I met Terry Jones of Monty Python fame this weekend.
I sold him a new car. He was very grateful for the good deal I was able to get him.
But seriously, this past Mother’s Day (Hi, Mom!) I went to a comedy writing seminar/interview session with Terry Jones, one of the writers and performers for Monty Python and director of all of their movies. He talked about his theories on writing comedy and the audience got to ask him questions. Of course I partook in the action….
ME: “First of all, I just want to say that besides Carol Cleveland, you were the best woman on Monty Python.” TERRY: [closes his eyes, bows his head and crosses his legs] “Why, thank you.”
[audience laughs] ME: “Given the ‘questionable’ content of some of Monty Python’s material, especially Life of Brian and Meaning of Life, did you or the group in general have an internal barometer — or at least discussions while writing — to question whether what you were writing was funny or just profane for the sake of being shocking?”
He went on to say that they (himself especially) never analyzed what they were doing; they basically just wrote to be funny. (“You don’t know if a joke is funny or not until you put it out there.”) They gave their individual ideas to the group and if the jokes weren’t working, they scrapped them. He then said that they never found anything that they didn’t think they could make funny.
Overall, a pretty good weekend and decently informative. I leave you with his advice on how to break into the writing industry….
Before I get into this blog entry, I have to give credit where credit is due; a friend of mine (Thanks, Emily!) pointed me to a completely absurd commercial that I just had to talk about.
It’s insane and goofy, yet filled with mixed messages. And people in food costumes.
I’m of course talking about the new commercial for Discovery Health’s National Body Challenge 2009.
Haven’t seen it? You’re not alone. But hey, thanks to YouTube, you’re going to get an education!
Ooooookaaay…? Odd.
For the sake of this post, let’s ignore the weird quasi-fetish on display here (what would you call that, anyway — dressing in a food costume and porking…. A Foody, perhaps?) and focus on the message.
Based on the commercial, it’s implied that the fast foods are the ones who are caring, long-lasting lovers who crave attention and that vegetables are the attractive new flings. Shouldn’t that be flipped around? I mean, I eat burgers and pizza because, even though I know they’re bad for me, they’re exciting and tasty. Does anyone outside of a PeTA rally really see healthy vegetables as the exciting alternative to hamburgers and fries?
Here’s a more honest (debatable) and funnier (because I wrote it) approach to the concept of that commercial….
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It’s completely dark. Obscured by shadows, a woman in a celery costume flips on a light to reveal herself and her surroundings. She’s inside a house, specifically a bedroom, and she drops the suitcase she had been carrying. She enthusiastically says, “I’m home, honey! Did you miss me?”
As she speaks, she looks up and sees a man in bed with a woman dressed in a hamburger outfit. The man, completely startled, whimpers out a pathetic, “Hi…. I… didn’t expect you home so–-”
In complete shock, celery-woman runs out of the room and puts a hand to her mouth to try to hold back from openly sobbing.
The man, dressed in a wife-beater and boxer shorts, desperately follows her outside while calling out to her. “Honey? Honey, come back!”
Outside, celery-woman is crying, her face buried in her hands as she’s leaning against the side of the house. The man comes out of the front door and runs to her. “It’s not what it looks like. She was–-”
Celery-woman socks the man in the eye.
“How could you!?” she says through gritted teeth. “How could you do this to me? Don’t you care about me at all? After all I’ve done, I…. I feel like an idiot.” She turns away from him in disgust.
There’s an awkward pause.
“How many times?” she asks.
“Oh, Sheila, that’s–-”
“Just answer me — how many times, and don’t lie to me! How many times did you go behind my back to be with her, or others like — oh God, are there others!? Oh no! No, don’t say anything! I don’t even want to know! I feel sick just thinking about it.”
“Look, I–-” The man tries to put his arms around her, but she slaps his hands away.
“No!” she yells at him. “Don’t you even touch me!”
The two stare at each other in an uncomfortable silence. The man sees pain in her eyes — pain he caused her. She breathes in deeply, holds her chin up and approaches him.
“You’re sick, Jerry,” she says with a matter-of-fact tone. “You’re a pig. And I hope you can live with yourself and what you’ve done.”
Celery-woman walks to her car and drives away. The man collapses to his knees and starts sobbing. The screen fades to black, and white letters appear on the screen: “Vegetables deserve to be treated better. Start eating right today.”
After two and a half years, I’m finally making use of my YouTube account. I’m indulging in my newest hobby of making inappropriate soundtracks; putting music and audio to movie scenes in a humorous manner and thereby, belittling the hard work of hundreds of people. It’s a nice break from my job and from writing while still being creative and analyzing pace, content and structure. Honestly, I can see myself doing this for awhile… that is, until YouTube feels that I am infringing on copyright and shuts down my account.
To see the fruits of my labor, click on the following links. (The links are to the high resolution versions of the videos, but if you’d rather watch the low resolution, click on the “normal version” option under the video.)
I have many more movies in the pipeline, including The Fugitive, The Godfather, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining and Titanic. If you like these (and why wouldn’t you?), please send these links to your friends. Or just direct them to my “channel” here.
You could say that I’m just whoring myself for needless attention, but I say I’m networking.
It’s been awhile since I’ve been truly stoked to know that a comic or graphic novel is coming out, but this Halloween, Joker comes to town.
Joker is an upcoming hardcover graphic novel written by Brian Azzarello. The novel, as the title suggests, is a story that centers on Batman’s main foe and Gotham City’s favorite asshole, The Joker. Apparently, according to early reviews, it’s one of the most horrific and scary interpretations of The Joker ever, and that’s including Heath Ledger’s excellent film portrayal in The Dark Knight.
Just to hammer home the idea that this Joker is scary and completely nuts, here’s the cover….
Yeeeesh.
If the art style looks familiar to anyone out there, that’s because it’s done by Lee Bermejo, the artist behind the covers to the Hellblazer comic series. However, if you like Keanu Reeves more than you do quality entertainment, you might know Hellblazer as that book that the film Constantine was “based” on.
Funny story: The artist and the writer of Joker developed their interpretation of the titular villain to be menacing and ugly (inside and out) and based it around the notion of “if he were real, how could you make him scary?” So they gave him a hunched posture, untamed his hair, dialed down his clothes and gave him a Glasgow smile. Hmm…. Why does that sound familiar?
Azzarello and Bermejo started development of Joker in 2005, and when they got to around page 40 of drawing the book, the first images of Heath Ledger’s Joker surfaced. I would’ve paid money to see their reaction to viewing it for the first time.
Anyway, the plot focuses on The Joker being released from Arkham Asylum (possibly for good behavior?) only to discover that Gotham City’s underworld has changed. Instead of the crime factions respecting each other’s turf, a gangland civil war is taking place between the mobsters and the costumed crazies. Because of all of the infighting amongst the different families, the cuts for all of the major crime bosses has dwindled. Refusing to accept the meager scraps that are handed to him, The Joker decides once and for all to destroy everyone and take it all for himself.
To make it more interesting, the whole story is told from the perspective of one of The Joker’s subordinates, who gives a first-hand account of The Joker’s descent into madn– well, further madness, I guess.
Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m stoked for it. A nice, scary, violent, insanely graphic, well-told Joker story just in time for Halloween. Color me tickled pink!
Posted by Boone 
Posted by Boone 
Posted by Boone 
