Monday, August 17, 2009

Save Us, Psycho Jesus

If you're anything like me, you can't stand romantic comedies ("rom-coms", in the language of slick movie-industry players like myself). Romcoms are usually formulaic, insipid, and of late feature known human shit-stain Katherine Hegel (yes, by misspelling her name, she now can't sue me for libel! Besides, she'd have to prove that she's not in fact a shit-stain). Rom-coms tend to follow the same basic script:

1) Good looking girl can't seem to find love, because she's obsessed with her [career, neuroses, incredibly kooky standards, yarn collection, or devotion to Hitler];
2) Good looking guy comes into her life, and they get off on a bad start because [he's a hustler, he sat on her cat, he drives a Vespa, he has way too much lime in his basement for a man who claims not to be a serial killer];
3) The guy or girl has a sassy black friend who provides comic relief in a way all too reminiscent of a 1930s minstrel show;
4) The guy or girl has a sassy older relative who helps things along by telling him/her to "get some of the sexual healing" from the other;
5) Some Saturday Night Live castoff makes a cameo appearance as a snooty doorman/cleaning lady, because they really need the money;
6) The unlikely pair gets together by the end, to the sheer disappointment of the audience.

I thought maybe while my next feature film (and this century's Citizen Kane), tentatively titled "Psycho Jesus and the Pirate Vixens", is on indefinite hiatus, perhaps I could work on a screenplay for a can't-miss rom-com of my own. Think about it--guys want to take girls to movies, and they want to pick something safe, so they go with a rom-com. (After all, there's usually no real violence or ninjas in a rom-com) So this could be just the funding source to get Psycho Jesus out of production purgatory!

My rom-com will be called "The President Gets Laid" and it will be about the President of the United States who is a world class player who goes around boffing interns and news reporters, thinking he's having the time of his life, even though his sassy black chief of staff tells him he needs to settle down with a nice girl so the voters won't get pissed. The president thinks "screw that noise!" until of course he meets the seductively hot new Prime Minister of Pakistan at a national security conference. Consider the hijinks that would ensue, at high level security briefings where he's passing along notes, and at U.N. conferences where he makes speeches not so much to advance foreign policy but to try and impress Pakistan's Prime Minister. It could all come to a head when the Prime Minister is taken hostage by militants, and rather than use Delta Force or the Green Berets to try and free her, the President himself approaches the terrorists and makes a heartfelt plea that can't help but cause them to go "aw, shucks!" and break down crying.

If you think this is the worst idea yet for a romantic comedy, then you haven't seen "Failure to Launch".

4 comments:

  1. Make sure the Pakistani Prime Minister is also a virgin who's saving herself for marriage.

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  2. Brilliant. Though I will take your Failure to Launch and raise you one Fool's Gold. Or that horrid Sarah Michelle Gellar movie with the magical crab, which I am too embarassed to even name.

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  3. MJW--good call! I'm thinking the Prez in this case would have to try and "re-make" himself as an honorable, traditional gentleman as well, with hilarious results!

    Brett--the McCannaughy (sp?) films were bad enough, but I don't recall any magical crab film! Either I was fortunate enough to miss that one, or I saw it and repressed the memory, only to have it rear up later in life so I can have a breakdown in front of my grandkids.

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  4. Erm, Bride Wars, anyone? Made me ashamed to own ovaries.

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