Mason Jarre – Page 7 – Son of Stuck Funky

Snow Job Snore

Cameras are FINALLY rolling in today’s strip, which is take 3 (why?) of the contents of this Sunday strip from January 31, 1999.

Yep, even when it was actually happening, Lisa’s story was pretty much all about Les.

Les didn’t write the script for this movie, and yet, this scene is almost verbatim what was actually said back in 1999. I guess he had nothing to fear after all as the script writer must have been clairvoyant… or perhaps just too lazy to even try to punch up a bland passage lifted wholesale from the Lisa’s Story book.

If Les cannot live through seeing actors recite his own words, he knows where the door is. Even if he somehow didn’t walk through it to get in the soundstage, maybe he parachuted in or was brought in bound and gagged inside of a trunk (my favorite theory), he saw Marianne do so.

Bounce Bored

Could cameras finally be rolling in today’s strip?! Ha ha, no. Tom “Tell, Don’t Show” Batiuk is living up to his nickname again. Whatever was just filmed was “great!”, though. Not great enough to portray in this strip or to make additional takes unnecessary, but still great!

There’s really nothing here, is there? We’ve seen Mason and Marianne in their costumes… we’ve seen the laughably cheap winter park bench set being set up… Les has already reacted to all of this. Did we really need to see Martin Johns say some cliché movie director things and spout some authentic Hollywood jargon? Can we move on to Les’ inevitable griping about what is actually being shot? The sooner we get there, the sooner we get out of this story arc (I hope).

At the very least couldn’t TB have had Ayers punch this up by giving Martin a clichéd old-style Hollywood director’s get-up? Y’know, stupid beret, sunglasses, jodhpurs, oversized megaphone, etc.? And if you’re gonna have Shermy cameo as a cameraman, at least let us see his face!

Hollywoodnesday, July 15

Today’s strip was not available for preview. Whether it is available for regular view in a timely manner is up to Comics Kingdom and their miserable and often buggy interface that has supplanted seemingly every newspaper’s online comics section. Oh to return to that time a few years ago when some papers let you read comics from multiple syndicates on the same single webpage… or even just a few months ago when I could download a PDF file of the physical paper with my overpriced and constantly-rising online newspaper subscription and read the comics in the pleasant manner that I would in a physical paper. The internet has never been easier to access or more difficult to use… but I digress.

I’m going to assume Les is still in the Hollywoodland Studios soundstage with MariLisa and MasoLes. As both actors are wearing thick winter clothing (in addition to their amazing wigs) in prior appearances this week, I am also going to assume they are preparing to film scenes from when Lisa first figured out something was amiss in her body. That was back in January 1999.

Lisa and Les, Cindy and Funky, and Lu Lin and Zhang Li all went out into the snow to play football (apparently tackle football?!) in mid-January 1999. Lisa decided to perform a critical self examination for breast lumps after feeling abnormal pain when Zhang Li tackled her to the ground. You know the rest. If you don’t, TB has some books he would like to sell you…

For those that don’t remember (looking at you, TB), Lu Lin and Zhang Li were a refugee couple from China who owned and operated The Jade Dragon (see this handy Act II character guide), a Chinese restaurant next door to Montoni’s. Like everything in Westview that doesn’t involve pizza, comics, or high school, the restaurant eventually went out of business and the couple wisely left town. Montoni’s then expanded and absorbed the space that The Jade Dragon once occupied.

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?

The only creature that knows of death, and its inevitability

Link to the Sunday Mourning strip.

I’m writing this before the Sunday strip becomes available, as is usual for Sunday and Funky Winkerbean. Thus, I have no idea what it might be. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing more trivia associated with the upchucking upcoming Lisa’s Story movie, but we might get Funky and Holly at home, or–in a massive middle finger to “continuity”–Funky and Les out for a morning run. Remember the time Les flew to Africa, then flew back to Ohio in the middle of his trek up Mount Kilimanjaro so he could comment on Funky’s new car? He then immediately flew back and ended up back with his tour group. Lucky for them, huh? Probably, that’ll be revised so that it was Mason’s private plane doing all that plague bacillus transporting, even though Mason was but a glimmer in Batiul’s eye back then, because when you have awards to win, tiny little details like telling a coherent story are totally unimportant.

UPDATE: Oh my goodness, Lisa’s Story is the most tragic and heart-rending story every told. Every detail is just more piteous and disturbing. Why? Is it because her suffering reaches deep into the soul, and illustrates the grand scheme of life in all its glory, which is then only cut from us cruelly, and discarded, along with all our dreams?

No, it’s because it gave an asshole like Les Moore the gateway to fame and respect–two things that should never have come close to this utterly loathsome gibbering slime-sheet. I would give–(checks pocket change)–$1.78 if Mason would just dump Les into the fountain and say, “What a waste of space you are. Good luck getting an airline ticket out of here; after I use my enormous fame to blacken your reputation forever, no one will want to touch you.”

Heck, I could go as high as $2.56. Let me check under the couch cushions, and I might be able to sweeten that even more!

And…that’s all from me for this go-round. Thank you all for your indulgence and for being a great audience. Your contributions make this site what it is. And please, a warm round of applause for Epicus Doomus, who takes over the center seat starting Monday. Excelsior!