Hey, all you old timers! Remember when Kenneth Koch wrote “Sixty Plays” or whatever it was called? They were hilarious little premises, only one or two sentences long, plus a title — like, “An elderly homosexual describes the geography and culture of Mexico City to a Norwegian farm girl.” That’s one that stuck in my mind for some reason, though the title escapes me.
Well, I thought I’d try the same thing with little plot summaries of movies. Most of these are real movies that may get made some day now (probably not) that I’ve tweaked a little. I think Kenneth would have gotten a bang out of them —>>>
BOOK SMART: Two overachieving high school seniors realize they have never used the word “Timorous” — and each resolves to do so by prom night.
THE JEWISH FELLA: A young girl moves in with her father and his girlfriend and discovers they are sharing the house with a Jewish fella.
UNTITLED CIVIL WAR PROJECT: Three Civil War re-enactors and an African-American professor of history are accidentally transported back in time and awaken in the actual Civil War. They have to find their way back to the present using only their cell phones.
BAD TEACHER: After being dumped by her current boyfriend, a foul-mouthed, gold-digging seventh-grade teacher sets her sights on a janitor who is dating the school’s dietician.
BABE IN THE WOODS: Caitlyn, a first year student from the Midwest, arrives at Yale and can’t get rid of a wasp nest outside the window of her dorm room.
LOTTERY TICKET: A Jewish fella gets the flu during a three-day weekend while holding a winning lottery ticket worth $350 million.
BUTTERCUP: A middle-aged man is broke after the death of his wife but — with the help of his daughter — he attempts to go into the mail order jewelry business, marketing primarily to enlisted military personnel.
DESTINATION HOME: A spoiled 12-year-old girl moves to an old farmhouse in the country and befriends the ghost of Telly Savalas.
THE ORPHANAGE: A woman discovers that her son’s imaginary friend is the person who terrorized her when she was a child: Rabbi Louis Binstock.
TRANS AM: A disgraced sheriff’s deputy and a repentant getaway driver who must elude a federal manhunt join forces to find a “mamzer.”
GRUNT: A group of college students fight to survive a brood of bloodthirsty mutated humans after an accident strands the students in Nova Scotia.
GOOD LOOKING: In a future society where dating services perfectly match soul mates, a man decides to reject the person chosen for him and takes up residence with a ferocious wolverine.
MIDAS HILLS: A team of mercenaries seeks the legendary wealth of a gold rush town that seemingly vanished off the face of the earth fifteen years earlier… but instead of gold, they find the Holy Grail.
AUDREY’S DOOR: Audrey, a young architect, finds the perfect New York apartment. But she begins to lose her grip on reality when she finds herself battling the building’s ghosts as well as the cultish tenants who are forcing her to build a door that will connect to a nightmarish netherworld.
REAL MAN: A nerdy executive for a robotics company has a new boss who is handsome, charming, brilliant, and making moves on the nerd’s girlfriend. Much to the nerd’s shock, he discovers both he and his boss are robots — and the two of them team up to stop an evil mastermind from gaining world domination.
Okay, there you have ’em — but you know what else Kenneth said? “If something isn’t working in a poem, do it more.” So I’m going to keep on doing these — maybe not for as long as “When The Sun Tries To Go On,” but for pretty long anyway. Would you pay money to see any of these films? My favorites are “The Jewish Fella” and “Babe in the Woods.”
from the archive; first posted August 9, 2009
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Author: The Best American Poetry
