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Cavemen

07.18.07 @ 4:52PM Tags : cavemen, dechievement, newlows

Last week I saw an ad for the upcoming ABC primetime television show Cavemen, a spin-off of the GEICO television commercials that have been airing for the past couple of years. First I’d like to point out that the show is a runner-up for the Most Unoriginal Title award (for whatever reason, my personal favorite is Domestic Disturbance, but settings-based titles like Phone Booth, Taxi, and even World Trade Center are equally impressive, as are descriptive, upcoming titles like Shoot ‘Em Up and, plainly, War. But The Astronaut Farmer, which I recently and unfortunately saw on an airplane, may take the cake, not only because it’s about a farmer who becomes an astronaut, but also because the astronaut’s last name–you can’t write this stuff–is Farmer. Actually, I suppose you can write it, since someone did). Anyway, Cavemen’s based-on-a-commercial precedence-setting is a bona fide Dechievement, also referred to (by me) as a New Low.

But Cavemen further relates to this web site soapbox of mine because, as I said a while back, “the best satire is able to parody something BEFORE it actually happens out in the real world.” Behold:

“Hollywood has already turned to every other existing property for ideas, including its most recent gold mine (if you can call it that–“lead mine” would be more appropriate): the video game (Wing Commander, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Final Fantasy, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Super Mario Bros.). Walt Disney reversed the usual order and based 2003’s Pirates of the Caribbean on its 1967 theme park ride. 2001 saw the release of the movie Me and Mrs. Jones, which was inspired by the 70s infidelity anthem of the same name. In the same soul-sucking (hah, hah) vein, Martin Lawrence’s 1996 film A Thin Line Between Love and Hate stole its title from The Persuaders’ 1971 chart-topper–and the group H-town (of esteemed “Knockin’ Da Boots” fame) re-recorded it, quite sacrilegiously, for the soundtrack. So after you’ve based feature films on 4-minute songs, what’s next? Movies based on 30-second ad spots? How about Got Milk?, in which aliens invade earth (again), except this time for our dairy supply? Gatorade’s Is it in you, the movie?”

Or… GEICO’s Cavemen, the TV show. (I wrote the above two years ago).

Not that predicting a dechievement in advance is particularly prescient, because by their very nature, New Lows are essentially inevitable. But still.

Also, the above quoted entry, which was only my third post to this site, serves as solid evidence that my writing has in fact gotten worser over the past two years.

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I would just end the post there, but this being the internet, someone would comment on my intentional grammatical error as if it was unintentional, and then I’d have to reply with “I know worser isn’t a word, that’s the point” and, in some small way, their comment would cause me to lose faith in humanity’s future.

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The West Side

07.6.07 @ 1:48PM Tags : thewestside, zdl

My creative juices have been diverted to my new internet film project for so long that I don’t have much left in the tank to write the oh-so-clever blog post that this ought to be. Functionally, this post should suggest I’m a self-deprecating, talented writer in addition to a resourceful no-budget filmmaker… but I’ve been burning the 5AM oil for too long to have the energy to write that post. Suffice it to say that I hope this is an important moment in the “tries to start a film career in New York” storyline of this site.

So, without further ado, please go and watch The West Side. Zack and I have been working on the show for a full year, during which time we triumphed over approximately one billion setbacks. It’s a great feeling to finally have the idea we talked about a year ago–an urban Western–fully realized and up and out there for the world to see. We’ll see what happens as a result.