Flaming Hand

The movie is great idea. If you do the Larry the Musical, you could also do the thing from the view point of the people FILMING Larry the Musical so that you get the movie within a movie. I always love shit like that. It could be fun. Film it in documentary style with a digital video cam from the documentary film maker's point of view, BUT to make the film crew look "legit"you could get someone to borrow you some cheap super 8's and shit and put them on tripods, even if they're broken, just to make it look like you are "filming" the movie with a crew, and the documentary is about the movie they are making.

Now you know of course the real story is that the whole project falls apart and goes south. The movie has to fail, the documentary has to fail and that's the real story going on, but you can still do the story of Larry the Musical inside the movie within the movie, within the movie.

You can have the story of some people that are watching the guys crappy doc and giving it the thumbs down so that he never get's any work again. You just switch points of view, and the viewer STILL gets to see the whole musical and hear all of the great music. Show the whole musical but from the view point of inside of the musical...but show it happening on video monitors "on the set", or as it is being watched in the "editing booth". So you have the movie, within the movie, within the movie, within the movie.

As layered from the top level inward:

1. The editors and execs giving the guy's doc the AXE as they are watching it in the screening room.

2. The doc makers crappy life and his dismal subject matter which is of course doomed to fail.

3. The film crew and their crappy lives as they are led around by a vain director that is without common sense, sanity, or sense of continuity and completion. He is of course the real "ED WOOD" style director.

4. Finally you have the actual musical itself happening inside of the whole thing, the tragedy being that the musical never gets the proper treatment due to the incompetency of all outside members involved with working on the project, chipping away at it bit by bit until they destroy the whole thing.

5. The final synopsis....everybody fails and the whole thing shits the bed.

The idea is kind of fun and very simple to do. You give the script writing responsibilities to 4 different people, assign each person a story level and tell them that they have to write 15 minutes of script for their subject and tell their subject matter's entire story in 15 minutes. You get the 4 scripts back, film each story line separately by itself and along with the actual musical footage, the end result is about a 90 minutes on the screen with editing back and forth from different story lines....all the while showing the Larry the Musical in it's entirety.

So in the end, the whole thing ends up being a little Ken Russell, a little Spinal Tap, a little Woody Allen, and a little Ed Wood all thrown together...and any other influences you can put in their.

Maybe you even pull the Natural Born Killers thing and throw continuity out the window with hairs styles, sets, and clothes all changing constantly in mid scene, and making the whole thing one fucked up mess, and if you do not follow a linear path, that will make it even cooler.

Film a clip like a Russ Meyer movie, the next clip is like a spaghetti western, the next one is like a 1931 Frankenstein movie, the next clip done in Easy Rider style, a Hammer Film, Star Trek, the possibilities are endless. Keep fucking with the audiences perception and attention span. It could be really fun for you to do. The best part is, the more haphazardly it is filmed the better. Don't even try to go for quality in the film making. Save the quality for the music itself.

TommyB

Okay, I'll bite. . . and by the way, I would never try to talk you out of something as exciting as that!