What Is It Good For?
I’m working on something new now. I’m just going to assault people with genre stuff until somebody thinks something I write will make some money. This one’s kind of a kids’ movie — I guess more of a “young adult” thing, though, hitting that “tween” demographic, I guess. I’m trying to keep it toned down in terms of language and violence, but I always liked movies like The Goonies and (the original) Bad News Bears for respecting kids enough to realize that about 90% of them have ridiculous potty-mouths, so everyone in the audience can handle it except overly sensitive parents.
Doesn’t matter. I am consciously trying to keep this free, but here’s where the problem starts: it’s about war. I’m not hugely concerned with the violence — ironically, there isn’t much. It has a lot of satirical elements concerning the futility of war, but mainly it’s about a group of kids whose fighting escalates into all-out assaults during recess. It’s kind of inspired by this general sort of cabin fever that affected kids while I was in junior high; when we were stuck inside for most of fall and winter, when spring broke they’d just go apeshit. We’d have recess in a large park across the street, with more than enough space to hide from the prying eyes of teachers and lunch moms, and all manner of craziness would take place. Nothing to the extreme of this script, but in getting into the mentality of my 12-year-old self, a lot of it felt like the extremes I take the script to. Much of the comedy comes from this exaggeration, but I think it also contains a great deal of emotional (if not literal) truth.
And then I came up with the perfect opening sequence: a beat-for-beat spoof of the Omaha Beach sequence in Saving Private Ryan. Without drawing much attention to the fact that I’m clearly spoofing one of the most famous battle sequences in recent movie history, I’d use the spoof to clearly establish the main characters, the battle lines, the physical space of their “battlefield” (i.e., a city park), and set the comic tone for this goofy “war” (which mainly involves throwing crabapples at the other side, going back to the “it’s not that violent and nobody even gets hurt” statement).
Is this disrespectful? I’m honestly not sure, because my taste has no sense of boundaries. To me, funny is funny, and if I can pull it off the way I think I can, that’s great; if I can’t, I’d end up changing it anyway. Is there a taboo in mocking — even if I’m doing it with affection — a fearless and reverent piece of filmmaking? I don’t know.
Posted by Stan on March 16, 2008 3:11 PM | Permalink | Random Musings | Digg It
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