Thursday 13: Pitches

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Several weeks ago, buried in my list of thirteen excuses for not doing Thursday 13 the previous week, I mentioned my trip to Hollywood pitching a movie. To tell the truth, I actually pitched thirteen other movies while out there, so here they are:

1. Since Enchanted has sort of stole Shrek's thunder in the fairytale mickey-taking stakes, I proposed a sequel to Shrek where the green ogre, along with Fiona and Donkey, find themselves transported out of their computer-generated landscape and into the real world of New York City. It's called "Shrek's In The City".

2. Superheroes meet Harry Potter, as a stray spell at Hogwarts creates havoc by producing four super-powered pizza-eating Moaning Myrtles, in "Teenage Mutant Whinger Myrtles".

3. A sort of Gremlins-meets-Chucky scenario as a Furby takes on a life of its own, slaying people and then repeating their final screams. It's called "Furby Goes Bananas".

4. Everybody knows that all good movie franchises come in trilogies (Lord of the Rings, Back To The Future, and, hey, look what happened when Star Wars decided to add a fourth film), so how about a sequel to the Kill Bill movies. Now the main problem with this is that the Bride slayed all of her enemies (and then some) in the first two movies, so most of the characters from the first two movies are no more, but we'll get round this by using some voodoo to bring them all back. That's right - a Kill Bill zombie movie where all of the Bride's victims are raised from the dead to get their revenge. It will of course be called "Kill Bill Vol. 3" (sorry, got to stick to the winning formula. Bet you thought I was going to say "Bride's Dead Revisited") .

5. Speaking of Kill Bill, how about a Disney sequel, ripped off ever so slightly from the former, in which the kick-ass heroine travels to France to avenge her family, and finally ends up stained red by the blood of all of her opponents. It's called "Mulan Rouge".

6. Sticking to the Disney theme, I pitched a TV spin-off in which some cooks, desperate to win a restaurant of their own, compete with each other in a kitchen, in a race against time to prepare a meal for two, all under the watchful eye of a monstrous chef with unkempt fur who keeps growling at them, and with the added disadvantage that sometimes the clock they use to time things suddenly performs musical numbers along with their cooking utensils. It's called "Belle's Kitchen".

7. Steve Guttenburg, Tom Selleck and Ted Danson wake up to find their little lady's all grown up and considering gender realignment surgery in "Three Men and a Maybe".

8. Snake Plisken's back, but this time, thanks to state-of-the-ark 2D graphics, he's trapped in a two-dimensional terrorland, in John Carpenter's "Escape From Flatland" (or maybe that should be "Snake's on a Plain").

9. Ben Stiller plays a milkman (not just any milkman, mind you, this is a high-concept movie where he's a man quite literally made of milk following being bitten by a radioactive cow). Anyway, he falls in love with Cameron Diaz, only to discover that she's lactose intolerant, in the romantic comedy "There's Something About Dairy".

10. Following the success of High School Musical comes a musical based on Smallville. It's called Super-Kal-El-Lionel-Chloe-Lex-Pete-Lana-Lois.

11. No doubt the upcoming Star Trek film will reinvigorate the franchise, but, if not, here's a Plan B. To appeal to the teen market, how about a Starfleet Academy movie that drifts into American Pie territory. Since no one wants to see Kirk going around being successful with women, let's focus on Spock and McCoy, on the eve of graduation, desperate to go where they've never gone before, before they get sent off on their five year mission. Anyway, while Spock's going through Pon Farr and McCoy's overdosing on cordrazine, they hatch a desperate plan - with the aid of their incomprehensible Scottish pal - to use a replicator to create duplicates of Kirk's sexy latest squeeze Carol Marcus. Unfortunately, some of Spock's Ponn-Farr-imbued DNA gets mixed up with the DNA they steal from Carol Marcus, and they end up creating two new sex-crazed Carol Marcus clones, and hilarious hijinks ensue, with the red-hot twosome threatening to give tribbles a run for their money. It's called "Doc, Spock and Two Smoking Carols".

12. A follow up to The Bourne Ultimatum (hard to see how they resisted calling that one Bourne Three). This time around, in a fourth-wall-breaking Truman-Showesque twist. the former amnesiac finds that he's not actually Jason Bourne but just a Hollywood actor playing Jason Bourne and in disbelief has to resort to expletives. It's called "I'm %£!$ing Matt Damon".

13. Jason Vorhees turns to memes in "Thursday The Thirteen".

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Thursday 13

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Well, after last week's no-show, it seems only fair that this week I offer thirteen very feasible excuses as to why I didn't do the Thursday 13 last week:

1. I was abducted by aliens. Fortunately they returned me on Friday morning at one minute past midnight, but by then I'd missed the deadline.

2. I was staring at my screen, waiting for inspiration to hit, when I fell asleep and had a ridiculously-convincing dream where I'd written the greatest Thursday 13 of all time. Anyway, I woke up the next morning, not realising it was a dream, thinking I'd already written it (and thanks for all the nice comments I dreamed you left on it, by the way), and it was only when I looked back this week, and noticed that it wasn't there, that the truth dawned on me. Needless to say, dreams being what they are, I can't actually remember the contents of this greatest Thursday 13 of all time, although I'm fairly certain it didn't comprise a list of excuses.

3. I pushed the Publish Post button, but my internet connection is so incomprehensibly slow that you'll not see it until next Thursday.

4. You know how sometimes the brain can protect itself from traumatic situations by repressing memories. Well, that's what yours has done with last week's Thursday 13 of mine. I suspect if you look back you won't even see it - isn't the human mind an amazing thing?

5. Following my previous Thursday 13 about my favourite numbers, I was being held hostage by some militant mathematicians, incensed that I'd omitted their favourite of ninety-nine, a number that conjured up images for them of red balloons and bottles of beers on the wall. When I pointed out that I'd also had to miss out seven, despite it being magnificent, they finally let me go.

6. I was going to post a Thursday 13. Indeed, I'd spent ages working on a list of my favourite months, but then just at the end I saw the horrible flaw in my plan. As a result, at the last minute, thinking on my feet, I switched to discussing my favourite signs of the Zodiac. D'oh!

7. I had to abandon it since, despite hours working on it, it failed to reach the stringent standards of quality control required for my blog (i.e. it still consisted solely of the words "Thursday 13").

8. I did actually post it. It was a list of thirteen conspiracy theories, which blew the lid off just about everything. But as soon as I posted it, THEY removed it.

9. I posted it, but then it turned out to be exactly the same as the first person's Thursday 13, word for word. Thinking I'd be accused of plagiarism, I typed up another 13, but they matched the second person's. So I did it again, and they matched the third person's. At this point, I think you can see the pattern emerging.

10. Sure, I wrote it, but I didn't think you could handle it. Maybe next week.

11. At the last minute, I realised that if I did post it, then this week's Thursday 13 wouldn't make any sense.

12. Okay, my most faithful reader, I'll tell you the truth, but you're sworn to secrecy (don't worry about the other readers; I'm using clever HTML so that they're actually now reading something different and far more funny). I was out in Hollywood pitching a movie, hoping to get it greenlighted. It's yet another entry in the "Look Who's Talking" franchise, but this time with the high-concept twist that instead of having the adventures of a baby voiced by Bruce Willis, I turn things on their head and have the adventures of Bruce Willis voiced by a baby. It'll be called "What You Talkin' 'Bout, Willis?"

13. All of the above

Honest, that's what happened. Would I lie to you?

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