Terminating Hollywood

By Alexander O'Hara

This is the first book in Alexander O'Hara's Popp’d Off series: a sarcastic, satirical savaging of the freaks, geeks, strange beasts and wild antics of pop culture. Terminating Hollywood, as you probably guessed from the title, is all about movies. Pieces include: the life of Tom Cruise rewritten in a Biblical style. how Movie Trailer Guy lies to us; homosexual undertones in action flicks; Schwarzenegger on the therapists’s couch; the most stupid character names ever; Marxist cartoon reviews; national stereotypes in cinema; what happens to action heroes in retirement?; tell-tale clichés of summer films; romantic match-ups that could only happen in cinema; how to make a deep-and-meaningful art-house film; Spike Lee vs. Mike Leigh in a directorial death-fight; why the Oscars suck completely; VCR RIP; the most pretentious French film script ever written; James Cameron takes on the life of Gandhi; suggestions for Tarantino flicks; get kitted out with the coolest props ever; and why movies have made me terrified to travel abroad.
Take a walk on the wild - and funny - side of the freaky-deaky film world. This is no country for old jokes!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alexander O'Hara
• Release date: Apr 12, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458151933

Alexander O'Hara

Alexander O'Hara is a pen name of Darragh McManus, journalist and writer. He's like the silly version of Darragh. Or sillier, rather. Under his own name Darragh had a humorous book on Irish sports and culture, called GAA Confidential, published in 2007, which got excellent reviews (many of those by real people). He's also a novelist and playwright. Alex/Darragh writes for several newspapers in the UK and Ireland, including the Guardian and Irish Independent. He plans to upload several more humorous books here, so be prepared for laughter...DEADLY laughter. Email [e-mail] with comments, queries, random and bizarre thoughts, whatever.

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Terminating Hollywood

The funny side of the film world

By Alexander O’Hara

Copyright 2011 Alexander O’Hara

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Contents

A Reading from the First Book of the Cruiser

Back to the future

The write stuff

FILM CLASS #1: How to make a deep-and-meaningful art-house film

Making the pitch

Lame academy

Oscars? I’m a grouch

The Best Of The Best Of – My All-Time Bestest Oscar Winners (in Categories of My Own Devising)

I’m too old for this Twit

The art of psycho-Arn-alaysis

Toy stories

Trailer trash

VCR RIP

A real man’s man

It’s a scream, baby

The most stupid movie character names ever (excluding sci-fi, fantasy and Bond films, which are allowed to go a little nuts)

And speaking of Bond…my favourite 007 movie

Have sci-fi got a joke for you

Mao that’s what I call entertainment!

Go Fourth and multiply

The four sacred elements

Censor sensibilities

Yule believe anything

FILM CLASS #2: How to become an A-list star and then throw it all away

The spoof, the whole spoof and nothing but the spoof

The most pretentious French film script ever written

Screen gods

It’s the role you weren’t born to play

Having said that…ten unlikely casting decisions I want to see

Stereotype writer

The good die young, but Rambo keeps on going

Sum’ like it hot

Monster munch

FILM CLASS #3: How to produce a ‘director’s cut’ of your movie

Beauty and the geeks

Reel lives

Review to a kill

Directorial death-fight – Spike Lee vs. Mike Leigh!

Computer regenerated

Shit ’house

Fiction factory

Scenes from the ball

The Satanic versus

Speed demons

FILM CLASS #4: How to make a sequel

No thanks, I’ve got a headache

The world is a scary place

Gimme some props, yo

Tasty mash

Paddy? Wack!

A darkly comic, knuckle-gnawingly tense topliner in franchise helmer’s sophomore narrative arc

You can quote me on that

A Reading from the First Book of the Cruiser

Tom Cruise may not strike too many people as the natural successor to Jesus – too short, too smiley, and where the hell is his beard? – but according to Scientology chief David Miscavige he is that cult’s ‘Christ’. Like Jesus, he is now scorned for his views, but will be worshipped in the future. Time, surely, for the rewriting of Tom’s life in the proper Biblical style. All kneel:

In the Year of Our Lord Nineteen Hundred and Sixty-Two (aka The First Year of Tom), a child wast borne to Thomas and Mary Lee. And L. Ron Hubbard didst look down from Scientology Heaven (located somewhere beyond the third moon of Jupiter) and see that it was good.

And yea, Tom didst grow up to be a superlative young man, blessed with wisdom aplenty and fearsome strength and wondrous teeth, as prophesied in the Seventeen Psalms of Orthodontics. And his youthful years were spent in penury, because Tom the Father didst refuse to pay child support, ill-tidings be heaped on his cheap ass.

And Tom didst then consider becoming a Catholic priest, but lo! the all-powerful L. Ron didst intercede by using his mighty cosmic brain rays, and Tom didst change his mind and move to Hollywood instead, a Babylon run by the sons of the Tribes of Israel and home to a multitude of whores and sodomites and possibly some Gomorrheans and all.

And the young Christ – sorry, Cruise – didst set forth through this artistic desert for some forty months, and manna didst fall from L. Ron’s munificent and well-groomed hands, in the form of several smash hits. And the heavens opened up for Tom the Maverick in his F-14 Tomcat and he didst see the overfed face of John Travolta in the clouds, blessed be its fatness, and also kick some Russki booty in the process.

And yea, Tom didst hook up with Mimi the Rogers, who didst lure him with her hot Yummy Mummy looks into the glorious mysteries of the One True Church. And he didst then drop Mimi the Sanctified for a younger model, hallelujah. And thusly Tom didst once and for all annihilate the forces of Suspicion and Sexual Ambiguity, and show the world that he wast all man, glory be to his rampant and totally vanilla libido.

And time didst pass and Tom didst strain mightily for some critical plaudits, and inheriteth the mantle of sex guru and Vietnam vet and camp vampire and Rain Man’s brother. And lo and yo, Siskel and Ebert didst raise their thumbs aloft, but the wandering herds didst, uh, wander over to Screen 4, where they were showing a Will Ferrell comedy, the curse of Baal and Azazel and Kirstie Alley be on his simpleton’s head.

And yea, the beauteous charms of Katie the Taller didst fire Tom’s tender heart, as foretold in the Book of Paparazzi, and he didst leap over Oprah’s couch and testify his love to the world, and L. Ron didst weep fatherly tears of happiness which quenched a large portion of the surface of the sun, hallowed be his enormous and Godlike ducts.

And the girl Katie – who was in no way brainwashed by anybody and actetheth entirely of her own free will – didst bear Tom a child of the female variety, blessed be her X chromosomes. And they didst name the child Suri, which meaneth something-or-other in the ancient tongues, but sweet FA to anyone alive today. And Tom didst denounce the evilness and evilitude of the Devil’s Science, psychiatry, and suffereth a fiery rebuttal from Brooke of the Shiels, but she once dated Andre Agassi so what does she know?

And yea, though Tom didst get the bum’s rush from Paramount and wast cast into exile, his star continueth to rise, shining like the sparkling gold teeth fillings of the Great Sci-Fi Author himself, blessed and hallowed and doing serious box-office, lo, even unto the end of time itself, his million-watt smile in grace and favour for ever and ever, amen.

Back to the future

The movie industry isn’t particularly renowned for originality – witness the plethora of sequels, prequels, remakes, adaptations and ‘re-imaginings’ clogging up studio production slates and giving ire to anyone interested in seeing something new every so often. And did the world really need a prequel to The Scorpion King, Tremors or 2003’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, itself a remake of the 1974 original, which had, in turn, inspired a belated sequel (I know, it’s confusing)?

Of course it didn’t. While The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (either version) was primo horror fare, this isn’t quite The Godfather we’re talking about. And one shudders to imagine what the prequel involved: a young Leatherface paying his first visit to the hardware store for piano wire and a nail-gun? Mom and Pop Leatherface presenting their son with My First Little Chainsaw at Christmas?

Pretty pointless, really. But I’m not totally averse to the notion of prequels, providing the right source material can be found…

Triassic Park

An excitable Scottish billionaire constructs a fantastical theme park, recreating the long-gone Triassic era. All turns to disaster, however, when tourists realise that incremental changes in climate and the excruciatingly slow evolution of various strains of fern don’t make for a very exciting holiday, and visitor numbers drop vertiginously.

Terminator -1: Procreation Day

The sperm and egg which will one day become the future Sarah Conner team up to defend humankind against a relentless computer chip which can’t really do much and is rather immobile but will one day form part of the future Terminator’s CPU.

The Omen – Let’s Play the Waiting Game

Extremely slow-moving drama, with a running time of three billion years, as Lucifer hangs around the barren netherworld of his exile, smoking too much and waiting for the stars to align so some prophecy or other comes to pass and he can assume dominion over the world. Look out for the scene where the fallen angel plays chess with Death for 230 million years. Then they get bored and switch to Connect 4 for the next eight million.

Internally Debate Hard

John McClane ponders whether to visit his wife in Los Angeles or stay at home watching Moonlighting reruns instead. He then ponders whether or not to wear a vest that day. Starring Hayden Christensen as McClane and Bruce Willis as the vest.

The Matrix Reworked as Farce

Super-powerful, self-aware computers begin construction of an enormous fantasy world to enslave the human population, seemingly unaware that it would be far easier to use unthinking but equally warm-blooded animals. Like hippopotami. And that the energy-giving sun is blazing like billy-o a mere thousand feet above them, just beyond the low-lying toxic cloud.

Apollo 12 – Fairly Uneventful

Humdrum account of the not-at-all ill-fated Apollo 12 space mission, during which everything passes off pretty much as planned.

Squeak

Young Sydney Prescott begins elementary school one year to the day since her older sister was bullied