Wednesday, May 23, 2007

I'm Stirring, I'm Stirring!

So, instead of crafting the perfect post tonight, I watched "Goodfellas" for probably the 200th time... literally. Every time that fucker's on the cable, I have to watch its ass. In the early 90s, I worked at a video post-house called Modern Videofilm, and I must've watched that movie 100 times while there. I watched it with closed-captioning, I watched it dubbed into Japanese... I think I even watched an Esperanto claymation version of it once. And yet, I still feel compelled to watch it when I come across it. I know every fucking scene, every camera angle, every song in the background, and I still love it like it's the first time I'm seeing it.

I think it's because I'm soft in the head.

I even put some dialogue from the movie in the screenplay I wrote with a friend back in the late 90s. That fucking screenplay... goddammit... that's a whole 'nother post. I get pissed off every time I think about it. I won't get into it now, but suffice it to say, our screenplay was stolen by Alan Ball and made into "Six Feet Under." I shit you not. I have a chart of all the crap those shitfucks ripped off and everything. We wrote our movie a good four years before that show hit the air -- ours was about two brothers who inherit the family mortuary from their freshly deceased dad. There's so much shit that's the same. Fuck, even the mom's name was the same.

Boy, this vein on my neck is really starting to throb. Okay... breathe... that's it. Don't think about the mean man who stole your story. So, yeah, we had this little "Goodfellas" tribute moment in our script. The mom, named "Ruth"... EXACTLY like in "Six Feet Under" by the way, was hosting a dinner for the two estranged brothers, hoping she could get them back together and she says:

RUTH
Oh, by the way, I invited Barry and Beth over for dinner tonight. I want us to have a meal together, just like we used to with Daddy. I'm making my ziti with the meat gravy and I'm planning to roast some peppers over the flames and I was gonna put on some string beans with some olive oil and garlic... oh, and I have some beautiful cutlets that were cut just right that I'm going to fry up before dinner just as an appetizer. Would you stir this while I get something from the fridge?


So, yeah, that was straight out of "Goodfellas." Does this story have a point? No. But now I'm pissed about that goddamn script again. Motherfucker.

I'm going to sleep.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you really think they stole it? Could they have seen it?

crabbydad said...

Natasha, I don't think they stole it, I know they stole it. We sent it to HBO four years before the show ever hit the air (it was copyrighted in '97), and CAA had it as well. We tried to get some lawyers to take the case on contingency, but while they agreed we were probably ripped off, juries side with Hollywood 99% of the time, so they wouldn't take the chance. Don't get me started.

Anonymous said...

For the record, crabbydad, I happened to watch Goodfellas the other night too. Because it controls me.

signed,
wenus