Heh. I'll never lay any claims to pop-culture awareness, but am I the only person who didn't realize that they had even made a Butterfly Effect 2? Of all the clunkers that seemed least likely to spawn a franchise, it seems to be right down there with Glitter. If it's this easy to get crap made, I really do need to start cranking out some shoddy spec scripts, or an idea for another reality show.
Maybe a spec script about two people trying to start up a reality show, and along the way they have merry misadventures that bring them closer together, and the audience falls in love with them as they fall in love with one another and make the bestest reality show evah. I'm thinking either Vin Diesel and Catherine Zeta-Jones, Nicolas Cage and Katherine Heigl, or Zeta-Jones and Heigl. And a masturbating zoo animal, probably a monkey or a bear, or Seth Rogen. Fun for the entire family!
And a masturbating zoo animal, probably a monkey or a bear, or Seth Rogen.
ReplyDeleteThose are separate things?
I saw Zack & Miri and Pineapple Express recently, and that's all I ever care to see of him again -- motherfucker reminded me of Chewbacca speaking English, seriously. Listen to him sometime without focusing on the words, maybe from the next room or something, and see if he doesn't sound like a fucking Wookie. Does he have any vocal settings between "mumbly" and "bellowing"?
Huh. I see you have time to rummage at leisure through the $1.99 bin at your local WalMart. I thought you were working on an MBA, sir. ;-)
ReplyDeleteIf you first showbiz idea fails, why don't you start writing for these folks. You got the relevant skills down pat.
You're spot on re: the inexplicable inflicting of that fucker Rogen upon the blameless rest of us, but the problem runs deeper than that. It's that, apparently, either the masters of comedy du jour think America is still a country of infantile fratboys refusing to mature or, horribile dictu, the country really is such a collection. How else do you explain that everything coming out of Hollywood these days and peddled as comedy (that's basically Judd Apatow's Predictable Emporium) is the same shitty script, rehashed over and over again? Why is everything 'comic' just another indistinguishable variant of the "bunch of commitment-phobic white guys in their mid-30s doing the same stupid shit they did in college wax nostalgic about it but also intermittently anxious about their impeding 'futures' as married dudes who aren't allowed to be stupid no mo' 'cause it pisses missus off not because it's about damn time everybody grew the fuck up"? Huh? How do you explain that? Why won't they let women comedy writers write and produce something funny about women -- or, at least, with more than one cartoonish woman in it?
TVS:
ReplyDeleteI'll probably get around to Netflixing Zack & Miri eventually, but I didn't even make it 45 minutes into Pineapple Express. It was a lot funnier thirty years ago when it was called Up In Smoke.
Pissed me off, too, because I liked Freaks & Geeks and was looking forward to seeing Franco and Rogen work together again. And Craig Robinson is usually funny, but I never even got that far.
I did like Rogen in 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, the latter of which just needed to lose a half-hour. I actually kinda like that Apatow is loyal enough to his peeps to keep helping them move product; what I dislike (and Rogen gave this away in an Onion AV Club interview during the Knocked Up promo tour) is that they rely heavily on focus groups and test audiences to fine-tune their movies. Everyone does that to some extent, but they take it to the nth degree, as the volume of extras on the DVD releases attest.
Marius:
ReplyDeleteI'm cramming before the term begins next month, dammit. Sort of a retard bucket list.
Nice rant, by the way. I say option #2, the country really is such a collection. Fat, drunk, and stupid; self-actualizing through toys; failing at introspection and thus at communication, thus terrified of wimmins (not that many women don't have their own issues with men); unable to comprehend the ramifications of simple math and thus financially irresponsible; blah blah blah. Might as well have fun with it where you can.
I have fewer issues with those kinds of comedies -- since, well, I can relate to them on some level -- than with the fluffy rom-com alternative. I saw The Hangover a couple weeks ago and liked it quite a bit. But I know what you're saying -- coming of age is only funny a certain amount of times, and then it gets old.
As far as women comedy writers, I don't know why there aren't more of them. It is a frat-boy's club. Maybe the success of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler will change that.