Nobody can claim this film doesn’t have legs. One of the main stars has four of them! Some have accused the writer, Engel Tournpeaks III, of borrowing from recent hits, which he strenuously denies, saying, “I deny that.”The film tells the story of a magical lion who is called upon to save California from a big gorilla that has gotten loose in the city and joined the Republican party, becoming Governor.

Also involved is a sensitive, annoying teenager with big round glasses. When he hits puberty, he discovers that he is a wizard who isn’t attractive to girls.

Cunningly, he decides to join the feminist cause, whilst secretly subscribing to Hustler and Playboy like everybody else. This puts him at odds with the Lion, who doesn’t go for that type of thing because He’s really Jesus. (And because He’s a lion.)

The Wizard uses his powers to come up with a series of brilliant excuses like, ‘But I only buy them for the articles’, which appear to work, but actually don’t, not even with magic spells attached.

Made in 3-D, when the Lion has finally had enough and whacks the kid across the face, his glasses appear to fly from the screen and sail into the audience. A lesser critic claimed there was a lot of subtext in this, but I didn’t see any subtitles or anything.

Soon though, the Lion and the Wizard learn that they must work together if they are to defeat the big gorilla, even though the Lion keeps mentioning the Wizard’s magazine collection in public and making him blush and stammer.

• 

• 

• 

Finally the Wizard learns how to deny all accusations of inappropriate reading matter whilst looking directly into the camera. Nobody believes him, but they all start to admire the little rogue and he finally goes up against the big gorilla and wins, even getting the right-wing vote on account of the lion, who, although clearly deranged, can talk, which is cute, so they vote for him.

Down but not defeated, the big gorilla kidnaps the Wizard, planning to kill him. However, events get in the way and the gorilla starts to become fond of the boy, who shows kindness towards him, performing magic tricks and dancing naked around a campfire.

When the gorilla approves of the Wizard’s magazine collection, they become firm friends. However, cornered in New York, the creature decides to hide at the top of the Empire State Building.

Unfortunately, as he quietly ascends the famous skyscraper, he is watched by the whole world and gets shot. His fall is dramatic but extremely entertaining.

In the final moving scene, the Lion stands over the gorilla and says, “It wasn’t spotty killed the beast, it was his proposed three-point plan to address the budget deficit.”

The Wizard’s loyalties are not clear as the film ends, paving the way for around ninety sequels

Sadly, whatever my review says, it makes no difference. You HAVE to go and see it, or you won’t be able to join in any conversations for the next ten to twenty years.

See you at the cinema, suckers!

Messaging Concept:

All Together Now: Let’s Get Mobile

The first phrase implies connectivity, events, and community.

The second phrase implies physical mobility, event attendance, and m-commerce (as a play on words).

Together, the headline works as an upbeat play on live events, as if somebody is warming up a pre-show audience.

C-Suite communications: Big picture only. Business growth and gaining brand followers is central to the message.

TPM communication: More feature-driven, with an emphasis on data availability and consistent results, as well as enhancement of TPM strategies.

End User communication: Feature-driven, with a lighter touch and an emphasis on ease-of-use and consistency of results.

CTA: Based on a recent study I saw somewhere recently, showing a much higher click-through rate for single CTAs placed at the end of emails. A/B test for Braze.

Notes:

The copy is presented strictly as first draft, without any knowledge of design. In the second draft, I would look to the design requirements, with a view to potentially shortening copy and/or making other changes.

The amount of copy used here may have been shorter if plans for the landing page were already in place.

I wanted to “introduce” XXXXX only enough to create click-through-level curiosity across email messaging; and follow-up-level curiosity for print messaging.

With that in mind, the copy could have been shorter, playing up on the curiosity factor and filling in those blanks on the landing page. I tried to make it work this way, so that I could express some of my company research.

(subject line options): GSMA Mobile World Congress – XXXXX a Trail in 2019

 GSMA Mobile World Congress – Less Mess, More Marketing

 Less Mess, More Marketing – The GSMA Event Is Coming

 All Together Now: Let’s Get Mobile at the GSMA Event 2019

 Calendar Call – the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2019

Hi [NAME],

XXXXX (formerly XXXXXX) puts online businesses in the right place at the right time.

All Together Now: Let’s Get Mobile

GSMA Mobile World Congress

25-28 February 2019

Barcelona, Spain

107,000+ attendees

7,700+ CEO participants

2,400+ exhibitors

3,500+ media and analysts

We’re excited to announce our sponsorship of the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2019.

And we want you in the right place, at the right time, at the ultimate industry hotspot.

Everything from the upcoming wide availability of 5G, to current-and-coming trends, is to be scrutinized, challenged and championed, under a suitably hi-tech spotlight.

XXXXX is:

A customer engagement platform that delivers your messaging across push, email, in-app and more for those easily distracted, energetically mobile targets.

In-the-moment optimization and live views of every customer is there for you. As is your ability to access up-to-the-minute insights from anywhere.

Oh, and AI.  And automation. And other helpful stuff culled from old sci-fi novels.

And it’s all easily implemented, so campaigns can be locked down and updated on the go.

Meaning every experience is relevant. Every campaign you run resonates. Consistently.

Our industry is getting together to grasp the future.

XXXXX is part of it.

Connecting with you is, too.

[TELL ME MORE]

So let’s get mobile. See you there.

And thanks for your time.

Best,

[NAME]

[POSITION]

[XXXXX ACCOLADES]

TITLE: THE THING I HATE THE MOST

LOCATION: AN AMERICAN CITY

TIME: MODERN DAY

TYPE: ROMANTIC COMEDY

LENGTH: 115 PAGES

Co-written with author Sarah Gilbert Fox.

LOGLINE: Two highly creative people — one female and hugely successful, the other male and unemployed — tired of being used in bad relationships, decide to adopt the worst “hard-ass” character-traits of their respective sexes as a last ditch defense mechanism, and to start living those parts in public…

Then they meet.

TAG: If all is fair in love and war, you really have to work at fighting dirty.

THE THING I HATE THE MOST is a modern screw-ball comedy in the tradition of ‘It Happened One Night’ and ‘His Girl Friday’. The story of two highly creative and vulnerable people — Kick Kennedy, the owner of an advertising firm, and David Park, a newly unemployed ideas man — who decide that the time has come to start playing hard-ball in their personal relationships, by taking on the “hard-ass” personality traits each has always despised in members of their own sex…

Then they meet.

After a disastrous, drunken night together, in which nothing other than mutual irritation occurs, they are thrown together by both his need for employment and her desperate search for someone with ideas quirky enough to please a crucial billionaire client.

Dismayed by a growing attraction, and emotionally confused by a head-hunting female advertising competitor, Tanya Wellbridge, who seduces David, they begin to fear that they are actually becoming the very people they are pretending to be, and as a result, start to despise each other so deeply that they end up in bed together again.

With disastrous consequences.

As their partnership starts to come apart at the seams and a huge legal fight looms, only their loyal best friends and their own better natures can stand between them, Tanya Wellbridge, and total ruin, as big business and the war of the sexes interlock and spiral madly out of control.

Pitch Registered: WGAW

TITLE: JULIE DREAMING

LOCATION: AN AMERICAN CITY

TIME: MODERN DAY

TYPE: PARANORMAL THRILLER/TEEN ROMANCE.

LENGTH: 120 PAGES

LOGLINE: An emotionally vulnerable teenage girl, who possesses potentially unlimited paranormal abilities, is wooed by three men with very different motives…one to have her, one to love her, one to kill her…

TAG: If dreams can come true, nightmares can, too.

JULIE DREAMING is the story of a teenage girl who, with her best friend, has mastered the art of lucid dreaming (the awareness that a dream is taking place, and control over it).   However, Julie is on the verge of a nervous breakdown and her disturbed history indicates that her ‘abilities’ may run far deeper.

Although searching for normality, Julie watches with some embarrassment as three males compete for her attention, for very different reasons, as her inner demons propel her towards destruction and her gifts attract a famously eccentric para-psychologist obsessed with mind-control and ‘the ultimate assassination.’

Julie becomes his ideal guinea pig and her desire for normality turns into a fight for survival, taking her from childhood dreams of a father-figure slaying dragons, to horrific adult nightmares of abandonment amidst grotesque monsters, from which only one heroic ‘knight’ can save her.

Julie is finally forced to face her own ‘demons’ and to distinguish between those people who love her and those who wish to use her.

This is a teen-romantic-thriller with a strong horror back-drop and a self-mocking satirical edge.   A mystic love-story that utilises the mystic in a way all audiences can understand, relate to, and talk about.

Satirically self-aware, the SP meshes the style of hip teen movies like the ‘Scream’ series with the mystic other-worldliness of ‘Narnia’.

Pitch Registered: WGAW

TITLE: SINKING JOE STONE

LOCATION: LOS ANGELES

TIME: MODERN DAY

TYPE: ROMANTIC COMEDY/THRILLER

LENGTH: 120 PAGES

LOGLINE: A struggling poet is seduced into the bright lights of show-business and the dark, violent world of the mob whilst risking the loss of his true love, his real friends, his sanity, and his life.

TAG: He was destined for success, marked for death, out of his depth, in love, and on drugs. And it was only Wednesday.

SINKING JOE STONE is the story of Joe Stone, a struggling poet and writer who, after a one-off journalistic assignment in a prison, finds himself summoned to the cell of an infamous and notoriously silent mob-boss, who wants Joe to write his life story…

Joe’s best friend, a hard-nosed sports journalist, and his best friend’s quiet, literary sister — who is secretly in love with Joe — are more aware of the potential dangers inherent to this opportunity than is the starry-eyed writer, who jumps at the chance of overnight fame, money and glamour, putting his life on the line in the process.

As Joe sinks into sleaze and drug-addiction at the hands of a manipulative lover and a calculating mobster, the mob itself attempts to first discredit the writer, then kill him, as his one real friend and his one true love fight to bring him back from the edge… before he goes under for good.

Pitch Registered: WGAW

TITLE: RUNNING DRY

LOCATION: AN AMERICAN CITY

TIME: MODERN DAY

TYPE: BLACK COMEDY

LENGTH: 120 PAGES

LOGLINE: A misogynist, alcoholic, reclusive and suicidal literary legend is forced to re-evaluate his life thanks to a beautiful but jaded TV reporter, his estranged daughter, a maniacally-depressed musician, and his stalker…

TAG: He thought his life was over, ‘till they made him get over his life.

RUNNING DRY is the story of Tom Blaine, a misogynist, alcoholic and reclusive literary legend, whose gun-in-the-mouth suicide attempt is rudely disrupted, first by his own inability to reach a ‘final edit’ on a suicide note, then by a call from the cops, requiring him to come speak to a deranged stalker who has captured the media’s attention. From this point on, not only does the life of Tom Blaine fail to end, it becomes extremely complicated…

Madeline Blaine, Tom’s estranged daughter, angered by the media’s glowing reports on the “hero” she believes responsible for her mother’s death, and reporter Chrissie Jade, eager to draw out the reclusive genius in a bid to save her own career, along with musician John Baranda, an enthusiastic new fan caught up in the excitement, come together around the horrified writer with amazing, touching, and hilarious results, as the deranged stalker, “The Nut” escapes jail and becomes increasingly insane as he hunts down Tom and his daughter.

Running Dry is a highly satirical romantic thriller with a big heart and a sharp bite.  Revealing humor and feeling through character-driven action, the story builds towards a climax that is simultaneously thrilling, hilarious, and life-affirming.

Pitch Registered: WGAW

Between February 2004 and February 2005 I wrote twenty six freelance articles for Francophile internet magazine Bonjour Paris + one article with Karen Fawcett (President) and Sarah Gilbert Fox (Directeur Général), which was published in the guide-book, “Paris For Dummies.” Here is one of the original twenty six, with the original self-penned lead…

Death In The Afternoon: The Catacombs

Pat Brien takes you on a Tour of Cemetery Montparnasse, which holds some of the most colourful and controversial of the deceased artists, philosophers, writers, performers, anarchists and Feminists who lived the history of Paris, before descending into the dark and murky labyrinth of the ancient and awesome Catacombs.

I’d heard of the Paris Catacombs several times, but something about this dark, winding labyrinth, buzzing with small electric lights, throwing shadows against cold, grinning skulls, leading to huge open spaces filled with still hundreds more vacant, gaping eyes, unknowing and unseeing, piled together, cramped and condemned, raising only questions and never revealing answers, reminded me too much of French bureaucracy, so I had always avoided it.

But I eventually hardened to French bureaucracy and softened to the idea of a trip to the Catacombs. Deciding on a visit to nearby Cemetery Montparnasse, as a sort of warm-up (if you’ll pardon the expression), I took the best of the metro stop choices: Edgar-Quinet, Line 6, coming out onto Blvd. Edgar-Quinet. A few steps South along the Blvd and I was standing awkwardly at the main entrance.

Entering and turning right, I was confronted by the first of many small temples, filled with crucifixes and holy figures, pretty picture-windows and flowers. I was almost moved to tears by the fact that the space inside was almost the same as that of my studio apt. But I felt a little strange standing in front of someone’s tomb and mourning myself, so I moved on.

Just past this is the modest resting place of philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and writer Simone Beauvoir. Sartre apparently lived the last few decades of his life on nearby Blvd. Raspail, making the immortal thinker a home-body in all senses of the word.

A genuinely touching aspect of the grave of Sartre and Beauvoir is a dedication (larger than that to either Sartre or Beauvoir), to the memory of a 17 year old girl called Sohane, a French girl ofAlgerian origin, who was burned alive in 1984 for refusing to follow some kind of religious or cultural law (a dress-code, according to one helpful mourner).

Beauvoir is described in the plaque as a writer who wrote for the freedom of women, and Sohane as a martyr who died for it. It is very touching and strange to consider that a philosopher, a writer, and an activist, are still working together from the grave towards a common goal in Paris.

Knowing nothing of philosophy, I had always had a soft spot for Sartre because of his classic one-liner: ‘Hell is other people,’ a statement as exquisitely simple as it is painfully true.

Just ask a cool British guy called Sebastian, who I hooked up with and talked at for a period of hours on my first visit to the graveyard.

I will never forget some of the looks we received as we stood in front of Charles Baudelaire’s grave discussing ‘Buffy The Vampire Slayer.’

But apart from Satre, Montparnasse holds yet another of the one-liner kings, Proudhon, the anarchist thinker who came up with the immortal: “Property Is Theft!”

To be honest, I never really understood that one. What if you rent? What does that make you? A liberal? As for Proudhon’s final property, ironically enough, I couldn’t find it.   The map I was viewing (a signpost at the top end of Avenue de l’Ouest), was clear enough, and the sections were clearly signposted, too, but I didn’t get there.

In truth, I was only interested in seeing if anybody had sprayed an Anarchy sign on his tomb, or in the hope that some fan-club nuts might have paid to have one painstakingly carved into a headstone.

All the thoughts of Anarchy somehow led me straight to the grave of Serge Gainsbourg (Division One, along Avenue Transversale). Serge’s grave was bedecked with photographs of the great man, along with metro-tickets, cigarette’s, and even flowers. I don’t know much about Serge either, only that he seems to have been loved for being unlovable, which is a pretty good trick.

Apart from Serge, Sartre, Proudhon, Baudelaire, you will also find here the Fascist Pierre Laval, executed for treason, car-maker André Citroen, César Frank, and a famous victim of French anti-Semitism at the end of the nineteenth century, Captain Dreyfuss. Some of the graves and temples are amazing, some of the sculptures astounding, like the huge hand over the grave of one Robert Thibier, who was probably the sculptor.

Unfortunately, the name wasn’t listed.

Anyway, having spent some time wandering around, staring at the head-stones and into the temples, I was left with a feeling that the Montparnasse philosophy dictates that just because you’ve been dead for a few hundred years, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look good.

And with that, I was ready for…

From Cemetery Montparnasse, you only need turn right at the main entrance and hook back onto Blvd. Raspail, then follow it down to Pl. Denfort Rochereau, face a giant statue of a lion, and look to the building in front and to the left of it’s left nostril! It’s that simple. Or get off the metro at Denfort-Rochereau, Line 4, and use sortie ‘rue Denfert-Rochereau’, which will leave you standing directly opposite. The Catacombs are open Tue-Sun 10.00-4.00.

I was amazed by the queue. I had expected to see a few people milling around, of course: a grumble of tourists smelling a photo-opportunity with death, but I was greeted by a queue stretching a long way back. It looked more like the crowd for the Louvre; the Mona Lisa lovers.

‘Damn,’ I thought, ‘Maybe they buried her here? Maybe they’ve got her skull on display and I’ve missed all the snappy adverts: “Meet Mona In The Catacombs! Wonder At The Mystery Of That Toothy Grin! Fitted With Realistic Hair! Photo’s 10 E’s.”

THE CATACOMBS.

Yes, it was the tourist crowd. Somebody somewhere was making a fortune from selling bright orange shirts and trousers that were neither long nor short, just stupid.  All those little family groups. The women and children suffering meekly under the enforced enthusiasm and cross-eyed leadership of the dominant males. The crappy camaraderie.

I heard one guy telling his partner: “I don’t care what the guide-book says! I spoke to an actual French man!” I realized then that life is so much sadder than death. I put my shades on, to protect my eyes from the blaze of orange, and looked down the queue. ‘Maybe they’re here to be buried?’ I thought hopefully. But they weren’t, and I knew it, so I joined them.

One woman was freaking out because a spider had found it’s way onto her. Odd, considering that she was about to descend into one vast, dimly-lit, grinning pit of death. So we waited. Then we went in, paid our five euros, and began descending the steep, narrow, winding stairway to the Paris Catacombs.

After a long, dull start, in which minding your step on the rough ground and minding your head on the low ceiling, takes up most of your thoughts along some ancient, extremely narrow passageways, you come to a large, circular opening, then the skulls start.

Walls made of bones, interlaced with grinning skulls, some lit, some half-lit, some with shadows creeping over them, searching out the deep eye-sockets. Dates on plaques. The ancient dead. More skulls. Some chest-high bone walls showing how far back these Catacombs go.

Thousands of dead; a sea of bones, the odd skull sitting atop; some tilted in the half-light, looking for all the world like the fleshy, bald heads of living men. They did live once. All of them. You know that. They walked around above, dreamed, laughed, played it out, schemed and struggled until their turn was over. Now they were here.

I preferred them to the tourists, somehow. In fact, I stopped and waited until the low orange grumble had faded to dark, silence, and I found myself alone, just me and the dead. I soaked it up.

It felt good. Peaceful. Here were the real dead of Paris. Old bones even before they were so rudely dug up, probably already forgotten, and dumped here back in 1785.

These were the guys and girls who knew what being dead and gone was really all about. Here death actually was the great leveler, not like in Montparnasse Cemetery, with all its poseurs, its unsophisticated and fashion-conscious nouveau-dead, like Citroen and Laval, demanding attention and maudlin sentiment.

Here was a real community of corpses. Their own skulls were their tombstones; their bones piled beneath them, testifying to the fact that they once stood and walked in the sun.

The labyrinth wasn’t really a labyrinth. It was low and claustrophobic in places, dripping water and wet underfoot here and there, but there was no way to get lost.

For me, there was still a way out. And the tourists were long gone. They had collected all the drama they needed for all the phone-calls they were going to make, for letters they were going to write, and I had collected all the information I needed for the article.

I said goodbye to the dead and started making my way back up towards the light, towards a nice guy who would check my bag to make sure I hadn’t stolen a skull (to stick a candle on the next time I sacrifice a goat?).

He would then smile and point me out towards a street I had never seen before in my life, where I would be blinded by the sun and the blaze of slow moving orange grumble.

Oh well, C’est la vie!

Les Catacombs, Place Denfort-Rochereau, 75014, Paris. Telephone : 01.43.22.47.63.   Entrance : 5.00 euros. Call for discount information.

Entrance: Place Denfort-Rochereau. Exit: Rue Remey Dumoncel. Turn right and continue along to Avenue Du General Leclerc. Turn right again to head back towards Place Denfort-Rochereau.