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Humor - 50 Ways to Save the Movies
50 Ways To Save The Movies:
- To end the growing hassle and indignity of being subjected to bag searches, wanding and over-enthusiastic pat-downs prior to attending preview screenings, critics and "lucky" members of the public should be forced to attend in the nude. The studios will never again have to worry about "bootleg" movies, because there will be no bootlegs.
- Force Eddie Murphy to sit through every one of his movies. Let him see what it feels like before he goes out and makes another one.
- Adam Sandler should be required by law to never again make a movie in which he plays an eccentric nerd with an explosively violent temper, who attacks people with little provocation and yet who still manages to get the cute girl in the end. Enough already.
- Offer "Suck Insurance." That way, if a movie sucks, the theatre owes you.
- A royal commission should be ordered by Ottawa to investigate and answer the burning question: "Why Do So Many Canadian Movies Suck?"
- Develop Karaoke Movies. That way, you can provide your own crappy dialogue.
- Theatres should be fitted with yellow emergency-stop strips like they have in subway trains, which patrons can rush to stop screenings for cliché-alert offences like:
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- A hairbrush being used by a cloying actress to mime to an old Motown song;
- An action hero magically being able to unlock an "impenetrable" vault combination or defuse a bomb seconds before disaster;
- The first sign of any irritatingly "cute" kid or clever dog;
- Anyone vomiting to indicate emotional distress.
- Serve beer and wine at movies. As well as morphine, absinthe, marijuana and chocolate-covered peyote buttons.
- Roger Ebert and his new sidekick Richard Roeper should be required to wear condoms on their thumbs. They've become way too promiscuous about the films they jerk skyward for.
- Add salaries to credits. As in "Starring Ben Affleck ($20-million U.S.)"
- Keanu Reeves should be prevented from appearing in movies where the words "intellectually challenging" are intended to be said with a straight face.
- Forbid the spilling of any bodily fluid besides blood.
- Drunks should be seen in films as obnoxious and slobbering as they are in real life, not as barroom wits or street sages.
- Based on his incredible evocation of Keith Richards in Pirates Of The Caribbean, Johnny Depp should be signed immediately to play Richards in the inevitable Rolling Stones biopic. A corollary: forbid Mick Jagger from acting ever again.
- Make subtitles to foreign films yellow instead of white, so we can actually read them.
- Deduct advertising fees from ticket costs. We shouldn't pay for trailers, pre-screening slide-show ads for video games and discount jewellery, or noxious product placement in movies. For this we should be paid.
- Instead of announcing the list of the weekend's bestselling movies every Monday morning, list the ones that are the best.
- If teenagers must be played by people in their 20s, their parents and teachers should be played by teenagers.
- Create a "Bad Taste Tax," to be levied against people who waste their money on such obvious trash as Jackass: The Movie, Freddy Got Fingered and Freddy Vs. Jason. Monies collected would go to a fund to encourage excellence in cinema.
- Force Bill Murray to make more movies.
- Force Ron Howard to stop making movies.
- Let the cute puppy die.
- Allow Michael Moore to make "documentaries" only if he agrees to have United Nations fact checkers verify his rabid ravings, allegations and finger-pointing.
- Tell formerly Communist countries like China and Russia that they can't just cherry-pick our good Hollywood films. If they want The Hours, they also have to take Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle.
- Place warnings on movie posters and advertising we can really use. Like "Computer-Generated Cheese Content," or "May Contain Traces Of Madonna," or "Dangerous if Consumed Under the Influence of Thought."
- Immediately cease-and-desist with the use of dashes, colons and brackets in movie titles, some of which are longer and more complicated that the plots of the movies themselves.
- Promote more honesty in filmmaking. Instead of saying "Based On A True Story," how about "Wantonly Fabricated From A True Story"?
- Now that gay marriage is legal and all, have Frodo marry his adoring sidekick Sam atop Mt. Doom, in the final instalment of The Lord Of The Rings trilogy. All this heavy breathing is driving us crazy.
- Institute a "Kevin Spacey Clause" for Oscar recipients. If winners unleash more than four dogs subsequent to their awards, they must return them. On TV, during the awards.
- Forbid Whoopi Goldberg from ever again hosting the Oscars show, unless she signs a contract promising to never again try to be funny.
- And while we're at it, institute a maximum three-hour limit to the Oscar show, which could be achieved by cutting all those sappy songs and all those oh-so-worthy awards to embalmed celebrities.
- Why restrict the use of those nutty, end-credit outtakes to comedies? There must have been wacky moments on the set of Schindler's List, too.
- Please give Samuel L. Jackson a job other than playing the tough-as-nails veteran cop/soldier/jedi looking to recruit a few crazed young'uns for a suicide mission.
- A moratorium on the following: Martial arts. Motown music. Cell phones (on and off-screen). Colin Farrell. Handheld cameras. Slow-motion-flying-through-the-air-while-firing-two-pistols-shots. Children.
- Tell Kevin Costner he can no longer direct movies. Maybe he'll go back to starring in the occasional good one.
- Change the locks on Jerry Bruckheimer's office. Drop the keys in the Grand Canyon.
- Make a gay-themed movie where the central character doesn't adore show tunes, have a home shrine to Barbra Streisand or work as a hairdresser or set decorator.
- In movies where non-English characters speak accented English, make the English characters speak unaccented Tagalog.
- Tell Edward Burns he can no longer make or star in a movie in which he plays the know-it-all New Yorker who gets the girl despite his own lousy personality.
- Only cast Tom Cruise opposite women way taller than him. It's a blast to watch.
- Make it a federal offence for actors to attempt a foreign accent of any kind.
- Raise money to help Anthony Hopkins retire.
- Make a Canadian movie in which Callum Keith Rennie doesn't play a dysfunctional dad or weird dude, Don McKellar doesn't play the wry egghead and David Hewlett doesn't have to sweat.
- If spontaneous audience heckling displays more wit than what's onscreen, hecklers should be given a reasonable portion of that night's box office receipts. Poor heckling should be punishable by multiple Eddie Murphy screenings.
- Men over 55 in movies should not: Beat the bejeezus out of people half their age. Have sex with people half their age. Show us their butts. Speak street jive. Play anything other than men over 55.
- Bring back Bruce Dern. We need him.
- All sequels should be called "Again." As in Spider-Man Again. Then Spider-Man Again And Again. Then Spider-Man Again And Again And Again. And so on.
- Give credit where it's due. As in "And Also Starring Toronto as Cleveland."
- Stop letting Steven Spielberg read books.
- Stop making movies for a full year, so we can all catch up to any good ones we've missed.
Last Modified: Sunday, November 30, 2003 10:28.
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