So, I was riding the subway home tonight and I had an idea. I want to take themes and plotlines from several different but well-known stories and combine them into one.
Want to help me out? Name some movies I can crib from. Give me comedies, give me horror movies, give me a Disney classic and a costume drama, too.
I’ll take the themes and plots and meld them into one new spectacular movie. An example would be Die Hard and Tootsie meets The Sound of Music and Jurassic Park: A NYC cop, in drag, protects an orphanage from terrorists in a strange zoo where dinosaurs have broken loose.
A lovely young plantation owner, who dreams of being a ballet dancer, running away from her kvetching father, who wants to marry her off to a soldier, is kidnapped by an evil prince. Coming to her rescue are two men in drag and a French giant.
Jeez, four war movies and Pokemon. Okay, let’s see…
A cynical military reporter is a mission to go up the jungle river to kill the third son of a midwest farmwife. Her other two sons were already killed in country, and she will ascend to the Mewtoo level if her third is killed (kinda like how you get straight As in school if your roommate commits suicide).
On his way up the river, however, the reporter goes insane and hides out with a family of “native” people, where another soldier, renegade drill sergeant is whipping the natives into shape by asking them to name their bamboo spears.
Godfather III (hell, I don’t remember the details, just throw two mafia dons in there and I’ll be satisfied)
Alien3 (Ripley with the shaved head on the prison planet)
Lethal Weapon 3 (again, I couldn’t tell one from the other, just have Mel Gibson show up to do a Curley from the THREE Stooges wiping his face routine)
And just for the hell of it, have Ringo Starr do a brief cameo.
Montfort, this is very much like a game my LO and I play to pass the time on long car trips and waiting for movies to start. It goes like this: person one gives three or four elements - actor, title, character, director, plot element, whatever - and person two has to come up with a complete movie package: plot, characters, cast, and, for bonus points, title and tag line. Catch: the other person has to agree that it sounds like a real movie - that the suggested cast and crew would actually be involved in - that could be released by a major studio this year. (Bonus points if the other person catches her breath in horror and gasps “But I would see that!”)
So, here’s my melange for you:
Tom Hanks stars in a movie featuring
aliens
an adorable special-needs child under the age of eight
and at least one musical number
I don’t know Paint Your Wagon, but I’ll try the others:
An English professor has plucked a prisoner out of the death camp he oversees as his “special project”. They fall in love as she teaches him how to striptease. She doesn’t know, however, that a rescue mission is in the works.
As the rescue troop attacks the prison camp, a flock of psychotic seagulls attack, causing a mess of things, and a tragic end for the professor and his prisoner.
A reporter, sent to medieval Scotland to do an article about a rebellion, learns that the leader of the rebellion is a young farmboy who dreams of being a dancer (this is a recurring theme in this thread).
As the evil English warlords home in on the secret rebel base, an office building in downtown Glasgow, the reporter tells the warlords about the funny hijinks going on in the office. She successfully diverts them from attacking as the farmboy dances his way to FREEDOM!
A mafia don, wanting to retire, is forced by his rival, who pities no fool, into exile. As he searches for his advisor, Tom Hagen (played by Ringo Starr), who years ago left la familia, he crash lands into a strange planet where movie stars lose respect by doing bad movies.
He’s chased by the movie stars on the strange planet, as well as his mohawked rival.
It all ends in a gigantic musical number, sung by our hero, Tom Hagen, and the rival, which gives the film the title: Three is the loneliest number.
Problem Child 2 was the one with the evil girl, right? Here goes:
Two misunderstood but precocious children, separated at an early age, grow up leading parallel, but different lives. He becomes a mob runner, ultimately falling in love with her, a karate student who is seeking out a grand master. Hijinks ensue as they get distracted by other paramours, and ultimately our hero is talked down from the bridge on Christmas by her.
A Cabaret-era drag queen is killed in a horrible accident, but is told by St. Peter that it all was a mistake, and he gets sent back to earth, in the body of a suave WWII spy.
As he tries to figure out what his life is, he falls in love, and is ultimately caught and sent to prison. There, in an exciting and inspirational third act, he meets up with one of his old drag buddies and breaks out of prison.