Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (12 page)

Ran II
(dir. G. Gaines and E. Jackson, 2006). We really stepped it up for
Ran II,
with costumes, a soundtrack, weaponry, and a plot that we actually sat and tried to write down beforehand. Here goes: An emperor and his sons are having dinner. One of the sons makes fun of the emperor. The emperor becomes enraged and kills his own court jester. The wife of one of the other sons runs in and announces that she has just gotten remarried to another emperor. She is noogied to death. The second emperor, meanwhile, lives in a bathroom and eats soap, and has a lengthy freak-out scene when a messenger tells him that his wife is dead. The messenger turns out to be the rebellious son; the rebellious son, however, then makes the mistake of walking under a tree, where a mysterious assassin is waiting with some toothpaste. The assassin and the first emperor chase each other through the forest for a while. This causes the second emperor to have an even longer freak-out scene. Eventually, he runs into the living room and commits Elbow-Forehead Suicide, while the for-some-reason-alive-again court jester sings a very loud nonsense song.

And that’s when things get complicated.

Apocalypse Later
(dir. G. Gaines and E. Jackson, 2007). Again, not our best title. Once we found out what the apocalypse was, we thought that it was ridiculous that
Apocalypse Now
was not, in fact, about the End of the World. This movie can best be summed up like this:

1. Earl, wearing a bandanna and holding a Super Soaker, demands to know when the apocalypse is happening.

2. Offscreen, I tell Earl that the apocalypse is not for a while.

3. Earl sits in a chair and does a
lot
of cussing.

4. Repeat.
½

Star Peaces
(dir. G. Gaines and E. Jackson, 2007). It’s the year 2007 on planet Earth, not the future, and although he has an awesome name, Luke Crazy Bad-Ass is the lamest guy in his entire neighborhood. For example: His wallet contains nothing but pudding, and instead of wanting to make out with him, girls prefer to punch him in the stomach. Then he discovers two robots in a sandbox who tell him that he can move things with his mind. There is no evidence that this is true, but he tells everyone about it anyway, and when they ask him for a demonstration, he gets really angry and does the Robot Dance of Anger. At one point, he thinks that his bike is some kind of futuristic speeder and uses it to ride around Frick Park with a Super Soaker, making space noises with his lips and attacking people that he thinks are storm troopers. Then the police show up, as in, real policemen who were not in the script but who were called up by an old lady we almost ran over. This turned out to be awesome, because we hadn’t really written an ending.
½

Hello, Good-Die
(dir. G. Gaines and E. Jackson, 2008). Breakthrough! This was the first of many of our films to use sock puppets. James Bondage, British superspy, wakes up in bed with a beautiful woman, who is secretly a sock puppet. We know that it’s a secret from when James Bondage says, “The most beautiful thing about you is that you’re not a sock puppet.”
½

Cat-ablanca
(dir. G. Gaines and E. Jackson, 2008). The thing is, cats can’t act.

2002
(dir. G. Gaines and E. Jackson, 2009). We felt very liberated after watching
2001.
If
Aguirre, the Wrath of God
taught us that the plot of a film doesn’t need to have a happy ending,
2001
taught us that a film doesn’t even need a plot in the first place, and a lot of its scenes can just be weird colors. Artistically, this is our most ambitious film, which also makes it the least fun to watch.
½

The Manchurian Cat-idate
(dir. G. Gaines and E. Jackson, 2010). Not only can cats not act, they also hate wearing clothes.
½