Happy Holidays!

IN 3-D (no doubt)

And it will be happy because — yes, there will be an Angry Birds: The Movie!. Okay, you will have to wait three and a half years for those chicks to hatch (yuk, yuk – can you tell I used to write press releases?) but in the summer of 2016 one of the most downloaded games in the history of that stuff will be released at a multiplex near you.

Here’s part of the just circulated announcement of that already anticipated film:

December 11th, 2012 — Santa Monica, California — On the third anniversary of the release of Angry Birds, Rovio Entertainment announced that Despicable Me producer John Cohen has signed on as producer of the upcoming Angry Birds movie. David Maisel, former Chairman of Marvel Studios and executive producer of Iron Man, will be executive producer of the feature film, coming to theaters in summer 2016. The film will be produced and financed by Rovio Entertainment. John Cohen most recently produced Illumination Entertainment/Universal Pictures’ Despicable Me in 2010 and executive produced Illumination/Universal’s Hop in 2011. Prior to Illumination, Cohen was VP of Production at Twentieth Century Fox Animation. He worked closely with Blue Sky Studios on films including Ice Age, Robots, Ice Age: The Meltdown and Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who. Cohen had the idea to reimagine Alvin and the Chipmunks and developed the 2007 film.

Now — here is what I created a year and a half ago for my students. This wholly fictional creation was in order for them to do an outlandishly fake movie marketing exercise:

March 28, 2011 – Los Angeles, California

As you all know, Pendleton Productions has purchased the rights to Angry Birds and has set up “Angry Birds: The Movie” as our first animated/live action tent pole film with Pixar Studios. It will, of course, be directed by Brad Bird (The Incredibles). We have cast Angelina Jolie, Paul Rudd, Andrew Garfield, Willow Smith and Kim Kardashian as our birds. Our pigs will be played by Zack Galifinakis, Hugh Jackman and Jack Black. In the time remaining, we’d like you to develop a detailed marketing plan to launch our film. Actually, it’s more than a film. It’s an event. Or will be if we decide to hire you because that will be your responsibility. The marketing plan should reach across all media and be as creative and out-of-the-box as possible while still staying within the realm of reality. Whose reality? That’s up to you. But it should include publicity and promotion plans for the launch, advertising ideas, tie-ins, merchandising, product placement and any other means of creating public attention (but not backlash). It should also take into account platforms in film, television, music, new media and all social media. Because we want to reach, well – EVERYONE!!

What can I say? That this is when you know you’ve been in the entertainment industry too long? Or not long enough because you’re still surprised by it?

Bottom line — There is NOitem, idea or concept that cannot become a movie – especially if it’s one that has proved uber-successful in another medium. In fact, it’s preferable that the item, idea or concept has already done well somewhere else. Because that means there is something called “brand recognition,” which ups the elusive financial “X” factor that will ensure your movie blockbuster status. I mean, look at the box-office receipts of Aeon Flux, The Dukes of Hazzard, Tekken, Battlefield Earth, The Mod Squad, The Honeymooners, Super Mario Bros. and Bewitched alone and you can see I’m correct, right? Okay, perhaps those are bad examples. Well, they’re at least bad somethings.

Ouija Board: The Movie? Spirit says no.

Note: Please do not write in with either the box-office grosses or reviews of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (especially since two friends of mine wrote that one), Mortal Kombat, The Brady Bunch Movie or The Prince of Persia because I’m not interested in anything that disproves the cynical yet obvious point I’m trying to make.

It was not always thus so. I mean, can you imagine The Seventh Seal in this kind of climate? But conversely, there could perhaps be The Seventh Seal video game or phone app if that Bergman film were a post millennium release and one were trying to tweak the bounds of taste just a tad.

Well… I guess there’s a board game tie in.

What to do? In keeping with the holiday spirit, we’d like to make a modest proposal of some titles that Hollywood could perhaps consider for future Christmas time seasonal announcements of films in the future.

1. Swiffer: The Film – It’s the animated adventure of a lonely mop who finds itself jettisoned back in time to a Mad Men-like 1950s reality where being disposable is seen as a negative and lack of proper refills ensure its extinction. How will Swiffer cope and stay alive? Can it adjust to going from top dog prince to Eisenhower-era pauper? Stay tuned.

Does this outfit make me look fat?

2 The Adventures of Abed and The Girl You Wish You Hadn’t Started A Conversation With at a Party – Popular post-modern man-child Abed from the soon to be defunct NBC cult hit Community goes on the road with Cecily Strong’s soon-to-be breakout character from the new 2012 season of Saturday Night Live. Together they travel the terminally unhip worlds of America they inadvertently make hip because of their own unintentionally po-mo hipness factor.

Click for some stimulating party conversation…

3. The Church of Stefon – SNL’s Stefon (because SNL always suffers from film spinoff overkill) flies solo and crash lands into red state America where he helps a group of down-on-their luck fundamentalist pastors rebuild a Church that was destroyed by the first super Tsunami-tornado ever recorded on U.S. soil. While the preachers blame the emergence of the LGBT community for the aberrant weather, Stefon teaches them through determination and humor that God’s creatures all only have one religion — Clubbing.

Wholesome family entertainment

4. Game of De-Thrones – What happens when Mitt Romney, Hilliary Clinton, Michael Dukakis and Sarah Palin look-a-likes team up to topple their more famous counterparts? Do they take their place in the hierarchy of American political leaders who almost were and institute their plan to once again run in national elections, backed by a shadow rogue group of disgraced Wall Street bankers, in order to recreate the once greatest world power of the U.S. in their own unique vision? Stay tuned.

5. The Pet Rock Musical – Desperate for a Broadway hit, a group of both young and has-been producers team up to create an original musical embracing the beauty of played out sociological trends with hopes that it will be just bad enough to capture the public fancy. Featuring tributes to not only the pet rock but to Cabbage Patch Dolls, Game Boys, Beanie Babies, Nehru Suits, Furby (wait, is that back?), Zhu Zhu Pets, Razor Scooters and the 8-Ball.

6. Super Nerds and Real Housewives – A new romantic comedy featuring three couples from the various cities of Bravo’s Real Housewives fame who find themselves in Silicon Valley married to everything from well-meaning bores to abusively damaging computer nerds. In the end one couple divorces, one stays together and a third takes in a third partner. Not yet determined if addition to third couple will be male or female or some combination of both.

Probable movie poster

7. Pandora’s Box – A store clerk’s Pandora account will only play songs loved by his ex-girlfriend, prompting the young man to go on a journey to find the woman (whose name is also, coincidentally, Pandora) and stop her from marrying a phony entrepreneur (who is only using her for her name) before it’s too late. Starring Michael Cera (obviously).

8. Twit Her – The super-villainess Twit Her must hack into the accounts of the 10 people with the most Twitter followers, who were discovered to have been abusing the system and illegally creating an unauthorized list of unwilling fans. Her mission: reduce their followers to zero and have the real taste makers finally assume their rightful place in the echelon of who and what is important.

9. Instagram and Other Unworldly Events – Pictures from a man’s past, present and future lives begin coming alive in the room at the worst possible moments, threatening to ruin his life. He must hunt down the reclusive real creator of Instagram to dismantle the service before he himself is eventually reduced to merely a series of endless, three-dimensional photos in time.

America’s Sweetheart

10. A Honey Boo-Boo Christmas – Low-budget, independent film where the rural family travels to California looking for The Beverly Hillbillies and instead run into Lindsay Lohan and take her under their wings to teach her the true meaning of holiday spirit without money. Lindsay Lohan has, in fact, just been signed to play herself. (I’d watch this).

I’m not sure what the marketing campaigns will be on any one of these films. However, I do know that 18 months ago my students came up with this kind of fun stuff for the then fictional Angry Birds movie.

a. A real life Angry Birds game with some of the stars of the film (Jack Black was specifically cited in this one).

b. A real life board game (which might actually already exist) in American landmarks like Times Square and St. Louis’ Gateway Arch.

c. ABC partners to do an Angry Birds version of Wipeout.

4. A master guerilla marketing guru who out text messages to a bunches of people in a given room saying things like “Knocking out pigs and pass it on”

5. A cirque du soleil type show at premiere.

Stay tuned to see if any of our predictions or strategies come true.

In the meantime, Have fun, be safe and go see a movie. In a movie theatre, that is.

12.16.12

by notesfromachair

A Real Conversation

Gun control? Adolescent depression? Human impulse to violence? Bad people doing bad things to good people? All or some of the above?

I’m not sure.

This is what I imagine: A room at a school, similar to the one I went to decades ago because, let’s face it, east coast classrooms for mostly middle class white kids are not all that different.

But this one is. Because when you open the door — you know, the one that has a rectangular glass cutout at the top of it where you can see in — there is something unusual. First you react to the fact that bodies are lying on the floor. But not just bodies – coarsely severed limbs on top of bodies. Then you realize there’s blood. A lot of it. Everywhere. And in between is carnage. The carnage of human remains – part of a brain, an elbow, maybe a knee or a piece of foot. It’s not like war, though, because these are smaller than the usual body parts of war. Well, not all wars, I suppose. Though I have never been on a battlefield, I imagine scattered among the young adult males, and nowadays even females, we might also find on some the remains of youngsters no older than those in that Connecticut schoolhouse on Friday morning.

Sorry to get so graphic but there seems no other way to talk about it other than to report on what is real or what we know to be real through our informed imagination and by the fact that no one wants to say exactly what they’ve seen inside that classroom except to call it words like “gruesome,” unspeakable” and “a massacre.”

From Newtown…

What we have physically seen with our own eyes are cops, medical workers, politicians and yes, even Presidents, seeming overwhelmed, speechless or, inarticulate actually, as they tried to put the tragedy into words and express how they or we were feeling. And you know that I’m not exaggerating on that score when seasoned tragedy professionals find it all too much too bear and dare to allow themselves to become inexpressive or, perish the thought, overly emotional, or even merely just plain emotional. At all.

Not everyone went there. Some among them had logical explanations for the unexplainable. Politicians like ex-Arkansas governor/former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee noted publicly that it was unsurprising that school shootings like this continue to take place because as a society we have banished religion from the classroom. This is what happens to you “by removing God from our schools,” Mr. H., an ordained minister, warned in his best imitation of Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell or….(fill in your favorite fundamentalist religious icon of choice). Or – perhaps he was just being himself.

Click here to watch full video.. if you can.

“Comedy equals tragedy plus time.” Alan Alda once spoke these lines in the poignantly funny and tragic Woody Allen film masterpiece “Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Someone should pass this on to Mr. Huckabee because his full remarks would only make sense as the nonsensical punch line of a televangelist in a not yet written Woody Allen film. But voiced the very day of the massacre in the last month of 2012 they come off as just plain shallow, stupid and simplistic. Not to mention dangerously misinformed. Still, one wonders if the reverse is true – if tragedy is nothing more than comedy plus time. Meaning, if we have long enough to think about something we once thought was funny, can we conclude that in our older years we’ll find that same laugh riot just plain sad? Using this logic and Mr. Huckabee’s words maybe this is what drove the now dead 20-year-old Connecticut assassin to do what he did. Maybe gales of laughter heard while not in the presence of God surrounded him enough that one day the laughter turned into anger, which then turned into this. Uh, I don’t think so. That sounds as likely and simplistic and as appropriate a thought as Mr. Huckabee’s explanation. So sorry for stooping so slow.

But back to carnage and the mass murder of 27 people, mostly children between the ages of 5 and 10. Murder, that is, by at least one automatic weapon and two pistols held by the hand of someone who was not yet old enough to legally drink in the United States. Of course we all know that many young men and women under 21 do drink. Just as we know many people under 21 are taught to shoot firearms. However, the latter is legal. Even when they’re not in the military. (Note: the minimum age for military service is 18. Just thought I’d bring that salient fact up).

Sorry if I’m getting too snide, graphic or just plain gross. But when the big macho male Connecticut Medical Examiner gets on television and says of the massacre, “I’ve been doing this work a third of a century and this is the worst that I’ve seen and probably that any of my colleagues have ever seen” you know the time for niceties are gone.

By the way – salient fun facts:

A single assault weapon, like the legal one used on Friday morning, fires up to six bullets a second.
The average victim in our latest U.S. mass murder had anywhere from 3-7 bullet wounds in their bodies.
The 20 or so dead children were all wearing “cute kid stuff,” according to that same Ct. chief Medical Examiner, whose name is Dr. H. Wayne Carver. And when pressed even further on the subject by one overzealous reporter, he added, “the kind of stuff you’d all send your kids off to school in every day.” Dr. Carver looked them all straight in the eye when he added that fun fact.

Connecticut Medical Examiner, H. Wayne Carver

Connecticut Medical Examiner, Dr. H. Wayne Carver

Want more? Yes, I thought you did. Well, did you know that —

The bodies in the crime scene were so gruesome that rather than have parents come directly into the site they were given photographs taken by “very good staff photographers” to ease their pain, while assured that “up close and personal time” would eventually happen.
The mother of the accused shooter was an avid gun collector and marksman herself who owned numerous guns and often took her two sons to shooting ranges and taught them how to pull a variety of triggers correctly.
When pressed again by another reporter if he was affected emotionally by what he had seen after examining more than 11 bloody child corpses in that single day alone, Dr. Carver responded that if you weren’t affected you “don’t belong in this business.” He also noted that in the past he has “sat down in the locker room and cried alone but I haven’t yet on this one.” But, he added, “notice I said “yet.”

There is a tipping point for everything – a boiling over moment when a critical mass is reached and something that has been building for a long time can’t help but inevitably explode into existence. (Okay, it’s not always an explosion but it is worth noting that these things do often start gradually and mount with time). We’re told this is how change occurs and, looking back in history, we can trace the inevitability. But we can never quite predict what that tipping point will actually be. And often not without hindsight, long after it happens.

I’ve told a number of people that I was just slightly older than the dead children at Sandy Hook Elementary School when both Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were shot within a few months of each other in 1968. At the time, it felt like a tipping point on gun violence in America had been reached. But it hadn’t.

It happened again many more times over many more decades – most recently after the mass shootings at Columbine, then again at Virginia Tech, and then this past year at the movie theatres in Colorado. But, once again, it hadn’t.

Today is the Day rally, Washington DC, 12/14/12

Unlike war, there are not countries to be brought together to broker a treaty or an end to this reality. There is simply the citizenry of the country in the form of the government. And we all know how well that has been going.

And yet, there seems to be something about the deaths of young children that occasionally does make the difference. We saw this in the Vietnam War with the My Lai massacre. We also saw it with AIDS when young hemophiliacs like Ryan White were ostracized or infants in other countries began to be massively ravaged.

It’s sad to think that it took the deaths of these innocents for us to reach the tipping point this time. But what’s sadder is to think their deaths won’t make the difference.

A friend wrote to me that there are 275 million guns in private hands in our nation of 315 million and that it will be incredibly difficult to put this genie back in the bottle. This friend is incredibly smart and often quite perceptive. But in this case, I hope he’s as wrong as Mike Huckabee.