Let's take it a little easy, just this first time. Warm up on something we can all relate to and get pissed about. Something near and dear to my heart. Issues we can pretty much agree on. Tactics and buttfuckery you may or may not know about, but we can all pretty much agree they suck. Knowing that these things happen, knowing how the logic works,
and generally being aware of the problem. Awareness is always the first step. So, what is it that's got my panties in a bunch now?

I'm talking about the movies, my little dumplings.

We'll warm up on that, and next week I can start in on the shit that's probably going to get you pissed at me. Which I welcome. Being pissed means you care. And that's what I'm trying to do, here. Make you care. Trying to see if you can keep your attention span on one thing for more than 3 minutes. One thing that doesn't have pretty pictures or an interactive quiz or whatever the fuck.

So tune that MP3 player out, put up your away message, and for god's sake turn off that motherfucking camera phone. That's the last time I'm going to warn you before I strap you down and shit on your face.

Let's get started. We have a lot of ground to cover, and this column is going to be a long one. But if you manage to make it all the way to the end of the column and read every single word, I promise to show you a keen multimedia presentation that will numb all your senses!

No I won't.

Let's start off with what goes on the screen before the thing we paid to see goes on the screen -- the Advertising Gang Bang. You know what I'm talking about. You get situated in your little seat about ten minutes before the movie starts -- any if you're one of those people who's content to show up 10 minutes after the listed start time, get the fuck off my column and go watch Survivor or something, you tardy piece of camel shit -- and then those commercials come up. Maybe it's Celine Dion singing about the virtues of driving a Chrysler. Maybe it's monkeys peddling online ticket purcashing (look! it's monkeys, therefore it must be funny! ... I hate you) Maybe, god help us, we're going to get that fucking commercial where paper bags tell us to buy tickets over the phone, because wouldn't it be great to be just like those fucking paper bags?

Movie Chain Owners of America, if you are going to subject us to this shit, at least make sure your advertisers pump out some fresh material more than once every six months. If I have to be subjected to their attempts to squeegee my brain, after I have dished out cash for inflated ticket prices and after I have dished out more cash for grossly inflated concession prices, at least be entertaining about it.

A woman once told me she thought the commercials would be a force for good. (I know, I know -- stay with me here.) She explained to me that if the movie theatre chains scored some extra cash from showing us Celine Sings the Chrysler Classics, they could cut down on the price of tickets. I wonder when she thinks that mythical price dip is going to take place. Ask our friends in New York City what they think about that theory -- aren't you guys paying 10 bucks for an evening show now?

Here's what happens: A movie theatre makes, tops, a quarter (that's one fourth, not 25 cents, brainiac) of each ticket they sell. So we'll say you buy yourself a ticket at the price of $8. The theatre pockets $2, and the other $6 is forfeit to the Dark Masters of Print Distribution and beyond. On a Friday night for an opening movie, that'll net the theatre about $2000 to $3000 for one screen. To the poverty-stricken (me), that sounds like a lot of money. It's not. Where do the theatres really make their money? Concessions. And commercials. That shit is pure fucking green, through and through. When presented with an opportunity to either cut profits and be The Good Guys or to stick it to the customers just a little more for a larger profit, which path have these baby-kicking vampires historically taken?

If you're waiting for me to answer that for you, go back to watching network TV. American Idol needs your ratings.

So that's commercials. Next come the trailers. Now, we all know the typical clichés: "In a world... blah blah blah, moody scenery shots... one man... yadda yadda, shot of the male lead looking moody... will change forever." None of that shit is news. Frankly, we know what to expect when the trailers come up, and the only people still harping on them are cut-rate comedians who probably have jokes about Shaggy being a pothead in their retinue, too. Fuck them.

What I really hate are the trailers for independent films -- excuse me, the guy in the Converse and vintage t-shirt just sniffed his nose indignantly, let me correct myself -- "indie films." You've seen it. Screen goes dark. Cue the slow, mournful violins. Show us the accolades: "Official Selection, Donkey's Scrotum Film Festival, Vagina, Iowa," "'The Greatest Piece of Filmic Art Since Ghost Ship!' - Easily Excitable Critic You've Never Heard Of," "From the Director of 'Pretentious Dialogue and Meaningful Pauses'," and so on. Then you get the clips that, strung together, mean absolutely nothing, but are full of Important Dialogue and more quotes praising this movie as the greatest piece of art ever committed to the human retina, so why haven't you seen it, you uncultured peasant?

Jesus Christ. Believe me, I'm all for proletarian art -- all forms of expression belong anywhere but in the hands of the privileged -- but this shit is really getting out of hand. It is one thing to pursue an unconventional story even if you do not have the backing of Hollywood. It is a perfectly respectable path to avoid the test groups and cockeyed marketing and blame-game of the studio fuckheads. It is quite another to give me yet another exploration of your struggles as a gay Hassidic Jew in love.

You thought I made that last part up, didn't you?

Of course, the mainstream alternative isn't too promising, is it? There's such a creative dirth in Hollywood that I find myself patiently waiting for some studio to bite the bullet and adapt a mindless arcade shooter.

Oh, wait...

I'm not sure what really pushed me over the edge here. Maybe it was that the entire summer was pretty much dominated by limp, uninspired sequels -- and the studios had the balls to act surprised that almost every single sequel underperformed. Maybe it's because the only movies that really did anything were adapted from best-selling novels, comic books, and (this just seems so insane, typing it out) a fucking theme park ride.Maybe it's being subjected, yearly, to another WB Stars in Peril slasher flick masquerading as a genuine horror film. Maybe it was From Justin to Kelly.

The sequels, the adaptations, From Justin Who? to Never-Has-Been Kelly, looking at this loser's line-up, we would think that there just aren't any original ideas coming into Hollywood, wouldn't we? We'd be wrong. Each year over 10,000 new scripts flow into Bizarro SoCal, and that's just fresh material. We're not even considering the properties and scripts purchased over the past two decades that have never been used. I know there are a lot of worthless writers out there, and that at least 75% of those scripts have to be trite pieces of shit, but that still leaves us 2,500 scripts of at least average quality. Where are those movies? Where are the original ideas? Why is the entire fucking Oscar line-up going to be comprised almost entirely of adaptations and fictional takes on factual occurences?

The WB Stars in Peril situation, though... I have a special place in Hell set up just for the dog-fucking leeches responsible for this shit. I'm a horror fan, see, and I hate to see my favorite genre treated this way, much as you'd hate to see your darling little sister triple-penetrated by pedophiles dipped in bird shit.

It's the same formula, year in and year out: take some lame, half-conceived pile of shit very very loosely based on either The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th (but never Nightmare on Elm Street, as that actually had a creative, unique twist on the slasher genre idea), or god help us, Scream. Cast a WB starlet (or star, in the case of Valentine) who's had basketballs injected into her tits, so she can "break into movies." (Quick -- tell me the last time this tactic has worked with real success.) Put, I dunno, a Groucho Marx nose on the killer's face and let him use some trademark weapon, like an ice cream scoop. Voila! The movie costs $35 to make, and it'll rake in $70, so we have 200% take!

What's worse is that these pretender slasher flicks shoot for the light end of R-rated, so the women in the roles of the Chicks Who Get Topless Before Dying don't even get topless. If we're going to gangrape the genre's corpse, fellas, let's go all the way. Let's not go weak sister when we get to the saving graces.

I don't know who's buying tickets for this shit. It isn't me. It isn't any of my friends (that's why they're my friends, see). Is it you? Did you lay out money for Bad Boys II and send a signal to Hollywood saying "yes, we really do want to be subjected to more tired bullshit in place of something challenging and new"?

I know what some of you people are thinking. You're thinking, "oh come on, we just went to see House of the Dead because it'd be fun for a laugh. It didn't cost much, and we're above it, see? We make fun of it and have a good time and we use irony to mask our shallow motivations and even shallower lives. We're not the problem."

Yes, yes you are the problem. You are very much the problem, and I have a knife that would like to discuss the problem with your testicles at great length. I don't care how you justify patronizing shit -- how you can convince yourself and others that it's okay for you to pay money to see bad movies, or to watch any sort of reality show with "Joe" in the name, or buy an American Idol album, or pick up a copy of US Weekly. You can tell me you just want to survey trash culture and laugh at it, but you know what?

You're being played for a sucker and you know it. The Evil Men who peddle their shit to us commoners, they bank on people like you just as much as they bank on the genuine morons (and hey, at least the morons are honest about what they are). It doesn't matter what your supposed motivation is for buying into trash, so long as you put your money in their hands. Once that money has changed hands, justify it all you want, your message is loud and clear:

KEEP SELLING US WORTHLESS SHIT, BECAUSE WE WILL BUY IT.

You can vote with your dollar every single day of your life, my little dumplings. Put your paychecks into the wrong hands and Mass Culture will only continue to fuck you in the ass. Choose wisely and we may yet get out of this static, water-treading fix we've gotten ourselves into.

Think about it.

-Crimson