Meanwhile, on Tinder...

All told, the date had been an unmitigated disaster. She’d been on bad Tinder dates before, but the evening had been above and beyond. He’d been rude, boorish, asked nothing about her life over the course of their dinner, keeping the conversation instead to his own weirdly racist views of how the world ought to be run, and when he walked her home afterward he jammed his tongue into her mouth without so much as a how-do-you-do.

The kiss had been deeply unpleasant, perfectly summing up her evening as a whole, and she breathed an internal sigh of relief that it was finally over.

And yet, in spite of this, when he asked if he could see her again she, inexplicably, said yes.

She’d always had a problem saying no to people, you see, and he’d mentioned that he was leaving the country on business for three months, so she figured she could put off any unpleasantness at least until such time as he got back, by which point he might have forgotten this whole horrible evening had ever happened.

“Absolutely,” she told him, with a nervous little laugh, “I mean, assuming I’m still single by then.”

He laughed, and so did she, relieved, and then she went into her building and up to her apartment, blessedly alone at last.

It wasn’t until the small hours of the morning that she admitted to herself that she’d made a small problem much, much worse. He knew where she lived and he knew her phone number, and she had said that she would “Absolutely” go out with him again. There was no way her situation would lead anything but suffering…

Assuming she was still single by then.

One woman, one smart-phone-based dating app and a mission to find true love on an extremely limited timeframe, this autumn Katherine Heigl will star in a new romantic comedy that critics are already calling “A delightful romp…”, “The feel good date-movie of the year!” and “About what you’d expect from a Katherine Heigl movie…”

“Three Months,” coming this fall, from Fox 2000 pictures and Spyglass Entertainment…

Let's Make a Movie: Michael Jackson

So: Michael Jackson was a member of the Jackson 5, yes?

And then he released Off the Wall, which spawned a number of sizable, pleasantly funky late-70s hits.

However, as a thought experiment, let’s imaging that before he could complete the album Thriller, he was in a car accident, or contracted pneumonia or some such, and as such the album never came out. Michael Jackson was a famous pop singer, to be sure, but he was never Thriller famous.

Were this the case, he would definitely still be alive, I suspect everyone who thinks seriously about it would agree. Alive, dramatically less crazy than he was toward the end of his life (fame is, after all, a toxic state in which to be and one that will absolutely drive you mad if you let it), in his fifties and reaching the point in his life where he was considering whether or not he still had it in him to mount a proper comeback to a career that likely petered out at some point decades previous.

So: Here’s my movie.

Hollywood is constantly making biopics of famous performers, actors win awards for playing their heroes, we get to watch a cleaned-up, warts and some version of our idol’s life, it’s all quite interesting if somewhat sanitized, but what’s never been made is an ALTERNATE HISTORY biopic of a famous performer.

Our POV character will be a music documentarian following Michael Jackson around and interviewing his family, friends and staff as he prepares himself for his comeback. Not the huge, bombastic Michael we know, but rather the logical progression of Off the Wall-era Michael, the laid back, chilled out, funky everyman, forty years later, relaxed and at peace, having never been swept up in the whirlwind that was his life as the king of pop and in the private time this allowed him having at some point come to terms with his past.

We see him, older, wiser but still vital, working on music that genuinely doesn’t care about sounding contemporary, more interested in doing work he enjoys than being rewarded by the pop world at large, and as we do we see him revitalized by the very throwback-ish nature of the music that he’s making, settling into a groove and getting genuinely excited about making music once more, and we then follow him up to the album’s release and the first night of his tour of mid-sized concert halls, seeing him see the smaller crowds than he’s used to, and seeing too that he doesn’t really mind. After all, he will say in a monologue that will make up the centerpiece of the film, he’s a musician, and a performer, but he’s not a politician. He doesn’t need to please everyone all the time…

Handled correctly, with the right actor playing Michael, I think this could be a powerful story to tell, a much more interesting way to handle the life of such a complex figure than the traditional biographical film. And I think that, marketed correctly, it could be a hit as well.

Everyone, after all, loves Michael Jackson.

The soundtrack, I should think, will be produced by Pharell, and will be light and fresh and bouncy, reminiscent of Off the Wall but also poignant, as it like the film will remind us of what could have been and in doing so make what was all the more heartbreaking.

I think this film would be a success.

Off the Wall, after all, was a better album than Thriller anyway.

And yes, I know that’s going to get me some hate.

I stand by the opinion…

I Want to Make A Movie

In my movie, I want Tim Allen to participate in a hit and run, only to return home to find that the person he’s run over and abandoned to die on the side of the road is none other than Santa, and that, due to an obscure clause in his contract, whoever kills Santa is forced to take his place. Over the course of the rest of the film we’ll focus on Mr. Allan’s transformation, both physical as he takes on the traditional form of Santa and mental as he becomes more generous and jolly, as his inner Santa comes to the fore.

The tone I intend to create, over the course of this film, is one of existential dread mixed with a healthy dose body horror, as an ordinary man is forced, as penance for one lapse of judgment, to watch helplessly as he is transformed beyond his recognition, as one by one the signifiers of identity he’s put so much stock in, both physically and mentally, are stripped from him, as he is consumed from the inside out by the Christmas Spirit, an angry ghost which must be appeased at all costs, and which has no care for the life it is consuming.

Partway through act two, Allen-Clause will discover that he’s no longer capable of taking his own life, that every time he tries the Spirit prevents him, seeking as it does to protect its host body until such time as the transformation is complete and it has total control, and due to this revelation he will spend act three seeking out someone, anyone, willing to put an end to his life while there’s still enough “self” left in him for his death, and by extension his life, to hold some measure of meaning.

Eventually, he’ll remember how he got into this mess in the first place, and run into a busy street, where he’ll be hit by a car and, in his dying moments, bloated body broken, from behind his white beard, he’ll let out a laugh, not the “Ho Ho Ho” his laugh had become, but rather the laugh of Tim Allen, weaker and more hoarse as he dies, but still inarguably his own. In this way the audience will know that, in death if not in life, he’s triumphed, both over the Spirit and its horrible clause.

I believe the film will be a fascinating look at the nature of identity, as well as a gripping horror story, and as such will release it midway through October, just in time for “holiday season” for this type of film. I also suspect I could bring it in with a relatively minimal budget, as I can’t imagine Tim Allen’s terribly busy nowadays, also a plus as the possibility of a sequel is obvious.

After all, somebody was driving the car that ran Allen-Clause over at the end of the film.

And, no matter what lengths the host bodies might go through to die, Santa does come every year, like clockwork. So however many hosts might succeed in ending their lives, eventually there will be one who isn’t strong enough to do what it takes, or lucky enough to do it in time. And that unlucky soul will be consumed so completely that it will be as though they’d never existed at all.

Because the Christmas Spirit will not be denied…