I was debating this post as a "Skit Happens" entry or the newest category, "Hollywood'a-Could'a-Should'a," because it's about a sketch I wrote after I finished college. I was every into mash-up sketches, taking two different titles and coming up with a sketch. I did "Laverne & Sherlock," "Cagney & Lucy," and all of my Shakespeare sketches. I picked the Hollywood'a because I kind of lost my mind a bit when it came to this bit.
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You know, I got an idea for a short prose piece last week. While watching "The Office" on Comedy Central, a commercial came on for "A Quiet Place: Day One." So, I'm sitting there thinking...John Krasinski in both of them. Wouldn't it be something if they did some kind of smash-up? Then I thought, what if a Hollywood agent thought that was a viable idea? And what if he pitched it to Krasinski? So, I wrote it up as a one-sided phone call of the agent talking to Krasinski trying to sell him the concept. And I've been sending that piece around. But as I wrote it, I kept coming up with different scenes and bits the producer would pitch to make the concept viable until I realized...I actually enough here to write up an episode of The Office as this. So I did. Much like my "Island of Frankenstein" screenplay, I had no business writing it. Then I remembered years ago that someone wrote a spec episode of "Seinfeld" has if it was still on the air after 9/11. Back in the 90s, writers went through a phase of writing "retro" spec scripts of shows like "I Love Lucy" just to stand out from the crowd. I one time got involved with a theater "producer" who wanted to turn "Oliver Twist" into a TV series called "Fagin's Gang" and I wrote the pilot for that. I got involved with a Hollywood "producer" who kept pitching ideas at me, where I was actually writing loglines and sample pages (which I wrote about here). It's done. Did anyone else think of this? While I was googling for images for this post, I put it as "The Quiet Office" and only got hits on the TV show. There's lots of sketches I've written that when I posted them here over the years, a search for graphics would bring up a lot of versions of it (like "The Walken Dead" sketch I wrote--man, that had a LOT of takes on it). Anyway, it's here. It's pretty funny (IMHO) and I think I got the flavor of both...although, there's much more talking here than the movie creatures would allow. I wanted to write Office dialogue, what can I say? Dear Hollywood, Look, I’m sorry “The Mummy” tanked…oh, who am I kidding, I’m not. I was angry about it since they announced it and the start of this whole Universal Monster “Dark Universe.” I’ve been mad about this stuff since “Van Helsing” came out. I grew up loving the monster movies of Universal Studios. From “Frankenstein” right up to “Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein” (if you don’t know it’s one of the most solid Universal horror movies done in the Forties, I pity you), the movies were scary, funny, thrilling, and hokey. Sure, continuity is off, this was back before “franchises” existed and each movie kinda started from scratch, but they were fun and not calculated. Even the first time the idea of two monsters existing in the same universe occurred (“Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman”), it started off a joke idea that people grew to like. But it was a train wreck of a movie, whose only acknowledgment of previous Universal monster movies was the vague notion that werewolves can kill vampires, which was first implied at the conclusion of “Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.” Anyway, the film got me angry. So angry, I wrote the sequel to the last Universal monster movie they SHOULD HAVE done. I brought it into modern times, I managed to explain why we haven’t heard from the monster is decades, and I folded in every bit of folklore from the movies I could PLUS give it a sense of humor about itself. It was a tale of thrills, revenge and villainy. Naturally, as soon as I started showing it around, Universal started floating the idea of a “Dark Universe” to compete with Marvel movies or DC. Sure, I tried to do a rewrite, and convert the monsters into the more public domain versions of themselves, but the same reaction was had. Apparently you can’t pitch a movie called “Island of Frankenstein” without triggering those connections. Oh, well. I’m very happy with it and I love the big finale. So, I park it here, on my website. Enjoy. |
Dan FiorellaFreelance writer, still hacking away. Archives
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