Monday, January 28, 2008

The End of The Movie Should Be The End of the MOVIES...


A very talented, world-class musician once told me, in the middle of a recording session, that the really great players all had one thing in common.
They knew when NOT to play.
The obvious moral of the story being that having a feel for when to paint the space and when to leave it blank is the difference between hackery and artistry.
And, of course, there’s the sage wisdom of the guy who wrote the song “The Gambler”:
“You got to know when to hold em / And know when to fold em..”
That classic lyric line popped into my head this morning as I was reading about the weekend box office for the debut of the new Sylvester Stallone movie.
Rambo IV.
Or Rambo XIV.
Hell, I don’t know, I’ve lost count.
Now, I’d be the last guy in the world to begrudge ol’ Sly the right to make movies. He is a pretty good screenwriter, to be sure and as an actor…well, as an actor, he’s a pretty good screenwriter, to be sure.
But I digress.
Bringing John Rambo out of mothballs to be played by a sixty-ish Stallone gives me the same feeling I get when I see a recent picture of Paul McCartney and find myself spending far too much think time trying to come up with a name for the color of that hair.
Whatever happened to growing old gracefully?
Well, I haven’t seen the movie. Imagine that. Truth is, I was never a big Rambo fan, anyway. For sheer, mindless, totally inane action adventure, I believe you’ve really got to go with the pre-Ronald Reagan wannabe Schwarzenegger.
And I lost interest in Rocky right after he beat the crap out of Mr. T.
I mean, for heaven’s sake, Mickey was dead, Apollo was dead and Mr. T. got a can of whupass opened on him.
Talk about a perfect time to say “goooood night, everybody!”
But Rambo is back.
For, I’d hazard to guess, about twenty-three minutes, give or take.
And the problem with it, in my humble o, is that whatever else it does, it ruins our nicely stored memories of the good old days.
Instead of a fit, buff, dynamic Rambo living in our memories and/or DVD players, now, the last thing we’ll remember is this guy who looks like a computer buffed version of a really, really old…well, Rambo.
It’s the same principle I apply when justifying not going to open casket funerals.
I don’t really want that to be the last image I’m recording and saving of that person.
And this isn’t the first time Stallone has brought out a hero newly equipped with a walker.
Rocky showed up again a year or so ago.
This time his wife was dead.
“Yo! Adrian…where’d ya put da remote control???…”
Enough already.
I don’t want to see my heroes getting old and gray and still trying to act like they’re still twenty-five.
Bad enough I have to see the people I love in real life do that.
But the reason they call it show business is because it’s a…say it with me…”business!”
And if at first you succeed…sequel, sequel, sequel.
So, since I’m always looking for new ways to contribute to the culture and hopefully fill my own anemic bank account at the same time, I thought I would pitch some ideas for sequels that, at best, would bring audiences in droves to the multiplex to re-visit their favorite characters and, at worst, make me a couple hundred thousand bucks when the direct to DVD hits Europe (God bless those people, they’ll worship ANYTHING…..four words….France, Jerry, Lewis, Genius……nuff said)
And while I’m basically pitching to the studio folks here in an open arena, were unscrupulous types could purloin my ideas and cash in, I’m relying on the good in human nature to protect me from any possible theft.
INSERT LAUGH TRACK.
Okay…how about….


FARGO II………Marge and Norm Gunderson’s baby has grown up to be a teenager and causes a scandal in Brainerd by being the subject of a series of tabloid photographs taken at that big statute of Paul Bunyan. She is obviously stoned and, apparently, not wearing any panties. Boy, if that ain’t a way for Britney to make the big comeback by winning an Oscar, then the role will never be written…

BRAVEHEART II…
the son of William Wallace (the one conceived when Braveheart himself knocked up the duchess on a little break from trying to free Scotland) becomes king of Scotland and, feeling like he’ll never measure up to his dad as a leader, hatches a plan to invade England, justifying it by saying that he has evidence that the Brits are stockpiling arrows, bows, cannons and those big long lance things…except Willie Jr calls them “weapons of mass destruction”…

GONE WITH THE WIND II…Scarlett is now a prominent leader in the women’s suffragette movement, having discovered, after Rhett walked out giving a damnless, that she had actually been suppressing lesbian urges ever since that party at Twelve Oaks where she was giving India Wilkes the eye…Rhett, suddenly having realized that he, in fact, DOES give a damn, tries to win her back…but only because the whole idea of bi-sexuality is a total turn on….and, in a flashback sequence, Melanie is played by Olympia Dukakis…which has nothing to do with the plot so much as Olympia Dukakis sounds a lot like Olivia DeHavilland.

THE NATURAL II…the steroid scandal hits Roy Hobbs hard…and the scriptwriters debate whether or not they should call this one “The Artificially Enhanced”…

FATAL ATTRACTION II…Michael Douglas reprises his role as Dan Gallagher, still chasing skirts, when not getting botox treatments…this time around, he makes a play for a woman much, much younger who succumbs to his charms and actually has his baby….I thought about pitching Catherine Zeta Jones for the part of the woman, but who would ever believe THAT?

And, finally, and this one’s the winner, guys…..

CASABLANCA II…turns out that the problem of two people in this world really DO amount to a hill of beans

…which is more than I can say for Rocky, Rambo and the resurrection of any other characters who should just be allowed to rest in peace….

1 comment:

Roadsoda said...

"They knew when NOT to play."

best advice I ever got was "never pass up the opportunity to keep your mouth shut."

thought that fit the context of the point. Can't be overstated. When in doubt...don't....don't speak or do. Its simple, yet rarely embarked.