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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You know what pisses me off? These ads you see on TV for some starving children's charity in Oswego or some place, where they say that $2.90 a day can buy you a coffee, donut and a newspaper, or you can feed an entire family in Oswego. To which I say, well yeah, but what about my donut? That shit is delicious. If I feed a family in Oswego, are they then going to turn around and mail me a donut? And how long does that shit take? I'm hungry now dammit, getting a donut from FedEx in the middle of a steak dinner I'm eating next week isn't going to do me a whole hell of a lot of good. These charity boneheads have really failed to think through the details.

And what in the hell are they feeding those Oswegans for $2.90? McDonald's? Thanks, but the U.S. doesn't need any more foreigners pissed off at us like that. Even if we're feeding them Ramen noodles, that's still pretty rough. You can only make it for about three days on that stuff before you start dropping ass like a Play-Doh Crazy Spaghetti Factory.

Now if you tell me they're eating something good for that $2.90, then you've got my attention. I want a slice of that action. I haven't done the math recently, but I'm pretty sure I spend way more than $2.90 a day on food. And I don't even have any kids, or a wife siphoning off $2 of my per diem so she can buy some of that organic beeswax lip balm. You ever try eating on 90 cents a day? Well big spender, I hope you like Juicy Fruit.

I even called one of these places and told them I'd sponsor some poor motherfuckers out there in the Congo if they'd give me the hook-up on some of this cheap grub. I figured, if I'm getting 30 cent steak dinners and lobster bisque for 99 cents, I can afford to carry some freeloading Ethiopians as part of my overhead. What the hell, I've never been a selfish guy. Get on the Mitch Kroeger gravy train, you skinny fuckers.

You know what they said to me? Nothing. I mean they hung up like I had just propositioned them for phone sex. Wake up, charity assholes, that was like two weeks ago! Now I'm calling with a business proposition. No wonder you guys are on TV begging for handouts, you don't have any idea how to run a business.

My solution? Well, for one thing, I'm not one of these conservative assholes who's going to look a starving Ethiopian in the eye and tell him to go get a job and buy his own food. That's bullshit: jobs suck a nut. I would, however, suggest that maybe he should grow a pair and go kill himself a lion. Lions are good eatin', for one thing, and last time I checked they're pretty huge. Kill one of those things and you're going to be ass-deep in lion steaks for the foreseeable future. You might even be able to sell some of the less desirable cuts to your fellow villagers or trade the gonads or the gizzard for some A1 sauce and baked potatoes, to make a real meal of it.

Now don't get started on me about how some skinny Ethiopian dude, tired from weeks of not eating, is supposed to kill a big scary-ass lion. For one thing, if he's really that skinny, the lion doesn't pose any real threat since he can just slip between its teeth like dental floss. But even if he's not down to Kate Moss starvation levels quite yet, it's not like we're living in 400 B.C. here. Lions may be big and mean, but they still get run over by a Jeep just like anything else. And I know that not every starving Ethiopian villager owns his own Jeep, I'm not stupid. But that doesn't mean he can't borrow one. He wouldn't even need it that long, maybe thirty seconds or so. And what kind of asshole wouldn't lend a starving Ethiopian his car for thirty seconds? You should be ashamed of yourself, bud.

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If there is one thing we are guaranteed as Americans, failing all else, it's the right to sue. Even the prisoner in the darkest and dingiest cell has the right to file a lawsuit through a two-bit shyster claiming the prison conditions have done irreparable emotional damage which requires financial compensation.

I'm going to exercise that right, fellow Americans, because I have just seen a play so obviously based on my life that they should have called it Ching! Ching! I Owe Red Bagel a Lot of Money. Oh, sure, they tried to disguise it, calling the play instead Ching! Ching! I Owe Fred Scarsdale a Lot of Money, but I recognize my life when I see it re-enacted for me in proscenium stage setting.

First off, and this is so obvious it doesn't bear pointing out: Fred Scarsdale? It rhymes with Red so plainly I needn't go any further. The judge will hear that and throw the book at the playwright, and it will be a Michener book, I can tell you that much. Plus, I've been to Scarsdale one time to research my theory about the Grand Canyon being the ass crack of a giant rock creature, though that didn't really pan out. But that's in the play, too, if you were wondering.

Second, the play is about a tyrannical journalist and editor (me) with a mysterious background (me) and high standards that none of his staff can meet (also me) and who they plan to murder in his sleep for his reign of tyranny (bound to happen), and, as a subplot, fails in all his relationships with women because of strong mother issues (me, too) and his inability to maintain an erection. This final part is the only fictional element in the play, though if the judge starts to doubt the authenticity of my claim I can perhaps produce a couple of doctors who would verify the similarities.

The playwright is some hotshot former journalist and M-TV veejay just known as R. Dunkin. Though the name sounds a little familiar, I must admit, I have no idea where I would cross paths with someone who could write. My business usually limits me to meeting with conspiracists and Washington insiders, publishing experiment results from scientists with poor methodology, and bossing around reporters and columnists. Rok Finger attempted to write a play once, but I hear it was so poor he ended up giving it away, and it reappeared years later as Rent. Even if I thought Finger possessed the babymakers enough to write a play about me, I know it wouldn't be as powerful and well-written as the Fred Scarsdale thing, and it also completely lacked music.

I'll get to the bottom of this before too long, and when I do, there better be a big fat change purse waiting for me. I am not the sort of man who displays his life to the public for a minimal price in a community theater setting. Someone out there owes me a fat shiny copper and I'm going to get it or my name isn't Fred Scarsdale. Or Red Bagel, I mean.

In the meantime, as much as I hate to admit it, you should really go see Ching! Ching! I Owe Fred Scarsdale a Lot of Money at the Appleberry Theater in Vlanch, Pennsylvania. It is a well-done rendition of a man corrupt with power until, like King Lear, he is reminded of what is important by the hero of the play, Rafael Tumpkin. And if you're not big into drama or anything, you should still check it out because of the hot love scenes between the main character Fred Scarsdale and his strumpet reporter Jill Tumken. This stuff is too good to be true.

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