Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Why Won't You Chimp?!

(If I play my cards right, maybe I can be as famous as Bruce Vilanch. )

Let me explain.

Monday at lunch, one of my coworkers mentioned that she ha recently seen Space Chimps with her kids. I immediately (and quite sensibly, I think) said that I would NEVER go see a movie with chimps in it. "The last movie I saw," I said, "that featured chimps was Project X and that was good mostly because of Helen Hunt." "Nevermore," I stated flatly "would I see a chimp movie."

"Even if that chimp movie was the just a really good movie that had a chimp in it."

And thus it began.

My work friends then spent the next fifteen or twenty minutes reworking the titles of just about every movie we could think of

Top Chimp

Return of the Chimp

The Good, the Bad, and the Chimp

The Remains of the Chimp

You get the idea. (It might not sound funny now--I don't know--but it was REALLY funny at the time. Perhaps you have to hear the chimpified titles and immediately image the newly configured image.)

But here's the larger point I'm trying to make.

Wouldn't this make a GREAT opening bit at the upcoming Academy Awards ceremony? Every awards show starts with a montage of the Best Picture movies. Well, imagine replacing Slumdog Millionaire with Slumchimp Millionaire. How about The Curious Case of Benjamin Chimp? Or maybe Chimp/Nixon? And who wouldn't go see Chimp After Reading? They could even make it more impressive by digitally replacing a character with a chimp. So, instead of Brad Pitt aging backwards, you get an "actor" who goes from this to this.

ANYWAY . . . I need to pitch my idea to the aforementioned Bruce Vilanch. I think he is still the guy that writes many of what passes for "jokes" during the Oscar broadcast. I think this idea is a winner.
And if no one will go for that . . . then a full scale, live version of this item will be almost as good:


4 comments:

David said...

This entry might not strike you as funny since you weren't there at it's inception.

But, you have to acknowledge the depth of the Project X Wikipedia entry that I provided above. THAT is funny!

If you didn't stop to click on it before, go back and read.

lulu said...

It sounds delightful, actually.

Kill Chimp
Kill Chimp 2
Chimpless in Seattle
The Breakfast Chimp
The Chimp Seduction
The Chimp Connection
Chimps of the Caribbean
The 40-Year Old Chimp

Brokeback Chimp

I think the rhetorical mind meld 'Would you refuse to see a great movie just because it had a chimp in it?' is more of a riddle, the answer being "There has never been nor will there ever be a great movie featuring a chimp."

David said...

Sorry, Lulu, but did you NOT see the mention of Project X? At LEAST you can count THAT as a great movie . . . that might have prominently involved a chimp.

I'll admit that I preformed a search for "monkey" on IMDB to see if there was any chance of finding a stellar monkey movie. I guess I should have used a more generic term or started listing other searches because I didn't get Project X or Any Which Way But Loose. So, I guess monkey/ape=cinematic death.

I suspected as much, right? But it's good to get emperical proof.

Done rambling now. Who even reads these comments anyway?

Anonymous said...

Space Chimps is a good laugh, but only because of "kilowatt," who has become one of my favorite cartoon characters.