Friday 26 December 2008

Dear Joe Dante


Where are you? Where have you got to, you wild-haired weirdo? Where, after such a prolific run of corkers, have you vanished? And have you taken Rick Moranis with you?


You got Dennis Quaid pissed, bunged him in a capsule and had him boom Sam Cooke records through Martin Short's colon. You gave us John Goodman pioneering rumble-rama in the midst of the atomic age. You sent River Phoenix and Ethan Hawke flying over the set of Tron before sticking them in a giant Malteser and having them sail into space to meet aliens raised on pop culture. You gave us the best-ever episode of Eerie, Indiana - you know, the one where the kid gets a new retainer and starts hearing dogs talk. You can't desert us now.

We need you. We need your oddball repertory cast of Dick Miller, Robert Picardo, Wendy Schaal and Rick Ducommun to offset the litany of cack-handed supporting players that pass for entertainers nowadays. We need you to save us from the onslaught of teen-slasher tat, mindless blockbusting maulers and all Reese Witherspoon movies post-American Psycho. What is Hollywood good for if we're repeatedly deprived of your skewed tales of mogwais versus gremlins, Petersons versus Klopeks and Quaid versus indigestion?

We need you to deliver another of your off-kilter, faintly subversive attacks on bourgeois materialism. We need you to run amok in suburbia with another wittily-shot, Goldsmith-scored destruction of the American dream. We need you to resurrect Zach Galligan, Grandpa Fred and that wacky Japanese dude for Gremlins 3. Work a camera?! I am a camera!

I hope that you will hear my plea.

Faithful regards,
Davis.

PS - Was it Small Soldiers that did it? 'Cos that was pretty good, you know. I'm just saying.