an open letter to peter jackson
Dear Mr Jackson,
I write to you as a long time admirer of your work who has just had the mind numbing experience of sitting through all 188 minutes (well, 185 of them, I took a bathroom break) of King Kong.
I must humbly request that you return to me no less than 100 of those aforementioned minutes.
Allow me to assure you that I am not a person who could be accused of not appreciating your vision as a director. Meet the Feebles is my favourite film, and Heavenly Creatures is a film I believe deserved to be showered in awards. I also felt that your early shlock horror was marvellous.
Whilst I can't honestly pretend I am a huge LOTR fan, I can appreciate your artistry and skill there. So few fantasy fans could find anything negative to say - quite an achievement in and of itself.
Clearly, those films could justifably run for three hours plus each, but it does seem as though you've developed a belief that this is a normal running length, rather than an exception which should be carefully employed when absolutely necessary.
King Kong is proof positive of this principle.
Did it need such a lengthy introduction? No. The multiple dinosaur stampede fights (each of which was at leats twice as long as it needed to be)? No. The pointless subplots with the characters no-one gave a shit about (with their somewhat cloyingly unrealistic inter-racial subtexts). No.
Basically, you could have gotten the film down to two hours and not left much out. Thirty minutes to get to the island. Forty on the island and Fifty in New York (the last third of the film being admittedly rather decent). You could have kept - and indeed better highlighted - the relationship between woman and ape and still used all your favourite SFX (which weren't that crash hot frankly - I thought ten years from Jurassic Park things might have improved a tad more) and still had a bit of social commentary about depression era America etc etc but I wouldn't have been left with a numb arse and a distinct feeling that maybe I missed out on something that really mattered in that time.
I think King Kong also needed some script revision and better blue screen usage, but it really might have been a good film regardless if it hadn't chewed up so much more of my life than it should have.
My time is worth at least $30AU an hour. Since we are old friends (I know all the words to 'Sodomy' from Meet the Feebles and have done more to promote your early work than anyone not actually on the payroll for them), I will charge you my discounted rate of $20AU/hr for one and a half hours (less than the 100 mins previous mentioned).
As such, I feel you should pay me the amount of $30AU at your earliest convenience.
I wish you all the best for the future and volunteer my editing assistance (at the above discounted rate even) with your next motion picture endeavour.
Yours sincerely,
Weasel
I write to you as a long time admirer of your work who has just had the mind numbing experience of sitting through all 188 minutes (well, 185 of them, I took a bathroom break) of King Kong.
I must humbly request that you return to me no less than 100 of those aforementioned minutes.
Allow me to assure you that I am not a person who could be accused of not appreciating your vision as a director. Meet the Feebles is my favourite film, and Heavenly Creatures is a film I believe deserved to be showered in awards. I also felt that your early shlock horror was marvellous.
Whilst I can't honestly pretend I am a huge LOTR fan, I can appreciate your artistry and skill there. So few fantasy fans could find anything negative to say - quite an achievement in and of itself.
Clearly, those films could justifably run for three hours plus each, but it does seem as though you've developed a belief that this is a normal running length, rather than an exception which should be carefully employed when absolutely necessary.
King Kong is proof positive of this principle.
Did it need such a lengthy introduction? No. The multiple dinosaur stampede fights (each of which was at leats twice as long as it needed to be)? No. The pointless subplots with the characters no-one gave a shit about (with their somewhat cloyingly unrealistic inter-racial subtexts). No.
Basically, you could have gotten the film down to two hours and not left much out. Thirty minutes to get to the island. Forty on the island and Fifty in New York (the last third of the film being admittedly rather decent). You could have kept - and indeed better highlighted - the relationship between woman and ape and still used all your favourite SFX (which weren't that crash hot frankly - I thought ten years from Jurassic Park things might have improved a tad more) and still had a bit of social commentary about depression era America etc etc but I wouldn't have been left with a numb arse and a distinct feeling that maybe I missed out on something that really mattered in that time.
I think King Kong also needed some script revision and better blue screen usage, but it really might have been a good film regardless if it hadn't chewed up so much more of my life than it should have.
My time is worth at least $30AU an hour. Since we are old friends (I know all the words to 'Sodomy' from Meet the Feebles and have done more to promote your early work than anyone not actually on the payroll for them), I will charge you my discounted rate of $20AU/hr for one and a half hours (less than the 100 mins previous mentioned).
As such, I feel you should pay me the amount of $30AU at your earliest convenience.
I wish you all the best for the future and volunteer my editing assistance (at the above discounted rate even) with your next motion picture endeavour.
Yours sincerely,
Weasel
posted by weasel at 1:20 AM
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