Reel Suite: August 6, 2008

This week has been mind-bloggering!  I've been ripped off!  Ripped off, I tell you!  (More on that in a bit). 

First, I'd like to thank our temp Tomoko for rescuing me from my office after last week's earthquake toppled beams and left me trapped, screaming for help.  Tomoko is only 4'8" and 86 pounds, but she's Yao Ming to me!

Second, my gratitude to Carl Yang for taking over the blog last week, reporting his Comic-Con exploits very colorfully.  As a matter of fact, hats off to all the Asians on my floor.  Domo aregato, Mr. Roboto, you industrious sons of bitches!
 
This week's focus:  Theatrical Box Office Anomalies.  I had breakfast Monday with my counterparts Dustin Edwards from Disney and Jay Kaplan from Fox, and judging from their mass consumption of Bloody Mary's, their weekend cumes were clearly not through the roof.  We all found it ironic that Starz/Fox's "Space Chimps" may end up grossing more than Disney's "Swing Vote" and Fox's "X-Files: I Want to Believe" combined.  Combined!  Apparently, Americans hate Kevin Costner, have had enough of Kelsey Grammer and his heart, equate Nathan Lane with gay marriage, and are sick of presidential cam-PAINS, paranormal activity and Amanda Peet.  But monkeys in space?  Bring it on!  Not that "Chimps" is a blockbuster; we just found it curious that an innocuous monkey movie with virtually no marketing is outpacing star-driven vehicles with brand recognition.  But the presence of this film in the marketplace has a personal resonance for me, and after doing some research, I'm hopping mad!
 
As many of you know, I was once an aspiring screenwriter, and one of my unproduced screenplays from the 90s is called "Apollo: Primates!"  It won honorable mention in the 1998 ASPCA International Screenplay competition.  It chronicles a group of ragtag, flight-obsessed monkeys who soar toward the stratosphere in a cardboard box attached to helium balloons.  A team of resourceful orangutans on the ground do everything they can to save the chimps before they disintegrate. 

Back when I wrote this, I was living with a woman named Tangie (Angie with a T).  Tangie was a nurse with a foot fetish who worked for a podiatrist.  She had pale skin, flat, long red hair that covered one side of her face, and she dressed like a shopgirl from the Depression.  I would crack jokes and she would just stare at me, eyes at half-mast, slowly chewing gum.  I thought she hated me, but in bed she would completely devour my feet.  I mean, just gorge on them like a lost hiker on a chicken leg.  And loudly growl while she was doing it.  The growl became a howl.  The neighbors would pound on the walls, and more than once they called the cops on us.  It was a wild time.
 
Tangie read my "Primates" script and suggested I focus more on the monkeys' feet, gripping the cardboard box for dear life.  When I told her monkeys don't have feet, they actually have four hands, she turned ashen (if such a thing was possible) and locked herself in the bathroom, weeping, breaking glass objects in the tub, and shouting, "No, no, no, no, no...."  After that, our relationship was on thin ice.  When I got a raging case of athletes foot from the contra-dance class I was taking, she wouldn't come anywhere near me.  One day, she left me a letter saying she was moving in with a guy named Kirk who was writing the animated film "Quest for Camelot".  Apparently he didn't contra-dance and his feet were pristine.
 
Fade out, fade in.  2008.  I check the credits for "Space Chimps", and who wrote and directed it?  A guy named Kirk.  Kirk DeMicco.  ALSO the writer on "Quest for Fricking Camelot"!!!!  Clearly, Tangie told him my story and it stuck with him all these years.  Come to find out, Tangie is now Tangie DeMicco, and she's all miss Pacific Palisades.  Apparently, you can even see the other side of her face!
 
Well, don't think that Mr. Kurt Barnet is going to take this lying down.  Why, it's plagiarism, libelism... any kind of "ism" you can get your hands on.  I knew America was ready for monkeys in space before Starz/Fox did!  If Manka Bros. Films was smart, they would snap up the rights to "Apollo: Primates!" while the monkey-getting is good.  I see "Apollo Primates 2: Mars Mission!"  It's lucrative, I tell ya!
 
I've decided my lawyer in the plagiarism suit will be... Tomoko the temp.  If she can move a 200 pound beam, she can kick Kirk DeMicco's thieving ass.  I'll keep you all posted...

Kurt Barnet