A Halloween Column, or
JR Goes to the Movies
By John Ross

[Author’s note: Due to my own ineptitude, this column got “lost” on my computer for two and a half months. I finally found it, and got my Webmaster to put it up belatedly. Sorry.]

It’s been far too long since I served up a column here. Many of you have wanted my take on Obama’s Health Care “reform,” and I was going to do that, but then something happened last night and Halloween’s coming up, so I have to write this piece first.

Last night I saw the film Paranormal Activity.

My daughter Lucy is in high school and wants to be a filmmaker. She has already won high accolades for a stop-action animation she did with her friends. It’s almost Halloween and she wanted to see a scary movie. She told me she wanted to see an independent film called Paranormal Activity, so I took her.

Paranormal Activity is about a couple living together where some sort of unseen presence seems to be after the girlfriend, in the house at night. The boyfriend buys a video camera and starts taping everything, including them asleep at night. An “expert” they consult tells them that from her description, this is not the ghost of a dead person, but a “demon.” The girlfriend first felt the demon’s presence when she was eight years old, she explains, then her house burned down a little later and her family moved somewhere else. Now the invisible demon (we never see him) is back after 20 years (I guess he just now learned about Google), making tapping noises at night and causing the bedroom door to slam shut.

As we watched this much-hyped film, Lucy kept saying "I'm sorry, Daddy. This is so boring!" At one point she poked me and giggled. "You fell asleep and were snoring!" This movie could make a meth addict nod off.

Six other people were in the theater. All of them walked out, shaking their heads, before the movie ended. We were the only two who stuck it out, hoping for something interesting to happen.

It didn’t.

During one of the seemingly interminable "couple sleeping" scenes, I started tapping the plastic cup holder on my armrest with my fingernail, doing a fair impression of the "scary noise" the demon had made earlier. My daughter later said that my improvisation was her favorite part of the movie.

As we were laughing afterwards at dinner about how watching paint dry would be equally scary and much less annoying, I had a brainstorm.

"Lu, I don't know what kind of movies you want to make, but I just had an idea about how you could really launch your career.”

“How?”

“With a combination Reality/Documentary/Horror film. We run an ad and get a few hundred local people who watched Paranormal Activity to be our actors. They'll work for free when they read our script.

"Then we get the guy who made Paranormal Activity to come to us, as we'll be making a film about him. We'll explain it will only take an hour of his time. Whatever he wants, I'll agree to pay it after his filming is complete.

"Then we rent one of those big rotisseries like they use to slow-cook an entire hog. Our cast straps him to it naked, and they cook him alive over a slow fire until he's dead and ready to eat. You’ll get a lot of great footage of his flesh sizzling and his eyeballs exploding from the heat and his constant screaming. Then the mob takes out knives and cuts off pieces of his flesh and they eat him. Maybe you can have them fight over who gets to eat his heart or something.” My daughter’s eyes were getting big and I was on a roll.

"Let's figure out the budget,” I said as I grabbed a paper napkin and a pen. “You’ve already got a good HD video camera and tripod. Figure a couple hundred dollars to rent the big rotisserie for a day, another few hundred for a half ton of charcoal, and a couple grand for KC Masterpiece to show up with 200 pounds of barbecued pork for our actors to eat and pretend it’s human flesh. Throw in another couple grand for a makeup girl and supplies, to make our cast look their best, and that about covers it. Five grand for the whole movie. I’ll bankroll it for you.”

“But-“

“And after we get our five Gs back, we put the rest of the money into an escrow account, and anybody who can prove they paid to see Paranormal Activity, we give them their money back. Only then do you start to make a profit, and you get all of it since you’re the director and my daughter, and I’ve got my five grand back. The publicity will be huge, and we build great goodwill from paying off all those disgruntled viewers. Probably do it within a month. Then you’ll start to make some serious dough with your film.”

“But, Daddy-“

“Yeah, maybe you’re right, just the writer/director isn’t enough. We’ll need two more rotisseries and another ton of charcoal for the whiny girlfriend and her idiot boyfriend, that everybody wanted to watch die about ten minutes into the movie. Okay, another two grand. I can swing that.”

“But, DADDY-“

“I know, you’re probably worried about dreaming up a title, but I think I’ve got you covered there, too. Let’s keep it simple. How about this? PAYBACK.”

“BUT DADDY-“

“And then you release a companion film, The Making of PAYBACK, where you show it wasn’t real cannibalism, they were eating K.C. Masterpiece. You show how when the actors cut the flesh off the bodies, there was a camera cut and barbecued pork was substituted. The actual cooked human flesh got thrown in the garbage, or fed to their pets, or donated to a homeless shelter, or something.”

“BUT DADDY, let me talk! I don’t want to go to prison for murder!”

“Won’t happen. You’re a minor, and besides, you’re just filming a documentary that turned into a horror film. The actors were supposed to just throw a scare into the three, but once your camera was rolling, it went past that, so you just captured all the footage you could. What else could one little girl do against a mob? And you couldn’t call the police because your iphone is a battery hog and it was out of juice and you didn’t have your charger, and besides, the people were dead by that time anyway.”

“But I wouldn’t want our cast to go to prison either!”

“Identify hundreds of people, all in makeup? Good luck.”

“But Daddy, you might get in trouble! They can identify you.” “Doubt any charges would stick. If I get indicted on something, yeah, I’ll have to cool my heels in jail until I bond out, but I can eat baloney sandwiches for a day for my little girl. Then the jury will acquit me because my lawyer will make them watch all of Paranormal Activity, and poke them with a pin every time they doze off. And don’t worry; I’ll make good use of that day in jail, if it actually comes to that.”

“Doing what?”

“What do you think, silly? I’ll be writing THE SEQUEL!”

“Sequel…?”

“PAYBACK 2: Washington D.C.” At this, my daughter got a faraway look in her eyes. She was obviously thinking of something.

“You know, Daddy, we won’t need to spend any money on charcoal for that one.”

“No charcoal?” I asked.

“We’ll use paper.”

“Paper?”

“Yes, Daddy. Paper. Isn’t that Health Care Reform Bill about two thousand pages long? How many copies of it do you think they printed?”

I’m looking forward to my daughter’s career as a filmmaker.



John Ross 10/29/2009

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