The Day After Tomorrow, We'd Get Sued

South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have been working on Team America, a movie in which all the parts will be played by marionettes. It sounds like fun, but as the heavily hyped disaster flick The Day After Tomorrow rolls into theaters, I find myself missing the film that might have been.

"It started when we got snuck a script of The Day After Tomorrow, that Roland Emmerich movie about how global warming causes an ice age in two days," Stone told E! Online last summer. "It's the kind of script where you know it's going to make hundreds of millions of dollars, which makes it the greatest dumb script ever.

"We planned to secretly shoot that movie with puppets, word for word, and release it on the same day. We thought that would have been hilarious, but our lawyer convinced us we wouldn't get it released."

Comments

[fyodor]

Lawyers always spoil the fun. Never consult with your lawyer!

[Eryk Boston]

Always consult a lawyer.
-Signed, a lawyer

[Gilbert Martin]

Shooting it word for word with puppets would have been funny but it would have been even funnier if they had added a bit onto the end with an Al Gore puppet single handedly re-warming the climate by running his mouth.

He puts out enough hot air to melt any glacier.

[ERock]

They did bust on Day After in the future imigrants episode. One of the rednecks suggests ending the future by fueling global warming to start an ice age. It's dismissed as a horribly stupid idea, right before they agree to form the man pile.

[mtc]

I noticed that too ERock, but it wasn't quite as funny as it should have been because they corrected the redneck saying ice ages and global warming take millions of years to occur, which isn't correct. Tens of thousands or even just thousands (hundreds?) of years would be accurate, and would have still sufficently driven home their point. I'm just a fucking nit-picker, what can i say.

Of course most people probably still beleive if the ice caps melted, it would cover almost all the land on earth. Thanks Kevin Costner.

[s.m. koppelman]

Messrs. Parker and Stone aren't infallible. "That's My Bush!" was a squandered opportunity of epic scale, tamer than "South Park" when it should have been meaner than a sackful of feral cats.

My great unproduced TV pitch is this: known film directors re-shooting episodes of old TV shows. David Lynch doing "Three's Company", Jane Campion doing "I Love Lucy", Peter Greenaway doing "Gilligan's Island", etc.

[Kevin]

Oh my God! The Ice Age killed Kenny!

[kevrob]

Team America! One of the worst Marvel Comics of the 1980's, if not of all time! Motorcycle racing mutants, for crying out loud, and based on a toy, to boot.

Hmm...you can't copyright titles, but that trademark is probably lapsed. Call your lawyer.

Kevin

[Xavier]

I was very disappointed in that future immigrants episode. The issue with the immigrants was posed as a conflict between preserving the jobs of the present inhabitants and helping the future immigrants. They never once considered the idea that having a large cheap labor force would be good because things would get produced at a very low cost.

[Fred]

I saw a sneak of The Day After Tomorrow and I thought it was performed by marionettes.

[steve]

South Park! I love those intrepid little fellas!

[Mark Bahner]

"My great unproduced TV pitch is this: known film directors re-shooting episodes of old TV shows. David Lynch doing "Three's Company", Jane Campion doing "I Love Lucy", Peter Greenaway doing "Gilligan's Island", etc."

I have an even better idea. It's...Monty Python re-shooting...Sam Peckinpah! That would be just super!

http://www.ibras.dk/montypython/episode33.htm#9

[Geotech]

"Messrs. Parker and Stone aren't infallible. "That's My Bush!" was a squandered opportunity of epic scale, tamer than "South Park" when it should have been meaner than a sackful of feral cats."

If I remember correctly, they went on Dennis Miller Live to promote the show and basically said it wasn't really supposed to be a spoof of the Bush Administration. They also basically said that they didn't have a problem with Bush, at least at the time.

I don't they swing left.

[Russ D]

You remember the same short-lived series as me. Whew, for a minute I thought I might have been hallucinating.

Haynes sort of used your concept in Far From Heaven. Unless you're thinking along the lines of Lucy and Ethel being lesbians.

Anyone else remember the SCTV bit where Eddie Haskell comes out of the closet?

[dhex]

joe: no, not that i've ever heard. it more or less points the blame at sexual abuse by her father. lots of barbie spanking sequences, but if you can find a copy of it somewhere, booted no doubt, check it out.

safe is excellent and darkly funny.

[James Anderson Merritt]

Hey SMK, lay off "That's My Bush!" If you think it needed to be meaner, then I suspect you didn't "get" it. I found it alternately hilarious, outrageous, and just plain rude. Not to mention incredible, in the sense that the "Paper Chase's" Mr. Hart -- Timothy Bottoms -- has apparently matured into a dead ringer for W. Who'da thunk it?

At my place, we taped all the episodes one day, when Comedy Central ran them all, marathon-style. It's one of the best tapes in our comedy collection.

TMB never gets enough praise, in my opinion. Frankly, if the show had been any meaner to Bush and Co., I don't think it would have been successful in portraying him as a lovable sitcom Dad, which always was a major goal of the series. But they played right up against that line, in almost every episode I can recall. I mean, c'mon: they made fun of W's trip to a prison to witness (and participate in!) an execution! And that was one of the tamer episodes.

They couldn't have continued the series past 9/11 anyway, so I'm glad they made the episodes they did. Someday, after the sting of 9/11 has faded, when the Bushites are gone or at least can't get away with questioning the patriotism of anyone who criticizes them anymore, it'll be time to pull out this tape and laugh again.

[s.m. koppelman]

No, no, no Russ. 😉

Not parodies and what-ifs or Haynes-style riffs on a genre. I want to see line-for-line, verbatim remakes of episodes of old TV shows, shot from transcripts, recontexualized solely through acting and visual style.

[joe]

Did anyone else see the word for word remake of "The Karen Carpernter Story" with Barie dolls?

[Gary Gunnels]

Oh I love cheesy disaster flicks - they are the best movies to MST3K. Remember "Independence Day?" Oh yes, that Apple OS to Alien OS interface is going to work just so well! 🙂 I nearly died of a seizure when I saw that for the first time. Oh, and there's the whole issue of gravity distortions from the alien ships, as well as the horrific impact their crash landings would have on the environment - yes fifty ships the size of good-sized meteors hitting the planet and burning!!!! Hoorah!!! 🙂

I could go on and on about "Starship Troops" - like, that's one mighty fast meteor you got their bugs! 🙂

Anyway, these films are just great; keep them coming.

[Russ D]

koppelman,

I swear someone actually tried that pitch. I think it was NBC, but I'm probably wrong.

[dhex]

joe - superstar is fantastic. too bad the family crushed it.

then again, it did creepily hint at incest and other unmentionables...using disfigured barbie dolls.

todd haynes has done some neat stuff.

[Jesse Walker]

I've seen Superstar, Joe. I don't think it's supposed to be a remake of anything.

That and Safe are Haynes' best movies.

[joe]

I thought they stole the script from a TV movie. No?

[s.m. koppelman]

I seem to remember a short-lived series where the cast did campy reenactments of bits from old sitcoms.

I'm thinking more along the lines of, say, a Lynch "Three's Company" that depicts the roommates living in paralyzing mortal fear of Jack's "secret" being discovered by the landlord, or a Campionized "I Love Lucy" that plays up Lucy and Ethel's feeble, stunted responses to their oppression in patriarchal 1950s midde-class society.

[joe]

Perhaps a "Leave it to Beaver" espisode, in which "the Beaver" is a daughter?

[Converse ALL STAR OX UK Outlet]

It makes sense