Quentin Tarantino’s Little Women. Writes itself.
Once, at an SF convention, I read a (spurious) blurb in the film schedule for Jim Henson’s Atlas Shrugged. Six hours long, with Kermit the Frog as John Galt.
This pure, Grade A, solid GOLD, man! I predict 75 mil in the first weekend! Let’s grab lunch, I’ll have my people talk to your people…
"Hey, Joe. Listen, I’ve got a great idea for you for 2010. We need to get working on it, now!
"Everyone knows that ‘great’ old Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn snoozer: Bringing Up Baby. Boring, stuffed shirt paleontologist dating hip society woman with a leopard for a pet. A wild leopard gets into the area, and hilarity ensues. This was back in Hays Code days, so there was no sex, no violence, and no explosions. No nothing. Can you believe that shit?
"What we propose to do is, first, the scientist role must be edgier. He’s now going to be a paleo-geneticist. Well, that’s what he says he is. Really he’s an underground researcher out to show everyone the reality of Biblical creationism, by using the so-called fossils in his museum to get enough DNA to bring back a couple Jesus Horses.
"So, he gets his first clutch of eggs going. And they’re all going to be one of those cute teethy dinosaurs. Does Spielburg own them Raptor things, or can we use them? Anyways, they’re cute, and toothy, and so the scientist dude (I’m thinking Alec Baldwin for this role.) give one of the little guys to our leading lady.
"What you want to cast her already? Well, she’s got to have some presence, yanno. Yeah, she’s got to be able to give out an ass-fucking to the badguys when it’s necessary, so our idea-man, he’s saying it’s time to get Halle Berry back into action roles. And, of course, she’ll be less finicky with the love scenes than some other big names I can think of.
"Anyways, the little toothy guy, we’re calling him Baby, of course. Short for Baby Jesus Horse.
"Anyways, the little toothy guy, he’s all hooked on Halle’s looks and smell. And did you know this? Lizards smell with their tongues. So, Baby’s gonna be licking Halle all over. And she’s gonna get into it.
"What? Why? Don’t you know anything? Them little toothy guys? They’ve all got huge, like prehensile tongues. It’s a fact, just ask your fossil guys to show you one of the little toothy guy fossils with their tongues sticking out.
"Anyways, Halle is getting all into the loving she’s getting from Baby. And so, when our scientist starts getting all egotistical, 'cause he brought back these little toothy guys - wait? You thought he was going to be the hero? Noooo - come on! Scientists, especially genetic scientists are always evil. He stuck other DNA in there, yanno. You’ll see, they aren’t just little toothy guys… well, you see where this is going:
"It’ll be the battle of the century in the museum! Halle and Baby, with some really slick machine gun, for Halle, against the evil Alec Baldwin, who’s given up on proving anything and is using his science to make the rest of Baby’s siblings into cyber BIG, radioactive toothy guys!
"And we’ll end it all with a nuke in the museum, just when you think Alec and the last evil big radioactive toothy guy are all getting ready for the sequel. Cause we can always count on musuems having some meteorites in 'em. And those come from space, so they’ll be easy to turn into a nuke.
“So, waddya say - we got a winner here?”
That would be Garret P. Serviss, and the correct title would be Edison’s Conquest of Mars, freely available from the Gutenberg Project.
And I gave the correct title, aside from a typo.
Tarzan of the Apes: The infant Lord Greystoke, shipwrecked in Africa and orphaned, is raised by apes. His comparative physical weakness, however, makes him the ever-abused runt of the tribe. When he meets Jane he completely ignores her because she’s so disgustingly bald all over.
Yeah, that’s good.
But, what do you got that will reel in the 17-25 year old males demographic?
I KNOW!
We cast the Olsen Twins as Cthulhu.
PLEASE let it be a musical…PLEASE let it be a musical…
Actually, I could totally see Schindler’s List as a Les Miserables-style musical:
-The intro where Schindler wheedles and bribes his way into upper German society…I’m thinking “Chicago” style
-A song where he rejoices over the genius of using Jews to run his factory…(something like “Lovely Ladies” with him as the pimp)
-The sad “seduction” song of the girl trying to get her parents into his mill (like Fantine becoming a whore to support her child)
-Schindler’s angry response, followed by a beautiful balled of heart-changing remorse (like Javert’s “Stars” meets ValJean’s “Who am I”)
-an ensemble piece of the Jews singing happily in the factory…a la “At the end of the Day”
-a comic song by the Ralph Fiennes character as he’s picking off prisoners (like “Master of the House”)
-a song of dreams and escapism by his handmaid, like Cosette’s “Castle on a Cloud”
And so forth. Wow. Kind of very vaguely creepy.
Also, maybe something along the lines of a Brecht/Weil collaberation might (and I emphasize* “might”*) work.
This reminds me- in a 2005 book of essays about the original King Kong entitled King Kong Is Back!, there is a hilarious essay by Bruce Bethke called “King Kong 2005” which comments why you couldn’t set King Kong in the present day- animal rights activists, etc. It’s worth seeking out. Here’s a few excerpts:
And after the great ape makes his fall…
Let’s MLA this bitch:
[sub]Bethke, Bruce, “King Kong 2005.” King Kong Is Back! An Unauthorized Look At One Humongous Ape. Ed. David Brin with Leah Wilson. Dallas: Benbella Books, 2005.[/sub]
It is of coarse a musical.
Boi’s in the Hood?
King Kong: Denham and his crew, having knocked out Kong with gas and preparing to bundle him onto the ship, get stomped into tomato paste by his relatives, because the existence of one animal implies an entire breeding population, you dumbasses!
The recent remake did have a brief nod to this: Kong’s lair has the bones of other giant apes, impying that Kong is the very last of his kind. But how any population of enormous megafauna could live on a relatively small island is another question. Heck, humans demonstratively have difficulty maintaining a population on small islands.
It was a magic island.
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.
And now he seeks revenge on the chemical company that did it to him.
With his steel claws and titanium shell it’s….Metal-morphosis!
Think about the awesome soundtrack!
Quentin Tarantino’s Song of the South: Uncle Remus (Samuel Jackson) tells the little plantation children who worship him (Dakota Fanning and a “younger” HJO) the story of “Li’l Brer & Sis Cracker, who got their asses whipped, arms broken, faces cut up, and woke up with snakes in their mo’fckin’ bed when they told Mama that Brer Badass Mtherf*cker stole the jewelry she sent him to bury and hide from the Yankees and or for telling Daddy that he was banging their mama while Daddy was at war”. Features the voices of 70s icons Sherman Hemsley, Loretta Swit, and Rob Reiner as the animated rabid raccoons in Uncle Remus’s delirium tremens.
Confederacy of Dunces- a heartwarming drama about an effete but passionate mostly housebound man who champions the cause of working boys in Civil Rights era New Orleans. Stars Billy Bob Thornton, Chris Tucker, and Jenny McCarthy.
Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward Angel- deviates heavily from the book in that it includes a likeable character and is set on the asteroid Ceres. The far more canonical director’s cut features 39 hours of deleted scenes based on Wolfe’s book.
A Tale of Two Cities- now a buddy flick starring Luke and Owen Wilson as lookalikes who trade places in modern day NYC and Baghdad.