DATELINE, HOLLYWOOD, CA: The entertainment industry was hit with devastating news today, as the Writers Guild of America, West (the premier screenwriters’ union in Hollywood) announced that virtually everything that could be weaponized by fictional terrorists, madmen, and power-mad dictators had, in fact, already been weaponized. The remaining list of things known to have not been weaponized in film or television is being kept a carefully guarded secret at this time, but it is rumored to include cornflakes, laundry detergent, barbecue sauce, the collected poetry of ee cummings, a 1972 Ford Pinto, the ABBA single “Dancing Queen”, and the mortal remains of Telly Savalas.
Said one screenwriter, under conditions of anonymity, “I blame MGM. The Bond films have been weaponizing all sorts of damn crap over the years, from orchids to financial forecasts to experimental fuels. They had to have known that the stockpiles of everyday things that we could make scary by announcing the bad guy has ‘weaponized’ it couldn’t last forever, but they kept going. Now I’m stuck with trying to convince Morgan Freeman to stand in front of a crowd of extras pretending to be White House reporters and announce that Libya has fucking weaponized cornflakes? It’s not going to work, dammit.”
Later that day, the screenplay ‘Flake Fury’ sold for 1.2 million dollars. Morgan Freeman is reportedly interested in the part.
Still others point the finger at television. “Oh, yeah, we weaponized the shit out of…everything, man,” one producer said after advising he did not want his name used. “Weaponized lighter fluid, weaponized bird flu, weaponized iPhones–fuck, we weaponized every single product Microsoft and Apple put out in the last five years, and that was just on last week’s CSI: Cyber! I don’t know what we’re going to do when the stuff on the list runs out.”
There is some hope, though. “We’ve been discussing re-weaponizing things that have already been weaponized,” said a spokesperson for WGA West. “We believe that if something is in large supply, then we can make a plausible case in the story that even though it was previously weaponized, the amount of it not under lock and key will be great enough that someone can get hold of it and weaponize it all over again.” The announcement appeared to relate to a new series that will be premiering in the fall, set in Washington DC, where a small group of sinister plotters have ground the government to a standstill by weaponizing stupidity.
Related Articles
11 users responded in this post
Chubby Rain
Sadly, without Roger Corman the U.S. was bound to lose the arms race eventually.
Still, there’s important work being done concerning Transformers with freely-swinging balls. Deadly stuff and will serve us well until Seth McFarlane can write Ted 3 and 4.
The other question is, what guns will the bad-guy minions use?
For a while in the 80s everyone had Uzis. Then Die Hard came out, and suddenly they all had MP5s. For a brief period the Calico was popular, but now I think everyone just uses Glocks (or the evergreen “Ruger Blackhawk dressed up with some plastic furniture from the prop department”)
Could they weaponise… weapons?
Dancing Queen was weaponized the day it was written.
The worst pop song ever.
“Could they weaponise… weapons?”
WITCH!!!
Reminds me of an old Spitting Image sketch (Cabinet discussion on failing national businesses):
“Well obviously we didn’t privatize it enough.”
“You’re saying if something is particularly useless we should privatize it TWICE? That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard!”
“Right then, let’s privatize it. Then it’ll be brilliant!”
“We’ll have to privatize Dobson three times!”
No one has been wrong on the internet harder than Brian Fowler.
Ain’t the Ford Pinto already a weapon?
@Remora: Not yet. Right now it’s only dangerous. Until they learn to…weaponize it.
*applause*