Get a load of today’s strip… Les is gonna cameo in this thing?!
I think we’ve all but officially moved into The Producers territory, haven’t we? This Lisa’s Story movie is actually some sort of scam cooked up by Mason, Cindy, Cassidy Kerr, and probably Martin Johns, right? You wouldn’t think anything could possibly make any part of this movie any worse, and then there is the mere suggestion that Les could actually be in the flick. Les’ appearance is inherently negative, it cannot even be neutral. Les, amazingly, realizes this.
And let’s not forget, Mason is getting “points on the backend” for this work as casting director, which has seen him cast three people with no genuine auditions. Gotta be a scam.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Seeing “Les” talking to (sigh) Les is EXTREMELY DISORIENTING, to say the least. I’ve never had THIS feeling before…and I DO NOT LIKE IT. We’re into brand new FW territory here people. Dark, foreboding and very annoying territory.
So they’re just making this thing up as they go along? I mean, doesn’t this mean that they’ll have to fire a real actor to give Les a part? That doesn’t seem very fair. Imagine being that poor actor.
“Wow! I finally got a real part! It’s only one line, but it’s my first big break! I’m gonna call my mom!”
“Uh, I’m sorry but you’ve been replaced by that creepy bearded asshole over there. Yeah, the deeply conflicted guy who keeps staring at everyone. Hand over your laminate, get your things and get out.”
Mason hiring a non-SAG actor should go over well.
Cameos like that happen; Jim Lovell made a cameo as the recovery ship’s captain at the end of Apollo 13, Peter Benchley played a TV reporter in “Jaws,” and Arthur C. Clarke sat on a park bench in “2010.” But they could find a better cameo for Les than a waiter. How about a dart board in a faux-English pub?
You’re right, but I was thinking it would be controversial because Mason is a highly paid actor. But I don’t know much about the film industry (just like TB.)
I’ve searched, but I can’t find any SAG/AFTRA rules about this kind of cameo. My best guess is that they qualify as a U/5 role (U/5 meaning “the character speaks under five lines in a production) or an “extra” role (bystander in a crowd, for example) which do not require union membership. There’s a lower pay scale for these roles.
In any case these cameos happen, so they’re clearly accepted by the actors union.
Why couldn’t Les play the Central Park bench years later, with Lisa’s dedication plaque screwed into his forehead? At least then there’d be an excuse for his wooden acting! ZING! Thank you, I’m here all week!
I like the idea of Les as “mugging victim #3.”
When “Les and Lisa” go to the hospital, they pass an anatomy class where a cadaver is being eviscerated. The cadaver is the real Les Moore!
Does he have to be a cadaver? I could stand seeing him live one more day if, like Lisa, his death diagnosis is the result of a clerical error.
Yeah, it is weird. Back in the asinine time pool arc, Les and Les pretty much only looked at each other a couple of times. They never talked.
Had the talked it probably would have destroyed reality as we know it, so thank goodness for that.
I remembered this arc and that they met but I was sure they didn’t exchange any dialog. Your well-timed post confirms this. It’s a terrifying image, though. Boy that time pool arc really was stupid, you know?
I especially loved the part when Les couldn’t say anything to high school Lisa, much less explain why she didn’t have a middle age avatar… Way to “protect” her memory, asshole
Lisa and Cayla just stand there. Their blank expressions clearly illustrating the growing horror that they have no future.
At the time I was hoping that the “time pool” arc was going to be a reset of the strip to wipe out the Act II and Act III nonsense from the Funky canon.
I did too! It even would have been a nod to the era when the strip was that surreal all of the time, talking janitor robot/8-track player and all.
Lisa gets to see her children again, Les gets to write a book called “My Wife The Time-Paradoxing Cancer Wizard,” Cayla gets a chance to be with somebody who treats her as more than a roommate, and the rest of the cast gets some blessed silence for a few moments. Wins all around!
Ugh, I had bleached that shit out of my memory…
I love the look on Dead Lisa’s face. “So… I just don’t have an older self? That’s it? I don’t get any more of an explanation than that? Why did you bring me here?”
In Man In The Moon, Danny DeVito was absent from the scenes on the set of Taxi, because he was playing the role of George Shapiro, Andy Kaufman’s agent. Having him also appear as himself/Louie DePalma would have been confusing, even though DeVito and his role in Taxi are very well known.
How the hell is this clownshow going to have the main character bringing Montoni’s pizza to himself (because of course it’s Montoni’s)?
Les Moore will play Wally Winkerbean, RRRRRRRRRRRight?
It would be amusing to see Les as the target of his own dickishness. (I assume character Les makes some snotty comment to the waiter.)
Five words, six words? Let’s go whole hog and make it seven words: fuck off and die, both of you.
Who could possibly care if Les did a cameo? Who, in the audience is going to point and say “That’s the guy who wrote the book!”?
Tom Batiuk has a really high opinion of himself, and a totally unwarranted opinion of his work.
It’s like they’re making the film for Les and no one else. This is some sort of twisted wish-fulfillment fantasy on a grand scale, on all sorts of weird disturbing levels.
Granted nobody in a movie audience will recognize or care about the author getting a cameo. But it’s something that legitimately happens. Here’s a Mental Floss article listing 25 author cameos. Granted that, like, Stephen King or Kurt Vonnegut is a higher-profile author than Les Moore but, like, when’s the last time you thought anything about the guy who wrote War Horse?
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/56564/25-movie-cameos-authors-original-books
It wasn’t a story he wrote, but Kurt Vonnegut’s appearance in Back To School was pretty damn funny.
Batty is just trolling us with this crap. Has to be. If not, then I’m worried about his mental condition.
Is this entire movie going to consist of scenes where only Les and Lisa have lines of significance? No doctors? No Funky, Cindy, Holly, etc.? No Summer? No Nick Bakay voicing an animatronic Le Chat Bleu?
*sigh* I know the answer. I don’t like it, but I know it.
YOUR HELPFUL FUNKYVERSE GUIDE TO SCREENPLAY WRITING
Screenwriting Rule #1: A screenplay is just an endless series of conversations; Always keep in mind that you must TELL, never SHOW, everyone everything that’s happening. After all, just like comics, it’s not like film is a visual medium!
Screenwriting Rule #2: Remember, you’ll need to have extraneous characters who aren’t moving the plot forward or revealing character. Make sure to give them bland, colourless lines like “Your order will be right out.”
Screenwriting Rule #3: Getting a speaking role in a movie is easy! Hang around a set, and you should be offered one within a few hours. Why is this important to remember? Well, it means that when you’re writing a screenplay, ANY idiot might end up saying these lines. So for God’s sake, don’t spend too much time on ’em!
I’m waiting for the story to reveal that they’re just using Les’ book as the script. Because who needs stage directions, camera instructions, sound effects, scenery, or brevity or when you’re making a movie of the greatest written work in recorded history?
“Why are we even bothering with actors? We should just point the camera directly at the book, and film that!”
“Oh wait, maybe we need ONE actor — to put his hand into frame every couple of minutes and turn the pages…”
Fun fact: as the Enterprise is preparing for their final battle against Khan in “Star Trek II,” composer James Horner appears as one of the techs preparing photon torpedoes.
Notice how you liked the movie before you knew that? We’re seeing the opposite happening today.
I hate to contradict the Lord of Language, but if he’s going to portray a New York City waiter, then Masonne is correct. “Yorder will be right out” is only five words.
Personally, I’d like to see Les in a bellhop costume at a posh New York hotel, calling out “Paging Mr. Moore! Mr. Moore, you have a telephone call at the front desk!”
Awesome scene…!
Les would do even better dressed as an organ-grinder’s monkey, catching pennies in a cup. If nothing else we’d finally see him get paid a fair wage for a day’s work.
He’d screw that up too. This is the guy who regularly spent gym class unable to get back down the climbing rope.
Oh, wow! Holy crap! I had this “film” pegged as a piece of shit, but there’s a WAITER in it??
#BestPicture!!!
Maybe when this arc is over Les could write a book about it, then spend the next ten years ruminating on that book, then option it for a screenplay, then oversee the production, then watch them film the scene where he sees himself watching himself watching Mason playing him. Then the circle jerk will be complete.
The Other Other Shoe: The ‘Lisa’s Story’ Story
And yet again, we have Batiuk’s need to make Les look ill-used merely make him look like a choad.
Speaking of cameos, is that Tank McNamara in the banner? Hopefully, he’s here to beat the snot out of Les.
Oh I forgot — One of the required tropes of a Masone Jarre production is his penchant of changing details on a whim, even ones that are presumably set in stone… It’s funny because Les and Masone have been joined at the hip for months so you’d think this topic would have been discussed earlier.
SEE: His tracking down of 91 year old Cliffe Angere for a single scene cameo that somehow morphed into him ending up being a co-star…
Look, I get that sometimes cameo roles happen out of nowhere. Daniel Craig just stopped by the set of “The Last Jedi” one day and they made him a stormtrooper in an epic scene; and there are dozens of other examples I could list off the top of my head… But knowing Batiuk, Masone will spend a week trying to talk Les into it, Les will spend a week discussing it with Kayla/Summer before saying yes, Masone will take another week coaching Les up for his one-line role, then we burn another week of flubbbed takes trying to get it right, and finally we get a week of Les basking in triumphant applause and praise from the whole crew as he recounts how difficult it was…
There, I’ve just given you every FW strip through Labor Day
Come on Les! Even Pee Wee Herman was a waiter in “Blues Brothers!”
Pee Wee Herman was also the Hamburger Man in Nice Dreams. Classic role.
Paul Reubens was the first choice to play Gozer the Gozerian in Ghostbusters. No kidding. How different would that have made the climax?
No, Mason, Les can’t be in the movie because he’s already the main character, you moron. Having two Les Moores in a scene will just confuse the audience. If not anger them, because by this point in the movie they’ll know it’s a bigger ego wank than Mariah Carey’s Glitter.
It would raise false hopes: “Look! It’s old Les, condemned to a life of waiting tables for tips! He’s come back in time to prevent this by murdering his younger self!”
Do it, Les. Think of it as the human version of a dog pissing on a fire hydrant to mark his territory. Let everyone know this movie is yours, damn it!
BWAWHAWHAWHAW! It’s funny because Masone can only count as high as the number of bent nails in his pocket!
I love the Weird Al reference in the title.
Yeah, when weird Al miscounted, it was funny. When Batiuk does it…draw your own conclusions.
Part of Al’s joke with that miscounting was that the chorus of “Got My Mind Set On You” clearly goes “I got my mind set on you”. So the word count is actually slyly mirroring George Harrison’s silly earworm of an original even as the words themselves form the more obvious joke.
TB here, though, is just taking yet another thoughtless and creatively bankrupt swipe at “Hollywood”. *yawn*
If this week ends with Les gazing deeply into Marianne’s eyes as he prepares to say his big line, becoming overcome with yet more MAN PAIN, and running away from the set blubbering like a baby… I’ll… I’ll…
I’ll sigh very loudly and pour myself a drink.
The expression on Les’s face in the 3rd panel and then imagining Cayla alone at home ….. makes me want to drive a flaming 6 inch spike into Les’s mouth!
Batuik is just basically jizzing all over the pages at this point.