STEAL THIS IDEA, part XIV

      Have you ever heard of Krampus? No? Well, he's basically Santa Claus's evil twin who kidnaps especially naughty children to bring to his lair for drowning, eating, or transport to Hell.

(read about it here for more details)

     My idea is for a slasher film featuring Krampus as the killer but instead of looking demonic, looking exactly like Santa Claus which would enable him to get close to his victims since they would let their guard down for Santa.
      I picture him riding in a sleigh pulled by eight flying decaying corpse reindeer (with glowing red eyes of course) reined with rusted chains and the sack on board would be filled not with toys, but with the many weapons he would use to kill his victims who are presumably on the Naughty List. The weapons could be Christmas gift themed if you must like a doll whose head once removed reveals a dagger (let's say).
      In the end, the Final Girl almost dies but is saved at the last moment by the real Santa Claus, who in the course of the attack would reveal Krampus's true form before dispatching him.
      The world's naughtiness could be what keeps the creature from ever dying permanently thus allowing for many sequels if need be.

      Given this creature's modus operandi, the cast should all be people who would be on Santa's Naughty List, even the Final Girl.

      Stupid holiday fun!

      Or you could play it as more a children's horror film and have Krampus with the same M.O. and disguised as Santa Claus. The film could feature several naughty children and one goody-two-shoes. The naughty children are kidnapped one by one before Christmas (perhaps taken via temptation by whatever form of naughtiness they symbolize - a Seven Deadly Sins for children). The goody-two-shoes makes a plea to Santa Claus who appears and together they rescue his/her friends and save Christmas.
     .....Unless you want to go all in and have the children be killed in which case the goody-two-shoes and Santa would have to work together to rid the world of Krampus once and for all.

WE ALL HAVE OUR JOHN CONNORS...

     If you remember the Terminator franchise (and seriously, if you don't, go the fuck away...like, now), the singular obsession of Skynet was the elimination of the human resistance leader John Connor. In the first film, it went after his mother to eliminate him before he had ever been born. In the second film, it went after him as a child, going after him when he would be vulnerable.
     As far as I am concerned, it ends there but since Terminator 3 exists as does Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, I'll point out that Skynet's mission in part 3 was to eliminate John Connor's lieutenants under the assumption that if you cannot get the main man, eliminate those who have helped him before they become important. In the Sarah Connor Chronicles, its missions become more varied like making sure equipment is in place and eliminating miscellaneous threats to its nascence.

     However, it was in this latter film and television show that a new concept was revealed in terminator programming: When the T-X accidentally encountered John Connor (who had been living "off the grid" for years in the timeline of this film) in a veterinarian's office, the T-X found its mission parameters immediately and irrevocably altered to terminating John Connor.
     This also happens (at least once in the aborted television) series when a terminator on a mission to eliminate someone else is distracted by John who (correctly) assumed that the machine would deviate from its mission to go after him. You see from the machine's point of view, its mission parameter changing to terminating John Connor.

Faced with Bedell's impending termination, John did the only thing he could: he diverted the machine's attention. "Hey! Look over here! It's me, Connor! John Connor!" With a Mission Priority Override, the Terminator abandoned Martin and raced after John.

      Basically, the termination of John Connor is every terminator's primary mission no matter what else they were assigned to do. In the film's universe, since Skynet did not anticipate being destroyed by a human resistance, it did not make any attempts to preserve records when it launched the United States's nuclear armaments against the U.S.S.R. (who in turn launched all of theirs through the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction). Skynet did not know much of John Connor's youth which is why its targeting is as imprecise as it is.
     In the first film, it only knew his mother's name and knew she lived in Los Angeles. This did not bode well for the two other Sarah Connors in the area. I'm not sure under which knowledge it operated for why it sent the T-1000 where (and when) it did in the second film. The third film only became about John Connor for the T-X once she accidentally encountered him otherwise it could have been a completely different film.

     Anyways, what's my point you ask?

     I think we all have our respective John Connors in our lives and I don't mean for termination, I mean that girl (or boy...whichever is appropriate for you) who is no longer in your life but if she were ever to (somehow) come back, you would drop everything to be with her no matter what or either that, the amount of resistance you would need to put up to avoid uprooting your life would be nothing short of Herculean.
     She's your one. She's The One.

     My The One is The First One: my crush from high school. She's not my first crush, but she was my most powerful one in high school and whose influence remained despite the passage of years. Only would Digby challenge her for dominance and she ultimately loses and I'll tell you why.

     The First One and Digby are opposites. The First One is that of light and Digby is that of darkness.

     Simply put, The First One inspired me. I created a coded alphabet to write about her. I created a language in order to have a new way to think about her. I named a made-up planet after her. I've used known information about her to make cheat codes and Easter Eggs in BASIC programs I've written. She inspired poetry from me. She remains the standard candle by which I judge beauty. She is the perfect fantasy...

I heavily manipulated my original 20 year old drawing in an attempt to make it look cooler

     Digby did not ultimately inspire me. She brought out the worst in me. She has no legacy. No poems; no BASIC cheat codes; no planets or moons named after her; she did not revive work on my language...nothing. She inspired only darkness like envy, pride, and wrath.

     I cannot imagine it ever happening, but if somehow someway The First One reappeared in my living life (as opposed to online via Facebook) and offered up a chance to date her, I seriously cannot calculate just how into someone else I would have to be to not immediately dump whom I'm with just for that chance. And I barely know anything about her. She is that powerful a fantasy. She is the one who started it all...my goal of goals.

     Don't tell me you don't have one yourself...

STEAL THIS IDEA, part IX

     Costello showed me the film, "House of a 1000 Corpses" the other day and while I cannot say I liked the film, that's not the point of this entry. What I couldn't help but notice was that while the two guys seemed very interested in what they were doing (investigated strange attractions across the country), the girls really could not be bothered.
     Now, being a horror/slasher film, these good times inevitably turn sour and our may-as-well-be-nameless characters get caught up in a terrifying experience from which none of them will escape. No, I'm not giving a SPOILER ALERT for a ten year old film. Now while it is entirely fair to say these characters were doomed from the moment they picked up Baby, who was hitchhiking in the rain, I'm not really so sure.
     Evidence that they were doomed anyway comes from the five abducted cheerleaders mentioned offhandedly by a news anchor earlier in the film. Cutaways in between scenes show them being tortured and killed all the while these kids are downstairs eating dinner and holding conversation with the rest of the weird family while Baby's brother fixes their car (he also caused their car to break down in the first place by shooting out the tire). So yes, they may have been doomed no matter what.
     However, it does all seem fun and games (at least for the non-cheerleader guests in this house), but each of the two girls were really annoyed by this experience. Denise, just scoffed at everything and Mary grew quite jealous when Baby seemed to be putting moves on her boyfriend during a performance she was doing of a Betty Boop song. At that point, when threatened, Baby pulls a knife on Mary threatening to cut her and blah, blah, blah tension raised. Their car was fixed and they were asked to leave by the mother. They do so, and are again ambushed by the other brothers and the torture-fest begins for all.

     But what had me wondering is, what if the girls were appreciative like the guys were? Or what if they simply hadn't come? Would they have been allowed to leave the house unscathed? Yes, that would have made for a pointless film...not that the actual film was any less pointless.
 
      Anyways, what I had in mind was making a DVD extra in which the characters are spared. This would take some planning. I'm using House of 1000 Corpses as an example because the girls' reactions seem to be what gets the action moving. Imagine if they weren't there? Done properly, only a few alternate takes would be needed and you could drop a line early on in the film where the guys complain that they should have left the girls at home (something to which the girls can agree).
      Activate the DVD extra, and the girls stay home (perhaps seen in a cutaway phone call wishing they could have come or some other bullshit), the guys end up at the same place, but they have a good time, the car gets fixed and they go off on their way. Fade to credits (this would be a much shorter film). It's like a Choose Your Own Adventure book and it could still end creepily like one of the guys thinking he's seeing a cheerleader being dragged to a shed or pleading from a window or them simply happening across part of a cheerleader's uniform.

      In summation, write a horror film where it is clear one character gets the horror ball rolling and if that one character weren't present, everything would have turned out just fine. Write the film so that character can be neatly cut out of it using a minimum of alternate takes and alternate dialog since I'm guessing the budget will not be high. I imagine that is where storyboarding comes to the rescue.
      Anyways, that's my stupid idea. Take it from me. Get it out of my head...

DISCLAIMER: To anyone reading this, you are welcome to not only use, but claim this idea as your own without giving credit to me. I sometimes have ideas, but I do not have the skills needed to express them. It is more important to me to see these ideas done than to receive recognition for them. That being said, giving me a mention anyway would make me giddy. If this idea has in fact already been done, then I strongly suggest you not actually steal it (at least not without major revisions) :-) 

STEAL THIS IDEA!

      I think I've built up enough of these to start a new entry series. Y'see, in addition to not being an author, I am also not a writer...or at least not a good one (as this blog no doubt attests). However, this doesn't stop these strange, and what I would hope to be good, ideas from popping into to my head on occasion. I would love to see these ideas developed, but lacking talent of my own to do so, I must rely on the good peoples of the internet to do it for me.

      Here's how it works. I present to you, my dear reader(s), an idea I think worthy of a story or at least worth including in a story be that story traditional literature, a movie, or television series (hell, even a play, who am I to give a fuck?). What you do is, upon approving of its meritoriousness, you fucking steal it...run with it...make it your own. Take the credit too, I don't give a shit (although let's face it, getting a mention in your finished project would be just peachy). I just want to know this idea exists outside my limited mind.

      Seeing as how I recently railed against horror films, I thought my first entry should relate to them.

      Start the film in the middle of the action. Bypass all that shit in the beginning where we spend twenty minutes with jerks and deal with the happy times before the killer/monster/force of evil strikes.
      Jump right into the thick of it, like after the first couple of kills. Have a cast which is already aware that something bad is happening and have the audience figure out, through clues in the narrative structure and/or scenery, just what is going on. Do not provide the solutions for what is going on through clumsy dialogue exchanges between surviving characters. They're running for their lives, not trying to solve a mystery. The mystery element is there for those audience members who didn't necessarily come just to see teenagers getting murdered in impractically fantastic ways. I'm looking for a "have your cake and eat it too" type film that will lend itself to rewatch because you, the curious viewer, are determined to figure out the killer's raison d'être, what these kids actually did to provoke his/her/its ire, and how it was the Final Girl was able to stop him/her/it despite the utter failures of her other, now dead, friends.
      Doing this will require a lot of planning and storyboarding before you actually begin shooting the film, but I think it is something worth doing because at some level, I am a fan of giving the audience homework. Wait on the actual answer for at least a year...let the message boards hash it out first...see if anyone can put it all together first. Done right, even the actors and actresses in the film need not know the mystery behind it.

      It's an idea that's been attempted before in the Babylon 5 legacy series, Crusade. While ultimately TNT forced J. Michael Straczynski to make an alternate pilot, the episode intended to be the first one survives. It was meant to thrust the audience into the thick of things and have them figure it out and it not only works, but is a solid concept. I've been entranced by the idea ever since and would like see it done.


DISCLAIMER: To anyone reading this, you are welcome to not only use, but claim this idea as your own without giving credit to me. I sometimes have ideas, but I do not have the skills needed to express them. It is more important to me to see these ideas done than to receive recognition for them. That being said, giving me a mention anyway would make me giddy. If this idea has in fact already been done, then I strongly suggest you not actually steal it (at least not without major revisions) :-)

I HATE HORROR FILMS

      I just don't like horror films. All too often they are poorly written, badly acted, too dark (absence of light too dark, not the other kind), too predictable, obviously low-budget, and (among other things) lacking in compelling characters. And they're not scary. A quick cut-away or sudden loud noise does not scary make. "It's not actually talented filmmaking if you can get the same effect from popping a bag of potato chips behind somebody's head."

      And for those assholes out there who would counter me with, (mocking tone) "Well, then why you don't you make a horror film then?" You're a fucking idiot. You don't have to be a filmmaker, an actor, a writer, a grip, a director, a producer, etc. to criticize a work. I couldn't play "You May Be Right" if my life depended on it, but I would know immediately if you missed a note, lyric, or sang off-key and I can't do either of those things either so such challenges to criticism are meaningless.

MONEY IN FILM (a.k.a. HEY, IS THAT A...?)

      I had my VCR reconnected recently to help out my Best Friend with something. After I was finished, I remembered I had a recording of a Harold Lloyd silent film called Safety Last, a film which you are likely aware of solely from this still:

Safety Last starring Harold Lloyd (1923)

      The movie is actually entertaining and is the first silent film I ever sincerely watched (I remember as a kid, a chain restaurant called the Ground Round would show Charlie Chaplin films throughout the evening but I didn't watch them for more than a few seconds at a time). It has moments of genuine humor and is engaging to watch if only for glimpses of life and fashion in 1920s America. The main character, conveniently named Harry, works as a sales clerk in a department store for a whole $15 a week.

55 hour workweek

There's a scene showing a "Businessman's Lunch" in a local diner for 50¢:

      How enviable, right? But I liked the minor attentions to detail like the fact that real money was used in the film. (I guess it became illegal to show real money at some point - that would always take me out of films, even as a kid, to see obviously fake money being used on screen) In the film, Harry moves to the city to become a big shot in order to impress his monumentally stupid girlfriend (who is never given a name - referred to only as "The Girl"). He never makes it but tries to convince her otherwise by buying her expensive things in an effort to show off. In the scene with the lunch, just after he was paid, he went to a local jewelers and purchased a platinum necklace for $15.50. Harry pulled out five dimes from his pocket:

Safety Last - dimes

      How appealing to a collector to see in his hand, three Mercury and two Barber dimes (1916-1945 and 1892-1916 respectively). He spent his entire paycheck plus these five dimes. A course from the Businessman's Lunch would be shown disappearing with each dime paid. There were three notes in the pay envelope which I can only imagine were $5 bills, but no shot was ever clear enough to show what type they were. However...

      Later in the film, The Girl comes to the city to see how her impressive boyfriend lives. Shenanigans ensue. She first spies Harry leaving the General Manager's office (he was being reprimanded for being only in shirt sleeves on the sales floor - the scandal!) and dummy thinks he's actually a manager. She wants to see "his" office. Harry makes excuses until he sees the G.M. leaving his office and then offers her a quick look. In the office, Harry absent-mindedly pushes a button summoning an assistant. Wanting to further impress his girlfriend, he drops a $1 bill into the garbage, making sure the assistant sees it so that he will be in on the gag and then orders him bombastically to remove the garbage at once. The assistant starts to leave when Harry calls him back for a piece of paper he missed and Harry snatches the $1 bill back as the assistant picks up the piece of paper :-)

Safety Last - Silver Certificate

      That's an 1899 series $1 Silver Certificate (also known as the "Black Eagle Note"), the current series at the time this movie was produced. It is also of the large-sized paper currency which was replaced by our current-sized notes in 1929 (see comparison of the two note sizes here). It's also visible in the garbage can:

Worth about $13.40 today

And the winking exchange:

"Pretend I'm the boss." --- "Gotcha!"

      So in addition to being a fun film to watch from the bygone silent film era, it also provides some nominal bonus entertainment for numismatists who almost certainly wish they could've lived in an era when what is now collectible coin and currency was simply money to buy things with.

A GEM IN A SEA OF GARBAGE...

      Check out this deleted introduction from the so-so movie Superman Returns released back in 2006. It shows Superman exploring what is left of his homeworld, Krypton. It was apparently cut because movie audiences can't be expected to watch an extended moment on film without dialogue. God forbid we let the images tell the story without being told what to think through music and dialogue...







      The scene is whatever to me. What stunned me was the truly alien design given to Kal'El's spacecraft. Nothing about it is familiar. It's a ship seemingly composed solely of crystal. There are no visible engines, buttons, or read-outs...nothing at all to suggest human engineering or anything humanity is currently capable of. The ship is beautiful. We don't know how it works, but we see it working. It heartens me to know that even though this scene was deleted, that there are still people in Hollywood capable of creating moments of awe-inspiring wonder.

      Who knew the Kryptonians were one of the First Ones? ;-)

ADDENDUM: I can't help but wonder if this film would have been better if the script introduced the movie-going audiences to a Superman villain they've never seen on the big screen before. With Kal-El going back to Krypton, it would seem the stage would be perfectly set for him to either encounter or accidentally awaken Brainiac who could have then either followed Kal-El back to Earth or downloaded onto his ship's computer surreptitiously as Kal-El explored Krypton's ruins. And why not? It's been either Lex Luthor or General Zod (and the Brainiac-like stand-in for the third film). Superman does have other villains Hollywood

DAY 2 - YOUR FAVORITE MOVIE

I'm honestly not sure what my favorite movie is. I am much more of a television person than a movie one. There are a lot of movies I have liked, but none jump to the forefront like yesterday's song did. It's entirely possible that I have not yet seen my favorite movie yet and that's why I'm having such difficulty coming up with an example.

For now, I will say, "South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut" simply because it was consistently funny and that I got to watch it for the first time with many of my dearest friends. In this case, I will let the experience trump the content.


"Blame Canada" by South Park
(originally posted to That Other Journal on December 19, 2009)