield, The Barbie Diaries, and Balto III: Wings of Change.

Terror of the CIA - Ooo, this is a good one! Not that anything with a title like this'd ever get made, but if it did, it'd probably be about the CIA creating Frankensteinian monsters for deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan. And then one of the monsters'd develop a conscience and refuse to keep doing the CIA's dirty work, so the other monsters'd be ordered to destroy him, 'cause a conscience is obviously a liability when you work for the CIA (or the U.S. government, for that matter). Hot diggity!

Ecstasy of the Swamp Creature - A Swamp Thing-like creature spends its days lollygagging in an idyllic bog (really? can a bog be "idyllic"?), just soaking up sunshine and playing with its cute forest friends. One day, a bunch of Mob goons dump a half-dead waitress in the swamp (for reasons of their own, heh heh). Our protagonist rescues & revives her, using his own "flesh" to heal her injuries; as she recovers, she begins turning into a swamp creature, too - OMG! They fall in love (bet you didn't see that one coming) and spend the happiest days - and nights (wink) - they've ever known just enjoying each other. Surprise, surprise: it all goes to hell when the Mob assholes come back to make sure there's no trace of the waitress left...

The Glitterbat - A lonely girl catches a bat, covers it with a glue and then sprinkles glitter all over it. Meanwhile, her parents get a divorce.

Exorcism at the O.K. Corral - This one shouldn't be too hard to figure out, right? You take the oft-told tale of the feud between the Earps & the Clantons and throw in an exorcist. During the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral, a haggard, foul-mouthed, whiskey-soaked priest performs an exorcism on the combatants, but instead of expelling any presumed demonic forces from the area, the ritual actually summons the spirits of the damned, who proceed to possess the people of Tombstone, Evil Dead-style! Which of course forces the Earps & the Clantons, boiling with hatred & contempt for each other, to set aside their feud and join forces to defeat the startlingly violent demons. The horror, the horror...

Gonna have dinner now. Thanks for stopping by!

Copyright © 2010 by Diego Baz