It might seem that I live 24/7 in McSciFi-Land, still the world’s weirdest amusement park, but that’s not entirely true. While I spend the majority of my time here I need to take a break every now and then. Sunday was one such moment.
My lovely bride and I went to the moving picture palace to watch a moving picture. Specifically, we went to go see Barbie. When we got there the projector was broken in our theater and no one told us. After a solid half hour of back and forth we finally got our tickets switched so we could watch the movie in a theater with a working projector.
I highly recommend seeing movies in theaters with working projectors.
My spoiler free review is as follows. This movie was a riot. It skewered everything in its path. Did it earn the right-wing ire that involved burning dolls and Elon Musk posting a coherent, if malevolent, thought? It not only earned it, it embraced it. One important note here, while the movie is about a beloved doll, it is not for kids. From the out-of-nowhere drop of a M******f****r, to the sexual innuendo – both subtle and not, to the politics writ large in every frame, this movie doesn’t even pretend to be for kids.
Kim and I loved it. The people in the theater with us were all in. Several woman brought their Barbies out during the film so they could watch it too. At its core, this is a film about female empowerment and what it means for real women to exist in modern society. It hits some points a lot harder than you might expect in a movie about a toy.
In non-Barbie news, The Brittle Riders garnered its first official rejection. To get there, we took a circuitous route, to say the least. I had met the agent on a public blog. She had our tone reel up on her office screen and was planning to show it to some coworkers as an example of how to do one of these things correctly. Her job requires her to manage millions of dollars of contracts and ensure what needs to be somewhere gets there. It is a detail oriented role and she’s been doing it for a while.
Anyway, she has a new boss who, to be polite, likes micromanaging. Obviously, for her, distractions could mean large sums of money not going out or going to the wrong location. In other words, constant interruptions are not welcome.
As you may have guessed, new boss walks in and asks what she’s working on. It may have been the umpteenth time that day he did that. So she motioned to her one hundred inch screen with the awesome surround sound (God, I wish I could see it that way) and said, “This.” Three minutes later, with the blood drained from her boss’ face, he mumbled, “Looks expensive” and left the room. She noted he hadn’t said “HELL NOOOO!” so she took that as permission to make a formal presentation to the network’s buyers.
She reached out to me, got copies of everything related to the book except the book, asked me a bunch of questions, and made a formal pitch.
The notes she shared were universally positive, but no one could justify the potential costs involved. However, if we get it funded independently, I’m allowed to circle back.
One common thread, when people first become aware of The Brittle Riders, is they start by saying “This needs to be animated.” Which is fine. But, as they become more familiar with the content the refrain switches to “Ah, hell, this has to be live action.” Every single time. It’s why we built the tone reel around live action examples.
This journey I’m on can be maddening, but it can also be joyful. The network that turned us down wasn’t even on our list for shopping, this was all organic and odd. And, while a deal didn’t happen, there are now a room full of powerful people who are saying nice things about all of this. I know that since several employees reached out to me privately telling me how cool The Brittle Riders is.
All that being said, I want to thank you for taking this journey with me. I have no idea where it will end, but I’m betting we can get tequila there.
See you next time.
