Everybody pack your bags - Hollywood would like to offer you a movie deal for no good reason at all.
By Burbanked on Mar 29, 2006 in Development Heck, Off the Rails, Views and Reviews | 864 views |
It’s really bad enough that this dork is getting way too much press coverage over what amounts to a steaming big pile of Nothing with a side of Boredom. But am I correct in reading near the bottom of the CNN article that New Line Cinema may be contacting this kid to create a movie concept?
You’ve got to be kidding me. Aren’t there any more Freddy Krueger properties that need to be developed, New Line? Are we so desperate for cinematic content that we’ll mine every true story, regardless of its levels of drama, excitement, motivation or…maybe something happening?
I don’t mean to get so worked up about it - look, I’m the guy who willingly gives away FREE High Concept movie ideas - but this story irritates me to no end because it displays a willingness on the part of Hollywood to create nothing out of less than nothing:
- The kid’s a writing major in college and his faculty non-adviser thought that this was a “brilliant” idea - despite the fact that he had no premise, no theory, nothing to prove other than the fact that he could do it.
- And he didn’t do it! What started out as a weeklong assignment ended up lasting only 41 hours. I’ve spent that long at Wal-Mart just looking for a drill bit.
- Go here and listen to this zilch on NPR - he didn’t set out to learn anything, he played video games, he didn’t observe anything more profound than “how people come and go”, and he left the store without incident. That describes how roughly 68% of college students spend their weeknights at school.
- And by the way, John Hughes made this movie already.
So please, Hollywood, pass this one by. Please don’t give a single penny to this kid who couldn’t be bothered to come up with an idea elevated anywhere above Brilliant Thoughts Had While Stoned. And if you’re truly this desperate for a Wal-Mart-centric movie plot, option a story like this gal’s instead (via The Consumerist - and found in about 10 seconds of searching).
Here endeth the rant.
My blog-love affair with cartoonist Doug Savage’s terrific daily Savage Chickens (
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because clearly Cage has decided to become action/thriller cinema’s first Polish great-grandma. (
Well, that’s too bad. Back a year or so ago when I heard that they’d be making a movie out of Judi and Ron Barrett’s terrific kids’ book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, I hoped maybe it’d be made live-action. Handled well, the idea of seeing an actual town where it rained hotdogs and baked beans in an open-roof restaurant, as well as the bit where sanitation trucks clean up all the leftover rain/snow/food and feed it to the pets would be, I thought, a bundle of CG-imbued cinema fun. 
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