Hollywood bones me yet again

(originally posted 11/7/2017)

I’ve just about had it with Hollywood. I was just notified that yet another one of my scripts was rejected. This rejection is particularly hard to take because I feel I swung for the fences on this one.

This one was big budget.

The perfect vehicle for some hunky A-lister to rule next summer. This was a blockbuster waiting to happen. It had it all; the sci-fi angle, suspense, taglines and just a hint of creepiness.

A crew of astronauts land on a far-off world to investigate an unknown monolith that sits in the center of the planet. Under the direction of Skip Mangold, the stone-jawed veteran of dozens of such missions despite his youthful appearance, the team sets out to solve the puzzle of this deserted ruin.

With the help of the nerdy yet stunningly-attractive Sara Leeson, an expert in countless alien languages, they plunge into a scenario nobody outside of the millions of eager theatergoers would ever suspect.

After putting the pieces together Sara turns to the camera and states “This isn’t a monolith. This is a baking pan.”

You see, they are exploring a planet that was occupied at one time by a highly intelligent race of creatures that needed bodies to move around in. Composed of thin sheets of plasma, they baked huge bodies and would wrap themselves around the heads. Somehow this allowed them to control them and lumber around.

And when I say they baked these bodies I mean no such thing. They had slaves bake them.

All of this is slowly uncovered as the intrepid team of explorers delves further and further into the structure.

Finally they uncover the most horrifying secret of all. At one time these creatures had visited Earth with the intention of subjugating humanity and making them their slaves.

“The Gingerbread Man. The story my Mom told me as a kid” says a solemn Captain Mangold.

“Yes … but she had it all wrong” offers up their resident historian Voltaire Severin, “It was we that needed to run as fast as we can. Could. As fast as we could.” He then begins to decipher the events as told on a battered scroll they uncover near an ancient oven. Ingredients vary throughout the cosmos but there are certain things necessary for these ghostlike-bodies to manipulate what comes out of the oven.

“This scroll tells what is needed to bake the perfect body.”

“Bodies that will then go on to enslave the population” whispers a clearly rattled Miss Leeson.

“Which makes this scroll ….” The camera pulls tight to Skip Mangold’s face. The background music stops. All noise on the entire planet stops. The people responsible for making the movie trailer have to look no further than this scene.

Ok, let me do that again without commentating so you get the full gravity of the tagline.

“This scroll tells what is needed to bake the perfect body.”

“Bodies that will then go on to enslave the population” whispers a clearly rattled Miss Leeson.

“Which makes this scroll …. a recipe for disaster.”

I know. I know. Brilliant.

You could have the spooky retelling of the Gingerbread Man. The epic flashback of a fox eating the delectable alien to save the planet from certain doom. Maybe even a cameo from Clooney or Pitt as a man named Fox. Or even David Duchovny as a tip of the hat to X-Files fans.

My point being that this film has it all. Expensive sets. Actors floating around in space. Dark corridors filled with secrets and opportunities to make the audiences jump out of their seats. Diabolicalness. Movie-related snacks at the concession stand.

The tie-ins with the Food Network are too many to count.

“This summer … run… run… as fast as you can!” should be blasting across every TV in America, but no.

Hollywood has once again rejected me and my vision.

Pearls before swine.