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April 18, 2022:

THE MILLION-DOLLAR SCRIPT

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, I am sitting here like so much fish, listening to Carmen Dragon CDs, some of which, I must say, are very appealing in their weirdness. Occasionally, they’re more like Easy Listening albums than classic albums. Starting with CD 5 things do improve, sound-wise, so that’s good. I’m currently on CD 10 of 17. I’m not sure I need to keep any of these in the Music app, but we’ll see. Prior to the listening was the watching – the watching involved one motion picture on the Flix of Net, which I assumed was new because they make everything seem like it’s of recent vintage on the home page, but it was, in fact, perpetrated on the viewing public back in 2011. This motion picture was entitled Abduction and starred Taylor Lautner, Lily Collins, Sigourney Weaver, Michael Nykvist, and Alfred Molina. Before I tell you about this motion picture, let me first say that there was an actual bidding war on the script, which ended up by selling for a million bucks. It was written by some guy who fronts an indie rock band. Yep. And yep, it’s every bit as derivative and inept as you would imagine. One MILLION dollars. It really takes a special kind of stupid, but apparently there is no shortage of that in today’s motion picture business. The first eighteen minutes of the film is excruciatingly bad – and then the plot kicks in. It’s the typical nothing is what it seems malarkey, along with the bad guys after an innocent young person who must go on the run and the good guys, well, who knows if they’re REALLY good. Yes, that plot, number 19 in the book of plots. The first huge mistake is casting 101 – I don’t know from Taylor Lautner but he’s really awful. Later, I found out that this was not on the heels of his first film, Twilight, and those fans are quite insane and he’s young, has abs, and they LOVE him, even though he is not a good actor. I’m sure the producers of this thought they’d scored a real coup getting him, but that didn’t quite work out the way they thought, which is what usually happens with cocky producers who don’t care about the movie at all, just the deal. Lily Collins is okay in one of her first films (twenty-two at the time), everyone else looks like they showed up and were waiting to be paid, and the plot idiocy just gets worse and worse as it goes. John Singleton, who once showed a shred of promise as a director, does very bad work here because he’s not really a genre director and has no idea what he’s doing. But other than the bad script and inefficient direction, the film never has an iota of a chance thanks to the abs of it’s lead. He can’t read a line convincingly but does manage to be without a shirt a few times, which is all the Twilight stans need, apparently. Unfortunately for the film, it has a 5% rotten rating with every single review bad and it did nothing at the box-office. Oh, and by the way, there is no abduction in the film. Highly not recommended by the likes of me, unless you like abs. We, of course, we dear readers, really know what ABS means – Active Brain Syndrome – but apparently THAT ABS only works if you actually have a brain and those involved in this mess clearly don’t.

Yesterday was another short day due to my not falling asleep until after four-thirty and not arising until three in the afternoon. Once up, I answered e-mails and did a few things on the computer, then ordered food – Pad Thai – it was better than the last two places I had it from but was certainly not up to the best Pad Thai I’ve had. Then I watched the motion picture, and you know as much as you need to know about THAT.  Then I ordered a piece of cheesecake and that arrived and was good. I’m told that we had around thirty-five in the audience and that they were a very good audience, so that was nice. I really can’t imagine that anything did well on a weekend that included both Passover AND Easter. Just the luck of the draw, I suppose, and I suppose it’s just the luck of the draw. And now, the Brahms lullaby is lulling me to sleep even though I’m not really tired. Who wrote the lyrics? Go to sleep, close your eyes, for the sandman is calling. That’s how I learned it, but there are a humungous number of different lyrics to this thing, so who knows what’s right and what’s wrong. Well, The Shadow Knows.

Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll do whatever needs doing, I will write for sure, I’ll hopefully pick up some packages, I’ll eat the meal I should have eaten yesterday, i.e. hot dogs, I’ll write some more, we’ll prep the book to send to the publisher and we’ll get it ready for pre-orders, and then at some point I’ll watch, listen, and relax.

The rest of the week is more of the same, then we play week four of six and I’ll be there for at least two of the performances but may attend all three, just because I can and I don’t care who knows it.

I forgot I’d taken this video as we were coming in for our landing on Tuesday night. So, here it is.

IMG_0051

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up when I’m up, do whatever needs doing, write, hopefully pick up some packages, eat, write, prep the book for the publisher and for pre-orders, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite Thai dishes? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, mind-boggled that a script like Abduction ends up being a million-dollar script. The business has clearly gone off the deep end.

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