Because Stupid Is As Stupid Does

August 7, 2006 10:18 AM

Darwin Awards - The Movie! If it bombs, the reviews should be comedy gold.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson (45 comments total)

It was inevitable, I suppose. Your favorite genome sux. I want these motherfuckin' idiots out of my motherfuckin' gene pool. So what's next: Bulwer-Lytton, the Mini-series?
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 10:19 AM on August 7, 2006 [1 favorite]

Next would be either flickr: the movie! Or Metafilter: the movie!
posted by routergirl at 10:28 AM on August 7, 2006

I would watch a documentary, where friends, family, and the occasional suriving recepient are interviewed. This?

Michael Burrows (Joseph Fiennes) is a brilliant but overly cautious forensic detective, who turns his fascination with the Darwin Awards into an avocation. He is paired with Siri Taylor (Winona Ryder) a take-no-prisoners insurance claims investigator. Together they embark on a road trip to see if they can better understand the motivation of potential Darwin Awards recipients.

Yeah, that'll probably suck. I guarantee you this or something like it happens near the end:

SIRI: Go on, Michael. Take a risk.

(They kiss, standing on the ledge of the very tall building. Camera pans up to a moonlit sky. We see CRAZY FARMER MACGREGOR from Scene 5 swoop past the full moon in his homemade hanglider which works after all!

Fade out, roll credits, with a cover of "Chances Are" as performed by Fallout Boy underneath.)

Either that, or one of them reconciles with an estranged spouse.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 10:40 AM on August 7, 2006 [1 favorite]

Metafilter: the movie!

Which famous actors would you choose to play which posters? (Assuming, perhaps, that you haven't seen the posters, and you're choosing an actor based only on the posts.)
posted by pracowity at 10:41 AM on August 7, 2006

Wow, remember when Joseph Fiennes and Wynona Ryder actually had careers?
posted by doctor_negative at 10:50 AM on August 7, 2006

pracowity writes "Which famous actors would you choose to play which posters? (Assuming, perhaps, that you haven't seen the posters, and you're choosing an actor based only on the posts.)"

This should be fun ...
posted by Songdog at 10:53 AM on August 7, 2006

pracowity: "Which famous actors would you choose to play which posters? (Assuming, perhaps, that you haven't seen the posters, and you're choosing an actor based only on the posts.)"

I picture all the roles as played by beloved kid's toys. Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots. Mr. Potato Head. GI Joe with Kung Fu Grip. Slinky Dog. Gumby (damnit!). Etc.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 10:53 AM on August 7, 2006

Metafilter: the movie!
Which famous actors would you choose to play which posters?

There's nothing new under the sun.
posted by languagehat at 10:55 AM on August 7, 2006

I Demand to Be played By a Large animated old Hand water pump! and voiced by Merle Haggard!
posted by Elim at 10:56 AM on August 7, 2006

I'm waiting for the Darwin Awards Reality television series. I'm envisioning a concept where you start a season off with two dozen contestants. Viewers use the internet (so we can get lots of press about being the first Web 2.0 television series) to submit stunts for the contestants to pull off. At the season finale the sole remaining contestant is crowned and given a flatbed truck heaping with M-80's, tequila and safety matches.
posted by substrate at 10:58 AM on August 7, 2006

I like it, substrate! Contestants would "vote" themselves off "the island" - permanently! I might actually have enjoyed Jackass, for example, if they had been forced to repeat their stunts until one of them died.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 11:03 AM on August 7, 2006

Wow, remember when Joseph Fiennes and Wynona Ryder actually had careers?

Yeah I was thinking about that while watching A Scanner Darkly. Ryder actually looks really pretty now, I'd always thought she looked too much like a 15 year old boy during the 90s.
posted by bobo123 at 11:12 AM on August 7, 2006

languagehat writes "There's nothing new under the sun."

But languagehat, there are thirty thousand new members since then, and each and every one of them has to be cast!
posted by Songdog at 11:13 AM on August 7, 2006

They should release it as a double feature with The Onion's movie.
posted by Iridic at 11:21 AM on August 7, 2006

Area Man Can't Stop Commenting In Own Post
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 11:23 AM on August 7, 2006

Why is there no Herbert Kornfeld in that cast list? Or Jim Anchower?
posted by ninjew at 11:27 AM on August 7, 2006

My casting choice for dhoyt.
posted by maryh at 11:31 AM on August 7, 2006

Oh Nonie. How you have fallen. I blame Reality Bites.

This movie won't be cruel enough to be good. I'll go see it anyway because the marketing campaign will likely be so cleverly geared to my brand of cynicism I will not be able to resist it. Then I will leave angry with a feeling of being used and I will brood over a burrito while my friends try to distract me with beer. This is the formula of my life. Similarly predictable to the formula that will be applied to this movie.

PS. I have a good true "brush with fame" Nonie Ryder story if your interested.
posted by tkchrist at 11:32 AM on August 7, 2006

I wonder if ColdChef still wants Mel Gibson to be him. "Nothing new", indeed.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 11:34 AM on August 7, 2006

PS. I have a good true "brush with fame" Nonie Ryder story if your interested.

Well duh. Please commence unloadment.
posted by maryh at 11:35 AM on August 7, 2006

Perhaps just as Elvis' estate copyrighted his image and likeness, the survivors of Darwin award winners should copyright their dearly-departed's mode of death. That way when anyone goes to take a comedic stab at their grief and stupidity, or when someone meets their death in a similar way, they get a royalty. In an egalitarian society, this would be the only compassionate response.
posted by eegphalanges at 11:39 AM on August 7, 2006

looks to me like the trailer starts out with an urban legend...which at least would be less disturbing than watching recreations of real people actually hurting themselves.
posted by kozad at 11:48 AM on August 7, 2006

Please commence unloadment.

Aw. Shucks. Since you asked.

I used to work, on and off, as a grip in the movie biz in the 1980's early 90's. I met many good friends who kept on with movie careers. In the mid 90's one of them called us up to say she was going to be in town with her friends in the Rock band Soul Asylum and if we wanted to go to the show - back stage and all that. Nonie Ryder was dating Dave Pirner. I couldn't go. My wife (girlfriend at the time) decided to go. My wife was very excited as she hadn't really rubbed shoulders with celebs. I told her not to get her hopes up.

So the show was uneventful. Soul Asylum at the time having burned past their musical prime and had entered the pop stage of their careers. So the band, being the nice guys they are, invited my wife out to dinner with them. And Nonie shows up.

They go bowling. They go out to chinese food. My wife was a big fan. And Nonie is very chatty and a very pleasant person. Nonie chats about how she thinks she is addicted to nasal spray and talks about Polly Klass, just chats on and on.

But my wife notices Nonie, as beautiful as she is, has a hump. Literally a hump behind her neck. hunch back type hump. Like not just bad posture. My wife can't taker eyes off of it. The more she tries to ignore it the worse she starts leering at at.

Then the topic of money comes up. It's important to note my wife was just getting her design business started and was broke. when they went to dinner my wife orders plain rice for $2 while everybody else is ordering tons of food. But she does pound three G&T's. Anyway. Nonie says...
"Hey. Just now, 2 minutes ago, I made $1500 dollars! My accountant told me how much I make a minute!"

Then the band joins in talking about how much they made just while they were bowling. The hump. The gin. The hunger and the humiliation. My wife excuses her self to the bathroom and barfs.

When she comes back Nonie looks at her sincerely concerned...
"Bulimia... it isn't the way... I should know. I live in Hollywood." She says.
posted by tkchrist at 12:01 PM on August 7, 2006 [2 favorites]

I didn't know that Winona had a neck hump.

A quick Google search for "hump," "winona," and "ryder" doesn't turn up anything. Well, it turns up an awful lot, but nothing strictly relevant.
posted by Iridic at 12:12 PM on August 7, 2006

I have had only one other person verify "the hump." I have not seen it.

This was the friend who arranged the dinner. She is biased. She was good friends with Pirners former pre-Nonie girlfriend.

Said "hump" may have another agenda.
posted by tkchrist at 12:29 PM on August 7, 2006

This film has a 3.0 rating on IMDB. Its website has links to several reviews - all of which require Microsoft Word to open. I've got a bad feeling about this. . .

As for playing me, I'll take Blobby. Or does this qualify as a self-link?
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 12:36 PM on August 7, 2006

Sneetches... yeah. It will be bad. The site itself is oddly sparse, ugly, and poorly designed.
posted by tkchrist at 12:48 PM on August 7, 2006

Nonie Ryder

Nonie. I love it. Couple that with her former last name and you've really got something: Nonie Horowitz.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 12:54 PM on August 7, 2006

Laughing at people for dying -- not so funny.
posted by Kirklander at 1:33 PM on August 7, 2006

"So what's next: Bulwer-Lytton, the Mini-series?"

That'd so rock!
posted by ZachsMind at 1:35 PM on August 7, 2006

What if the guy who puts the Snakes on the Plane is on the flight and gets killed by his own Snakes?
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 2:08 PM on August 7, 2006

Isn't the fact that Chris Penn is in the cast apropos?
posted by John Shaft at 2:33 PM on August 7, 2006

This is going to crash and burn!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
posted by riotgrrl69 at 3:20 PM on August 7, 2006

According to Entertainment Tonight, the part of Sparx will be played by Nonie Ryder and her hump.
posted by Sparx at 3:57 PM on August 7, 2006

Is there not some song about a hump? And getting love-drunk off said hump?
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 4:03 PM on August 7, 2006

That's 'humps' _sirmissalot_. It's a futurological song about the cloning of Nonie.
posted by Sparx at 5:19 PM on August 7, 2006

Something about the Darwin Awards disturbs me. Some of the people they write about are indeed not the sharpest knife in the drawer and probably do stupid things, but a lot of them, if not most of them, are more or less accidental deaths by presumably normal people. What if you or one of your family members were included? It's kinda creepy, and instead of being funny, the DA just generally make me sad.
posted by zardoz at 5:20 PM on August 7, 2006

please stop saying "Nonie". for the love of god.

this is one of those times when you really wish for a device that lets you murder through the internet.
posted by jimmy at 6:38 PM on August 7, 2006

Will writes

Then sigh not so,
But let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny
Converting all your sounds of woe,
Into Hey Nonie Nonie

posted by Songdog at 9:09 PM on August 7, 2006

EVERYBODY HOLD ON A SECOND. I'm pretty sure she spells it Noni.
posted by scarylarry at 1:16 AM on August 8, 2006

I hope they include this guy. He's big in hell. Like Menudo big.
posted by the ghost of Ken Lay at 5:59 AM on August 8, 2006

please stop saying "Nonie". for the love of god.

Ok. Says the grown-up still calling himself "Jimmy."
posted by tkchrist at 8:48 AM on August 8, 2006

Ok. Says the grown-up still calling himself "Jimmy."

you don't think that's my name, do you? oh, my, mr. T.K. Christ, you have so much to learn.
posted by jimmy at 11:28 PM on August 8, 2006

You'll always be Jimmy to me.
posted by tkchrist at 12:56 PM on August 9, 2006

You're all a bunch a meanie peanies. Ms. Ryder is a beautiful and talented person who suffers from sticky fingers and I will go to my grave believing that. FREE WINONA!
posted by ZachsMind at 1:38 PM on August 9, 2006