Breathtaking action continues!
Hey, remember this guy?
He kinda just showed up two months ago to pile yet more work onto poor suffering Durwood and Mopey Smurf. Well, he’s back and it turns out he’s the director! Who’d have known, huh? When you’ve got mad comic storytelling skillz like T-Bats, you can have new characters drift in and out without any real introduction at all. That’s why it’s called writing. Damn, we plebes should only hope to be smart enough to be on Tom’s level.
Before we go any further, it’s time to award 1 FREE INTERNET to TheDiva, for having a Ouija board finely tuned to The Ghostly Realm Of Ghastly Cliches.
Well, let’s see if I can go two for two! *presses fingers to temples* I hereby predict that this disruption, instead of stopping the shoot dead while the unauthorized personnel are evacuated before someone gets seriously hurt, will be declared to have improved the scene immensely…
— TheDiva
Of course, the director isn’t going to call “cut.” They never do when something unexpected happens on the set, and anyone who thinks otherwise just doesn’t watch enough TV or read enough comics.
Great storytelling demands great artwork, so allow me to bring Mr. Director to the foreground of the first panel so we can see what an awesome draughtsman Tom is.
Jesus, he’s a T-Rex.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Given the work we’ve seen from Creepy Pete since he got to “Hollywood”, I expect panel 2 occurs after literally every scene this director has shot.
“Keep it rolling! The lawyers are gonna want copies of this!”. It’d be funnier than the idea that a school bus full of morons is exactly what this critical scene needed. But I don’t think about pizza, comic books and cancer all day so what the hell do I know?
Now you know I have a very strict “NO CRANKSHAFT” policy but all this cancer talk forced me to take a look. Ugh. I mean WTF? Does this garbage really amuse or entertain anyone? That’s my fill of CS for the decade.
After all, if they’re from Westview they’re just gonna have meaningless, depressing lives and die of cancer anyway. Blowing them up in a blockbuster movie stunt is an act of mercy.
It’s good to see Frank Nelson still getting work, even after death.
Really, it’s easy. All you have to do is ask yourself, “What is the stupidest way this could possibly go?”
Anyway, I suppose it’s too much to hope that we’ll end up with the director facing a Twilight Zone-level array of criminal and civil charges…
It does seem likely that “black tee shirt guy” who was delivering the news that a completely new script was needed two months ago is the director. Leaving aside for a minute the question whether the director would actually deliver this news in person (I tend to doubt it, though I confess that I really don’t know), how could they now already have made all the arrangements necessary to be actually shooting on location? What new highly improbable scenario could Tommy Westphall have in store for us? (Cue Crankshaft for the fastest progression of cigarette-related lung cancer in medical history: Death and burial within a week of detection and diagnosis. Or does Ahia have medically-assisted suicide?)
It’s sort of irritating to have to remember that Batiuk isn’t going to respond constructively to being told that he cannot have a down-beat look at a woman who only really died of cancer because of the complication called losing her will to live AND wacky sitcom hijinx. It’s like how we have to remember that Jeff is frowning because he got hosed in the will.
Oops! I forgot the most important character!
Because of course this dipshit director would have to consult the script before he could determine whether this was supposed to happen.
He gained 100 pounds since before!?!
Sheesh- Batboy doesn’t know ANYTHING! Directors wear berets and jodhpurs and speak through a megaphone!
Well considering Mopey Pete and Durwood wrote the script, it really shouldn’t surprise you Herr Director that it isn’t in the script!!
1. Full marks for the “Die Hard” reference, which anthropologists of the future will note was THE high point of American culture…
2. I know I’m not one to talk, but that director might want to see his doctor about diabetes… And become intimate with an elliptical treadmill, or at least work in a salad or two…
3. So if he’s the director, then all the previous conversations with Pete/Darrin make even LESS sense now? Because all he ever acted like previously was a random studio lackey/messenger boy…
4. Would it have taken Batiuk that much fucking trouble to introduce the director? He’d spent a month introducing us to Cliff Anger… Hell, he’s spent two weeks introducing us to Marianne Winters and WE STILL HAVEN’T SEEN HER ASS YET!
5. Where are Pete/Darrin anyway? Aren’t they supposed to be on set? Even if they aren’t, wouldn’t they want to be?
6. And wouldn’t Pete be getting all pissy and whiny about seeing his script changed on the fly?
7. We already knew the script was fucked when Pete/Darrin of all people had to be called in to revive it… How much more fucked was it when a random school bus comes plowing through the set and the director thinks it’s a goddamned *improvement*??
8. Shouldn’t the bus driver at least *try* to hit the brakes, or is he begging to get fired and the school system sued??
9. Please tell me the movie studio or Mason is pulling a world class swindle here and “Starbuck Jones: Episode One: The Prequel of the Beginning of the Origins” was always intended to be the sci-fi version of “Springtime for Hitler”?? Because that’s the only explanation that would come close to covering everything…
…And the kids on the bus have now lost their hearing and peed their pants. This is indefensible!
In real life of course the screaming of the effects guys who would have worked for hours if not days to set up this shot would have drowned out anything the director said.
It’s one thing not knowing how things work – it’s quite another to not bloody care how things work while as the same time wanting folks to take the comic strip seriously.
So after all those months of agonizing over the script, it turns out random happenstance is better than anything Pete worked up.
Does Tom Batiuk realize what he’s saying about the craft of “writing”? I’m betting not.