Originally published on August 18, 2006.
By GARY THOMPSON - Philadelphia Daily News
All "Snakes on a Plane" haiku have the same problem: how to work "motherf---" into a line that contains only five or seven syllables.
A blogger named SnakesinEurope addresses the problem thusly:
Snakes on a plane, b--
On this Motherf--- plane
Ain't s-- we can do..
All of this, of course, raises a couple of questions: Why are people writing haiku about "Snakes on a Plane?"
And why do they all seem to include the word "motherf---?"
If you need to ask, you need a quick primer in the year's biggest Internet entertainment phenomenon - a grass-roots (if you prefer, net-roots) campaign to celebrate the most brazenly shallow movie pitch ever made - embodied in the title "Snakes on a Plane."
And in this haiku:
What did you say? snakes?
On the motherf---- plane?
Now THAT'S a movie
The phenomenon started when a non-starter screenplay (see article, above) was resurrected by New Line Cinema and floated to rewrite guys as a project about "snakes on a plane."
One screenwriter blogged about it on the net, and the shorthand title became a mantra, seized upon by bloggers and movie buffs as the quintessence of Hollywood low-concept marketing.
So succinct was the title/concept that fans were moved to celebrate, rather than denigrate, its elemental appeal.
Fans began to write their own posters, merchandise (t-shirts are everywhere), advertising, trailers, etc. One fan devised fake outtakes featuring fake celebrities in various roles.
When Samuel L. Jackson was hired to play the lead snake killer, fans began to work the word "motherf---" into the folk art, as Jackson is widely judged to be the leading enunciator of the word, hands down.
A fan's fake radio campaign used a fake Jackson to utter the line "I want these MFing snakes off this MFing plane," and New Line, hip to the growing wave of fan support, added it to the movie.
The online sports book BetCRIS.com is now taking over-under bets on Jackson's use of the word - the over/under is 17, and we're thinking under.
Published: 2007-01-03
Bettor's enjoyed a good week with many favorites winning, especially in baseball. Sunday alone in baseball there were 13 defined favorites which won, so with results like that bookmakers generally have a tough time of it.
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2007-01-03 | permalink
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