COLUMN: Forget health reform, America needs Hollywood reform
This would be fine if it extended only to sets, props and other material goods. Unfortunately, they seem to be most aggressive in the idea department. The Fugitive, Cape Fear, Batman, Highlander, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Flintstones, Father of the Bride, Rambo, "Lois and Clark" (a.k.a. Superman ), Kung Fu (The Legend Gets Milked), The Getaway, Back to the Future, The Addams Family, Weird Science (the series), RoboCop (I, II, III or the series, take your pick), Beethoven's Second, Beverly Hills Cop 3, Rocky IV, Nightmare on Elm Street V and Friday the 13th part VI (Jason takes the Muppets to Manhattan) all suffer from this very public form of déjà vu.
Clearly, the smog in Los Angeles has begun to affect even the people who can afford to breathe filtered air, causing premature brain death amongst thousands of studio executives and script writers. If there was any doubt before, Problem Child 2 has confirmed for me that the well has run dry. Hollywood has no more ideas.
Personally, I couldn't care less about the demise of originality in the entertainment industry, but there is the public good to consider. After all, most crimes are committed between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., which not-so-coincidentally is when movie prices are at their highest, the popcorn under the heat lamps tops out in staleness and infomercials peak in stupidity. This country doesn't need another crime bill, this country needs better movies and TV shows to get hoodlums off the streets.
Having spent several hours in the cause of justice and public mental health, I feel that I am uniquely unqualified to save American society. However, there are precious few volunteers around these days, so I guess I get the job. Keeping in mind there are no stupid questions, just stupid ideas, here's the plan:
1) OK, the plan's a bit hazy here, but it would somehow involve a lot of money suddenly coming into my possession. It could involve winning the lottery, obtaining government grants, stealing an armored truck or patenting that Madonna harness I've been working on.
2) Form a movie/television studio. Or, if I'm feeling like a non-gender specific Tokyo business individual, I buy one.
3) Make the following movies and TV shows:
* A touching story about how a boy with no duodenum overcomes adversity to become both a serial killer and a poet.
* A thriller about a husband-wife team who fight off crazed Jehovah's Witnesses on their farm outside of Omaha, Neb.
* A sci-fi mystery drama about a physicist who gets trapped inside Schrödinger's box only to discover he's actually half a cat whose real mother rejected him.
* An upbeat musical about the life and times of Ghengis Khan.
* A comedy about three misfit surgeons who go around removing each other's organs and overcharging their patients, but in the end learn the true value of medicine when one of them throws a Robitussin party.
* A soap opera which follows the trials and tribulations of a trailer-park family as they sleep with their cousins and shoot each other in drunken fits. (First season cliffhanger: a tornado hits the trailer park.)
* A gritty, real-life show about six janitors and the crises they face daily.
* An action series which follows a graduate student and his faithful sidekick as they battle committees, collect data and write grant proposals.
Tempora Bona Volvant and let's do lunch sometime.
Jym Schwartz is a second-year graduate student in the Department of Geology and Geophysics.
This item appeared in the Opinion section of the March 18, 1994 issue.
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