My Movie Pitches

"Moviegoing is exactly what separates the audience from the Academy. You, dear ordinary cinephile, go to a theater and sit in a big room with a big screen on which, you hope, big things will happen. Those things are called movies. But the Academy balloters, by and large, aren't true moviegoers; the movies come to them, on DVD screeners. When the members, many of whom are on the set for 12 or 14 hours a day, do their Oscar homework, they want a retreat from the pyrotechnics they've been creating. They want dramas that are important yet intimate, stressing method and message. Those things are called TV shows." (Richard Corliss, Time, February 23, 2009)

While on the subject of the Academy, AMC Theatres are doing a "Best Picture Showcase" for 2009 Oscar nominees. Select locations will screen five nominated films and throw in a large popcorn and unlimited drink refills for only $30. I've got my ticket for this Saturday, but I may not make it to every movie. No matter what, expect some artsy-fartsy reviews next week from me next week. Back to the quote now, I found it interesting to consider that everyone goes to the movies to escape, whether that's little movies with big ideas for the industry insiders, or big movies with little ideas for the rest of us. I'm mostly kidding, but there is some truth there. It got me thinking about what kind of movie I would want to see, if I could see anything imaginable right this moment - no work on my part, other than to sit and enjoy the final product of the idea in my head. If you could magically create your own movie, with whatever budget, director, setting, stars, and storyline you wanted, what would your movie be? I'll tell you five of mine, but before you laugh all the way to the bank because you stole my priceless ideas, I just want to say that it's okay. Anyone who has the connections to get these movies made should do so, because I'd really like to see them, but without any legwork or phone calls of my own. I'm not interested in writing scripts for any the following either:

1. 28 Days Later... (2002) meets Braveheart (1995) - a Medieval zombie plague just seems like a natural fit when you consider that Braveheart's William Wallace (1270-1305) lived around the same time as the Black Death (1340s); only my movie would be entirely classical languages, like Apocalypto (honestly, do you really need to understand what Celts are saying when they're chopping the undead up into pieces?)

2. Dracula (1897) meets Glory (1989) - I've long had a "weird West" idea about gold diggers making a stop in an old fronteir town full of vampires (I know, it's been done to death; pun intended), but then I realized that the Bram Stoker book was originally published not too long after the American Civil War (1861-1865), and actually just a year after the Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) "separate but equal" court case; vampires in the movies haven't been taken seriously since Blackula (1972), but my movie could avenge all that with the tragic romance of an ancient Egyptian (black) vampire who comes to the New World and finds his long-lost bride in the Old South

3. Conan (1932) meets Encino Man (1992) - my fascination with alternative histories for pop culture characters goes back to my first childhood idea for a movie; I imagined a barbarian warrior named Carnaval (fifteen years before I learned Portuguese in Brazil) who wore a tall hat made of wooly mammoth fur with a flat top and bones protruding from the sides like the bolts in Frankenstein's neck; he also had two long fangs like a saber-toothed tiger; he was frozen in ice and then thawed in the present day to became a sort of rogue superhero, hiding in city sewers like TV's Beauty and the Beast (1987) or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1984) but coming out at night to battle evildoers

4. McDonaldland: The Movie - my other childhood dream for a movie involved Ronald McDonald, Grimace, Hamburglar, Birdie the Early Bird, and the Fry Guys in a land with "thick shake volcanoes, apple pie trees and the Filet-O-Fish Lake" (Wikipedia); evidently there was a "1999 McDonaldland VHS entitled Have Time, Will Travel" that you probably bought with a Happy Meal but it must not have sold well enough to warrant a feature-length big screen adaptation

5. With the recent success of Into the Wild (2007) and Wendy and Lucy (2008), my latest idea for a movie (while a rip-off) is about a Brown or Dartmouth grad who wanted to go into advertising, but then puts a twist on the old summer hike across Europe by walking home to California, completely off the grid and avoiding any form of advertising along the way; think Homeward Bound (1993) meets Sweet November (2001), but without talking animals or romance (sound boring enough?)