I saw a pretty funny movie on Showtime this weekend. TV Set. Have you seen it? It’s not the best thing since a burn-free face, but it IS a delightful, fluffy romp. It’s about a writer whose TV pilot script is “revamped” and “restructured” by television producers who don’t know what they’re doing. In short, they make sop out of a pig’s ear. (Something like that.) The way the writer, played by David Duchovny, handles the ripping to shreds of his script is quite hilarious (and probably true).
So in honor of the writer sticking to his vision, no matter how it affects ad dollars, let’s write a TV pilot bit this week!
Squeee! Yes! Let’s do.
In the movie, David Duchovny’s pilot was titled “The Wexler Chronicles,” which the producers lamely renamed “Crazy Like Me,” so what say we pick a title, either “The (YOUR NAME HERE) Chronicles” or “Crazy Like (YOUR NAME HERE)” and write part of the first scene as if you were dramatizing or humorizing your current life. Write it like a screenplay preferably. You know, make it dialogue-rich and add car sound effects. OR kids screaming in the background. Or the sound of a door closing on an empty refrigerator, a lonely, clanging sound that reminds you to get to the grocery store, but you can’t because you’re super busy and burned. So you order from an online grocery store and they muck up the order, and your kids are eating string cheese and scoops of peanut butter from the jar for a week straight.
That kind of thing.
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Here, let me get you started:
Title: The San Diego Momma Chronicles
Opening Music: Eric Burdon’s “Spill the Wine”
(Song note: I CANNOT tell you how often I feel like a long-haired leaping gnome. Really. It’s a problem and now that I’ve finally admitted it to myself, I hope I can begin to work on it.)
Opening Scene:
San Diego Momma (after discovering that the plumber accidentally hooked her shower pipes to a solid waste tank): Well now, that explains everything!
{a few minutes later, after tales of the solid waste shower reached news stations around the world, a news truck pulls up and an anchorwoman knocks on the door for an interview}
Vacant Anchorwoman: Hi there! Can I ask you a few questions?
San Diego Momma (fatigued and resigned to the fact that she’s a poophead): I guess.
Vacant Anchorwoman: So how did you feel when you found out that you’d been showering in solid waste water for years?
San Diego Momma: (looking disbelievingly at the vacant anchorwoman) How do you think I felt, Aloha? I felt disgust, terror, abject horror. (Under breath) Kinda describes the adult onset acne though.
Vacant Anchorwoman: What was that?
San Diego Momma: Nothing. Let me sum up: Solid waste showers are no good. No good at all. In fact, let me rephrase — Nothing good can come from a solid waste shower. Got your sound byte now?
Vacant Anchorwoman: Yes, thank you. But we’d like a sexier second take. Can you please describe your revulsion more fully and with feeling? Also, we’d like to get a shot of you showering in the solid waste for our evening teaser.
San Diego Momma (robustly and with feeling throwing shower poop on Aloha, the Vacant Anchorwoman): How’s this for a teaser?
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So do you get the idea?
Yeah, me neither.
Think you can fake it though? (Oh wait. You want to know who does this “slice of life” TV pilot deal really well? Katydidnot. Check it out.)
And since I clearly “blew” the rules out of the water with my odd and off-topic solid waste screenplay snippet, just do your thing (post your submission in your blog and leave the link in comments or if it’s on the short side, feel free to leave your PROMPTuesday here).
MEANWHILE…First (and last?) time to PROMPTuesday? Read a bit about it here.
Want to see what’s been written in the past? Catch up on the PROMPTuesdays archive here.
oh, I can fake it. Just not how YOU want me to fake it.
hey wait a minute…is it already tuesday in san diego? :P
I’m weird maybe, but I find this sort of thing SO funny!
Saw the movie and felt the same way you did.
Oh now I have to go write, huh? Fine. I don’t know if I can, though.
Oh, please tell me that story’s just a fictional dramatisation. Ugh! (Shudder). At any rate, here’s mine.
Okay, WordPress hates me. It’s not posting my comment with html, but it says it has, but I can’t see it. Go figure. Hey, on the bright side, at least I’m not showering in sewage. Anyway, you can just click on my name up there if you’d like to read my oh-so-fancy contribution.
Oh, WordPress loves me after all! I love you too WordPress! Sorry I left three comments, Deb. I’m not an attention seeker…really! (Much).
OK, so I didn’t write this, but it’s totally worth reading! And very timely…
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/opinion/21dowd-sorkin.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin
Hi there. My friend Tinsenpup suggested I give your PromptTuesday a go. Here‘s my effort.
I think my brain has been abducted by aliens and lumpy oatmeal was placed in the cranium as a substitute. How’s that for a premise?
Yesterday, my son had a writing prompt for homework that we had a blast expounding on.
You are in a corn field, with your dog, when all of a sudden, a plastic…
We decided it should be a plastic frisbee that zooms by, and the dog catches it in his mouth. The kid takes it from the dog, noting it’s flashing lights, but his mom calls to him from the farmhouse window (duh, there’s corn – it’s a farm, right?) and he stuffs the frisbee in his backpack.
Later on, in his room, he notices his backpack is glowing and when he opens it, the frisbee, which is really a tiny space ship, floats out and hovers in front of him.
And so on, and so on.
Okay, so it’s not your prompt, but it’s a prompt, right? Kind of like signing your name on the SAT – you get a few points for the effort, right?
“We’d like a sexier second take.” That’s funny stuff.
Mine’s up.
Heh. Scripts. Heh.
Blog This Mom! is in the building.
Sort of. Heh.
Heh. Has she left the building? Or is it that Blog This Mom! can’t type?
She’s trying again.
Here is Blog This Mom!’s PROMPTuesday.
Maybe. Heh.
Now what? Blog This Mom! forgot to type this code at the end of Blog This Mom! up there.
But the link above will get you to her PROMPTuesday #23: TV Pilot. Maybe this one will too.
And also? She’s going to stop typing and go rest now.
poor cheri, that was some rough commenting there.
and what? dramatize or humorize my current life? that wouldn’t be believable at all. people barely believe me already.
but i will give it a go.
on friday (ish). or today. either way, i’ll come back and link.
I couldn’t think of anything but a sappy sob story. I will be back next week, in happier spirits.
Great job to all who wrote this week. Thank you for the smile.
Hi San Diego Momma!
Thank you for your lovely comment!
Sadly, the camisole itself was a fiction, but the scenario just screams me.
I personally keep my telco in business with the number of calls I make to Tinsenpup, about an almost infinite number of pointless gadgets that hold me in their sway – they like some Indian Snake Charmer, and me the helpless Cobra!
But I promise if I ever buy that pink camisole, that you have first dibs on it! ;)