Good evening, Kibitzers, and an early happy spring! The vernal equinox is tonight, at 11:06 pm EDT /8:06 pm PDT. In its honor, my weather tomorrow will be sunny and warm-ish, with… a “slight chance of snow showers” overnight with “little or no accumulation” expected? Okay then!
I’ve been intending to do a KTK on Pitch Meeting videos for ages, but I kept putting it off because there are SO many of them. The thought of trying to pick only as many as can reasonably fit in a diary was, as usual, daunting. It didn’t get less daunting, but when Tom Tomorrow parked the series’ favorite catchphrase in the middle of his This Modern World on March 11, I took that as a sign that it was time.
Ryan George is a Canadian comic actor and writer who posts a lot of material on YouTube. There’s a whole other diary to be written about his stuff that’s NOT Pitch Meeting, which I may or may not manage to post next week. The Pitch Meeting sketches started out as part of a movie-related channel called ScreenRant, where they were collected into their own playlist. But they became popular enough to be continued on their own Pitch Meetings channel.
Pitch Meeting videos have two characters, Producer Guy and Screenwriter Guy, both played by Ryan George. The sketches all supposedly take place in the past, before the movies or TV shows they’re about exist, and the idea is, Screenwriter Guy has come to pitch his script to Producer Guy. Rather than have a realistic conversation, though, they openly acknowledge the plot holes/ ridiculous premises/ questionable motivations involved in the story. If I try too hard to explain this to you, it won’t be funny, so I will just show you. Be warned, there are spoilers.
(In some interview segment I can’t find now, Ryan George explained the origin of the gigantic-eyed characters in the thumbnails. I don’t remember what it was, but I recall it being a casual choice that just stuck, rather than something with deeper meaning. Sure is creepy, though!)
Home Alone [6:05]
This sketch is an early one, so the ongoing kabuki that has since developed wasn’t really set yet, but it’s mostly in there, including the famous phrase Tom Tomorrow referred to. (“Super easy, barely an inconvenience” t-shirts are available for purchase, just saying.) It’s all… pretty meta.
Independence Day [6:55]
“Why do they do that?” “’Cuz it’s gonna look cool in the trailer!”
CATS [11:58]
This is a “revisited” episode; some time after initially posting a video, he sometimes makes one of these in which, after the sketch itself, he talks a little about making it. In this case, among other things, he tells a really weird story about seeing the movie in Quebec.
Star Wars [7:02]
You’ll appreciate the careful historical re-creation of the 70s. ;)
Top Gun: Maverick [6:09]
“Oh, they’ve gotta do a Star Wars!” “It’s not a ‘Star Wars’, sir! It’s just some pilots flying though tight spaces trying to blow up an evil base by hitting a very precise target in an exhaust port!”
The Matrix [5:47]
“Oh, did they have a romantic thing going on?” “Not really, no, but he’s the male lead and she’s the female lead.”
The Lego Movie [4:09]
“I was pitching a commercial to the people at Lego, and they were like, ‘This is kinda long,’ so I was like, ‘Maybe it could be a movie!’”
Ghostbusters: Afterlife [7:15]
“So, Gary’s gonna… actually, I left some openings here in the script, Mad Libs style: ‘The name of a store that will give us a lot of money to be included in the movie’.” “Uh, WalMart!”
Avatar [10:49]
This is another “revisited” video, the first one he did, for one of the earlier videos he’d done sometime before, and he talks a bit about his characters and about the movie.
“I’m just following the classic rule of writing here: ‘Tell, don’t show’.”
Frozen [5:51]
“But he explains how to fix it in case that happens?” “He does not. I told you, these trolls are vague as hell.”
Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers [6:32]
“Okay, so the trees were treated poorly and now they want their revenge?” [voice off] “That's perfect! I love it!” “Who was that?” “Oh, that's just M. Night Shyamalan. Sometimes he eavesdrops on these meetings and tries to get movie ideas. THAT'S NOT A GOOD IDEA FOR A MOVIE, M. NIGHT!” [voice off] “Yes it is!”
The Big Bang Theory [4:22]
Okay, spoiler alert: I freakin’ hate The Big Bang Theory, so I have gleefully included it here because he, um, expresses my sentiments well. If you love The Big Bang Theory, you’re still my friend (and I hope I’m still yours), but be forewarned that this episode may make you sad.
“I just hope there’s never any kind of social movement that holds people accountable for that kind of inappropriate behavior.” ”Me too!”
Jurassic Park [5:28]
“What kind of idiot makes a video talking to himself and tries to pass that off as entertainment??”
Godzilla vs. Kong [7:54]
“How did she secretly teach a giant monkey sign language while it was under constant supervision?” “Unclear!”