Dear Ignorant Movie Producer

Hi all!  I’m getting just a little bit tired of waiting to start on my next show, so instead of worrying about what happens when my health insurance runs out, I’ve decided to write a letter to one of those people in the Business who never seems to appreciate the value of my world—the world of the Art Department—in film:

 

Dear Ignorant Movie Producer:

Give me a job.  Yes, I am demanding that you, a person with financial power and creative ignorance, pay me money—as much as I can get—to make your film a visually stunning (in a good way, this time) cinematic masterpiece.  I’m also wondering, rhetorically, just how ignorant are you?  Apparently you still believe that yet another film featuring your trademarks: a poorly-executed rehash of dopey ideas punctuated with stunted bursts of asphyxiating dialogue eventually dragged to oblivion by the lack of any plot, is going to magically transform itself into something better than a criminally indecent waste of time.  Somehow, in spite of the abominable writing, and the complete lack of characterization that has marred every terrible film you’ve ever produced, you expect vast numbers of intelligent people to pay for sitting through the latest of your foul efforts, losing two hours of their lives which they will never get back unless they can somehow reverse the time-space continuum.

If you continue to do business as usual, then, yes, you are truly an ignorant buffoon.  Maybe you should ask yourself, “What can I, an ignorant producer, do to make a decent film in spite of myself?”  First, let’s face it—your script is probably a floundering remake of some 1970’s television show that plummeted into the bowels of the Nielsen ratings for most of its debauched run as soon as the average viewer realized that watching it regularly would completely destroy their quality of life.  What will make anything turn out differently this time around?

The answer is not in the rewrites.  You know that.  Those are just pit stops on a downward spiral of desperation through the blue pages, the pink pages, the “goldenrod” pages, until finally you’re into the ineffectual plaid pages.  And every rewrite only makes it worse, if such a thing is even possible.  Meanwhile you’re paying one, two, or fifteen different writers at least WGA minimum each time you try to fix what was, from the beginning, a stupefying clod of banal dreck.

What can stop this Bird Flu-like virus of failure from fulfilling its destiny: that of sucking all the possibilities of success and profit from your project into the vacuous, gaping black hole of its maw?

One word: “Art”.  You remember Art, don’t you?  It has a department named after it.  There are well-substantiated rumors, from reliable sources, that film is a “visual medium”.  Why won’t you pay me the kind of money you’ve obviously wasted on all those writers?  Imagine gigantic crystalline cities reflecting the rainbow hues of a cloud-swept sunset; Etruscan mosaics and gold-veined marble floors, and inspired architecture featuring extremely professional wood graining or vintage William Morris floral wallpaper.  Then imagine an American Hepplewhite chair grouping or a Biedermeir chaise lounge set that brilliantly showcases the actors’ asses seated upon them.   Aren’t these fantastic, heart-stopping images worth every bit as much as this piece of dialogue from something you’re probably going to produce, if you haven’t already?

Neethoff

                       “I didn’t kill Monique!  All that night I was at the chili cookoff.”

Detective Gripsack

                      “No.  I happen to know you took off from the cookoff, Neethoff.  You know how I know?”

Neethoff

                      “I know you don’t know.  So… no.”

Detective Gripsack

                      ”Your DNA told me, my friend.  And your individual genetic code consisting of two long

                       chains of nucleotides based around a double helix joined by hydrogen bonds doesn’t lie.”

Et cetera, et cetera.  This is the stuff of terminally boring nightmares: soulless drivel of the most pretentious kind.  Once again, you have managed to regurgitate TV movie pabulum fit for consumption only by the kind of people who are featured regularly on Cops; people without the financial means for an impulse purchase of a pepperoni meat stick at the Circle K.  Is this the consumer base you want for your product?

And if your latest contemptible film actually makes it to theatrical release without going straight to video hell, who, exactly, are you hoping will pay to see it? The eighteen to thirty-year-olds with money?  No, and no again, dweeb-clown.  They need more to set their seats on fire; they need VISUALS.  Yeah!  Neon-hued explosions of light!  Sets so large they fade into the distance and beyond the horizon, filled with giant reptiles to smash those sets into burning, whirling, radioactive smithereens.   And hopefully this time they will be giant reptiles with complex emotional issues and convictions that change color and chase across their skin like squids do, and with simply fabulous, scaly fins all aglow in chartreuse and magenta, flashing long, sharp fangs so fluorescent-white they might have come straight from the cosmetic dentist’s office.

Can’t you see it all now?  Since you’re a movie producer, probably not. Why not?  Because your eyes, just like your brain, have shriveled into mere vestigial organs, leaving you groping through eternal mental darkness without a clue.  So you will have to hear the truth from me: even though giant lizards may not be in your little pasty-faced script, your audience is still crying out for the Art Department’s talent.  They’re crying out, and not for more car chases, gunfights, or tortoise-speed bogus kung fu flailing that insults the law of gravity.  They are crying out for soaring backdrops; and venomous coloration that works as subtext and adds to the gestalt of the film; and walls that speak of the pain and wretched glory of the human condition; and set dressing that accents characterization with awesome poignancy and subtle layers of meaning embedded in the furniture.  If they see it, they will feel it.

So, what are they crying out for?  Can’t you even remember what I just told you?

ART!  You power-brokering, money-mongering, cretinous dunderhead, I’m talking ART!  Let me know if you have the guts to burst out of the blundering, addle-pated, fatuous confines of your wretched, bovine, insipid writer-controlled world.  Let me know when you will finally pay me a staggering sum of well-deserved money to make my visions—not yours, you ignorant fool! — come true.

PS. Sorry, sorry, sorry.  I’m forgetting where the money for my paycheck comes from.  Just forget I said anything about your being ignorant or not having any concept of the importance of the visuals in a film.  I’m sure your next project, that remake of the remake of that TV show that was a remake of a comic book remake will be GREAT!