In today’s installment of “Oh No, Not This Again!” Les Moore, the bearded dick with ears who always dreamed of being a big-time writer, is sulking like a baby because the studio that’s adapting his cancer book for a TV movie wants to fly him to The Big City to have him work on his terrible boring script. AND this request coincides EXACTLY with his summer vacation from his real job! Poor, poor Les, will the indignities never end?
So Les is going to La-La Land, the decadent and depraved heart of the very worst our disgusting popular culture has to offer. And he’ll be flying, but no worries there as Les has a very special (wink!!) type of flight insurance which I won’t get into here. Given how FW works, I’m sure Les’ flight will be pleasant and uneventful and he won’t have a single issue to complain about.
The cat hallucinations are getting confusing. Now he sees Le Chat every time he gets a little stressed about anything involving writing? Since when? The dead wife hallucinations were troubling enough but now we’re clearly in “mental illness” territory here. Perhaps he could hallucinate a more pleasant personality for himself while he’s at it. What an annoying weirdo.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Once again, this isn’t how it works. They’d send him his script back via registered mail, with various notes and suggestions to integrate, and they might have a conference call to discuss these, then they’d wait for his second draft. They’re not flying him to Hollywood so he can work on his script out there. In fact, once he turned in his second draft, they’d hand the script over to someone who could actually write.
When authors sell their work to Hollywood, they sign over the rights. If the author insists on writing the screenplay, it’s A screenplay not THE screenplay. The studio turns the finished script over to an experienced screenwriter to revise or rewrite completely. There are only 3 slots for screenwriters in the credits, but there could be a dozen writers who worked on the script. The studio has no obligation to consult the author about any changes.
Apparently the den of iniquity that is Hollywood has never heard of Skype, conference calling, e-mail, or online document sharing.
On the plus side, it looks like Cayla will get a nice vacation away from the Specialest Snowflake and his constant litany about how hard everything in his charmed life is.
All right, what’s with always the damn yellow shirt own this guy?
” I could fly out to California, but….” Dude, man up and tell your wife you’re going to California! You have a studio interested in your screenplay, lets make this happen!
It’s nothing like anything that would happen in the real world, but you’re a cartoon! Stop being a sap and live the dream! And involve your beautiful wife! And those cartoon daughters you both have who have disappeared!
And not for nothing, I have a lot of yellow shirts, but I actually look good in yellow.
First thing Cayla does is burn that damn porch swing while Les is gone.
Oh Jeez, with Les going to Hollywood to work on the script, this arc is turning into “Barton Finkerbean”.
I’ll ignore the obvious problems with this setup because other people have talked about it and it just annoys me. But it’s incredible how disinterested Les is in this project. He has his book get optioned for a screenplay. He demands and gets the job of writing the script, and the moment he gets asked to do something, he complains and debates whether he’s going to bother. I’m also assuming that if Les refuses, the project is dead in the water, because that’s certainly implied from what Cayla’s saying.
This is an opportunity that literally millions of people in the world would kill for, and it means so little to Les that he’s willing to just toss it aside because it’s too much of a hassle for him. Does Batiuk really not realize just how unsympathetic this makes Les look? The guy has the dream of a lifetime given to him, but he doesn’t want to pull his ass off his porch swing to take it. We’re supposed to sympathize with him because this reflects his self doubt, but it’s absurd. If his self doubt was this crippling, his manuscript probably never would have been finished; it almost certainly would never would have been submitted to a publisher, and Les definitely wouldn’t have demanded to write the script. It’s too far down the road for Les to continue realistically having these doubts.
Never mind that once again, the level of indulgence this guy gets is extraordinary. The producer asks him to come to LA to work on the script, and Les gives him a noncommittal response. And the producer ends the conversation without getting a commitment from him, without telling Les to go fuck himself.
“Look. you shithead. This project has been stalled for 15 months because every step of the way you had to whine and think it over. Do you want to do this or not? I’m through waiting a month every time I ask you to make a simple decision.”
Wonder how Les’s self doubt would respond to his being told he really didn’t have a choice in the matter. How much pull does Batiuk think a screenwriter has?
That is the problem right there. Most people on the planet would kill for the chance Les is too bored and whiny to want to deal with. For all my talk about how this is going to end up with his whining about corrupting his vision, I forget that what he really hates is being dug out of his comfy little fantasy capsule in which everyone wants to hurt him because he’s too awesome for the room. He doesn’t want to protect her memory, he wants to not realize that he’s not that big a deal.
If Tom is looking for sympathy for Les, it’s too late for that. He should have thought about that before transforming Les into the biggest douche bag and most hated man on the comics page.
Problems with the script? What problems could they possible have with such a fantastic work of literature like Lisa’s story? Beady eyed nitpickers!!!
Seriously, though…how much work does a script about a woman dying of cancer need?
Half of us here could dish out a decent screenplay. Most TV screenwriters churn stories like this in their sleep.
Act 1 – Happy Life, Dreams of the Future..Blah, Blah, Blah
Act 2 – Cancer Found – Five Stages of Loss & Grief Crap. Family Worrying, etc
Act 3 – Cancer Thwarted – renewal of dreams, “other shoe” crap
Act 4 – Cancer Comes Back – New hopes smashed. Recording Death Tapes, preparing for death..Blah, Blah, Blah
Act 5- Lisa Dies, Everyone Cries, Funeral Crap, Les becomes an asshole and writes sob story to profit….er…keep Lisa’s memory.
See. It’s not like their adapting Atlas Shrugged into a movie series or something.
You know what Hollywood really should do is forget the Lisa Story, but instead do a National Geographic style documentary on Westview.
Westview, OH : The Worst Place on Earth. A town with no business, Riddled with Cancer cases. Run by a dictorial pizza owner who all must pay homage to . Praying to a long dead women named Lisa.
Put aside for a moment the complete disconnect between real life and this situation, and even the disconnect between the perception of Les that TB wants to project and the one he actually does, and consider this scenario from an entirely in-Batiukverse perspective.
Les may be wishy-washy about many things, but he NEVER passes up the opportunity to express righteous indignation, especially when it involves Lisa. Despite this brief break in character, he’s going.
Of course he’s going, of course he’s going to be indignant and of course he’ll moan about the humiliation of being laughed at for not getting how things work. He IS Batomic’s alter ego, after all……
Charles: I believe he (TB) thinks people LIKE Les, thus they can relate to his “everyman” insecurity and self-doubt. If he does believe that he’s way way off, of course. Les could have twenty wives that all die from twenty different diseases and I’ll still detest the guy.
Les used to be a lovable loser; it’s a shame what he has become.
This is off topic, but as connoisseurs of snark I though you folks might enjoy this.
Honest Trailers – Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
After watching this I’m sure you’ll agree the Michael Bay is the only director that can do “Lisa’s Story” justice since Ed Wood is dead.
Don’t forget, “Lisa’s Story” is now “Lust For Lisa.” When Les finally gets his sorry ass to Hollywood, it will be either “Lust For Lisa: Diary of a Madman” or “Mo’ Lisa, Mo’ Lisa, Mo’ Lisa.” Whichever, it will be the story of a man cracking under the strain of trying to cash in on his wife’s death from cancer. Watch how he hears voices on the telephone warning him of impending danger in a fakakta airplane. Cry as he chats nonchalantly with, alternately, a park bench and an imaginary French cat. Cringe as he dances with himself (i.e., masturbates) at a New Year’s Eve Party. Yes, Les. Go to Hollywood. It is your ….destiny!
What a miserable existence.
If the movie is on Lifetime, it will be called “Les’s fault”