Wednesday, July 02, 2008

How George Lucas left this Earth for another dimension, or outer space, or something

Spoilers, I guess.


[A giant room in the heart of the Skywalker Ranch. George Lucas is meeting with director Steven Spielberg and screenwriter David Koepp.]

Spielberg: So let's review what we've got in this film so far. We've got a '50s Cold War setting...

Lucas: Hey, you know that warehouse of secrets from the end of the first film? Can we set a scene in this one?

Spielberg: Sure.

Lucas: And it'll be Area 51!

Spielberg: What?

Lucas: Yeah, it'll be Area 51 and there'll be an alien corpse that'll be magnetic and Indy will get captured by the Commies to find it and he will find it! He'll take bullets from the Commies and use the gunpowder in the bullets to locate the alien corpse that's magnetic--

Koepp: That's awesome! He gets all the bullets from the Commies so they can't fight back when he swings into action Indy mode! You are a legend, George!

Lucas: What? No, it's just some cool shit I thought up. It doesn't have anything to do with anything. Hey, who the fuck are you?

Koepp: I wrote the script. It's under your can of Fanta.

Lucas: Yeah? Hey thanks! My Fanta is sweating in this heat! So he finds the alien corpse and then he gets betrayed by Mac -

Koepp: Mac?

Lucas: Yeah, Mac is Indy's good buddy who turns out to be a Commie.

Koepp: I've never heard of this guy. There's no Mac in my script.

Lucas: He and Indy have been through tons of adventures. It's all in the Indy video games I've got in the hopper.

Koepp: Video games?

Lucas: Yeah. Do your research. Steven, can I eat this guy? George hungry now, Steven. Him hungry!

Spielberg: George, we need the screenwriter. I brought you a goat.

Lucas: Give goat George! Give goat!

Spielberg: Bring out the goat!

[A P.A. leads a goat into the room and flees. Almost too swift for the eye to follow, Lucas' flesh billows out from beneath his turtleneck and engulfs the animal, then drags it inexorably into his True Mouth. Koepp turns grey.]


Koepp: Ah Jesus...

Spielberg: Don't sweat it David. [to Lucas] So you were telling us about Mac?

Lucas: Yeah. Who? What?

Spielberg: He's Indy's best buddy.

Lucas: I think I'm going to put out a bunch of animated Indy & Mac specials. That'll show those fuckers. Coppola, DiPalma, fucking ... Bogdanavitch ... fuckin' ...

Spielberg: Sounds fantastic George! Fantastic!

Koepp: Oh God ... that noise ... the goat's still alive in there ...

Lucas: ... mmm. Arghhnnngghh. And then Indy gets away from the Commies and he ends up in one of those crazy fake towns where they do nuclear testing? And then they do nuclear testing on it? But Indy hides out in a lead-lined fridge and he gets blown right out of the blast radius.

Spielberg: I'm sure David can work that in.

Koepp: You ... you goat-eating mutant fucker.

Spielberg: David, shut up!

Koepp: Indiana Jones is a 65 year old archaeology prof, not a Jedi. Even if he could survive a one megaton nuclear blast at ground zero in a lead-lined fridge, which he couldn't, he'd be locked inside the fridge. He would suffocate. He would die, scratching for life, in the hot, reeking dark.

[A horrible frozen moment. Spielberg whips his eyes back and forth. Lucas' face has gone slack, his eyes glassy. A thread of spittle unspools from the corner of his mouth. The bell on the goat's collar tinkles from somewhere underneath his turtleneck.]

Lucas: Okay, so the refrigerator is thrown, I dunno, miles or something, and Indy tumbles out. And then he comes face-to-face with a funny little gopher!

Spielberg: Sorry, what?

Lucas: A gopher! I've got a whole unit working on making a CGI gopher. We based it on the code for rendering a Hutt. Just remove the tail and add some fur.

Spielberg: George, I've got to be honest with you, I don't see what a computerized gopher adds to the story.

Lucas: Steve, we have been friends for forty years and I love you like an Imzadi, but I will rip your stupid face off and grate it onto my Cobb salad. I fucking swear.

Spielberg: Okay. One gopher.

Lucas: And a huge army of giant ants that drag people down into their giant ant lair. They're not there for the 'story', Steven, they're there because it will freak people's shit out.

Koepp: That works for me.

Spielberg: Oh yeah. Yeah! I can see it.

Lucas: And to top it off, Indy and Marion and their kid Mutt and crazy Professor Oxley and Mac will find the ancient aliens, and then they will open up an interdimensional portal back to their home world, and then they take off in their spaceship -

Koepp: Wait a sec. Which is it?

Lucas: Which is what, talking meat?

Koepp: Talking meat?

Spielberg: I think what David means to ask is, if the aliens open up an interdimensional portal, then they wouldn't need a spaceship. And if they have a spaceship, then they wouldn't need to open up an interdimensional portal. You see where he's coming from on this, right?

Lucas: I'm going to make this really clear. First, they open up a portal. Then, they fly away in their spaceship.

Koepp: So they fly the spaceship into the portal?

Lucas: What? No, the spaceship is too big! It can't - Steven, where the fuck did you get this talking goat from?

Koepp: But I don't understand.

Lucas: ANGRY!

[Lucas starts shaking. The room begins to collapse around them. An interdimensional portal opens up above Lucas' head, drawing up all the furniture and memorabilia into its blazing maw. Spielberg and Koepp run from the flood waters, which pretty come out of nowhere. Then they find themselves at the bottom of a hole. A shaft of water shoots them out of the hole to safety on the side of a hill. From their position of safety they watch the Skywalker Ranch collapse into itself. From the wreckage a spaceship rises up and flies away.]

Koepp: That made so much sense.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, pretty much. The movie didn't destroy my childlike love of the Indiana Jones movies, but it sure as hell won't be sharing a spot next to them on my shelf, either.

I gave it a resounding 'meh' for a review, but mostly because the music was spot-on. Well done, John Williams!

kat said...

This movie made my life a little bit worse. Thanks again George Lucas.

palinode said...

'sir' - Mostly the film just bewildered me. It felt incoherent and padded out with action, stumbling from one setpiece to the next. The whole thing struck me as a child's interpretation of how a movie should work - Communists! Fighting Aztecs! Aliens! Big ants! Waterfalls! Yeats quotations! Wait, that last one doesn't work.

Now that I think about it, they should have had the alien bursting out of John Hurt's stomach.

kat! - Exactly. Some movies give you something, others take from you. This one robbed us of a portion of our souls.

Anonymous said...

As the PA who brought the goat in, I can confirm that this really happened.

Unknown said...

ROFLMAO (as much as I hate that expression, that's what I feel like doing now)

The movie SO SUCKED

(And I have a friend who works at LucasArts and when Mr Lucas comes to the office they are not supposed to address him or even make eye contact because he hates being bothered by the little people - unless they look tasty I ghuess)

Bruce Johnson said...

Do you have the ONE Hobbit ring that lets you become invisible so you can listen in on these conversations? I am sure this is all 100% accurage since I am positive that this is what Geroge and Steven talk about on a daily basis.

George wanted to be an avante garde film maker in the mode of THX1138 and Apocolypse Now, but he obvious got seduced by the Dark Side after making American Graffiti and the First Star Wars.

palinode said...

pa who brought the goat in - Really? I was the goat. I remember you. You were nice and you smelled like an old tin can, which is my favourite.

becca - That hardly surprises me. And yes, that movie really bit.

lotus07 - Like I said, I was the goat. I got to hear the whole thing.

A friend of mine sent me a copy of Frank Darabont's script for the movie, some of which actually survived on screen. The script feels more like an Indiana Jones movie than the actual movie ever did. Unfortunately the fridge is still in that script.

I'd like to know what happened to the man who made THX 1138. I think he built a George Lucas bot that killed him in his sleep and now runs his empire. Or maybe he's got Lucas trapped in a basement, a scrawny revenant of a man making brilliant claymation films on a Super 8. Someone should send in The Goonies to rescue him.

Bette said...

By the time Shia was swinging with the faux-monkeys, my teeth were ground to nubbins. Such utter shite. My eight-year-old kid kept chirping, "This is so cool!" and I could only pat his arm in mute horror. When we got to the part where the water filled in to hide where the space ship had been, I garroted myself with the straw from my $12 megasoda.

palinode said...

Barbara - The vine-swinging Shia was pretty funny, but not as funny as the bit with sword-fighting Shia getting thwacked repeatedly in the crotch. That was crotch-thwacking gold, destined to be the lead exhibit at the International Museum of Crotch Thwackery.

Elan Morgan said...

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kilowatthour said...

dude. i am 100% certain this is how that movie came about.

Deron said...

Would Lucas really love someone like an Imzadi? I'm pretty sure Roddenberry would have, but Lucas?

I guess Lucas does look a little like a shorter, fatter Riker. And Speilberg-- no, never mind.

palinode said...

schmutzie - Well, woot.

kilowatthour - Oh, it is.

deron - I've been waiting for someone to point out that I put a Roddenberry in Lucas' mouth.

Disgraced Media Baron said...

I love that game, "Things to put in Lucas' mouth"!

Oh wait. I'm thinking about Hungry Hungry Hippos.

palinode said...

I can picture a Lucas version of Hungry Hungry Hippos. Instead of hippos you'd have George Lucases. And instead of little marbles, you'd have everything that was ever good about this world.