Studios to Replace Feature Films with Trailers

he heads of MGM Studios, Paramount Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Time Warner Entertainment, Disney Enterprises, and Universal City Studios called a press conference today to announce a dramatic restructuring of the way movies will be released and promoted in America. The announcement was the final step in a ten-year plan designed to cope with Americans’ shrinking attention spans and the prevalence of Attention Deficit Disorder among American teens, who drive the movie industry.

According to the studio heads, movie trailers will now replace full-length feature films in American theaters. Trailers, the previews for upcoming films that until now were shown for free preceding the main feature, have grown over the last ten years from one minute in length to the four to five minutes of today. While trailers once served to whet an audience’s appetite for a film with only a slight tease of what was to come, they had been gradually expanded over the years to tell the film’s entire story in capsule form. Purists criticized the dumbing-down of the medium and the spoiling of surprises, thought to be the handiwork of inept studio execs. But today’s announcement revealed it to be part of a larger master plan, with major studios gradually weaning film-going America off of the old system both by making the trailers complete experiences in and of themselves, and making modern feature films so unbearably long that watching only the trailer instead would seem like a reasonable alternative.

“This is the completion of a logical progression,� stated Columbia Pictures head Amy Pascal. “For years we’ve been faced with the problem of how to deliver an audience their favorite stars doing the things that made them famous, without all of this plot and writing getting in the way, and without taking up so much of a movie theater’s valuable time. Now we can get the seats filled, get the stars up there on the screen for a few quick one-liners and an explosion, some T&A, whatever, and a few minutes later they’re out the door, buying tie-in key chains and hats and what have you. Filmgoers interested in a more immersive movie experience will still be able to watch the entire film in the Deleted Scenes section among the Special Features on the DVD release. It’s perfect.�

“It used to be, you see the trailer, you get hooked, you go see the movie,� continued Pascal. “If for some reason the movie leaves you wanting more, you go buy the book. Way, way too much work. Now, you eat the sandwich, you get hooked, you go see the trailer. If you still want more, you can watch the whole movie on the DVD, if you’ve got that kind of time. So watching the movie is like what reading the book used to be. I suppose you could still read the book after that, which is the equivalent of what used to be having written the movie yourself, but we prefer if you just start over and buy the sandwich again. Or ride the ride.�

Studios are currently in debates over what to call the new, three-minute long versions of the films, since Americans may still be resistant to shelling out eight bucks to watch anything called a “trailer.� Among the front-runners are “The Ritalin Cut� and “The Director’s Bad-Assed Niece’s Cut.� Others prefer renaming the full cut of the movie “The Marathon Cut� while giving the 3-minute version an appealing tag like “The Buzz Cut� or “Flavor-Blasted.� Still others argue in favor of Reader’s Digest magazine’s offer to sponsor all new films as “Reader’s Digest Condensed Classics,� though some think that a title like “Reader’s Digest Condensed Classics Presents Adam Sandler in The Hockey-Loving Retard� will lose teens who forget what they’re doing before they get done reading the title.

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I know, it comes as a complete shock to me as well. It's probably in our American nature to assume that everybody feels the same as you do, that everyone shares the same values and the person you're talking to is not some sort of weirdo with a goofy opinion they're just waiting to drop on you. I feel the same way. I was so sure everyone around me believed in the same things as good ol' Rok Finger that I seldom allowed anyone to get a word in edge-wise. Imagine my surprise when I had a mouthful of peanut butter and Camembert used that moment to express outrageous dissent.

Of course the only thing that's been on the news lately is the War on Iraq. And I understand there are those who oppose the war, I have the news in my apartment. I can watch the footage and see the signs to know that some people disagree with our right to do whatever we want over there. But to know one of those weirdoes is sharing a roof with you, that was more than I could bear.

So we're watching this news broadcast and see all these nutjobs hanging out in New York City or some other exceptionally liberal city area with signs saying "War sucks." What kind of hootenanny philosophy are we teaching our young generations? But that's another diatribe for another column, probably a previous one. I'm watching all this and remark to Camembert, "What kind of hootenanny philosophy are we teaching our young generations? And in New York, alas, where the Iraqis bombed the Statue of Liberty."

"I think you're wrong, Rok," Camembert said to me. Do you believe the brass balls on that handi-capable prick? At first I thought it might be some kind of outright ploy for leadership of the apartment, then I realized his ilk probably doesn't believe in leadership. They just set up a council and everybody's on it and nobody ever gets told what to do. They have a name for that kind of government, you know. I just can't remember it.

Knowing all this doesn't help much. In fact, I was happier a few weeks ago when I was ignorant of Camembert's radical political views. To be fair, I haven't been really happy since before my wife tried to assassinate me.

Making it all the harder is the fact I haven't seen Lee since those Arab guys invited him to fight for freedom with them, he just packed up and ran off. He's always been pro-freedom, so that's no surprise. But even if I'm happy for Lee and his righteous group of new friends, that still just leaves me and Camembert alone in the place together. The three of us, including my cat Makeshift, but Makeshift is decidedly apolitical. She really only has an opinion on Friskies and tongue bathing, either way she's not going to get into this hot political debate between me and Chairman Camembert.

I suppose I've been reluctant to admit it, but it's high time I found my own place. I've thought about it before, sure, like when Camembert and Lee locked me out and told me to find somewhere else to live. But once I broke in again the idea slipped my mind. It's time to open that case up again, I'd say. I'll live with all sorts of people, no matter how different, as long as they're just like me. Accepting such a vastly different political idealist and his beliefs is just plain nuts to me.

It would be a good idea to get out soon, too. I'm getting tired of continuously talking to avoid him infecting me with his weirdo propaganda. Even Rok Finger has his diatribe limits.

º Last Column: I Support the War, but Not the Troops
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Well, I'm not quite sure how it happened, but another baseball season is upon us. It keeps coming back, like crabs, or that movie about the dog and cat that got lost and came back like crabs. But however it came about, we have to deal with it now, and the best way I know how is in detailing how much everyone is going to suck this year.

Let me get my first 2006 prediction out of the way early: Everybody is going to lose a lot of games this year. Take that to the bank. Even the best team in the league is going to have their pants handed to them at least sixty painful times this season. Sixty long, excruciating, face-first swan dives into mountains of Chihuahua shit, guaranteed. That's the dirty little secret about baseball that the league doesn't want you to know: Everybody stinks.

So the real debate is over who's going to be the least embarrassing team to follow this season, pretending like you've been a fan for years while your hometown nine brings new levels of meaning to the phrase "forcefully violated."

For starters, everyone's favorite dickweed, A.J. Pierzynski, hopes to lead his Chicago White Sox to a repeat of last season's improbable championship run, a feat made more difficult by the unlikelihood of the stars being lined up in asshole favor two years in a row. My prediction is the Bite Sox win six games all year. Some may find this unrealistically pessimistic, but they just don't play the Royals enough times for me to hope for better. Sorry, Sox fans, I'd fear your reaction if most of you weren't already safely behind bars.

Then of course there's the Yankees, but like I said, the assholes of the world used up all their good karma last year, which also bodes poorly for the White House in 2006. Once the Yankees' old-as-Moses rotation goes down in flames by mid-season, Yankee fans will be wishing for Small Wang, and that's never a good thing. Better to cut your losses and start rooting against the Mets now, Yankee fans.

Everybody loves the Cardinals, of course, and by that I mean everyone in St. Louis, by decree of the king. Didn't know St. Louis had a king? They're lousy with kings down there, so much so that they have to start handing out qualifiers, like "King of Beers" and "King of March-June." Slavish devotion to the Cards is required of everyone in St. Louis, as their city crumbles around them, but nobody in the rest of the country gives two shits on a bun. The rest of us settle in to watch the Cardinals stomp so much ass during the regular season that by the playoffs they're tired and roll over like Beethoven on recalled vertigo medication.

The Red Sox replaced a guy who looks like Jesus with a guy who sounds like cereal, which is only a good trade if the Jesus-looking guy is the dude from Blind Melon. Spoiler: It wasn't. While they were at it they tarred and feathered Edgar Renteria and smuggled him out of the city in a burlap sack, all for playing shortstop the whole of last season with a catcher's mitt. They brought in Josh Beckett to complete their impressive collection of "pitchers who once stomped the shit out of the Yankees but aren't that good any more." And as a final touch, they were able to trade the guy from Linkin Park to the Reds for Willy Mo Pena, all because some guy from the Twins doesn't like hitting.

As a side note, I'm sure the thought has crossed all of your minds that they should just fold the Twins and Reds together, either ending up with an unstoppable juggernaut or else a team that can't pitch or hit, depending on how the meld works out. Entertaining either way, I say: Either we get a team that will pants the Yankees big-time or somebody to fool the Marlins into thinking they have a chance, which would be funny in its own way.

So who wins this year? What's the name of that minor league team that started selling those bacon cheeseburgers on a donut? No, I'm not avoiding the question, I'm just hoping to convince my heart to put me out of my misery before I have to sit through another entire goddamned 12,078 game season. Seriously? You want a straight answer? All right: Barry Bonds wins, at least until a vain, insufferable steroid monster bursts out of his chest five years from now and starts talking about OBP and bitching about the media. Already happened? Well then, I guess we all lose.

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