The movie industry is looking a couple of rough years ahead, almost as if they were, you know, an industry. Credit-financing is going to be scarce, people are going to think twice (at LEAST twice) before throwing down $12.00 for a movie when they could watch a bunch of YouTube videos at home while eating beans out of a can with a spork. And yes, its true that movies did surprisingly well during the LAST great depression, but at the time the weren’t being dragged down by General Electric or News Corp or any one of Sumner Redstone’s offspring.

Desperate times, desperate measures. Things should be fine if the industry pays attention to this handful of simple guidelines I’m about to lay down. In turn, if they choose to reimburse me for these ideas, I’LL be fine. Otherwise, I’ll never upgrade to Blu-Ray.

REALITY MOVIES. Reality shows are the go-to idea when you’re putting together a cheap TV network – why not do the same thing on the big screen? There is an air of non-event around the form though, so maybe we can rename the genre for the big screen – call it a document or incidents. No better yet, a “documentary.” I bet we can talk the Academy into putting aside a special award for ‘em or something.

WOODY ALLEN SEMINARS. Woody Allen is the most disciplined filmmaker on the planet. For years he’s churned out tiny movies on tiny budgets, using big stars who work for peanuts because are attracted by the prestige and the challenge of working with only three pages of the whole script while getting almost no direction. The reason all Woody’s titles look the same is because he gets a discount on that font. We need to get him out from behind the camera and in front of a master class, where he can teach other directors to make dialogue-heavy, often unwatchable 93-minute movies for peanuts.

MORE 3D. This is counter-intuitive because it costs more, but let’s face it – at the moment, you can’t pirate 3D.

LESS DIGITAL, MORE LIVE – In the old days they wouldn’t hire 30 geeks to fake an explosion on a server farm – they’d just blow stuff up and film it. Was it more convincing? Sometimes. I don’t care. The important thing is that it was more fun to read special-effects magazines. Just imagine how much better the extras session on that DVD will be when you see the struggle of a dozen special effects people to put a guy in a rubber dinosaur suit and build a convincing tiny city for the dinosaur to step on. Contrast that with the interview with a programming geek who created a new tiny-city algorithm just for this movie. See? Pays for itself.

MORE REMAKES OF THE WILD, WILD WEST. Sooner or later, this idea is bound to pay off.

TEEN VAMPIRES. For the next year, every movie must write in a teen vampire character. It’s a transparent ploy, but those often work the best.

BIGGER PRODUCT PLACEMENTS – I’m not talking about soft drinks or cars. Set the next Batman movie in Isreal, for the Isreal tourist board. For the next Cate Blanchette Queen Elizabeth drama, have her discover oil under Buckingham palace and lament that the technology doesn’t yet exist to benefit from it. Think big, people!

FORCE JIM CARREY TO MAKE THREE DOPEY COMEDIES FOR 5 MILLION DOLLARS APIECE. Yeah, it’s less than he’s asking, but since they keep canceling those projects anyway, he probably needs the walkin’ around money about now.

SHOOT EVERYTHING IN MEXICO. There’s all kinds of goodness in this idea. For one, the Unions can’t reach you there. For another, lax safety standards insures that you’re going to kill off at least one major star in the process. Look at Heath Ledger! That put the Dark Knight over the top baby! Plus catering doesn’t have to send out for Mexican food.

Finally – SHORT, UGLY LEADING MEN. Sounds crazy, but it worked during the early seventies.

-daniel k

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 25th, 2008 at 6:22 am and is filed under Motion Pictures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.