I like to get out to the movies, but I don’t get to that often. I can watch movies on demand if I miss them even at the buck theater, which is now two bucks. I can do that, but I just never do on demand. A week or two later, then its just on TV. If I wait long enough, it seems that King Kong will be out – again. I saw the Jack Black one. If you saw the original then you know the story. Same basic script. And that is tough because there is something that bothers me about it. You know the part where Denning unveils Kong for the people in the theater? He says
“Behold Kong, The Eighth wonder of the world!”
Now here is the thing: Kong is a big gorilla. I mean gigantic, and that is impressive. But we have just watched these guys go to an uncharted island, fight the stone-age tribe that lives there, run into man-eating giant
insects, the complete collection of Jurassic Dinosaurs, and King Kong, whom they knock out with a gas bomb, tie up, throw on a boat, take to New York, and load into a theater WITHOUT incident - and THAT is the 8th wonder of the
world? How about that ISLAND? 5 minutes before, they are being attacked by dinosaurs.
DINOSAURS!! Millions of years on this island, I would say they get to be 8th wonder before Kong. How about the tribe? They live on
this island for 10's of thousands of years, and built a wall that keeps all these things away. Including the flying dinosaurs. How come they never fly over the wall? 8th Wonder right there. Initially, I am thinking Tyrannosaurus Rex has 8th Wonder down pat, but that wall is literally amazing. In comparison, a giant gorilla is a frigging birth defect.
But they remake the movie every 20 years. Why? Because we
LOVE King Kong. We do. A movie where a giant gorilla goes nuts – APEshit – in New York. We relate. Not the whole over-the-top Beauty and the Beast thing. Sure, bestiality is fascinating. But the anger, the violence, a blonde in her undies, and there is a cuddly big pet thing in there. They don’t remake it because of the story. I think the guy who wrote King Kong was a con man. It’s built on that whole con artist thing where they tell you some story and we all sit there and go, “what? Yeah sure. Ok” Think about the gaps in the story. The whole leap of faith. They catch Kong and bring him to New York City. I haven’t tried to import anything via ship lately, but I think that it is not too easy to just show up at the dock with a giant gorilla. You couldn’t import a case of soy sauce in this country. And I think wouldn’t somebody be looking for all the guys who died on the island?
“My brother was on the ship with the giant gorilla, and he hasn’t come home.”
“What? Can you wait till after the theater premiere?”
“Ok.”
That Denning character – just not a big picture guy. He gets the gorilla, and:
Shit – how can we make money with this big fucking gorilla? Maybe we can bring him to a theater and have people pay $20 to ….LOOK at Kong.
For how long? I think after 5 minutes that show would suck. What was the show going to be? Was he going to dance? It’s not like he could be funny…LIKE ME. He was all chained up. Maybe, I think, they were going to torture him. Its possible - people would dig that. Behold KONG, the 17th wonder of the world – then he shoves a tazer into his nuts. In the flick, this thing goes to Broadway. I said $20 because I am guessing a show was $20 before Pearl Harbor. Maybe less. I know that nowadays, even if you scored tickets at a booth, you’d be out a week at a bad motel. Even in New York, how long could that show run? A couple of months?
“Hey, I got tickets to King Kong.”
“Oh, it’s just a gorilla, plus he shits and pisses on his platform and it is gross.”
Maybe they planned to take it on the road. Two years later they would be playing Anchorage, and Kong would be so bored and fat he would sleep on stage. Then they would really have to tazer his nuts. You’d read in the paper that
King Kong got sold to a roadside hick show in northern Florida. Or they would figure out he cost so much to feed they would pull over on some road in Nebraska and shoot him, throw him over the side of a hill. Big gorilla
is fascinating, but come on. If they caught the Tyrannosaurus, I would be interested. I would want to eat it. There is not a lot of thinking through with King Kong, but boy, do we love it.
