Monday, August 21, 2006
"Any ideas on what's the best way to make a movie?" Idea Less
Dear Less, We have no idea how to help you, but what we can do is offer you a few time-tested ideas borrowed from other more experienced sources. Actually, that's not a bad idea at all. You want to make a movie? Here's a great idea. Borrow a bunch of ideas from other movies. Lock yourself in your little hole with a whole bunch of hit DVDs. For a little intellectual pretension, throw in a few foreign language DVDs. Not because any of the foreign film ideas will be remotely workable, but just so you can drop the names of all that foreign cult crap in the right places and during the conversations you will try to have with people who won't be listening to a word of all that intellectual cult crap you'll anyway just have to passionately spout. Trust us, it works. Not that we ever managed it, but beause we didn't do any of that and we didn't manage anything. During the days gone by when we tried our best to pass off our original ideas as our ideas, we were always met with stinging disapproval and a clutch of 'better' ideas from other people's ideas. Are you getting any ideas? We certainly hope they're not fresh. Not to belabour the point, but what we're saying is if you're trying to write a movie, or get a movie made, it's best that you load your cranium with a whole bunch of other movie ideas. Watch as many movies as you can lay your hands on and make copious notes. Make sure none of these notes you make contain anything stirringly original. That will only make them utterly undoable. The rule for getting anything done is, if it hasn't been done before, it fucking means it just cannot be done. Don't you get it? If something can be done, it's done. So let's do more of it. Right? Wrong. Which is what makes it so fucking right. Well, at least, that's what we've learnt. Since we're stuck with the agony of doing a fucking agony column, and little else, it must mean they were wrongly right and we were rightly wrong. In case, you find that a bit hard to swallow down your foolishly stubborn original gullet, just do a sequel to a great movie and call it '-1'. Why '-1'? Because that way you will be killing two turds with one stone. You will appeal to all the unoriginal folk that make movies by pandering to their base desires of milking a hit with a sequel. And you will be pathetically satisfying your pathetic urge for pathetic originality with little more than an originally pathetic title. Besides, the very very very least you can do when making a crap sequel is come up with an interesting title that tries it's best to break the rule of thumb which says no bloody sequel will make any money worth making so if you're trying to make a sequel let it be a sequel that's not a sequel. Mindfucked? Good, you're ready to make a movie. Your filmily fucking Funcle.