Tuesday, March 10, 2009

More Tales from Hollywood

On the sidewalk in front of the Chinese Theater, a shifting cast of wannabe actors mill around dressed as movie characters. Passersby can have their pictures taken with the character of their choice, most likely for a small fee. A trick I will not be falling for again, after some stupid FAKE gladiators outside the Colosseum in Rome got me to take a picture with them and then bilked me out of whatever the lira-equivalent of five dollars is, which, yeah, five dollars but it was one picture with costumed idiots and I can’t even look at it and enjoy the memory without getting pissed and wishing I had castrated that idiot with his stupid plastic sword for tricking me. So I scoffed at the tourists partaking in these photo sessions. One woman we saw, though, took it to a whole new level.


As we were walking around, we kept seeing a reasonable facsimile of Captain Jack Sparrow foppishly running to and fro in front of the theater. With a woman following him with a camcorder. All while shouting at him to keep running. Um, what? On and on they ran, weaving through the crowds, and were quickly out of sight. An hour later, this craziness mostly forgotten, we were confronted with it again, head-on. While walking down the sidewalk, we heard the voice of the amateur director behind us.


Sparrow, in front of blue polo shirt guy; Camerawoman in red hat; Zorro, obvious.

“Keep running! Run through those girls! Run through the middle of them!” Oh, hell no. I was not going to be a part of this foolishness. I stepped to the side and glared as Captain Sparrow flounced by, carefully followed by the camerawoman. And let me tell you, a half hour of running around Los Angeles mid-day did not do anything for their aromas. Phew. Also, there had been some casting additions since the portion of the storyline we had seen earlier.


The story now also involved Zorro sauntering behind Sparrow, absently hitting on people he passed. Now, I was only seeing some chase scene segment of the movie, but I am really getting the sense that this is a movie I would not like to be forced to watch. Because you know she’s going home to splice her hours of footage together on her iMac with her collection of instrumental soundtrack MP3s, burn off some DVDs and then lure her unsuspecting friends over to force them to watch her cinematic catastrophe. Those poor fools.


Someone please tell Zorro that he has to be IN FRONT of the camera to be in the movie?

I never did find out what Sparrow was running from or how Zorro factored in. Maybe she was reshooting the end of Pirates of the Caribbean: People Are Still Paying to See This Nonsense So Let’s Make a Third Movie, because that was one suck-tastically terrible ending. Seven years of single motherhood punctuated with one day of barnacle encrusted visitation rights? Bullshit. I agree: let the Z-man pick up some of the slack. Sure, he may step out on Keira Knightley’s anorexic ass for Catherine Zeta Jones every once in a while, but at least he’s bringing in some income by slashing Zs into stuff. My knowledge of Zorro comes pretty much exclusively from a trailer I saw ten years ago, but I think that’s a pretty accurate assessment of his persona. But for serious, the end of that Pirates movie sucked hard. They should have had the whole trilogy end and then cut away to Robin and Spongebob discussing the ethics of piracy. That would have been more satisfying ending. Or, I just had this picture I wanted to use again because it cracks me up.


Robin and Spongebob offer unique perspectives on piracy. Unfortunately, no one listens.

To whom it may concern: If you are secretly in love with Jack Sparrow, Zorro, Keira Knightley, Catherine Zeta Jones, gladiators, barnacles, Robin or Spongebob and feel that I have slighted them, been flippant with their good names or offended you, please know that I don’t care. Please also know that these people are fictional, not people at all and/or not interested in you. K thanks bye.


0 comments :