Okay, I’m finally catching up on some more commentary entries for Sketchwar. The week of 2/13/09, the topic was “Pimp My TV”.
I should explain this a bit: “Pimp My TV” is a contest from the Alamo Drafthouse‘s “Filmmaking Frenzy”. It’s a contest for filmmaking teams in which each team picks an old TV show and then shoots a trailer for a film based on that TV show.
We thought that idea sounded like fun, so we all decided to create trailers for TV-show adaptations.
We had all sorts of entries this time around. Mr. Robertson did trailers for The Facts of Life and Chico and the Man. Mr. Porter did entries for The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Green Acres. Mr. Wilson did Mr. Ed. Mr. Brownlee did Cheers. Mr. Stinton did Entertainment Tonight. And I rounded things out with Quantum Leap.
Again, whew.
The Facts of Life trailer exemplified the best way to make a funny “Pimp My TV” trailer — make a TV show into a movie of a radically different style. Unfortunately, there was no possible way to top Edna Garrett screaming about “this motherfuckin’ cafeteria”. If he’d cut everything after that, he’d have a solid winner. Hell, the same goes for Chico and the Manimal — Mr. Robertson does fine exploring its comic possibilities, but nothing he can write can possibly outfunny that title. ‘cos, I mean, *damn*.
Moving on, the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air trailer was pretty straightforward. It transferred the TV show to a radically different genre, but for some reason it still didn’t make me laugh apart from the “Maybe Just a Little Bit Gay” title. I think it suffered from the Miami Vice effect, where you’ve changed so much that it feels like it only shares the title with the original show. *shrug* I felt like I was watching a random action trailer.
But, again, other folks seemed to dig it, so take my opinion with the usual grain of salt.
And his Green Acres bonus sketch was a pleasant little ‘teaser clip’. Tiny little thing, but it made me smile.
The Mr. Ed trailer is a solid attempt. Again, it’s a nice example of radically shifting the genre. I guess it doesn’t really work for me because I can’t appreciate a good fart joke. And I didn’t get the “Geneva Convention” bit. And, pacing-wise, once you’ve revealed that it’s Mr. Ed, you’ll have a damn difficult time out-funnying that — so either that reveal goes at the very end, or you follow up the reveal with something that’s flat-out *hilarious*.
Let’s move on to Cheers: the Wes Craven film. Am I the only one who thought that, in spite of the horror tone, it absolutely still needed a laugh track? My other quibble is that this felt like a scene *from* the movie rather than a trailer. On the other hand, this does feel like exactly how it would go down if some mysterious figure offed Paul and Alan and Pete, so: kudos for that. (And “Counting down the seconds” is just pure gold.)
I dunno — I can whine about this or that, but this one made me laugh the most by a long shot. (Also: perfect tag line.)
Mr. Porter’s favorite sketch, however, was the Entertainment Tonight trailer, and I’d have to agree. Turning the paragon of vanilla celebri-journalism into a hard-nosed, All the President’s Men-style thriller is a genius move, and I dare you not to laugh at “Chevy Chase is planning to rig the Oscars?”
And Mr. Stinton executes that setup perfectly. It feels like a trailer, it hits all the get-’em-in-the-seats snippets without telling the story in chronological order, and it both establishes exactly what this movie would be like while continuing to deliver little comic surprises.
Well-done, and I have no useful advice.
As for my entry, well, I warned Mr. Porter early on that what I was writing just wasn’t that funny. I was a fan of Quantum Leap back in the proverbial day, and when I heard about this contest, my first gut response was, “Someone had *better* be doing Quantum Leap, dammit.”
So when Mr. Porter picked “Pimp My TV” for that week’s theme, I figured I had an excuse to write the trailer for the Quantum Leap movie I’d always wanted to see. I knew that what I wrote wouldn’t be sketch comedy, but, eh, screw it. I was just going to write it anyway.
I brainstormed the idea for a bit, and scenes sort of chased each other around in my head. I like making sequels that observe the span of time that’s passed since the original (for instance, I like that Tron 2 will take place 20-30 years after the original). So I figured this is fifteen-odd years after the initial experiment.
But what to do? I figured I’d basically rip off the “evil leaper” storyline, which was one of the most promising story arcs in the original show. I liked the idea of Evil Forces trying to track down Sam, and Al trying to save him, and Sam trying to save himself. It gave everybody something to do.
All in all, I felt like I got the gist of the movie into the (way-too-long) trailer, although Mr. Porter wisely points out that I’ve basically just told the story in chronological order rather than create an exciting and evocative “highlight reel”. I failed at creating comedy, but hey, now there’s a script for a Quantum Leap trailer that wasn’t there before. w00t!