21 thoughts on “Mr Potatohead”

  1. I like “Topic Of Cancer” as a title, as it evokes some of that classic Batom-style wordplay as well as being an accurate description of the source material. Lisa dies of cancer at the end, in case you hadn’t heard. Oh, sorry, really should have issued a spoiler alert there for those of you who haven’t read it yet. You’ll get over it, the whole thing was a big anti-climax anyway.

    “Lust For Lisa” would be a great title for Frankie’s reality series or maybe even the eagerly-awaited Tom Batiuk biopic, wouldn’t it? “Lust For Lisa” brings to mind a lot of pretty unpleasant FW memories, I mean REALLY unpleasant FW memories. TB is really a strange dude sometimes, I will say that.

  2. Five bucks says that Mr Potato Head is a real guy who made the mistake of asking “Shouldn’t there be some sort of pay-off from trudging through all the heartache, loss, pain, oozing psychic wounds that can’t and shouldn’t heal, misery and unquenchable yearning that isn’t feeling worse about the world?”

    Well that or telling Batomic Comic Obsessive “Hey, there, Delicate Genius. People already know the world is a pretty crappy place. Treating them as if they’re stupid idiots in denial because they want a few minutes of laughter makes you a repellent dick, not a savior.”

  3. Personally, I don’t see why Les objects to the title change. After all, it’s true. Just ask Summer, Cayla and the rest of us who had to watch Les rifle through his videotape collection in order to hear the departed one’s instructions on how to deal with life without her.

  4. Perhaps that’s the reason: he doesn’t want to have to think that when she made that silly comment about waiting thirty years to date again, she was making a very bad joke. Realizing that not moving on is not what she actually wanted is going to suck so he avoids it.

  6. Bill has it right. Interesting that a strawman sleazeball “Hollywood” type has keener insight on Les’ motivation than TB himself does.

  7. Thanks so very much for resurrecting the image of Les Dancin’ With Himself on that ghastly, bone-chilling New Year’s Eve. Yes, “Lust For Lisa” was very real that night. Actually, the Man Called Hollywood is not so far away from my ongoing title – “Story of L”. In any event, at least “Lust For Lisa” can generate interest, something that this strip has lacked since ever.

  8. Well, it’s better than their first choice, “I Was a Middle-Aged Cancer Victim and Now My Whiny Ass of a Husband is Cannibalizing My Memory for Accolades and Profit.” Slightly less accurate, perhaps, but better.

  9. I don’t know about you, but turning Lisa’s Story into a Skinemax flick is an awesome idea, IMHO.

  10. This reminds me of Kevin Smith’s story of when he was asked to write a Superman film. Except that Smith’s story is entertaining and interesting, two words that haven’t applied to Funky Winkerbean in a couple of decades.

  11. These were great titles:

    – Topic of Cancer (Epicus)
    – I Was a Middle-Aged Cancer Victim and Now My Whiny Ass of a Husband is Cannibalizing My Memory for Accolades and Profit (Diva)

    Let’s see if we can’t come up with some more.

    * It’s a Cancer, Cancer, Cancer, Cancer World
    * Lisa Dies at the End
    * Masky McDeath Only Rings Once
    * Malpractice!
    * The Park Benches of Cuyahoga County
    * Cloudy With a Chance of Cancer
    * Honey, I Shrunk the Tumor!
    * Oops!
    * The Cancer Tapes
    * The Cancer Is Coming From Inside the House!
    * Dead Woman
    * Romancing the Pulitzer
    * Romancing the Dead
    * Obsession
    * Cancer Madness!
    * Les’s Story

  13. Watch this. Tomorrow, he proves that he’s a money-grubbing Philistine without a soul by asking the question “Does she HAVE to die at the end?” This is so Batiuk can avoid the elephant in the living room: “Was turning the strip into Cancer Miserybean the stupidest decision I ever could have made or what?”

  15. 1) does Les have final say on the title? I remember they renamed Dog Soliders into “Who’ll Stop the rain?” and Robert Stone was a real bestselling author, winner of a national book award and yes a Pulitzer Prize finalist. So if they rename book he wrote – there ins’t much Les can really do except sit on the pouch and pout.
    2) I like the Pencil thin mustache as a true symbol of evil. He just oozes sleze right down to his cultter work space. One does wonder what hollywood did to the Author to make him so bitter.

  18. I just have to shake my head at the really lame strawmen Batiuk employs. One, who’s not crazy about the name “Lisa,” as if the name is a deal-killer. The other thinks the word “lust” should be in the title of a film about people dying from cancer–perhaps he knows word of mouth will kill the ratings, and is hoping to draw the raincoat crowd, but it’s still an idiotic idea. The only guy who had it right was the one who suggested that Les and Lisa are vampires, because he was totally spot-on.

  19. @beckoningchasm
    The filmmaker who pitched a vampire movie starring Les and Lisa must’ve been so disappointed to find out that they’re not the immortal, aristocratic, Eurorock sex god vampires post-Twilight Middle America is in love with but are instead garden-variety emotional vampires.

  20. Sad thing about this is that it could be an interesting idea if we were to find the reason why Misery Porn Producer wanted to call this movie “Lust for Lisa”. I’d love to hear a defense of that claim. But that’s not going to happen. It’s just something so over the top tone deaf and appalling that all we’re supposed to feel is sympathy for Les that his movie studio just doesn’t understand his genius. We’re just supposed to ignore the fact that Straw Man Producer wouldn’t have any plausible rationale for making that proposal.

    Actually, that’s not true. He could also have realized once Les sent in the script a year behind schedule and he read it that there’s no way anything could be salvaged from this stupid project, so any money spent after today on it would be wasted. After all, with how Les has screwed up their schedule they’re probably casting the company’s fourth or fifth choice of actors at best, and the only director who’s willing to be jerked around like this is the guy who otherwise wouldn’t be working. So what he’s trying to do instead is to so upset Les’s sensibilities that Les pulls the project in breach of their contract. He thus manages to stop wasting money on it and also manages to make the money that Les would lose by breaching the contract back, so he’s farther ahead than he would have been.

    That would be the only other explanation that makes sense.

  21. @Charles – well said, but I suspect Batiuk’s point is that the Hollywood producers, being Philistines of the highest order who could never appreciate true genius, haven’t read page one of Les’ script…or the original book, for that matter.

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