Snakes on a Plane

Snakes on a Plane is the next summer blockbuster coming out. It opens August 18, 2006 - and features the generally mild mannered Samuel L Jackson. I suspect it is about snakes on an airplane. But then again I'm not sure The Piano was really about a piano. Somebody told me it was supposed to be erotic, but after 20 minutes decided that no amount of sex could save that movie and gave up. So I don't really know for sure, and there was a piano there - but I had a feeling that the movie was about something deeper than the piano - if you were to watch the whole thing.

In 1988 there was a hit movie called "Die Hard". It featured Bruce Willis as a New York cop who is in a building in Los Angeles when a group of European terrorists (in the 1980's these were technically reffered to by the term "Eurotrash") take over the building to steal a bunch of stuff and try to kill everybody. Bruce Willis kills all of them instead. Had Bruce Willis been killed by the bad guys the movie would have lasted twenty-eight minutes and had a sad ending. This version didn't do well in screen tests. So they went with the "sell out" ending, and not only did it do well, it spawned sequels - Die Hard 2, Die Hard Goes to College, Die Hard Meets Earnest, etc. As we speak, "Die Hard - Isn't Bruce Willis Getting Kinda Old For This Stuff, and is the Situation With Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher, and Bruce Willis a Little Creepy?" is in pre-production.

I'm not a film expert, but I have seen some on television. It seems there was a period after the release of Die Hard where all the new action movie ideas were pitched relative to Die Hard. "Die Hard on a Bus", "Die Hard on a Boat", "Die Hard on the set of Regis and Kathy Lee where We're a Kinda Rooting for the Bad Guys". I guess Snakes on a Plane was pitched as "Die Hard on a Plane with Snakes".

So why am I writing about the movie Snakes on a Plane, which I frankly have no interest in? Well, I'm hoping if I mention Snakes on a Plane enough times, I might get some accidental traffic from search engines. Also - I wanted to share this link. You can set it up to have a pre-recorded version of Samuel L Jackson call a friend and tell them to go see Snakes on a Plane. Its very funny - certainly more fun than working.