Hire Me, Hollywood! #1
Welcome to a new feature of the site in which I tell you about movie pitches I’ve come up with. They might be terrible, but the other night I went to the movies and every trailer looked like what you’d get if you asked a French person what they thought American cinema was like, so I figure the motion picture industry could do worse. If you like these ideas and happen to be a huge Los Angeles bigwig, please get in touch with me!
Pitch #1: Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Douche. It’s The Nutty Professor for the Silicon Valley era when our hero [someone who can play both a young Adam Sandlerish dorky hothead and a young Bill Murrayish smarmy jerk], a super-talented indie games developer, is about to hit it big, which he needs to do for x good guy reasons, an orphan or a dame– but he’s kind of a hothead and has never fit in to a corporate culture. He Weird Sciences into existence an alternate version of himself who is chill, loves yoga and craft beer, but also alpha– loves mansplaining and gaslighting. One of Mr. Douche’s ideas leads to the development of something that would displace all of Dr. Jekyll’s whacky San Francisco neighbors who appear throughout the film and so Dr. Jekyll has to make things right.
Pitch #2: Running Mates. I was thinking the other day how much fun it would be to see a Presidential debate in which the two candidates not only clearly and genuinely got a huge kick out of each other as people, but amused each other so much that it legitimately threw off the whole debate. So here’s the pitch: He [Matthew McConnaughey] is a drug-loving socialist whom all the kids love. She [Meryl Streep] is a veteran iron lady who’s been hurt before. They’re running against each other but find themselves madly in love with each other at the same time. Their campaign managers [whoever your favorite character actors in a recent underrated sitcom are] go nuts trying to stop it. Ultimately, love wins but so does the insane, evil reactionary candidate they were both hoping to run against [Should be some kind of stunt casting, right? Like either a real former politician being uncharacteristic or a very serious dramatic actor or like a famous musician who would be super-committed? Actually, it would be pretty entertaining to see someone like Martin Sheen or Bill Pullman, known for playing a good-guy President, act like a total piece of shit]. Only this villain let them in on something damning earlier in the film, or maybe an intern who was just comic relief before because s/he [Josh Brener? Ellie Kemper?] was super-incompetent finds some dirt on the guy, and they get him impeached, and his schlubby, harmless running mate he was abusive to the whole time [Joel Murray? Or the guy who played Jerry on Parks and Rec?] gets sworn in and appoints our heroes to prominent cabinet positions. Oh, and the campaign managers end up together, too.
Pitch #3: A pizza joint that serves primarily as a front for the Mafia gets a writeup in a fancy magazine by an authenticity-loving food critic and the whole staff of the place has to deal with the pressures of being a super-popular restaurant, while at the same time mob stuff happens.
Pitch #4: The pretzel that almost killed George W. Bush and the Twix bar that took a bite out of Marco Rubio are sentient, buddy assassins. It’s Deadpool meets Osmosis Jones meets treason.
The Tusk 
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