Some time ago, Tim Pierce passed along a game on Facebook: #RemoveOneLetterFromAMovieTitle. Example:
POTLIGHT: a plucky team of old-school journalists completely miss a major news story right under their noses because they spend most of their days stoned to the gills.
The original film title is SPOTLIGHT:
Spotlight is a 2015 American biographical drama film directed by Tom McCarthy and written by McCarthy and Josh Singer. The film follows The Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” team, the oldest continuously operating newspaper investigative journalist unit in the United States, and its investigation into cases of widespread and systemic child sex abuse in the Boston area by numerous Roman Catholic priests. (Wikipedia link)
The entries poured in, in a dizzying flood. Here’s a very small sample (of 16), with the names of the contributors (you’ll have to figure out the original movie titles on your own):
Wayne Bryant. GODFELLAS: A minister, a priest, and a rabbi walk into a bar, come up with a scheme to work their way up their church hierarchies.
Alan Promer. A WWII solider and his Japanese captor are rivals for the affection of a local woman in THE BRIDE ON THE RIVER KWAI.
Andy Solberg. I also like the sequel, A BRIDE TOO FAR.
David Mortman. A TALE OF TWO CITES: It was the best of times it was the worst of times. A grad student having successfully defended her phd struggles with university bureaucracy to get her dissertation approved by the format checking team in time to start her tenure track job across the country.
David Mortman. AGING BULL: The DeNiro classic about an older boxer put out to pasture. Could have been a contender for an Oscar.
Justin Hughes. PEED: When a bus is rigged to explode if it falls below 50mph, Keanu Reeves soils himself.
Alan Promer. Germans index the Web in DAS BOT.
Ron Newman. TAR WARS: Han tries to extricate the crashed Millennium Falcon from La Brea before Darth Vader can drag him and his ship under.
David Mortman. THE IMITATION GAM: Benedict Cummerbatch reveals Alan Turing’s little known hobby of making prosthetic legs.
Alan Promer. Paul Newman escapes from prison and becomes a Hawaiian musician in COOL HAND UKE.
David Mortman. HEATERS: Christian Slater and Winona Ryder use their hvac skills to poison their classmates with carbon monoxide in this dark comedy.
Alan Promer. Fourth-wall-breaking humor abounds in this unconventional story of Disney “imagineers” trying to develop a new attraction for the theme park: THE PRINCESS RIDE.
Alan Promer. Keir Dullea is delightful in this charming romantic comedy about an astronaut who falls in love with the spaceship’s computer during a long distance flight. ANNIE HAL.
Andy Solberg. Corinne Clery and Udo Kier return in this sequel to their original erotic adventures, this time using Tantric Sex Magick, in THE WIZARD OF O.
David Mortman. GI JAN: Marcia Marcia Marcia! Jan Brandy has had it with not getting the respect she deserves and enlists in the Navy get it.
Brian Olson. A masked man is the True Love of a French cheese heiress, THE PRINCESS BRIE.
April 30, 2016 at 1:54 pm |
An aging Rhett Butler becomes the world’s oldest pilot during the early days of aviation in ONE WITH THE WIND.
It’s a fun game, but there are limited possibilities. The number of variations for each title is equal to its number of letters, and many variations are unusable, at least without heroic assumptions (STR WARS), or do not appear to make good titles (STAR WAS). Many movie titles, such as Casablanca, cannot be used at all.
Although most of the resulting movie descriptions are too contrived to sound appealing, I am ready to watch The Princess Ride.