{"id":514,"date":"2009-02-22T17:32:07","date_gmt":"2009-02-23T00:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wwwold.sketchwar.org\/?p=514"},"modified":"2009-02-22T17:32:07","modified_gmt":"2009-02-23T00:32:07","slug":"peter%e2%80%99s-commentary-on-the-%e2%80%9cpimp-my-tv%e2%80%9d-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sketchwar.org\/?p=514","title":{"rendered":"Peter\u2019s Commentary on the \u201cPimp My TV\u201d Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Okay, I’m finally catching up on some more commentary entries for Sketchwar<\/a>. The week of 2\/13\/09, the topic was “Pimp My TV”.<\/p>\n

I should explain this a bit: “Pimp My TV”<\/a> is a contest from the Alamo Drafthouse<\/a>‘s “Filmmaking Frenzy”<\/a>. It’s a contest for filmmaking teams in which each team picks an old TV show and then shoots a trailer for a film based on that TV show.<\/p>\n

We thought that idea sounded like fun, so we all decided to create trailers for TV-show adaptations.<\/p>\n

We had all sorts of entries this time around. Mr. Robertson did trailers for The Facts of Life<\/em><\/a> and Chico and the Man<\/em><\/a>. Mr. Porter did entries for The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air<\/em><\/a> and Green Acres<\/em><\/a>. Mr. Wilson did Mr. Ed<\/em><\/a>. Mr. Brownlee did Cheers<\/a><\/em>. Mr. Stinton did Entertainment Tonight<\/em><\/a>. And I rounded things out with Quantum Leap<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Again, whew.<\/p>\n

The Facts of Life<\/em> trailer<\/a> exemplified the best way to make a funny “Pimp My TV” trailer — make a TV show into a movie of a radically different style. Unfortunately, there was no possible way to top Edna Garrett screaming about “this motherfuckin\u2019 cafeteria”. If he’d cut everything after that, he’d have a solid winner. Hell, the same goes for Chico and the Manimal<\/a><\/em> — Mr. Robertson does fine exploring its comic possibilities, but nothing he can write can possibly outfunny that title. ‘cos, I mean, *damn*.<\/p>\n

Moving on, the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air<\/a><\/em> trailer was pretty straightforward. It transferred the TV show to a radically different genre, but for some reason it still didn’t make me laugh apart from the “Maybe Just a Little Bit Gay” title. I think it suffered from the Miami Vice<\/em> effect, where you’ve changed so much that it feels like it only shares the title with the original show. *shrug* I felt like I was watching a random action trailer.<\/p>\n

But, again, other folks seemed to dig it<\/a>, so take my opinion with the usual grain of salt.<\/p>\n

And his Green Acres<\/em> bonus sketch was a pleasant little ‘teaser clip’. Tiny little thing, but it made me smile.<\/p>\n

The Mr. Ed<\/em> trailer<\/a> is a solid attempt. Again, it’s a nice example of radically shifting the genre. I guess it doesn’t really work for me because I can’t appreciate a good fart joke. And I didn’t get the “Geneva Convention” bit. And, pacing-wise, once you’ve revealed that it’s Mr. Ed<\/em>, you’ll have a damn difficult time out-funnying that — so either that reveal goes at the very end, or you follow up the reveal with something that’s flat-out *hilarious*.<\/p>\n

Let’s move on to Cheers<\/em>: the Wes Craven film<\/a>. Am I the only one who thought that, in spite of the horror tone, it absolutely still needed a laugh track? My other quibble is that this felt like a scene *from* the movie rather than a trailer. On the other hand, this does feel like exactly how it would go down if some mysterious figure offed Paul and Alan and Pete, so: kudos for that. (And “Counting down the seconds” is just pure gold.)<\/p>\n

I dunno — I can whine about this or that, but this one made me laugh the most by a long shot. (Also: perfect tag line.)<\/p>\n

Mr. Porter’s favorite sketch<\/a>, however, was the Entertainment Tonight<\/em><\/a> trailer, and I’d have to agree. Turning the paragon of vanilla celebri-journalism into a hard-nosed, All the President’s Men<\/em>-style thriller is a genius move, and I dare you not to laugh at “Chevy Chase is planning to rig the Oscars?”<\/p>\n

And Mr. Stinton executes that setup perfectly. It feels like a trailer, it hits all the get-’em-in-the-seats snippets without telling the story in chronological order, and it both establishes exactly what this movie would be like while continuing to deliver little comic surprises.<\/p>\n

Well-done, and I have no useful advice.<\/p>\n

As for my entry<\/a>, well, I warned Mr. Porter early on that what I was writing just wasn’t that funny. I was a fan of Quantum Leap<\/em> back in the proverbial day, and when I heard about this contest, my first gut response was, “Someone had *better* be doing Quantum Leap<\/em>, dammit.”<\/p>\n

So when Mr. Porter picked “Pimp My TV” for that week’s theme, I figured I had an excuse to write the trailer for the Quantum Leap<\/em> movie I’d always wanted to see. I knew that what I wrote wouldn’t be sketch comedy, but, eh, screw it. I was just going to write it anyway.<\/p>\n

I brainstormed the idea for a bit, and scenes sort of chased each other around in my head. I like making sequels that observe the span of time that’s passed since the original (for instance, I like that Tron 2<\/em> will take place 20-30 years after the original<\/a>). So I figured this is fifteen-odd years after the initial experiment.<\/p>\n

But what to do? I figured I’d basically rip off the “evil leaper<\/a>” storyline, which was one of the most promising story arcs in the original show. I liked the idea of Evil Forces trying to track down Sam, and Al trying to save him, and Sam trying to save himself. It gave everybody something to do.<\/p>\n

All in all, I felt like I got the gist of the movie into the (way-too-long) trailer, although Mr. Porter wisely points out<\/a> that I’ve basically just told the story in chronological order rather than create an exciting and evocative “highlight reel”. I failed at creating comedy, but hey, now there’s a script for a Quantum Leap<\/em> trailer that wasn’t there before. w00t!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peter’s comments on the eight Sketchwar entries for the “Pimp My TV” Sketchwar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[148],"class_list":["post-514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analysis","tag-pimp-my-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sketchwar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sketchwar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sketchwar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sketchwar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sketchwar.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sketchwar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sketchwar.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sketchwar.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sketchwar.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}