Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Thank fucking Crom. The snakes have finally landed.

It wasn’t the caustic bombast the marketing fucks at New Line were expecting. It was more of a dull thud, like the sound a severed pony head makes with it falls into a pile of leaves. And now, finally, for the moment at least, the internet is safe.

SNAKES performed below expectations (some trackers had guestimated ridiculous weekend tallies of up to $ 40 million), coming in just a pussy-hair above TALLADEGA at $ 13.8 million. Now in a logical world -- one without Paris Hilton or President Down Syndrome or James “someone please shove a shotgun in my mouth and do what I don’t have the courage to do” Blunt –- this would have been a rousing success for a low-budget movie full of CGI serpents and jive-talking Negroes. But in the Bizarro Universe where we reside -- the one where Superman speaks like a retard and “My Humps” is the number one song for 800 weeks because millions of chubby white girls downloaded it to their cell phones to annoy the fuck out of their fellow Orange Julius employees –- the numbers for SNAKES were, well, a bit of a letdown.

It’s not that SNAKES won’t make money. It was made for 10 cents and bag of turds, at least by Hollywood standards. The reason for all the bowed heads and furrowed brows is that every fucking entertainment journalist with an opinion has been touting SNAKES as the FINAL PROOF we’ve all been waiting for of the POWERS OF THE INTERNETS. The problem was, like most people with opinions, they just didn’t get it. Just like New Line didn’t get it, just like every industry parrot with a Blackberry and expense account didn’t get it:

You can’t fake oblivious irony, kids.

The reason SNAKES became the web meme it did was simple: No one could believe a major studio would greenlight a script that Roger Corman’s cleaning crew found wedged underneath his mini-fridge. The concept was ludicrous. The title was ludicrous. It was a very, very stupid idea that managed to work its way up the chain of command to the HEAD OF A STUDIO. It was proof o' pudding that those smug fucks in Hollywood hadn’t the slightest idea how to do their jobs. They were just pissin’ in the wind. And it was funny.

For about fifteen minutes.

And just like Star Wars Kid and the gay dude in the Peter Pan suit, the humor was derived from their self-unawareness. We laughed at them like we laugh at fat children or a blind guy falling in front of an 18-wheeler. Key words being: AT THEM. Not with them. As your inbox full of YouTube forwards will confirm, the key to humor on the internet is that you're witnessing someone else’s pain, suffering and humiliation. We’re a sick bunch, we humans, but we know what we like. And if you’re in on the joke, it ain’t fucking funny.

But then the retroactive nudge-nudge wink-winking started. “Oh, we meant to do this. This is high camp.” And for a while it seemed like the general public was buying their bullshit. I couldn’t go to TGI Friday's without seeing some drunken frat boy in a striped shirt shouting “snakes on a motherfucking plane!” into the ear of the girl he was slipping rohypnol to. I pictured the NL marketing execs twirling their fingers together and muah-ha-ha-ing like mad scientists bent on world domination. Their evil plan of shit-and-spin had actually worked. Or so it seemed.

Because like they say in the German porn industry, timing is everything. If New Line had dropped SNAKES 6 months earlier it surely would’ve made a dumptruck full of greenbacks. But by spending all that extra time getting their digital snakes JUST RIGHT (like anyone cared), the window of opportunity had been locked, barred and shuttered. Sorry, G: Your shit done got played out.

And I have to say, the relative failure of SNAKES has restored my faith in humanity. When it comes right down to it bad is bad and people know it. Or maybe we just don't like the stink of a dead horse.

Make no mistake: I'm not saying mindless B-movies are not a pleasure worth pursuing. It's like PBR and expired luncheon meat, sometimes we just want to revel in the joy of BEING BAD. But a GOOD bad movie, I mean a REAL good bad movie should be pulled off the dusty shelf of the video clearance house dollar-movie rack; not shoved down our throat by a $30 million dollar marketing machine. Films like THE APPLE or RIDING THE BUS WITH MY SISTER are enjoyable in spite of themselves because we are witnessing sweet, wonderful, unintentional failure. Trying to make a good-bad movie is like trying to shove your own cock up your ass: even if you succeed, you only succeed in fucking yourself.

1 comment:

Jeff said...

Hey, found your blog on Friedman's comments page.

Great shit, man.