Tag: Hollywood

The Les You No

Today being 4/20 and all, I found it perfectly appropriate that Mason’s contact photo on Les’ phone should be a picture of some cannabis. But the “trees” we’re looking at in today’s strip are the kind that “don’t provide any shade,” not the kind you smoke. So, the Lisa’s movie is already in the pitch meeting stage, is it? Normally, this would mean that the screenplay’s been completed. Otherwise, they have nothing to “pitch.” Of course, normally, location scouting for a major motion picture takes place after the script is done, and by someone (or a team of people) whose job it is to scout locations; not by the leading man/exectutive producer taking pictures with his cellphone.

Les, perhaps still smarting over his students’ shabby treatment of Batton Thomas, shows little enthusiasm over going to Hollywood to pitch the movie. This sends the normally mellow Mason into a tizzy, demanding that Les join him immediately, his teaching job be damned. Mason is hellbent on involving Les in every single aspect of this movie project, but one questions the wisdom of dragging him along to the pitch meetings. Is no one in Hollywood going to be aware that Lisa’s Story already had been optioned and gone into production nearly six (!) years ago? And that, after insisting that he write the screenplay, Les arrived in Hollywood, splitting his time between complaining, daydreaming, and wishing for death , before walking away from and sabotaging the project?

In A World Where Les Is A Hero…

Link to today’s newspaper vandalism.

Well, apparently Tom Batiuk saw “Stan and Ollie” last year, and liked it enough to have it still playing eleven years in the future.  (Your time jump, Batiuk, not mine.)  The fact that he liked it makes me think it isn’t worth seeing, but I’ll try not to let his taste color my viewing habits.  Who knows?

As for the rest of this, movies are made this way only in the most imbecilic fantasy wish-fulfillment worlds.  The real world is nothing like this; the idea that Mason’s cellphone picture would be digitally altered for the big screen is really dumb, unless he’s planning on making an entirely green-screen film like The Amazing Bulk.  Which wouldn’t surprise me in the least, given the “talent” that abounds in this strip (and behind it).

Preproduction for movies is generally nothing but drudgery, so it’s not a bad idea for Batiuk to make it seem somewhat interesting or even romantic.  What is a bad idea is having Les Moore in your story–that turns it right back into drudgery.

It does turn out that Mason has a hidden superpower–he can lean way over and not fall on his face.  Boy, wouldn’t that make a satisfying third panel?  Especially if his cellphone broke and a piece of the screen lodged directly into Les’ throat.

Now I’m all miffed that this didn’t happen.

On Wednesdays I Go Shopping

Link to today’s strip (eventually).

Wednesday’s strip was not available for preview.  THANK GOD.

There’ve been many times lately when criticizing this strip feels like criticizing a preschooler’s finger-painting.   When presented with such a work, you don’t want to say, “Well, Tommy, arms don’t really come out of the sides like that, and shoes aren’t big and round like wheels.  And is that a dog?”  That just seems kind of mean-spirited.

Tom Batiuk doesn’t write well.  To put it mildly.  He cannot plot out a proper story, his ear for dialogue is deaf, and his points are buried beneath the ineptitude of his execution. Occasionally, he has a sort of ham-handed way with a phrase that has a certain off-putting charm, but that’s about it.

But what if that’s the best he can do?  His “stories” over the last couple of years have started out like they might be going somewhere but always–always–end up like a balloon that’s just been unknotted.  Falling to the earth with a farting noise.  The Butter Brinkle thing–seriously, what an embarrassment that would have been to a professional, published writer.  Here?  In it goes.  And once it was done, it was gone.  Nothing to tie it together, nothing to indicate it meant anything…no impact at all.

Lately, the strip has been all been wish-fulfillment.  Les gets showered with praise.  Funky gets stepped on.  Everyone talks about how awesome Les is.  Bull gets an off-hand death that is largely used to push “Lisa’s Story” again.  That really seems like the work of someone who doesn’t care.

But he seems to be losing his grip on the elements he’s always deemed important, like Les and “Lisa’s Story.”  How many times has Mason told Les he wants to option the book?  He flew out to Ohio to do it, then flew Les in to California to do it.  That doesn’t seem like someone who can separate the wheat from the chaff.  Both are treated with equal carelessness.

So I wonder if I’m pointing out the shortcomings in the work of someone who should do better…but can’t.

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Link to today’s strip.

Charles basically nailed it–and did my job for me, thanks!–in yesterday’s comments, in which he basically laid out the next month’s worth of strips.  I’d link his comment here, but I don’t know how to do that. (Here ya go. —TFH)

So, what we have here is what we had yesterday–two characters talking about Les.   Not a single step forward, but hey, if people are talking about Les, it has to be award-winning, right?

I don’t dare wish for anything different, because it’s certain to be worse.

Women Are Vain, Get It?

Oh, joy. More character development for Cindy. Of course, being the Hot Blonde model of female in this strip, there is basically nothing to her character apart from obsession over how attractive men find her (the other model of female is Frumpy Potato-Nose). Good job, Tom Batiuk. Honestly this strip would’ve been better off being totally wordless and just putting a little more effort into drawing a pretty, scenic nighttime beach scene. Of course, the writing took zero effort.