Monday, August 20, 2007
...
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Friday, August 17, 2007
R.I.P.
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The End Of The End
The monster is dead, the woman kissed, the children saved and the bomb blown up real good. The story is done. The characters have been arced. The movie is over. It was pretty good, with some very exciting bits, some boring stretches, a couple of good gags and, all your friends agree, not nearly enough tits. Yes, The end of The Fake Life's final two weeks is here and there isn't going to be any more. So all that's left is to clear up the tissues, finish up that bottle of scotch you snuck into the theatre, remember our fallen comrades and watch the end credits:
Hello, I'm Chris Oliver and I am not being written by Andrew Clarke because I forgot to write a final paragraph myself. I must say that Andrew Clarke was by far the best writer for this site. Fuck y'all, all y'all. Peace out.
Well, it was fun, educational and every so often incredibly frustrating, but there you go. Thank you to everyone that read this stuff, to Charlie for coming up with the idea, to George for being an awesome editor, and to everyone who contributed. Now I can go have a shower and start watching films without the need to think up something clever to say about them afterwards. I don't know where Internet Heaven is (ed - right next to Robot Heaven), but I hope there's free porn there.
And now was acknowledged the presence of the The Fake Life. It had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their memes, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of MODOK expired. And Darkness and Decay and The Fake Life held illimitable dominion over all.
Even though this web site idea Charlie and I hatched back during a random chat session a year and a half ago turned out to be a failure in the end, I'm walking away happy and proud. Why? Because the shit I've learned about just simple dealings with people, both good and bad, has been more enriching than any sort of popular or monetary success we might have had. I say that earnestly. I have zero regrets. And I'm proud of the small community that's arisen over here, even if I don't understand a quarter of what Brad, Matt, Jon, Carl, Tim, Tom, Luca, Neal, The Question, Batman, R.L. Stine, Van, and others are fucking saying.
We made our small little impact, and we got our much appreciated support from a modest number of people. And that's awesome. But I learned, from my earliest stint at CHUD.com to here at TFL, that I'm just not cut out to be a writer. Not a writer writing about films anyway. Creatively, I don't see where I can really go with it. My passion has been and will always be the cinema, and I will continue like I have been for years to work at learning as much as I can about it so that I can hopefully someday make a contribution that isn't a slap to its beautiful silver face. That or I'll just bartend and grow fat off the tips of degenerates, which as I understand it, is quite viable. Especially when you look like Sonny Landham.
So, a million thank yous to Andrew Clarke, Chris Oliver, Doug Slack, Bill Nolen, Carlton Stevens, Shane Yaroch, Bobbie Oliver, Scott Roche, Brad Millette, Matt Hedgecock, Ben "Katanga" Miro, anyone who ever contributed even just a minute of their time to this blog, and of course, my good friend and partner in crime, Charlie Brigden. I hope all of you out there have had a great time. If not, kindly go fuck yourselves. Wu-Tang!!!
Well, it's been a little past one year and four months since a few of us got together and headed for pastures new in the form of The Fake Life. We've had equal amounts of support and protest along the way, together with some pretty good articles, at least when we could be bothered to post them. At times it's been brilliant and rewarding, other times it's been frustrating and demoralizing.
Where it's always been brilliant and rewarding is where some of the contributors are concerned, namely Andrew, Doug, Chris, Katanga, Scott, and last but certainly not least, George, whose eternal support and superior editing skills have always been the backbone of this blog.
But it's over. And I think it's the right time. If we were to go back to the beginning with the knowledge I have now, I'd definitely do a lot of things differently, and probably change our focus greatly. But now is not the time to do that. I can only wish our friends luck in what they do next, and perhaps hold a glimmer of hope that maybe one day, we'll do something together again.
Until that time...
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Labels: The End
Continue reading The End Of The EndTFL's Movies
You know, we've spent so much time talking about other people's movies that we've never really mentioned our own. Like most movie bloggers, a few of us are wannabe directors, actors, and blood technicians, and we thought we'd share with you a couple of our flicks...Andrew:
As a film-maker I have no pretensions to talent or seriousness. Still, for your amusements, here are some short films I done made.
Sunday
This was a first attempt at closely matching visuals with a song. I had ambitions to a whole bunch of things, but they were at best partially succesful. Nonetheless, a very cool song and a very pretty lady.
Hello, Charlie.
This was me and a friend, bored one weekend, passing a camera to each other as we filmed this extremely daft tale of a drug deal gone wrong. It's pretty funny, if hopelessly amateur. Some friends of mine were fairly disturbed by it, the pussies. As cooler than thou film geeks, you can simply enjoy the sight of me making a complete fool of myself. Cool sound though.
Top Of The Monitor
Here's my first attempt at learning how to use my video editing software. I just shot mediums and close-ups of the toys and then improv'd a scene involving them. Very daft, strangely amusing, and probably a good insight into my subconscious.
My Music
www.myspace.com/andrewclarke76.com
Here's what i'm serious about - music. There's only one song on there at the moment, as i'm replacing old recordings with new. As some of my more recent demos and remixes get finished i'll be adding more songs to the list, but come visit and be my friend.
Charlie:
The "award winning" STRAY is a combined effort, written and directed by myself for my final project at "film school," with music composed by Andrew (and very good music it is. By the by, by award winning I mean it won a tiny award at a festival here. I just mentioned it because I rarely get ego boosts.
GIVIN UP is a bit more of a somber short, essentially made a month after my mother died, and a bit of an exploration of my feelings at that time, as well as trying to give up smoking. I may seem a bit emo, but it doesn't mean you can't slate it a bit.
George:
City of Angels
Hindsight is a motherfucker. I cringe watching this music video (Coldplay? Really?). I was asked to shoot this by a very pretty lady friend about 3-4 years ago for an art exhibit held in Los Angeles by some entertainment group that Mel Gibson and a host of c-list celebs were involved with. This was pre-"sugar tits" Gibson, but post-"I hate Jews" Gibson, so it was weird. In any case, this was the final product. Mock me, but mock me gently.
Shane:
This was a film made for my French and Italian New Wave class. Other than the two actors, there were three of us that split up the direction and cinematography. I did the writing in English and the editing, Pierre did the translation (he's French, ya see). The assignment was to make a film in the vein of the French New Wave, which made us essentially make a film aping various visual cues and the like. Luckily we had a French guy on our crew, so that made the French part of "French New Wave" a bit easy to handle.
Overall, the film is okay, I think. We made it in about four days total, and it shows. The script is something that I liked more then than I do now, but it still fits the feel that we were going for. Still, it's 18 minutes of student film (sorry), but I swear it doesn't feel like its run-time. Having a constant underscoring kind of annoys me, but it makes the film easier to take, and it was a lot easier to make it that way, what with the not having to worry about sound mixing and all. I posted the script in the film details, if you'd like it, as the subtitles get kind of fucked up, and as such are hard to see. It's also a bit...well, you'll see. The whole of the project has this air of desired-pretentiousness that falls short of what we were going for, but still, this was our first film.
I could make excuses all day for it, but like I said, it's pretty good, I think, so here you go:
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Labels: The End
Continue reading TFL's MoviesThe End Of Cinema As We Know It?!
Well???
George Merchan: The summer movie season is going to finally come to a close soon. So what were the legitimate phenomenas? I don't know, were there any? Record-breaking numbers aside, I wouldn't say it was May's big three (Spidey, Pirates, Shrek). And as grotesquely brilliant as Transformers was, I wouldn't say it was either. I think Knocked Up may be the only film that's really done what every studio wishes a film would do, which is be made for relatively cheap and sprout gorgeously supple legs. Then again, I don't think that's true either. For the big films (budgeted, at the very least, between 150-200 mil), it's all about the opening weekend. The studios know there's going to be a huge drop-off, so they spend inordinate amounts of cash promoting for that first weekend blitz. And though on the following Mondays you hear all about the broken records and copious amounts of cash pouring out of studio executive ass, we ultimately find out that a lot of films only barely make it to the black. After all is said and done, it's kinda obvious that movies aren't the best kind of investment around. Shit, I think I could've put 150 million into a high-yielding money market account and still have made more bank than Evan Almighty.
I think maybe the better question would be, "The End of the Ludicrous Blockbuster Business Model As We Know It?!" I haven't even started talking about convergence in media and the increased avenues of choice and immediacy that we as consumers now have when getting our entertainment.
Doug Slack: I think we're still in for a lot more OMG HUGE BLOCKBUSTERS. And I think that's partly due to all the recent advances in home viewing widgets. People who get the state of the art home theater systems need the biggest, loudest, bestest DVD's to utilize all their toys. You don't buy surround sound speakers to watch Waitress. You buy them, along with a 20 ft. flat screen, to watch Transformers. THAT'S a flick that'll shake your house, wake your neighbors and fuck their dog.
So the big blockbusters will continue to open big because everybody likes to come out to see the next spectacle. Then they'll sell like crazy on DVD so the ever growing number of home theater owners can impress their friends.
Andrew Clarke: Purely from the numbers, with all the big films aiming for and hitting $300m - a number that was still very rare only a few years ago - suggests that the studios have never been better at this blockbuster malarkey. In fact every film, down to Die Hard 4, has done as well or slightly better than expected. But then none of those big movies were particularly seen as triumphs. Despite the astronomical returns, they all merely 'met expectations', and all will rely on DVD to really bring the profits home. Much was made of Superman Returns' $250m price tag, but Pirates 3's $300m was seen as almost a given.
It would be nice to think that the guys holding the purse strings really know what they are doing. Even if a film costs $500m, if it takes in $1bn for the studio, it is still a sound decision, business wise. The trend is still towards bigger though, and inflationary bubbles will always lead to a moment of 'pop'. One of the producers of Spidey 3 was very reticent about it's budget when figures were leaked, calling it something like 'obscene'.
And however little we know about the real numbers in Hollywood's incredibly opaque accounting, the move to the home market is clear, and that can only lead to a long tail market where lots of things are bought by a few people rather than one thing being bought by everyone.
It all points to this inflationary model of ever bigger, ever more risky tentpoles becoming massively unstable. If one were to care about the health of Hollywood big business, it all seems very scary.
But we don't or, at least, we shouldn't. We aren't making any money from it. The question for me is: would it be great if the model collapsed or not? What if the parent corporations (who could swallow a quarter billion loss if they wanted to) demanded budget caps? Or if a tipping point occurred when everyone just gave up going to the cinema (perhaps when hi def cinema systems become affordable to mortals).
What would we lose? What would we gain? Purely for the spectacle of a pile up, what would happen if a rapidly changing market forced a huge change in the, supposedly, market led Hollywood business? Just for a change (and after sitting through the 3 hour bloats of these recent films), I would really love to see what happens.
Chris Oliver: I'd certainly welcome the end of the Blockbuster Model. Not the end of blockbuster movies, just the end of them being the centerpiece of the industry. But I don't see it happening any time soon. As Andrew points out, they are still making money, even if it is a stupid business plan.
What I do hope for is that, as the cost of filming on digital becomes lower and lower, we'll see a more and more diverse and vital field of independent film. I know this sort of rosey prediction of the future gets tiresome, but I'm an optimistic guy. I can see a very near future where making a movie will be not much more daunting than writing a book or starting a band, and the filmmaker can self-market it through a network of like-minded enthusiasts. Meanwhile, the studios can continue making their exploding robot movies (and releasing vaguely intersting pseudo-indies through their "independent film" subsidiaries).
Andrew Clarke: The explosion of online networks - from MySpace to YouTube to whatever the fuck kids are using these days - proves that there is a genuine desire for this style of content delivery. There's no studio pushing these places - they simply wouldn't exist if the people didn't spend loads of time on them. It's organic, it's real, and it's independent of the old power structures. The question is what sort of things will come from it. As these networks are so self-selecting, would movies made that way not be opaquely specific and insular - not meaning anything to those not in on the culture or 'joke'? Will we finally get our first emo-auteur?
Movies won't go back to the way they were pre-77. If the movie becomes truly democratised, what will happen to the medium?
George Merchan: Like Chris, I'd love to see digital filmmaking become more prevalent. Because of its cheaper/easier to use nature, though, you're gonna get tons of shit (this is similar to the internet and Web 2.0, blogs - not us of course! - etc.) But, it's like if you threw a hundred darts at a board, one or two are bound to hit the bullseye. Digital will unearth new and exciting things at the end of the day. And for film nerds and cineastes, that's fucking exciting.
But I don't think you can talk about digital (or even plain film) without talking about the piracy issue. Practically everything gets digitized now (both professionally and otherwise), and what with the move towards digital exhibition, the amount of "leakage" is probably only going to get worse. Will that ultimately change the method of how we get our cinema? It's morphing the music biz still as we speak. Granted, the experience of listening to music is obviously not the same as watching a film, but I still think the demand is there to have these other avenues of distribution. Look at YouTube and MySpace like Andrew mentions. So far the movie industry is trying its hardest to clamp down on piracy, but I think they're just fighting evolution at this point. Or is it devolution? Nah, probably not. In 50 years time, we'll probably still have the ArcLights and Alamo Drafthouses and... oh... wait...
Doug Slack: Digital filmmaking could lead to more specialized YouTube sights. Sites designed specifically to host movies. This will create a gatekeeper and an online studio system. If an online studio can accumulate enough quality films they could afford to charge a subscription rate. Or a pay-per-view system.
The dawn of a new age of film exhibition will be upon us as soon as someone figures out just how to make money off this shit.
Andrew Clarke: I guess we can look at the music industry, who faced their piracy problems with the same belligerence at first, to see how Hollywood is going to do over the next few years, and at the cable tv market to see how a fractured, more democratised movie market would function. We'd get HBO and a thousand channels of shit.
I guess it would have been fun if the very idea of 'quality' changed. If two hour spectacle movies simply stopped being made because everyone downloaded 10minute clips to play on their 3 inch iPhone screen. A nice, radical idea, but unlikely.
Any collapse, judging by other industries would lead to consolidation of the majors (leading to even safer, homogenised product) and extreme specialisation by everyone else. As always, some good will trickle through the gaps.
Here's a thing though - I certainly make noises in favour of radical change, but do we, as genre loving geek types (I mean, I'm just assuming here), actually have it really good right now? Imagine living 50 years ago when genre films were made for pennies and mostly by morons while Hollywood concentrated on musicals. Now it's Sci-Fi and fantasy. We'll complain about them not getting some character 'right', or being too 'safe' or 'dumb', but studios are still putting the resources into making these expensive properties properly.
Isn't it us geeks that are winning out here, with our Spider-Mans and Lord Of The Rings?
Doug Slack: Geeks love blockbusters more than they'll admit. Hell, I love 'em as much as I love their predecessors, the drive-in and grindhouse movies. I wouldn't be surprised to see all low budget and indie fare driven to the Internet or DVD, while the movie theaters show nothing but blockbuster spectacles. When you think about it, they fit their respective formats well.
Whatever happens with home entertainment, the movie theaters will always be open. People just enjoy going out, plain and simple. They like to do something on a Saturday night and be part of the community. Human nature will keep the theaters in business indefinitely.
Chris Oliver: To continue on the point of digital moviemaking, the actual "making movies" part is going to be much easier, but distribution is still going to be hard. The "specialized YouTube sites" idea sounds about right, or at least like a good start. I guess the question becomes, when you start making actual movies, and not 5-minute or 30-second skits, will people sit on the computer and watch them? Or will it be easier to just sell DVD's through mail-order? (Certainly that would be the easier way to turn a profit on it.) Or by that time, will everyone just have their computers integrated into their home theaters, so that watching something on the web is almost indistinguishable from watching a DVD? That's the part that I can't quite figure out.
Charlie Brigden: I don't think any kind of digital revolution will kick off until the scene radically changes. Right now, YouTube and its ilk are fantastic channels for distribution in theory, but in practice they're distractions that people use in their lunch hour at work to watch funny videos of cats. Currently, at least in the mainstream, I'm not sure they're much more than a glorified version of Candid Camera, neverending in a burning maelstrom of home videoed hell.
And while that isn't everyone, I think it is a large amount of people who would rather watch the current digital comedy zeitgeist as opposed to a creative and thought provoking piece of art. You can throw out a hundred fresh short films, but people will always latch on to Tay Zonday, and send that to all their friends instead. Again, I think it goes back to the mainstream (and the "underground" in some cases) where it's all very casual. Case in point, my shorts that I've thrown online. I've asked a lot of my friends to watch them, and I got very little feedback other than 's'alright,' whereas if I'd posted a picture of a Thundercats clip dubbed with Big Lebowski quotes, I'd be hailed as some sort of comedy wunderkind. Obviously, there's a little bitterness on my part, and I'm not painting my own work as some kind of Kubrickesque brilliance, but the general apathy to anything that requires an actual attention span and a little brain engagement seems to tell me that there's huge promise, but there needs to be huge change before this is accepted as a real viable alternative to something like cinema, or even public access TV.
George Merchan: I agree that theaters will always be around, but they're probably going to become much more elite so as to offer something besides a really big screen, great sound, and annoying people. Cost will reflect this too, unfortunately, but it'll be worth it. Again, the ArcLight model... it's got a fucking bar in the lobby, people! I can't stress how simple and brilliant that is.
But Doug's idea of keeping the big dicks in the theaters and the choads on DVD is a great one, I think. One that we will probably move towards actually. One I'm hoping we move towards as someone who wants to make his own shit and get all the help he can get. Charlie knows my plight. The business simply needs to embrace that because there is a market for it.
Of course, there is the argument that optical media like DVDs are gonna eventually go the way of the Dodo and everything will be delivered to us on giant fucking servers. Imagine every home with a large hard drive that's directly hooked up to the internet and acts as a hub for delivery of digital content. On it you keep your films, your TV shows, your music, your family photos, your porn. Those 3000 DVDs you don't know where to store? Now a bunch of unseen, out of the way files on your shiny new entertainment unit. Sounds like how we're already converging with our computers and Xboxes/Playstations. Also Tivo.
As for the YouTubes, MySpaces, and Revvers (an amalgam of YouTube and Google AdSense... wave of the future?) of the world, they really are like the Nickelodeons of the day, except that instead of getting anything new out of it, we're getting regurgitation. Something will come along eventually that'll completely change the perception of what one can do with this. But right now is not it, like Charlie says. Culturally, it's a child's sandbox. The moment someone builds the "No Homers" treehouse that everyone wants in on is when the paradigm will start shifting.
All that said, "Tourette's Guy" on YouTube is hilarious.
"Fuck salt!"
Doug Slack: Tourette's Guy should get a three picture movie deal.
George, like you said, theaters are looking for other ways to entice audiences. Here is where you need to understand the business model of a theater to guess where it's going. A theater makes very little money from ticket sales. Barely enough to cover overhead, usually. They turn their profit from concessions. Basically, a theater is in business to sell popcorn and soda, not to show movies. The movies are merely the means to get people to the candy stand. This is why theaters LOVE kids' movies and blockbusters and it's another reason why we might see indie fare leave the moviehouses.
The bar is a good idea, but probably won't play with the national chains...yet. It costs a lot to get a liquor license. Not to mention the fact that they're in for a world of headaches if they show anything without an R rating. Soccer moms won't feel safe sending their kids off to a theater with a bar and the theaters will have to use a lot of resources to monitor bar sales and keep the booze out of the minors hands. This strikes me as unrealistic since so many chains can't be bothered now to monitor the houses for noise.
Which leads me to the biggest change exhibitors need to make if they're going to survive. Talkers. Crying babies. Cell phones. Blow jobs. I spent many years as a theater manger for three different companies and I can tell you the reason these problems still persist is money. Exhibitors are notoriously cheap when it comes to payroll. Floor staff make minimum wage, managers are expected to work extra hours every week for no additional salary, staff will be sent home if business is slow. To properly monitor audiences and enforce rules of behavior, you need to add more ushers and so far the chains aren't interested in spending those extra dollars. Then there's the basic policy chains have of never turning away business. They'll sell a ticket to a couple with a baby at 10:00pm just to bring in all the cash they can. If theaters aren't discretionary enough to refuse certain sales, they may very well get hurt in the long run. But they're not ready to take that financial hit just yet.
George Merchan: I knew about the concession stand being the real source of loot for theaters, but that's still really interesting about the attitude exhibitors have in general towards their business. I'm just wondering that what with prices continually getting higher and the pre-roll of ads and what not getting longer, at what point will it be "too much" for audiences? Or am I giving audiences too much credit? Will they not give a fuck and fork over the green anyway?
Chris Oliver: I've always thought that there must be a ceiling--maybe around $10. That if tickets got to be $11, people would just say "fuck it" and watch a DVD. But now that the $11 ticket is almost here, it doesn't look like people are gonna stop. I figure we'll end up with a two-tier system. In rich neighborhoods, it'll be the ArcLight model. In poor neighborhoods, it'll be cheap tickets and lots of ads to see a double feature of worn-out prints of second-run movies, but the air conditioning will always be working. Which leaves the middle squeezed out.
Doug Slack: I'm gonna say it will be split. Most casual moviegoers will continue to suck it up until there's an actual gang rape during the show. And all the rapists' cell phones go off at once. And they're smoking. Crack.
But the indie/art house fags like us will jump ship and watch our Catherine Keener films at home.
George Merchan: Amen, brotha.
Andrew Clarke: So is there any chance this 3-D malarkey Cameron and Zemeckis are touting will be the saviour of the cinema?
Everyone who hasn't seen it in action thinks it is duff. Everyone who has says it's great. People said you can only use that super wide screen format (insert name of super wide screen format) for snakes and funerals, but now it is a valid artistic choice. Then again, it's easier to pull the curtains a bit further back than it is to get everyone to wear goggles.
And what of this mocap stuff Zemeckis is using for Beowulf. He says it gives the director unprecedented freedom and that you can film absolutely anything for $1m a minute, so solving the inflationary budget problem. Everyone who's seen that says it looks like Final Fantasy. Which was crap.
The changes suggested so far are more social, like making cinemas more classy, or getting people to stop watching videos of cats (never, ever going to happen). Are those pushing for a technological solution full of shit?
Doug Slack: Yes. Because cinema doesn't need a savior. It's doing just fine on the technical front. Receipts are up.
Most of the complaints I read about going to the movies revolve around cost and rude audiences. Nobody, outside of a handful of geeks, laments to the overuse of CGI.
George Merchan: About that fancy new tech: if a 3D shot can somehow convey something either narratively or character-wise that 2D cannot (and I mean something beyond immersion), then bully. Bring that shit. In the hands of a James Cameron, I'm not terribly optimistic. Peter Jackson though, we'll see. As for mo cap... there's the terrible possibility of fapping to a CG render of Angelina Jolie. That's only a few steps removed from jerkin' it to Hentai, right?
Charlie Brigden: I think ticket prices and the snack prices are doing a lot to make people not go to the theater. I mean, just looking at a couple of weeks ago when we saw Transformers, the tickets cost $12 each, along with a hot dog, popcorn and a drink, which came to about $16. Fair enough, I didn't care that much before I enjoyed the film a hell of a lot, but when the theaters are pouring out shit and folks are still paying those prices, there has to be a breaking point somewhere.
I mean, one of our favourite nights out is dinner and a movie, and I know that goes for a lot of people. That used to be a good, cheap night out. Now you're looking at $57 a head if you find a cheap restaurant. So you pay $57, and see a movie that cost $300m to make but is absolute pants, you start to get a little bitter about things. Of course, you don't have to buy popcorn, that's just me. But even $12 to see a flick is expensive. Especially since you can pay around double that and buy the DVD and watch it in an environment with less mouthbreathers.
And that's probably the big thing for me, personally (and the wife). While we like to catch up with cinema as much as possible, and we always try and go and see the "big" films (not just blockbusters, but the stuff we just cannot miss) we're perfectly happy enough to just wait for DVD. We have our front room with a good surround kit and a big HDTV, and we don't spend the whole film having the back of our seats being kicked by some retard child who's been thrown in the theater while his mom goes out to buy more wifebeaters, which happened at The Simpsons Movie.
Obviously, this is me being a snagglepuss in general, but I just get so fucking annoyed at theaters now because people just go there to fuck about, and I like to be able to watch a film on a big screen without a child screaming every five minutes. Like when I went to see X-Men 3, and this weekend dad took his five children, one of which was in a pushchair, and who continually threw her toys out of the pram and then cried because of it. Because superdad was too busy watching Brett Ratner's masterpiece, she kept crying and it ended up being my wife who got up and gave the kid the toy back.
Fuck that. I'd rather wait, rent/buy the DVD and watch it at home.
Andrew Clarke: You do have to remember that we are all rapidly leaving the target demographic for these movies. While I sympathise with you Charlie, you are being a big grump. You are after control of your environment, comfort and no stupid people, and so you move away from multiplexes. Remember all those godawful pubs and clubs you went to as a kid? I do, and now I'd rather some friends round for dinner.
We put a sheet up on the side of our house last weekend and watched Jaws after the sun went down. This was the best cinema experience I've had in years.
The thrill of simply 'going to the cinema' is gone from us not, perhaps, because cinemas have gotten worse, but because we've just been so many times. This is normal, and not a sign of the death of cinema, only a changing of the generational guard. One day, we all turn into our dads.
P.S. In London, tickets can be the equivalent of $20 - $25.
George Merchan: Jesus. What's an average Friday night at a pub cost?
What about "Day-and-Date" releases where you get the movie in theaters, on DVD, and OnDemand on the same day? Soderbergh tried it with Bubble. Though that one was obviously doomed to fail anyway, could it work for a big film that audiences actually want to see?
I think it's pretty clear that nothing is actually going to die within our lifetime or that of even our children's, but I do think we're headed towards a new evolution of exhibition defined primarily by choice. So what are the most viable possibilities? And more importantly, will they help promote good filmmaking?
Andrew Clarke: You start saying things like 'our children's lifetime' and I start thinking of peak-oil, environmental collapse and ending my days in a bubble with one faint TV channel being piped in telling me over and over that 'the war is going well, the war is going well'. I got totally taken out of Duel recently because I kept thinking about all that pollution the truck was pumping out.
The novel hasn't really died, though many, possibly grumpy, people said it reached it's peak in the 19th Century, so there's no reason to think feature length movies will die out, either.
While digital could lead to more independent and interesting movies being made, it will make it more difficult to sift through the crap. The only prediction I can give is that I will watch Transformers 3: Cubed.
And thus passed three days with nary a stirring...
George Merchan: Are we finished with this? Any last thoughts?
Doug Slack: I've given my thoughts and don't see any other questions I have an answer for. Unless anyone else has another question to raise, I'm done.
Andrew Clarke: Will you go see Transformers 3 with me?
Doug Slack: Only if you keep your sleek gay robot theories to yourself.
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Labels: The End
Continue reading The End Of Cinema As We Know It?!Crisis On Infinite Hollywoods
Steven Spielberg was supposed to direct Return Of The Jedi. David Cronenberg was attached to Total Recall for a while. Sergio Leone had The Godfather in his chubby hands. Hollywood history is filled with 'almosts' and 'what ifs'. So here's how we think a few films would have turned out if the dice of fate had rolled left in stead of right.
EXT. THE ORCA
Brody (Denzel Washington) is standing aft, shovelling chum. Hooper (Paul Giamatti) is driving the boat, while Quint (Brian Cox) walks around.
QUINT
Slow ahead, Hooper!
BRODY
Slow ahead I can fucking go slow ahead! I see what's happening here, I don't fuckin' believe it, but I see it. Here we have the big ol' white man giving orders, while the educated white guy gets to drive the boat. What, you think a brother can't do that shit? Instead I have to sit here shovelling fish shit just so we can catch a fish that's been killin' white folk. Fuck that. I was born in Brooklyn son, I don't have to take this shit.
Suddenly, JAWS rears his head from the water! As Brody steps back, the shark picks up a barrel from the deck of the Orca, and throws it through the boat's front window.
JAWS
Fight the power!
Babe: Pig In The City
Directed By: Brian De Palma
INT: SHOWER.
NANCY ALLEN
So the serial killer was just a bunch of birds under a trenchcoat?
SOME GUY
Birds.
NANCY ALLEN
Wow. Birds. And the visions I was having about my violent naked death turned out to be video tapes of the violent naked death of my twin sister that I didn’t know I had?
SOME GUY
Yeah. Wacky, huh?
NANCY
Yeah. Wow. Could you rub my tits now?
Harold And Maude
Directed by: Woody Allen
Ext: NEW YORK
MAUDE
So I was talking with my mother, oh my mother, have I told you about my mother? She never stops! I’m losing hair, look at my hair, it’s coming out in clumps! Oh I’m so neurotic. But look at you. Your firm, smooth thighs look great in that short skirt.
HAROLD
I love you so much.
MAUDE
And your pert, young breasts look great in that tight top I had wardrobe give you.
HAROLD
I love you so much.
MAUDE
But my mother, oy. Take my mother, please. My mother’s so fat she has her own zip code. My mother’s so ugly, when she was born, the doctor slapped her mother. I’m here all week, Harold. Harold? You do love me, Harold?
HAROLD
…what… sorry? Oh, right. I love you so much.
MAUDE
Are you wearing a bra?
HAROLD
What? No. I was told it would mess up the profile in two-shots. Why?
MAUDE
(loud)
OK, could we get a rain machine for the next shot?
HAROLD
Right that’s it. This is dumb. I’m out of here you fucking pervert.
Harold leaves.
MAUDE
(quiet)
Could we change that to a fog machine?
The Goonies
Directed by: Larry Clark
INT: CAVE
HOT BITCH
Let's fuck.
BOY BITCH
Yeah, let's fuck.
They fuck.
HOT BITCH
(Fucking)
Fuck!
BOY BITCH
I have asthma.
HOT BITCH
I have AIDS.
BOY BITCH
;_;
Fucking.
World Trade Center
Directed by: Oliver Stone
Oh.
As a fun extra game, guess which pictures George did and which ones were mine.
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Continue reading Crisis On Infinite HollywoodsTFL's Greatest Hits - Part 8: A Bunch Of Other Stuff
For the final bit of re-publishing here's a whole bunch of stuff we kind of liked.
Here's where Charlie did an interview with Takeshi Kitano, the lucky bastard.
Here and here is a short-lived, though fairly funny, column called Timewarp Movies.
Here's Bill Nolen, who did a lot of good DVD work for us, doing some wacky shit.
Here, here and here is me doing something called Turning Your Brain On At The Movies, though I only got to three because I didn't know where else to go after that beyond an article on free Internet porn.
Also we have archives of reviews (Film and DVD), some of which were dead interesting, so feel free to dig through them whenever you can't be bothered to work.
Of course, everything else on the blog, by implication, sucked. LOL! Thanks for reading. Bye!
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Continue reading TFL's Greatest Hits - Part 8: A Bunch Of Other StuffThursday, August 16, 2007
The Best Hollywood Endings
As we all know, Hollywood loves to make everything overblown. The major blockbusters all seem to be a hundred and twenty minutes of sound and fury, punctuated by deafening orchestras and epic visuals that like to say "this thing here, this is huge." And of course, this is always accelerated by 88mph at the end, so that you leave the theater with a huge sense of satisfaction that you've just seen something huge, something epic, something, well, giant-sized.Of course, nine times out of ten this turns out to be overbaked crap. Note the F14s swooning across a Bruickheimer-orange sky to the soaring tones of the Righteous Brothers or Hugh Jackman and Kate Beckinsale gloating atop a cliff as her family looks down ala the blue floaty Jedi spirits at the end of RETURN OF THE JEDI, or even Val Kilmer, Chris O'Donnell and Alicia Silverstone wobbling towards the camera in a scene that seems to be missing all the BLAM! and KA-POW! intercutting phrases it surely deserves. These are all crap. Even geniuses like Spielberg are not immune to this, judging from the insipid picturesque storybook ending to MINORITY REPORT, which was, to be fair, absolutely pants.
But sometimes, the blockbusters get it right. Sometimes a film finds a way through the netherworld of excess and actually presents a genuinely emotionally satisfying ending that still conforms to the usual standards of gigantic swelling orchestras and near-pretentious "final shots." Let's take a look.
KING KONG (1933)
KONG has it all. The big epic ending, striking visuals (especially for the year it was unleashed), and a magnificent orchestral climax, as composed by score wunderkind Max Steiner. But KONG also has something most monster movies before and since haven't had: pathos. While the later remakes placed Ann Darrow (or Dwan!) clearly as having strong, if not equal feelings for the big guy, he has no such luck here.
Unfortunately for our titular hero, Ann has just as much disgust and hatred for the guy as the rest of the world. The only person who holds any compassion for Kong is Carl Denham, and by extension, the audience.
In any other movie, we would be cheering on the planes as they fire upon Kong. In the hands of another filmmaker, this would be just another gung-ho action sequence with the audience baying for the bastard creature's blood at the behest of his wave of destruction. But the whole sequence is constructed so well to play on Kong's character development through the film, so that it's not joy and excitement we feel as the airplanes find their target, it's absolute pain, heartbreak and compassion.
As Kong falls to his death, Denham and the audience are left to contemplate Kong's demise, his worthless death as he lies stricken on the pavement, his life spent. It's with a sense of regret and guilt that he delivers that famous line, "It wasn't the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast," a confession in so many words that he alone is responsible for bringing Kong to New York, for juxtaposing him against Ann and creating that relationship, and for killing the Eighth Wonder of the World. It's a devastatingly tragic moment that very few movies even attempt, and all the more richer for the emotionally brutal way it's presented. And a piece of Hollywood genius.
KING KONG (2005)
George has already included THE LORD OF THE RINGS in his list, so I'm going to make a quick mention of Peter Jackson's other blockbuster. While it has more in common with the 1976 remake than Jackson would probably like to admit, KONG '05 is a stunning work. Sure, it could stand to lose forty or fifty minutes, and like LOTR, the bits that don't work really don't work, but the parts that do much outweigh the previous, and boy are they spectacular. Never more is this demonstrated than in the film's climax. Obviously, with the differing dynamic of Kong's relationship with Ann in the remake as compared to the original, the context is changed somewhat, but the end result is essentially the same. Where Jackson's picture differs is that instead of being somewhat passive observers in the original film, with ourselves the only ones who are really protesting Kong's death, here we are thrust directly into the heart of the matter, with the action being presented very strictly from the point of Ann.
The lovers' relationship is stressed even more here, with Ann - and the audience - being forced to watch as Kong is slowly murdered. And I mean slowly. The film is notorious for being long, and drawn out, but the ending is a case where both those things are true but in a positive manner. The pacing of Kong's death makes it excruciating to watch - and heartbreaking. Never has a movie made me weep more. A defining moment is that which portrays Kong's last bit of fighting spirit, his nobility. He sits atop the Empire State Building, roaring at the top of his lungs, knowing what is going to happen, with Ann beneath him screaming. It's such a painful moment and so personal between the two, that when it continues to its natural conclusion - Kong's death - you're left utterly helpless.
Indeed, when Ann embraces Jack after Kong's fall, it's an embrace borne not out of the relationship that was built between the two, but instead a catharcism needed by Ann. Whether it be Jack or a security guard, Ann would have hugged him like he was her saviour. Because she, like the audience, just needs that embrace, lest she actually follows Kong herself. The climax is slightly lessened by Jack Black's reading of Denham's final line, which simply doesn't have the right reverence. But James Newton Howard's music - which, like the film, is sometimes middling but often superb - soaks up the emotion of the scene and leaves us with the right mix of regret and grandeur to close the movie.
SPIDER-MAN (2002)
Like many other superhero movies, SPIDER-MAN ends in a similar way to Richard Donner's SUPERMAN - the loose threads sewn up, the hero is celebrated in a final goodbye to the audience, usually flying - or in this case, swinging - through the city. In Sam Raimi's picture, the ending ties together the usual heroism with the definition of who the character is. Peter Parker stands at Norman Osborn's funeral, with one of his best friends telling him he will pay in the future for what he's done, and another telling him she loves him. Yet because of who he is, because of who he's become, Peter cannot reveal his real self to either of these people.
And it's all summed up in some of the best lines ever to end a picture: 'Whatever life holds in store for me, I will never forget these words: "With great power comes great responsibility." This is my gift, my curse. Who am I? I'm Spider-Man. ' With that, that amazing image of Peter walking away from the funeral, alone, transforms into a stunning sequence of Spidey as he soars above the city, scored by Danny Elfman's amazing theme. A quick flick around the stars and stripes, and he's off! - ready for more adventure. And we're with him all the way.
STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN (1982)
The climax of what is considered to be the best Star Trek flick by a country mile begins like the climax of just about any other Star Trek movie, or episode, or book, or video game. The starship Enterprise is in trouble as the universe's most powerful weapon (made from a device designed to create new life) is about to explode and consume everything within four hundred lightyears, including the famous starship. Captain Kirk and the crew are begging Scotty for warp speed, but the poor Scotsman is incapacitated - leaving the ship's most beloved comrade to step into the breach and save the day, with the only sacrifice being himself.
Where this ending kicks into overdrive, and greatness, is at the moment Kirk realizes what has happened. The voice of a shocked McCoy comes over the radio, saying "Jim... you'd better get down here." Kirk spies Spock's empty chair, and runs to the engine room, intercut with the creation of the Genesis planet, a pure vision of the flourishing world juxtaposed with the dying flame of Spock's soul. Kirk's final moments with Spock challenge every fibre of Shatner's acting talent, with the man coming up trumps every time. But Nimoy's acting in that scene cannot be underestimated.
Those final words - 'I have been, and always shall be your friend' - leaves Kirk a broken man. As he says at Spock's funeral, "Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most... human." A possible insult in Spock's irony-free eyes, but nevermore has there been a more honest Kirk. His machismo stripped away, his melodrama shattered, he can do nothing but swallow back the tears. And as Kirk stands on the bridge paraphrasing Charles Dickens, he can but revel in the creation of new life, one which was caused by the selflessness of his friend. And as we see the torpedo on the surface, followed by Spock's reading of the famous introduction, we gain a sense of hope, a transference from mourning to reflection. And that reflection is one we're glad to experience.
THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN (1955)
Jack Arnold's SF classic takes us on the journey of a man as he shrinks, adding the usual sci-f/horror trappings the Universal pictures always loved, but also - as per Richard Matheson's novel the film was adapted from - as a study of misogynism. As Scott Carey gets smaller, his reactions toward the women in his life, particularly his wife, get more and more explosive, borne out of frustration at his disease but also at being cut down to size, namely the same size, as them, and even smaller, relieving him of any comfortable social structure.
This struggle continues in a more visceral and primal form as Scott shrinks down to minute size, first being attacked by the family cat but then being locked in a fight to the death with a monstrous spider, able to fit in the palm of his hand in his original size, but now as big as a car. But no matter how small he is, Scott's ingenuity and adaptability are as strong as ever, and he defeats the spider, only to find out that he's too weak even to really eat the cake he killed the spider for.
It's at this point where tragedy again gives way to life-affirming hope, in what has to be one of the weirdest endings to ever be seen in a mainstream picture. Carey finds himself shrinking ever more, and in an existentialist monologue explains to us that he is now the first of many occupants in a brave new world, and that he will continue to exist. You have to hear this monologue to appreciate it, so here you go!
THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980)
You've just had your hand cut off, you're hanging from a weather vane above what might as well be a bottomless pit, and to top it all off, you've found out the galaxy's most evil man is your dad. If your name is Luke Skywalker, you're having the bad day to end all bad days.
Fast forward a bit. Luke's been rescued, Darth Vader's very pissed off, and everyone is licking their wounds as the Rebel fleet masses. This is where possibly the most perfect example of how much of Star Wars' power is in John Williams' music. And Artoo-Detoo. As the fleet glides by to the strains of the Force theme, Lando and Chewie prepare to depart to rescue Han. A quick chat with Luke and they're off, the Han/Leia love theme swelling as the Millennium Falcon zooms into the distance, leaving only a glimmer of hope behind.
And that's what makes this ending work so well: the complete lack of any resolution. If you're a cynic, you'll say "well of course they'll rescue Han," but at the end of this movie you don't have any idea what'll happen. What makes this work so well is the body language between Leia and Luke, once possible lovers, now brother and sister in everything but name. As Luke puts his arm around her in a typically brotherly act, and Artoo sighs, any chance of success seems so far away. And there it ends, with Williams' music and Peter Suschitzky combining fiercely to show just how simple these films are, yet so damn hard to replicate.
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Continue reading The Best Hollywood EndingsTop 10 (OK, 4) Endings to Spike Lee Movies
I'll begin by more-or-less paraphrasing the opening paragraphs of Andrew's piece, because he basically stole a lot of what I was going to say. Real life is messy, and doesn't come with neat little endings to stories. So when you're writing a film, you have two options. Either end the story with a big, climactic punchline, and leave the taste of phony, Hollywood formula in the audience's mouth, or go for a more realistic semi-resolution, fade to black and leave the audience with an unsatisfied feeling and their popcorn half-eaten.
But the great thing about movies is that they are a visual medium, so that they don't rely entirely on plot mechanics to convey ideas. A story with a weak--or, let's say, a soft narrative conclusion, can have a strong visual conclusion that gives you a sense of closure without an unnaturally constructed plot device.
The most famous example of what I'm talking about is probably the freeze frame at the end of The 400 Blows. Narratively, there's no spectacular climax to the story. It's just one chapter in a life, ready to bleed into the next. But that final freeze frame serves as a full stop, if not an exclamation point, leaving the audience feeling satisfied that they have seen the end.
The master of this style of ending, in recent decades, is Spike Lee. I've always thought the endings of his movies were among the most poetic in contemporary American cinema. He first tried this strategy out on his second film, School Daze, which ends with Laurence Fishburne walking into the quad of his college campus early in the morning, ringing a bell and yelling "Wake up!" In literal narrative, it doesn't really make much sense for Fishburne to do this. It would, in fact, probably result in a serious asskicking from fellow students who were up partying until six in the morning the night before. But of course, he's not telling them to wake up, he's telling them--and us--to wake up. OK, it's a bit "on the nose," and I'll grant that it's not Spike's best film, but I like the idea.
Lee's next movie, Do the Right Thing, remains his most famous. Now, Do the Right Thing doesn't exactly fit my thesis--it's hard to imagine a non-genre movie having a more definite narrative climax--but I like the way he uses recurring visual motifs to underscore the themes of the film. When Smiley enters the smoldering remains of Sal's Pizzeria to pin the photo of Martin and Malcolm on the wall, the figures whose opposing views on the use of violence for political ends scroll across the screen at the start of the credits, it brings all of the movie's themes together. Of course, this isn't technically the ending--it's followed by the denouement of Sal and Mookie's conversation the next morning in front of the aftermath--but it feels like the end.
In Get on the Bus, Evan (Thomas Jefferson Byrd) has his son, Evan Jr. (De'Aundre Bonds) shackled to his leg as a court-ordered punishment for petty theft as they ride a bus across the country to attend the Million Man March. The shackle serves as a symbol of slavery, both for the audience and for the passengers on the bus. The final shot is of the shackle left abandoned on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. And although the metaphor is not perfect--whatever failings and prejudices of the criminal justice system may have led to this situation, the kid had committed a crime--it ties up the story with an image that has remained embedded in my mind, long after I've forgotten what actually happened when they showed up at the march.
My favorite of Spike's fantastic endings is from He Got Game, and it's an image that has stayed with me through the years, and could possibly be my favorite ending from any film. After two-plus hours of trying and failing to reconnect with his son Jesus (Ray Allen), Jake (Denzel Washington) has returned to Attica. Jesus stands alone in a gym, picks up a basketball and hurls it in the air, as the music of Aaron Copeland swells on the soundtrack. The basketball spins slowly through the air, like the bone in 2001, and finally lands in front of the father's feet inside the prison walls. It's such a beautiful, poetic image, expressing all the frustration of a communication breakdown, and at the same time the hope that communication can happen beyond language and words, perhaps through the sport that is both the bridge and the wall between them.
I didn't even get into 25th Hour, which has one of the greatest endings of all time, partially because it doesn't really fit with what I'm saying, and partially because I can't quite remember the order of what happened. Maybe the reason I admire this stuff so much is because I have such a hard time writing endings. In fact, I'm having a tough time figuring out how to end this right now. Maybe I should just close with an image of, I dunno, a typewriter eating my fingers. See, it's harder than it looks to come up with this stuff.
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Continue reading Top 10 (OK, 4) Endings to Spike Lee MoviesWednesday, August 15, 2007
Transformers: The Rejected Scripts
Hollywood's a funny old game. As soon as the latest big budget extravaganza is greenlit, legions of established screenwriters, dreaming strugglers and internet fanboys announce their intentions to write a draft, all fighting each other like dozens of over or underweight knights in Adult Swim T-shirts in order to reach the damsel in distress, the holy grail, in this case: TRANSFORMERS. Of course, we've already seen the final product as written by literary geniuses Orci and Kurtzman, but what about those scripts that didn't get past the writing stage? Read on for some exclusive extracts...TRANSFORMERS
Screenplay by: George Lucas.
Scene: Int: Autobot base. Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Ironhide, Ratchet, Sideswipe, Blaster, Grimlock, Slag, Snarl, Sludge, Swoop, Inferno, Jazz-Funk, Jetfire, , Blurr, Bluestreak, Broadside, Cloudburst, Downshift, Grandslam, Grapple, Hoist, Hotrod, Hound, Kup, Outback, Perceptor, Ultra Magnus, Sandstorm, Scattershot, Smokescreen, Mirage, Sunstreaker and Beachcomber are standing about.
Optimus Prime: Autobots! I sense a disturbance in the energon. Transform into your stealth attack line configuration.
Autobots transform (See ILM).
Blaster: Sir, i'm picking up signals on my Auto-radar command centre with genuine spinning satellite dish that say the Decepticons are currently attacking the Antarctic secret base play-set!
Optimus Prime: Autobots! Transform into Tundra attack Snow blast colouration!
Autobots transform (See ILM)
Optimus Prime: Most satisfying. Ratchet! How many figures is that so far?
Ratchet: Over 130 distinct forms, Prime!
Silverbolt, Slingshot, Air Raid, Fireflight and Skydive turn up.
Silverbolt: Optimus! We thought we'd show up for a single scene and stand in the background!
Optimus Prime: Excellent! When you're done you can send in the Protectobots, Technobots and Astro Squad.
Blaster: Sir! On my Computer Nerve Centre Command set with genuine flashing lights I see that a far larger threat is approaching!
Optimus Prime: What is it, Blaster?
Blaster: Plot, Optimus.
Optimus Prime: Godammit!
Blaster: Oh...no...it...can't be...s...sir...they're Sideshow Collectibles!
Optimus Prime: We don't stand a chance against their superior build quality!
Blaster: oh...god...they're quarter scale!
Optimus Prime: Autobots! The time for standing around stifly expositing is over! We must go and fight a lot for half an hour! Transform into your attack battle armour forms with working rockets!
Ratchet: 165 distinct figures sir!
Optimus transforms into an Ape.
Optimus Prime: The fuck?
Ratchet: Post Beast Wars continuity, Prime - you'are an Ape now.
Optimus Prime: Fucking EU.
Autobots go and fight a lot for half and hour (See ILM).
TRANSFORMERS
A Dogme 95 project by Lars Von Trier.
A man sits naked on the dirty floor in the middle of a darkened forest. We can barely see his face due to the lack of light.
MAN
I am a transformer.
THE END.
TRANSFORMERS (SECOND DRAFT)
A Dogme 95 project by Lars Von Trier
Scene: Truck stop. There is a truck. Ugly Man and Jessica Biel are looking at the truck.
Jessica Biel: So it was just a truck we've been staring at the past two hours?
Ugly Man: Yes. It is a symbol of America's need for transcendance leading to a refusal to accept grim European reality.
Jessica Biel: Gyp.
Ugly Man: Now I am going to fuck you up the arse for ten minutes to symbolise the co-dependant relationship between grim European reality and really hot young American fantasy. Bend over.
Jessica Biel bends over. Close up of Jessica Biel's arse.
Jessica Biel: This is going to be simulated, right?
Ugly Man: This is art, baby.
TRANSFORMERS: A ROBOTIC ROMANTIC COMEDY
Written By: Nora Ephron
Ext: Busy New York City Street. Intersection lights are broken. Optimus Prime (Volkswagon Camper Van form) and Megatron (BMW form) both try to cross at teh same time and the crash. They try to reverse but find that their fenders are inextricably stuck together. The transform to find themselves joined at the hip.
Optimus Prime: Well isn't this cute.
Megatron: But I have an important business meeting on the other side of town in two hours!
Optimus Prime: And I have to help some photogenically underprivileged kids from being evicted downtown!
Megatron: Gah! My (ask husband to think of some technology stuff) can not seperate us!
Optimus Prime: We're just going to have to get through this day together...
Optimus' best friends, Jazz (in large-booted SUV form) and Bumblebee (in pink VW Beetle form) watch from side street.
Jazz: Mmm-mmm, dat ain't gon' work. Mmm-mmm.
Bumblebee: I think it's adorable!
TRANSFORMERS: FIRST DRAFT
Written, Typed and Xeroxed by MICHAEL BAY. Music by Aerosmith.
EXT. TARMAC
A vibrant orange sky overshadows the huge landing field. Armies of troops jump into their planes, all at 2 frames per second.
We cut to a huge slab of silver, glimmering in the dusk. We pull back and it's the grille of a truck. White foamy liquid spills down the grille. We pull back further. A nubile brunette dressed in a tiny strappy top and jeans that barely cover her g-string is washing the truck, caressing its American steel, its smoke stacks rising in appreciation.
Suddenly, the truck begins to shift. Glittering shards of metal move in uber-slow motion. The shadow of a gigantic robot is revealed. As OPTIMUS PRIME steps into the magic hour light, we see the stars and stripes that decorate his cab. As fighter planes glide majestically in the background, Prime suddenly takes out a gigantic cannon and fires around blindly. Cue a jittering montage of super-fast and mega-slow explosions, all to the music of Aerosmith.
The nubile brunette walks to prime and clasps onto his leg, blowing the smoke away from his now spent cannon barrel. Prime transforms, the nubile brunette leaps onto the bonnet, and they drive into the sunset, flanked by the fighter planes, all to the music of Aerosmith covering Berlin's 1986 classic "Take My Breath Away."
As THE END flashes on the screen, the audience notices that they've been in the theater for four hours.
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Continue reading Transformers: The Rejected Scripts
