January 10, 2005

"What if Satan were a high school cheerleader?"

Posted by Ted

We can all stop blogging now (and not a moment too soon). “Query Letters I Love” has found the ultimate use for the medium: posting and mocking real Hollywood script queries from wannabe screenwriters. Just a sample:

“The protagonist’s challenges throughout the story are:

1) A seagull attack gave him Seagull Herpes, an incurable disease that will soon kill him.

2) The seagull attack also tore a bone within his calf in two. His best medicines are herbs and acupuncture, so the bone never fully heals, and it causes internal bleeding for him to walk. The story involves him running a lot…”

I’m in love.

Posted on January 10, 2005 08:03 PM UTC
Comments

Wow. That is about the least work-safe site I have ever seen.

Posted by Jeremy Osner · January 10, 2005 08:29 PM

The word “Cheerleader” appears on that page precisely twice, and yet all the google ads are for “cheerleader uniforms”. Google’s algorithms often confirm my rather low opinion of humanity.

(devoutly hoping that this is in fact a result of google’s general advert system, rather than any particular personalisation settings of mine, which I suppose it quite likely could be).

Posted by dsquared · January 10, 2005 08:37 PM

Abso-bloody-lutely brilliant! thanks!

It seems perfectly work safe to me, Jeremy, but maybe my boss is more understanding… (-_-;)

Posted by Andrew McManama-Smith · January 10, 2005 10:11 PM

In the television end of the business the queries are quite different. The outlandishness factor is next to nil; instead, it’s “my car dealership/real estate office/minor league hockey franchise would make a great sitcom.”

Maybe the Buffy guys are the ones who get the Satan’s cheerleaders stuff.

Posted by Delicious pundit · January 10, 2005 10:48 PM

The scary part was how many of them I could imagine being made as anime:

“When a 13-year-old mute girl moves with her parents to an isolated cottage, she discovers she can communicate with the trees who ask for her aid to rid the forest of an evil hobgoblin that is destroying the forest.”

If it had been made by Hayao Miyazaki, I’d be rushing out to by the DVD. The dialogue between the mute girl and the tree might be a problem. Either it’s like the “selling a picture” episode in Rohmer’s “Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle”, or both she and the tree gain the power of speech when she’s transported into the spirit world.

Posted by SusanC · January 11, 2005 12:16 AM

If this is the quality of even only half the ideas floating around Hollywood, it’s no wonder studios have been putting out so many remakes.

I guess what my friend in Los Angeles said is true: everyone’s looking to hire someone with a brain out there.

Posted by william · January 11, 2005 12:57 AM

The one about evil midgets sounds pretty good, in a Bubba Ho-Tep way.

Posted by George · January 11, 2005 01:36 AM

The only thing wrong with the titular query letter is that nagging certainty that if Adam Sandler hasn’t already made that film, he without question has it optioned.

Posted by schwa · January 11, 2005 05:42 AM

Satan as cheerleader? This may be worse than one might have imagined.

In the trial of one of the prison guards at Abu Ghraib:

Graner’s attorney said piling naked prisoners into pyramids and leading them by a leash were acceptable methods of prisoner control. He compared this to pyramids made by cheerleaders at sports events and parents putting tethers on toddlers. “Don’t cheerleaders all over America form pyramids six to eight times a year. Is that torture?”

A commenter at TalkLeft objected,

Are cheerleaders stripped naked before they form a pyramid?

That Bush was himself once a cheerleader may or may not be beside the point.

Posted by bad Jim · January 11, 2005 09:23 AM

Well, reading right-wingers endlessly rationalise their support of power is fun, but the Query Letters site is blogging at its best, I love it!
By the way, why do Americans find midgets endlessly funny? They really really leave me cold.

Posted by Matthew2 · January 11, 2005 10:20 AM

Are cheerleaders stripped naked before they form a pyramid?

I’m sure someone has an option on the film rights.

Posted by ian · January 11, 2005 10:35 AM

At first I laughed and laughed, but after a while I started getting scared. People who write these things actually inhabit the world I live in. One of them may be sitting next to me on a bus. The friendly neighborhood grocery store clerk might have written the one about Evil Midgets. A girl I have a crush on may be in the process of completing her script as I write this.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at people the same way again.

Posted by radek · January 11, 2005 08:39 PM

I love this site totally and completely (and it is great to teach scriptwriting with too).

I do wonder if the taglines and synopses of many great Hollywood movies are much better. Or sometimes, if these movies would play as bad as they read.

It depends I suppose on whether they are played as drama or comedy. There is a legend that “Paint Your Wagon” was flogged for years as a serious movie, bought by some dumb exec and pushed ahead until the artistic team decided it would only play as a musical.

Posted by David Tiley · January 12, 2005 03:56 PM
Followups

This discussion has been closed. Thanks to everyone who contributed.