Would you buy a montage sequence?

In My Humble Opinion
1

So I been working hard the past couple of weekends and I’ve come up with a new business plan and figured out all the kinks and I’m ready to launch it:

Magnificent Montages

And works just like it does in the movies. You pay us and we will do a montage sequence of any specific task that you don’t want to do.

Need to clean your house? Do a 30-second house-cleaning montage!

Want to get through all the work to get your Ph. D. without doing all the work for that Ph. D.? We have montage sequences for that, too!

Drama queen? Don’t want to go through the burden of the “Happy, Together” phase of a new relationship before your unique blend of neurosis and hang-ups begin to derail not just your life, but the lives of innocent bystanders as well? We have just the montage… and song… for you!

… But we’re having a debate about the roll-out. Our marketing gurus want to know what you think - pricing, use, likes and dislikes about this product. To that end, they insist you know the following:

  1. We can guarantee the outcome, but it will attained in a reasonable amount of time - no 80s sitcom fadeout/fadein’s here*. So don’t worry about getting screwed and, using the Ph. D. montage example again, exit the montage 60-years later, at the age of 86, getting an honorary Ph. D. from Bohunk State**.

Conversely, don’t expect us to throw a wedding together in 30 minutes.

  1. However, the time within the montage is real time: So if you pick a 1-year montage, a years worth of life will happen to you in the 60 seconds it takes to complete the montage. If you have kids, they will be one year older at the end of the montage. During your PhD montage, you might go through 4 years and 3 lovers before it’s all done.

  2. Subjectively, you will be aware only of the events occurring within the montage. Because we are compressing time, you come out unaware of how things are changed outside of the montage. Yes, your kids are 1 year older… and one might have gotten pregnant in the past year… but you don’t know this until after the montage sequence ends

  3. HOWEVER, from your family’s point of view, it is like you’ve been there the entire time. So no:

“Where’s Mom?”
“She’s montaging.”
“Shit. Again? I need help with my homework. Do you know what she’s montaging?”
“Studying for her insurance license.”
“Dammit, the test is Tuesday. We might not see her for another five days.”

type discussions… to them, you are always “there”. From your point of view, you montaged a whole weekend+ away.

  1. No world beating events though. Can’t montage your way to the Presidency, to being the greatest Revolutionary force known to mankind, to being Bill Gates or Alexander the Great.

  2. Pricing depends upon time and difficulty. Cleaning the house will be much cheaper than getting ready for the Big Presentation which is far cheaper than Earning A Degree.

  3. Oh, you DO get to pick the song! You can even direct the look and feel of the montage.

So… would you pay for this service? For what life events? How much would you pay? What events in your past would you have paid to have montaged?

*You know what I mean. Mike Seaver has invited all the popular girls to his house, saying that his sister Carol is going to make her special dessert. Carol freaks, fucks up, and right before it all goes to hell, Mom Maggie Seaver walks in, has a heart-to-heart with Carol, then puts on an apron, with the screen fading to black. After commercial, within 5 minutes of real time, Maggie has put out a feast requiring a staff of 5 working 7 full hours. Carol is now popular, and everybody ends up hating Mike because he’s a smarmy asshole with Religious Superiority issues.

Yeah, we don’t do that.

**No offense. They produce the world’s finest bohunks, that’s for sure.

2

I’m in! Say I need back surgery: get it all done in a “time passes” montage? Great!

Do you take Medi-Cal?

3

You just described Click, starring Adam Sandler. Except with montages.

4

Short-term chores are probably worth it just for the lack of a distraction factor. “Oh, I need to clean the house this afternoon…right after I finish this turn of Civilization…dang it, the Aztecs started a war…ok, I’ll clean after I raze their capital…well, I’m only a turn away from finishing this wonder…what do you mean people will be here in 5 minutes! I was supposed to start cleaning three hours ago!!”

Also, those kinds of chores are boring so doing a time skip means I’m not missing anything.

Anything else and I’m missing too many important outside events. Missing my kids first day of school, or seeing my sister’s new boyfriend, or my buddy’s wedding, just because I wanted to timeskip the kitchen reno? Not worth it.

Side note, could I break up the task into separate montages? Like, if I was writing a book, can I montage for an hour each night for the 3 months it takes to write (enjoying the other 23 hours as normal) or do I have to montage the whole three months? The former is much more flexible.

Seeing as I’m only willing to montage short events, it would basically have to cost less than hiring a service to do the task while I did something else, because otherwise I can just hire the landscaper instead of montaging away the weekly lawn maintenance. So, getting a maid for an hour or somebody to mow the lawn costs what, 30 bucks an hour? So maybe for $15/hour I’d montage that stuff away? I think this is going to be one of those things that’s too expensive to ever be worth it.

Although you do guarantee success, so I suppose I would never need to worry about a car accident on my morning commute because I could montage those 30 minutes away with a guarantee of success. Dunno if that’s worth it.

5

Ahhh. Not a fan of Sandler movies… the only one I saw was the Wedding Singer, more because I had a thing for the female lead (Drew Barrymore) @ the time.