After a whole freaking song by Daughtry (like we don't know your first name, douche), American Idol finally ends, and we start On The Lot with an optimistically lofty montage of movie clips -- from Casablanca, The Godfather, and whichever of the Lord Of The Rings movies had Gollum in it -- of the sort that this show's hopefuls will almost certainly never achieve, because if they had any talent, they'd have agents, and if they had agents, they wouldn't be on this show, signing their lives away. A girl in a sequined jacket tells us some pap about movies as the clips continue: Raiders Of The Lost Ark (shut up, Spielberg) is the favourite movie of some dink who graduated from film school twelve seconds ago. Star Wars: movie quotes unite the world, according to some girl. Rocky: an unseen guy says almost everyone on earth likes watching movies. Kudos to the editor who found the most predictable, content-free things a bunch of film nerds could say about their craft. Then there's a crane shot over some fakey-fake backlot bustle, in the middle of which Chelsea Handler appears to tell us that the semi-finalists are taking the (very disappointing) Universal Studios backlot tour. Cut to them, obligingly clapping for the cameras. It takes four trams to haul their asses around. Come on, now, that's way too many. Some nerdy string bean is impressed by the tour of the fake backlot, including even more Spielberg product placement: the plane crash scene from War Of The Worlds (booooooo) and the shark from Jaws (...eh, I think I was too old when I first saw it to really appreciate it). Chelsea's voice-over returns to introduce us to our concept: Project Greenlight, with way more people and no swearing. Some gr'up in a hoodie is thrilled to have this opportunity, like it isn't harder these days to avoid being on a reality game show. Some femmey lesbian is also grateful to be on the show. Some balding dorkus needs this to work or else he'll have to defer his dreams until his kids get older. We see a few clips of the semifinalists' entry submissions, which look...like not much, given that we get no context for them at all. (Apparently you can watch them online, if you care.) One is animated and looks more expensive than it probably was. Chelsea says that they made their submissions with digital cameras and laptops, but that they'll be challenged to "step up their game" once they have access to Hollywood resources (read: a costume warehouse, if the b-roll is any indication). We learn that this affair is going to last thirteen weeks, and only one of the contestants is going to make it...ON THE LOT.
The tour guide tries to drum up excitement over taking the semifinalists to a part of the studio where he's never taken any other tour, and they dutifully cheer. Recent Grad plays along that the fakey bustle (seriously, there are extras in Victorian garb to Roman columns -- fake!) is in the service of some real film project. The contestants get out of the trams as Recent Grad fulminates on about how exciting it was.
The semifinalists assemble; Chelsea welcomes them with a typical intro. Gr'up has confidence, focus, and drive, by his own assessment. A dude who looks like Spike Lee gave up Wall Street because he feels like he has something to say. Dude, it's way easier just to start a blog. Also, cheaper. Spike II just wants a shot. The contestants are going to be making "Hollywood movies" (eh?) every week, and showing them to the public. The crowd will be thinned, and one person will win a $1 million development deal with DreamWorks. So, uncredited script doctoring on Shrek Sallies Fourth may be in some chump's future, then? String Bean is impressed some more. Chelsea will see them at the Biltmore Hotel, "birthplace of the Academy Awards." A strawberry blond in a cheese-coloured suit wants to win.
Bus! The contestants mingle. We get an interview with Jason Epperson, of Winchester, KY, in which he says that all the hicksy coal-mining friends and family at home (I'm paraphrasing) are counting on him.
The bus stops at the Biltmore. The contestants pile out. The hotel is nice. Mateen Kemet (formerly Spike II) of Oakland felt like he had "arrived" when he got there. The screening room's all fancy, with three leather armchairs in the center for the judges, but no matter how much they try to make me think this is actually in the Biltmore Hotel, it's so over-designed that I'm immediately suspicious that it's as real as Trump's (former) boardroom. Will Bigham (formerly Balding Dorkus) of Canyon, TX felt like he and all his fellows had made it.
Chelsea shows up again, for no good reason, and reminds us again about the stakes. But the competition starts "right here, right now." They're going to be judged on their submission films, and on three assignments that will supposedly reveal which of them has what it takes to make it.
Time to meet the judges: Carrie Fisher, Garry Marshall, and Brett Ratner. Read: three people who decided to work an hour a week this summer for beer money. Let me help you to dismiss Jeff Seibenick (formerly Recent Grad) of Perrysburg, OH out of hand: Brett Ratner makes the kinds of films Jeff wants to make. That's his epitaph in a nutshell, for me. The judges enter (Ratner kisses Chelsea, and maybe I'm reading into her expression but it looks like she might want to go take a Silkwood shower with extra Purell) and take their seats, smiling self-importantly. Marshall, for his part, is responsible for everything Will watched throughout his (sad, sad) childhood. Mark McLain (formerly Cheese Suit) of Dyer, IN popped a boner when he saw that Princess Leia was ten feet away. Actually, Fisher looks better here than she has in years; I love her bob. She gets up to kiss the contestants' asses about having gotten into the semifinals. Ratner does not get up to say that he's excited for them because he's seen all their submissions. At this, we get an interview with Phil Hawkins of Manchester, UK (so far the only non-American we've seen make it here despite submissions from an alleged thirty-three countries), in which he pees his pants that Ratner watched his film. Fisher says the first step to becoming a director is the pitch -- selling the story of the movie, and selling oneself. Marshall speaks for the first time to say that directors have to be actors, so that studio executives (or whoever) can tell from their eyes if they're telling a story they believe. He namedrops Steven Spielberg (anecdote not worth repeating). The contestants will each be randomly given a logline (a story idea: "Cop Gives Waitress $1 Million Tip"), interpret the story idea, and show up the morning to pitch the judges their film. Jason was hoping they wouldn't have to do this; he's never done it before.
So the five loglines are:
1. A slacker applies ot the CIA as a joke and is accepted.
2. A man sees his face on the news described as missing or wanted. (Which is it, show?)
3. A mouse is captured by a pharmaceutical company as a lab rat and must plan his escape.
4. A priest meets the woman of his dreams just as he is about to be ordained.
5. A crate bound for a secret military base is delivered to a suburban family.
The contestants reach under their seats to find out which loglines they got. Opie Cooper of Jackson, MS wasn't worried about the pitch until he heard the loglines and realized he didn't want the one about the priest -- so of course that's what he ended up with. He says that you're supposed to write what you know, so he'll have to fake it. They can work in groups to develop their ideas, but it's an individual task, and they'll each be pitching alone. Ratner dismisses them dickishly.
Cut to some part of the hotel, where the contestants are working feverishly. The atmosphere reminds me of Creative Problem Solving competitions of my youth, in the sense that none of the kids know what they're doing, but they're doing it really hard. Hilari Scarl of Chicago repeats what we already know about the assignment. James Breese of Bristol, UK was having cartoon palpitations. Kenny, the gr'up, got the mouse logline, and what he's come up with so far is that it's a country mouse. Some douchey girl in a red crushed velvet jacket and a newsboy cap (I'm serious) is trying to help him by asking questions about whether the country mouse was captured by accident, or if he's trying to escape his small town. Hey, someone saw Flushed Away and is trying to write it in reverse! Kenny cheerfully says that he has no idea. As he tells us he's stumped, we learn that he's Kenny Luby of Owego, NY. Newsie has a lot of ideas, suggesting that he can go the Babe route -- live action, with CG-ed moving mouths, or like Cars, fully animated. In an interview, though, Kenny shit-talks her because her ideas aren't original (like his "country mouse" concept is any more inventive), and then back in his brainstorming session says that his character likes the pharmaceutical company, and is just trying to escape from one department to another. I...love it? In an interview, Newsie says that it's not enough to have an idea; you have to "flesh it out as a creative thinker." With Kenny, she reminds him that the goal is to wrap it up and come to an ending for the story. Kenny interviews that whatever he pitches will be fully his, not influenced by anyone. Good luck with that.
At 11:15 PM, this blonde girl Amy comes to sit with Hilary Graham, of Francestown, NH. They both have the same logline -- the guy seeing his face on TV. Amy says she's thinking of a concept where the guy doesn't know that he's dead. (a) Seen it. (b) Not congruent with the logline. At least Amy admits that it's been done before. She tries to mooch around to find out what Hilary's thinking, but Hilary will just say she's thinking of something different. She interviews that she had a well-developed idea, by then, that she was committed to. In conversation, she diplomatically tells Amy that until they've each come up with something solid, they shouldn't share, and Amy sticks her tongue in her cheek and looks pissed off. Go back to Grade 11, Amy.
3:30 AM. A bunch of people sleep while String Bean paces in the hallway...until 4:59 AM. Damn.
9 AM. Chelsea recaps what we already know (leave it to the professionals), adding that this round will end with fourteen people being cut. Jason's never pitched a movie idea and is worried about "burning in flames." Montage of people practising what they're going to say.
Then we find out that we should probably get invested in Cheese Suit Mark, because they went to the trouble of filming him in his hometown. He loves to entertain people. At the hotel, he's tired and nervous. He says he knows for a fact that no one's pitch is as creative as his. Not sure how he polled like fifty people -- one of whom was Hilary Graham -- but okay.
Ratner blah blah. We see that before each contestant comes out, the judges get a reminder of his or her submission film. Mark comes out, and Marshall compliments him on his suit. Mark got the logline about the mouse getting abducted. Interestingly, he also refers to a "country mouse," even though that wasn't actually what we at home heard as part of the logline. Anyway, he recaps the logline with lots of hand gestures, and then gets down to it: New York mobster has been working as an informant for the FBI. Fisher seems interested so far, but then Mark sort of loses his place, looks down, starts to repeat himself, is silent for a while, looks like he might start crying, and finally asks if he can go get his notes. Bye, Mark. Fisher looks surprised even at the request -- why wouldn't he bring them in? -- and then...commercials.
Hollywood sign. Skyline. Hotel. Chelsea catches us up. Back to Mark, "burning in flames." Marshall tries to calm him down. Mark says his mind has gone blank, and instead of dismissing him summarily, as would occur in a real meeting, Ratner nicely tells Mark to give them the highlights, and Fisher even more nicely recaps the mobster's name (Nicky) and the premise as they've heard it so far. Mark gets back to it: Nicky wakes up one morning as a man-sized rat -- because he's an informant, get it? He turns into Rat Man. "...And?" says Marshall. Mark says that he has "the size and strength of a human being, with the power of a rat." The power of a rat being what, exactly -- carrying disease? Mark concludes by saying that the movie is called Rat It Out, and holds for applause. None is forthcoming. Ratner says it felt like Mark was making it up as he went along. Fisher says that he has to believe in himself so that they can believe in him. Marshall says that it wasn't told so well, but that it was a good try. Hello, where did the pharmaceutical company come in? Mark leaves, and the judges discuss. Marshall, like a kindly grandpa, cuts Mark some slack over his nerves, and Fisher says that this process will be hard for her as well as the contestants: "I don't even like picking lobsters in a restaurant!" This earns a braying laugh from Ratner.
Mark comes out and interviews that the pitch was bad. He tells another contestant that he sucked, but then he interviews that at least he finished, and he hopes he isn't going home tonight.
Chelsea breaks in to say that the judges were in for a long day. We start with a montage of people who got the priest idea: Max is a bitter Jew who's joined the Catholic church. No, an evil priesthood has taken over the world. Then someone sees a gorgeous black drag queen. No: "Like Tootsie in a church, without cross-dressing?" And it is a musical. Chelsea VO says that the pitches went from bad to worse. Ramsey Mellette of Aurora, CO -- still on the priest -- has sent his protagonist to the melon aisle, where nothing good has ever happened in any movie ever. A girl comes up, they compare melons, they go home and have sex, there's a cute montage of them getting ice cream (Fisher is dubious, but so far this seems to be Ratner's kind of picture), but then things get weird; Melon Girl has morning sickness, she's projectile vomiting (Ramsey kindly offers a sound effect), but then it isn't actually morning sickness: the woman is possessed by the devil. Marshall sighs. Ratner laughs at the sigh. There's a stereotypical Irish priest who tells the novice to marry the girl, and he agrees, but he needs a crash course in exorcism. The exorcism gets a lot of detail and colour; the girl recovers, and she still loves the would-be priest. Ramsey finally stops, and Fisher looks straight at him, shaking her head no. And mouthing no. And...kind of audibly saying no. As she should. Ratner says that the pitch sounds more like a Saturday Night Live skit than a movie. He leaves. Marshall wants someone to pitch lunch.
Chelsea's VO wants to know if anyone's pitch can salvage the day. What about you, Andrew Hunt, of Minneapolis, MN? He's not nervous, as long as he can get the first line of his pitch out. We're still on the priests. In Andrew's pitch, Charlie is a Catholic from Boston. He's ambitious -- at least wants to be a bishop, and maybe the first American Pope -- but first he's going on a mission to South America before he's ordained. There he meets pilot Alex, who flies in supplies; Charlie develops a relationship with her. She's...Jennifer Aniston in Along Came Polly, basically. There are days of rain, then a flood. Charlie and Alex save villagers, but get separated. In the aftermath, Charlie spots Alex on a roof, possibly dead. He prays to God to save her, and she coughs up water; she's alive. Cut to a church in Boston, where Charlie's about to be ordained...or not; it's actually his wedding. The end. Eh, at least he told it well. Ratner asks Andrew to pitch his film to the studios for him; Fisher and Marshall agree that he's a natural, and Marshall even gets his wallet out to give him the money. Yeah, that does totally sound like it could be a Garry Marshall movie. Andrew is pleased. There's some more stroking, and he leaves. Outside, he says he nailed it. Mark looks pissed.
So Andrew did well. What about Rahim Jamal, of Santa Monica, CA? Rahim interviews that he worked on one idea all night and then decided to change it in the morning. He comes out in front of the judges; he got the logline about the crate for the military base going to the suburban family. He starts by asking if he can say something to preface it. Ratner says he should just get right to the pitch, so Rahim...prefaces his pitch by saying how long he's been up, how long he worked on his pitch, it was originally a comedy, which isn't his genre.... "Go into the pitch," repeats Ratner, less nicely, shaking his head. So he does, finally. In Rahim's story, the crate was supposed to go to the neighbour, and then the day after it's delivered to our protagonist family, the neighbour dies. Is the neighbour a military base, Rahim? If not, then you're off the brief. What the fuck. Anyway, the son breaks into the neighbour's house, sees Nazi insignia and shit. He's freaked out. "To make a long story short," says Rahim, ill-advisedly, the father hires a private investigator, and all that gets dug up are secrets and lies about his own family: "And that is my pitch." You kind of left out the middle of the story, there, dude. Ratner tells him to sleep before he comes to pitch. He's confident that Rahim can shoot a film, but then reminds him that the first thing he asked was to give a disclaimer. Rahim says he knows. Ratner tells him to be confident. Rahim says he's delirious, and Ratner tells him to quit making excuses. Fisher and Marshall agree that he shouldn't have been such a puss. Outside, Rahim cries that he blew it.
Contestant holding pen. Seriously, where is the Biltmore? That's a pretty nice hotel.
We follow Will to his home in Texas, where he talks about his kids, and we read between the lines that his wife has told him he can try this, but that if it doesn't work out, he needs to shut up about it and get a regular job that will provide shoes and medical benefits for his children. He got the mouse logline, and starts with his title: Of Mice And Rats. Eh. It's an animated buddy comedy. We start with a mountain of cheese and a pink hand reaching out for it: that's Phil, our country mouse. There's also a grubby hand, which takes Phil's cheese; the grubby mouse hand is that of Chuck, a barnyard rat. Seems like they're both country mice, then, but anyway, Phil can't chase Chuck because they both get picked up by a human lab tech. When the lights go out, we see an underground mouse brigade. They've been planning their escape, lacking only the muscle, which they've now found in Chuck. Sounds a lot like Chicken Run so far. The mice don't know what they're doing, the scientists are interfering, but then...our guys save the day in some way Will does not specify. The judges all like it. Outside, Will projects confidence.
Then we get a montage of the judges giving good reviews to pitches we don't hear from Hilary, Mateen, Kenny, some guy, some girl. But apparently nothing could prepare them for Jeremy Corray, of Crestwood, MO, who promises to give "the most energetic presentation they've seen all day." God help us. He got the CIA slacker logline, and starts his pitch. It hews closely to the logline until his guy, Douglas Trumbull, gets a job taking down a crime boss's DVD duplication business. More like an FBI gig than CIA, but anyway, Jeremy gets so into his pitch that he takes off his belt and starts hitting the floor with it to show how a trapped Douglas gets beaten by the CIA agents who've trapped him. Or by the DVD duplicator. He's not really that clear. He gets rescued by Penelope77, his internet girlfriend, he gets the bad guy, and we end with a virtual online wedding: "I call it Synergynistic." Let me just say he lost the judges somewhere around the time he started belting the floor. Fisher looks at him quizzically. Marshall cracks, "You must be exhausted," but Jeremy proudly says they'll see that he's like that all the time. Not a selling point. Ratner says that the histrionics were distracting for a pitch. Outside, Jeremy says he wanted to stand out, and maybe took it too far. Inside, Fisher says he was memorable, but not in the way he'd have imagined. Outside, Jeremy high-fives someone, because he doesn't know.
At 11:42 PM, the wheat is being separated from the chaff. The contestants come out grouped by their loglines. We see Jeff, the would-be Ratner, again. Starting with the CIA slacker group, two people we haven't seen, plus Jeremy, get cut. Everyone else gets to come "sit with us," as Fisher puts it. Jeremy is shocked to be out in the first round.
, it's the priest group. Ramsey is the only one of his group -- which also includes Opie and Andrew -- to get cut.
, the mouse people. Dreadlocks (Claudia), Mateen, Kenny, a Marty Martin, and Will all make it through; Mark does not.
, the crate people. Rahim and a bunch of other people get cut. Rahim says he'll take this experience to the grave. I hope that doesn't occur after he takes his own life tomorrow. No one should cry about a Fox reality show that isn't American Idol, dawg!
I guess nothing interesting happened with the people who got the logline about the guy who sees himself on TV, because we don't get to see that group.
The remaining thirty-six contestants gather on the stage, and Ratner tells them they're great, basically. Fisher says their assignment is to write, shoot, direct, and edit a short movie in twenty-four hours. Their logline is "out of time." That's it. And they'll be doing these movies in groups of three, with three locations, one for each director. Marshall asks how they know how their groups shake out, and Fisher says that they get to pick. Some people look pleased by that; others look distressed.
Outside, there are a bunch of tables set up with three chairs each. The groups tend to coalesce fairly quickly. At each table is an envelope with their locations. Writing the script started immediately. Marty, Jeff, and some other guy start with a dead girl. They seem to clash right away. Marty interviews about experiencing all the same problems you did back when you had to do group work in school. Jeff doesn't think Marty knows what he's talking about. The third guy obviously isn't going to amount to anything because we don't get to hear one thing from him. Jeff takes Marty aside to try to calm him down. Marty doesn't like it.
The teams arrive at their locations. They're on almost no sleep. This is cruel. Instead of sleep, they get actors, equipment, what-have-you. The finished short is to be two and a half minutes long, with each director in charge of one of three scenes. At their location (a restaurant), Jeff is directing. He wants Coke watered down to look like scotch, and Marty unhelpfully says he can't do it because he doesn't drink. Meanwhile, he's standing at the bar as he says this, so why he doesn't take the imaginative leap of looking at a scotch bottle to see what colour the liquid is -- or thinking back to any of the million movies he's probably seen in his life with scotch in them -- I do not know. Jeff thinks Marty is being obstructionist, and I don't necessarily disagree. Marty says that Jeff is an egomaniac.
Elsewhere, Hilary directs her scene. She bosses around the heretofore unseen Brent McCorkle of Arlington, TX.
Elsewhere, Kenny directs his scene at a train yard. We learn that he never went to film school; unsurprisingly, he seems defensive about this. His two co-directors, both women, seem annoyed by his indecision, while he in turn seems annoyed that they're ganging up on him. Behind them, Kenny talks, while his partners -- holding a big abandoned armchair that they've moved out of his shot -- quietly ask each other if they can put it down yet. They finally ask him straight up where he wants it -- "even just temporarily" -- but he doesn't seem to notice that they're uncomfortably holding something heavy while he wanks around the set. Then he's dealing with the actors (one of whom I recognize as a hotel desk clerk from Almost Famous, who told Patrick Fugit's character that his mom freaked him out), and they also seem to have no patience for him. Hannah Sunk, of Raleigh, NC, reports that Kenny was all fits and starts. And then there's another crew (including Mateen) just down the way, and the two crews are in each other's shots. I'm guessing this happened because Kenny's dithering put their group over their allotted time.
After the commercials, it's still a crew showdown. Shira-Lee Shalit, of Johannesburg, South Africa (she's in Mateen's group, not Kenny's), tells us what we can see is going on. How will it end?! Sars will tell you on Thursday.