“Wrap”

The Alan Smithee Memorial Bad Movie Poll is now CLOSED. And thank fuck for that is all I can say. I didn’t realise the monster I had unleashed, and I’m glad to see the end of it’s rotten, twitching corpse. The poll drew some 25,171 votes, though I am ready to concede that at least three or four may have been duplicate votes. Still, ballot-rigging’s good enough for the President of the United States, so it’s good enough for me. Enough of the fannying around. The results:

Third: Titanic (4,000 votes): Three hours and sixteen minutes of utter arse, false endings and a sappy storyline about some lost jewelry which the daft old bint went and threw back in the sea. Made only slightly more bearable by seeing Ms Winslet in the nudd - which she does in all of her screen appearances anyway, typical Tilehurst girl - and the ship’s engineer being the spitting image of my Uncle Mick. I, like the rest of the audience, was cherring for the iceberg. King of the World? King of my arse, more like.

Second: Freddy Got Fingered (7974 votes): A movie that set out to be bad, and couldn’t even manage to do that properly. With Tom Green “writing”, “acting” and “directing” (I use those terms in the loosest possible definition), there was no-one to reel him in, no one to tell him when to stop, no one to tell him it just wasn’t funny. In short, no one to tell him it was totally fucking shit. A monument to the kind of stupidity that can only happen in Hollywood.

FIRST: Apocalypse Now (10029 votes): Number thirty-two in imdb.com’s one hundred best movies of all-time. But then, what the fuck do they know? A victory of reputation over substance; an over-long pile of self-indulgent wank that could have been over in an hour if it wasn’t for Coppolla’s blind thrashing about with meaningful bollocks and a reluctance to edit out even the shittest of scenes.

As a matter of fact, given free range with the negative, my self-appointed director’s cut would go something like this:

Firstly, I'd rejig the cast slightly. Martin Sheen can't act for toffee, so for the purposes of the Scaryduck Cut, his part will be played by Benny Hill, with Stephen Fry playing the Top Brass in the style of General Melchett.

Scene One
Martin Sheen: Saigon. Shit.
Top Brass: BAH! Soldier! Go up country and kill Marlon Brando.
Martin Sheen: Sir! Yes, sir!
Top Brass: Still here then? Piss off!
Martin Sheen: Knickers! Knackers! Knockers!

Scene Two
The entire “Ride of the Valkyries” helicopter fiasco.
Robert Duvall: Charlie don’t surf.
Martin Sheen: Hey! There’s my boat!

Scene Three:
Martin Sheen: Are you Marlon Brando?
Marlon Brando: Ugnk.
High speed chase around jungle camp to the Benny Hill theme involving Brando, Sheen and a bevvy of busty beauties.
Martin Sheen: Take that, you fiend!
Marlon Brando: Ugnk! (dies)
Martin Sheen: That learned you.
Marlon Brando: Where’s my money?

Fin

Twenty minutes, tops, and I’ll even throw in the George Formby style ukelele version of the soundtrack that Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones did to cheer the whole bloody thing up. Feel free to purchase popcorn and souvenirs on the way out.

Apocalypse Now it is, then. The people have spoken, so mote it be. It's good to see a genuine Alan Smithee film winning his own award, a fitting end to the whole exercise. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to make funny noises in a padded room. After all, I went through the terror of having to watch Freddy Got Fingered without adult supervision. Never. Again. You may wish to whine about the results in the Speak Your Brains section, and point out the fact that we completely forgot to mention Rambo III, or anything by Sylvester Stallone for that matter. Or Eddie Murphy, come to think of it. Sorry.

"ARSES!"

I have written a book. No, not that book down in the sidebar, *another* book. It's about a penguin. More specifically, it's a book, aimed at seven to nine year olds, about a penguin that hates the cold of Antarctica, and goes off with some friends to find somewhere warm to live. It's with various publishers, and their reticence to get back to me is either a) encouraging or b) a sign they've used my manuscript as toilet paper.

Any road up, I was watching BBC Breakfast this morning, and the actress-turned-novellist Nichola McAuliffe was talking about her new book Crime Tsar. Then, totally out of the blue, she mentioned her *other* book. It's a book, aimed at seven to nine year olds, about a penguin that hates the cold of Antarctica, and goes off with some friends to find somewhere warm to live. It's out next month.

At this present moment in time, I'd just like to say fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking ARSES!

I bet mine's better.

The Scaryduck Archive