Ticked Off in Tinseltown

By Rick Horowitz

Look, I'm not gonna kid you, a nomination would have been nice. We busted our butts last year -- would it have killed them to notice? At least we'd have something for the ads. "Ugly Bugs From Space!" we could say. "Best Picture Nominee!"

OK. So maybe Best Costumes.

What really burns my toast, though, we had a shot at one of the big ones, had it right in our hands. How was I supposed to know?

Guy shows up -- this is maybe two years ago now -- says he's got a story for me. "What's it called?" I say. "The English Patient," he says. Right away I'm nervous. You get a movie called "The English Patient," the kids don't come, they figure it's one of those "Masterpiece Theatre" things with the accents. The guys don't come, they figure it's some disease-of-the-month chick flick, you know what I'm saying?

This guy says it's not like that at all -- they're mostly in the desert somewhere, not sipping tea, and the patient's a guy, and he doesn't even have a disease exactly. I'm all ears.

You open with the hero in a plane flying over this desert, he says, and it's nice and quiet and suddenly they're shooting at him. I say "Great!" I'm thinking "Top Gun."

Plane gets shot down, the guy says. Hero gets burned to a crisp. I say "What?!" You never crash the hero in the first scene. You never burn the hero to a crisp. It's bad box office.

He's still alive, the guy says, only he's so scarred up you can't even recognize him. So what's the point of even trying to get Tom Cruise, I ask him -- I'm still thinking Tom Cruise, see, or maybe Steven Seagal -- if you can't even tell?

The guy says there are scenes where he's all burnt up with some army nurse taking care of him -- this is during World War II. Then there are these other scenes where the guy's still young and handsome and the plane hasn't crashed yet.

"Back to the Future!" I say, and now I'm thinking maybe Michael J. Fox, with this really cool plane and he has all these adventures and --

Guy says no. Not time travel, just flashbacks. Before the hero gets burned up, see, he's in the desert and he meets this other woman, not the nurse, and she's smart and gorgeous only she's married. Then the husband has to go away cause the war is coming and he's this secret courageous spy or something, and meanwhile there's this sandstorm.

Right away I see the possibilities -- and they haven't even done "Twister" yet! Three minutes tops, he says, this storm. And early in the movie. It doesn't even pay to rent the wind machine.

"You're wasting a perfectly good special effect," I tell him, but he's stuck on this thing between the hero and the gorgeous one. Then the light bulb goes on.

"Casablanca!" I shout. "Love triangle in the desert -- of course!" The hero gives her up because she should be at her husband's side, helping the good guys win the war. Problems of three little people, hill of beans, we'll always have Paris -- I can do it with my eyes shut.

Not even close, the guy says. The hero and the gorgeous one are all over each other -- in bed, in the bathtub, standing up, you name it. Plus he's getting possessive, the hero is. Heroes don't get possessive, I tell him. That's why they're heroes.

Plus, he says, maybe the hero's a spy for the Germans.

That does it.

The guy wants to do a movie, but he doesn't want to follow the rules -- and he shoots down every single suggestion I make to fix the thing!

"Get your own sandstorm," I tell him. "I've got better things to do."

So he takes it somewhere else. So he gets lucky. I don't care.

You ever try working with camels?

2/13/97

©1997 Rick Horowitz. All rights reserved.