Wednesday, October 13, 2010

What America Will Crave

Though The Project is an evolving mélange of memoir, satire, and ribald tales of heart wrenching intensity, I'm keeping my showbiz options open via several concepts I intend to pitch when I'm in LA. Bills still have to be paid, and they don't call it show "art," do they? Some might, but this is a ruse to lure you into accepting the tenets of corporate entertainment. By the time you've figured it out, it's too late. You're a pig and a sell out like the rest of them. Is that what you envisioned in those pure, air guitar days?

I have my eyes wide open, like Alex in A Clockwork Orange. I only hope that the metal clamps prying open my lids don't sully the pitch. Executives tend to be timid.

ACHY BREAKY CAMP

Billy Ray Cyrus puts fathers with marginally talented daughters through six weeks of Cool Dad training. This includes dressing like a middle-schooler, wearing long, stringy hair (or if they are African-American, big Julius Erving Afros), finding the right hair dye, soul patch sculpting, and talking to their daughters in seemingly parental but utterly servile ways, because you don't scold or punish the golden goose, especially with her manager, agent and lawyers around. Miley Cyrus pops in and out, donning large wigs and speaking in British, French, and Spanish accents. Why? Have you already forgotten Billy Ray's lessons?

PUSSY HUNT

David Spade tries to nail every young starlet and model he can corner, employing sarcasm, baby talk, name dropping, and semi-sincere flattery. We follow Spade through LA's hippest night spots as he uses club lighting to mask his aging features. Between trysts, Spade shares his philosophy with the viewer, a blend of narcissism, dick jokes, and Rousseauian sentimentality, which turns out to be a cover for Spade's Hobbesian cynicism. Not that the girls understand the difference. They just want to see the Playboy mansion.

WALKING TALL

A sitcom where the actors perform on stilts. Not sure what the plot is or who the characters are, but come on! We're talking actors on stilts here! People will watch to see if they fall or crash into each other. Kinda like NASCAR on stilts, which is another good idea.

SO YOU THINK YOU CAN F*?K

Wannabe porn stars have sex in front of celebrity judges Jenna Jameson, Nick Manning, and La Toya Jackson, who critique their techniques and offer advice on how to avoid most STDs. Manning begins to think he is the show and is fired amid tabloid controversies, replaced by Pauly Shore, then Bobby Flay, who insists that contestants eat a nice meal before sex while La Toya pleads for work in Vegas. By this point the original premise is unrecognizable, and not even Nick Manning's return can save it.

PLANTS HAVE MORE AWARENESS

Five teens mumble and stumble their way through suburbia, barely able to speak in complete sentences or understand the basic mechanics of everyday life. Nothing much happens. A dog might liven things up a bit, but these idiots would probably try to eat it. Dr. Phil appears, lectures the teens for ten minutes, pauses, looks at them, then leaves. He bursts back inside, pretending that he heard something, then launches into a monologue about his childhood. The teens stare off into space.

QUEER HEIL FOR THE SKELETAL GAL

Ann Coulter romps through New York City with reactionary gay men, spending copious amounts of money while advocating imperial war, privatization, corporate personhood, and the marginalization of Muslims. Tony, a graphic designer of Lebanese descent, has second thoughts, but is wooed back when the gang throws him a male stripper party at Log Cabin Republican headquarters. SEX IN THE CITY tongues TRIUMPH OF THE WILL which gives THE BOYS IN THE BAND a handjob.

GET OFF MY LAWN, MAN

A vanity project of sorts, where I try to keep kids out of my yard, not by yelling or threatening violence, but by telling them long stories about how much better music was when I was their age, and acting out bits from Monty Python and the original SNL. Also, I don't cut my grass, which deepens the mystery: Who's this old guy in the robe, and what's a Conehead?