First I want to kick things off with a few words about, and a small picture of, our shoot this weekend. See I'm torn, because the landscape where we shot on Memorial Day is breathtaking, but Justin was so excited about it that I don't want to spoil its impact in the episode. So, a compromise.
 

Enjoy!

I've always wanted to write my own screenplay. Who hasn't, right? Some years ago, frustrated by my lack of ideas, talent, and motivation, I decided to just try and come up with the worst possible idea I could think of and write that.  It’s painfully obvious that talent is not a prerequisite for getting your dream picture made, and all storytellers basically use the same ideas over and over again.

My legendary lack of motivation proved my downfall in this exercise in mediocrity, but I still from time to time mull over my list of Bad Hollywood Stories and add to it. Someday, I hope to be hated by all decent writers by seeing one of these monstrosities on the big screen.

Dumb Luk

This was the original idea, the first one I really attacked after having my epiphany. I just free-associated Hollywood essentials into a mish-mash of clichés, stereotypes, and action sequences.

Luk is a Danish-Thai ne'er-do-well living on the mean streets of Providence, doing whatever it takes to get by. He finds out his long-lost grandmother is sick and dying on the West Coast, but has neither the money nor the resources to get there and visit her.

Throwing caution and his future to the wind (I even write this in cliches) he steals a car to make the tip, but little does he know that the car he stole is a top secret government urban combat vehicle.

You see where this is going, right? Cannonball Run, Knight Rider, and Shanghai Noon all meet for a cocktail as Uncle Sam chases Luk across the country to take back his ride. Luk manages to turn a few heads, save a few lives, and win over a few hearts before reaching the promised land and saving his grandmother's life, too.

Chicken-Fried Stake

I actually came up with this one today, and this is from the "come up with a title first and we'll figure out the plot later" file.

Stanley works the graveyard at Wooster's Roosters, a second-rate fried chicken joint along a deserted highway in rural Utah. His life didn't exactly turn out the way he'd hoped it would, but he's doing the best with what he's got. Even though Stanley has worked for Wooster for 12 years, he's ever hopeful that fate will soon remember that Stanley is destined for greatness, just like he and his mother always thought he would be.

Fate does indeed glance Stanley's way one evening, when just after dark one lonely evening 3 strangers enter Wooster's, looking for more than just the Family Bucket Special. You see, these 3 strangers are vampires.

So you take Die Hard, From Dusk Till Dawn, and Chariots of Fire, toss them all in a blender for 90 minutes and then watch vampires get their heads deep-fried in the, um, deep fryer. I can see it all in my head, it's just getting it all down on paper that's tough.

One last one!

Zoo Hard

I'm really proud of this one, because it has the ridiculousness of Dumb Luk and the fantastic title of Chicken-Friend Stake. Marlon Perkins (his parents were big fans of Wild Kingdom) is a second-rate zoologist (and ex-Navy Seal!) who never managed to rise above care and feeding at the petting zoo. He wants to propose to the woman he loves, a fellow zookeeper, but she's a rising star in the zoo circles and he feels he's being left behind.

Fate, love, and his two disparate careers all come to a head one day when eco-terrorists take over the zoo. Their demands are simple, if not completely thought out by this author: do something or other regarding the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or something, or other, or they will kill one endangered animal every 30 minutes.

Cue awesome action music, a bad-ass zookeeper armed with only a tranquilizer gun (and of course every fierce predator in the zoo!),  and bad dialogue along the lines of "we're going to make you extinct" instead of "we're going to kill you".

Hope you like those ideas because I'm working on them, and I've got a dozen more where those came from. I figure if I can't conquer Hollywood with quality I'll fire bad scripts like shot from a shotgun until I kill somebody. Or somebody makes my movie. Whichever.