A few weeks ago, with Piper busy doing imaginary things to imaginary people, I gave you an assignment for LAMB Grazin’ On The Plot Farm 3.0. Not to take anything away from the fine, fine folks that did partake (thank you!), but I obviously would lose a popularity contest to that dirty, stinkin’ Piper, as there were but two responses.

Nevertheless, we plow on. Read these fine, fine entries with a critical eye and vote for your favorite at the end.

Too Hot To Handle
Written and Directed by: Bob Dole
Produced by: Stolen Kansas tax money (circa 1974-1992)
Starring: Bob Dole as Rob Dole, P.I.
Zooey Deschanel as Golly
Jason Bateman as Hiccup

[Note: The following is a written description of a three-minute trailer depicting the opening scene of Warner Independent Pictures’ new thriller/comedy Too Hot to Handle.]

Thanksgiving, 2008. Topeka, Kansas.
Aged detective, Rob Dole, sits in his dimly lit living room. His left hand lights the cigarette dangling from his lips, his right grips tightly to a Webley-Fosber revolver. The clock strikes ten and there’s a sudden knock at the door. Dole blasts off four rounds right through the cheap pine boards.

A beautiful young woman pokes her head through the new door hole. “Rob?” she asks. The shadowed man shuffles behind the couch. She swings the door open and slowly walks inside. “It’s me, Molly, from Meals on Wheels. Happy Thanksgiving.”

She switches the lights on and looks around the small, dusty house. The place looks like it’s been ransacked. Piles of old newspapers are stacked next to the fireplace and empty scotch bottles have taken over the kitchen floor. The place is a dump. She clears out the sink, fills it with warm water, and places a turkey to begin thawing.

“That’ll be 42 bucks, Mr. Role.” The old retiree shuffles into the broom closet and shuts the door. “Mr. Role? I don’t have time for this. I have to meet Phillip in half an hour. The turkey’s gonna take a few hours to thaw and then I’ll be back to stick it in the oven tomorrow morning.”

The closet door opens. A string of incoherient mumbles trips out of the dark. “But, Golly, Thanksgiving’s today.” The pretty woman rolls her eyes and walks towards the closet. “Are you out of shots, Mr. Role?” No reply. “Are you out of shots, Mr. Role?” The pistol creeps out of the darkness and Molly grabs it from him and places it on the table.

“That’s better. Now, I’ve brought some spaghetti and meatballs for you tonight. I’ll be back to start cooking your turkey, tomorrow” says Molly. The door flies open violently. Rob Dole storms out of the closet and grabs Molly with his good arm. “Spaghetti and meatballs? SPAGHETTI AND MEATBALLS? That’s immigrant food! I’d rather regurgitate breakfast and eat that than touch that immigrant shit!” Molly pulls herself away from the crotchety old man and he stumbles backwards into his arm chair.

“Golly, get the hell out of here. You and Hiccup can have a great fuckin’ time eating your immigrant food!” Frustrated, Molly yells, “My name is MOLL-Y. His name is PHILL-IP! Crazy old man.” She throws the bag of food into Role’s nasty refrigerator and storms out of the house.

CUT TO: EARLY MORNING NEWS BROADCAST
“Son of Nebraska politician, Henry Bones, Phillip Bones and his girlfriend Molly Rains, were abducted in front of a diner around 11:30PM last night. A ransom note was delivered to the Bones household early this morning. The note asked for $300,000 in cash to be delivered upon further instruction.”

Back in Role’s living room, the ancient drunkard watches the news report. He looks back and forth between the television and the kitchen. Back and forth. He stands out of his chair.

Eli, the downsized former film critic of the Louisville (KY) Ledger, has been “liberated” from his upscale, balloon-mortgaged home, and has taken up residence in a dump on the outskirts of his former upscale life. A Mexican immigrant, Carlos, lives in a shack near Eli’s and shouts abuse at Eli when he isn’t regurgitating the rot-gut liquor he consumes every hour on the hour.

Eli ponders how he can find a useful—and lucrative—place in society again when, one night, he sees two men deposit a large bundle in the dump. Because of all the crime films he’s seen, Eli suspects that these are criminals dumping a body. He goes over to investigate. He finds the thawing body of a woman. The only clues to her identity are 42 bucks in Monopoly money stuffed into her mouth and a piece of paper stuffed where the sun don’t shine. The paper is an ad from an old AARP magazine showing Bob Dole extolling the virtues of Viagra.

Eli puts two and two together and figures the woman attempted to blackmail a mob figure suffering from impotence and received her “hush money” in some deep freeze. He figures he can parlay this true crime into a screenplay worth big bucks—but he has to learn more.

Eli begs enough money to buy Carlos a gallon of Gallo. While the poor slob is drunk, he hustles him onto a bus, and they head for Churchill Downs. Eli remembers a terrible evening he had at the movies, when his snobby ex-girlfriend Frieda made him go see some Frenchie movie named Pickpocket. Now thankful that he wanted to get into her pants so desperately that he agreed to see it, Eli rewinds the racetrack sequence in his head. But instead of working with a crack team, he simply lifts a few purses and then points to the staggering Carlos as the thief and runs off.

Armed with enough money to rent an SRO, a TV, and a VCR. Eli uses his precious library card to check out every George Raft, Edward G. Robinson, and Jimmy Cagney movie he can find—three in all. He has better luck with the Oceans remakes. He steals all the plot points he can, relying most heavily on The Woman in the Window for his ripped-from-the-headlines-of-the-past story. He uses the public computers at the library to type up his treatment.

Unfortunately for Eli, Dept. of Homeland Security agent Golly has been perusing the library’s records for anything that might lead him to a suspected Al Quaeda cell in Louisville. He notes the films Eli has checked out and sees Eli’s name in the computer logs. His surveillance of Eli takes him to the dump where it all began, as Eli goes to fetch Carlos for another round of pickpocketing at the track.

Sure that Carlos is actually an Afghani cleverly pretending to be blind drunk, Golly tails them both. He looks at the tote board and sees some suspicious odds flipping for a nag called Too Hot to Handle. This must be code, Golly conjectures. He moves in on Eli and Carlos and dramatically grabs Carlos by the arm, whose hiccupping has caused him to lose his balance. Eli, watching his fall guy, well, falling, runs to his aid and attempts to punch Golly in the jaw. Golly trips Eli, and a slugfest ensues; gamblers at the track place their bets on the outcome. Eventually, Golly handcuffs Eli. In the meantime, Carlos has found a quiet bathroom stall in which to sleep it off.

Golly forces Eli to take him to the SRO. The room has been ransacked and the video of The Strawberry Blonde is missing. Golly is sure it contains a crucial microdot revealing the location of secret missile silos in Freedonia. Eli tells him Freedonia is not a real place—it’s a made-up country in a Marx Brothers movie. He should not have said Marx. Golly instantly subjects him to the third degree. For two solid days, Eli is pumped for information, kept from sleeping, made to crouch in a corner until a giant roach scares him like a girl. Finally, utterly exhausted and discouraged, he says to Golly, “Look, mister, I’m so tired you’d be doin’ me a big favor if you’d blow my head off.”

Just as he says the line, Eli realizes that he’s been asleep all the time. He dreamt the whole thing. Just then, the screen goes black.

Walking down a golden beach, agent Golly waves to an attractive women on the balcony of a beach house. He walks languidly to the stairs and mounts them, and accepts a martini from the woman’s hand. She tells him Joel Coen just called and would like a meeting. Golly says he’s not ready to talk. Looking into the wide ocean, he thinks to himself, “After I find another film critic.”

Well, Piper’s been busy lately, most likely big-timing the LAMB while he hangs out with Loni Anderson, Bill Shatner and a badger named Dolly. You really don’t want to know anything more than that.

Anyway, I wanted to have us another Plot Farm. If you need a refresher on how this works, check out the prior posts on the subject. Last time out, 1 Minute Film Review edged Matt from The Spoon, 29% to 25%. Maybe it’s your turn.

Anyway, here are the rules really fast.

1) Choose from the 10 words or phrases below to create a truly original movie plot.
2) Remember, you do not have to use all 10 words or phrases.
3) When you have your truly original plot, e-mail them to me by next Tuesday, September 16th.
From there, the plots will be posted and people will vote on them so make them good.

Here are the words/phrases.

Dump
Thawing
Immigrant
Regurgitate
Golly
Hiccup
Bob Dole
Too hot to handle
42 bucks
Ransacked

Good Luck.

Greetings.

It is I, Piper from Lazy Eye Theatre. You know, the recent one time LAMMY award winner.

Anyway, last week I gave you an assignment for LAMB Grazin’ On The Plot Farm 2.0. And you responded with 7 entries. Eight if you count Friend Mouse Speaks’ 2 entries which I will so that means that we have eight. And one of those is a frickin’ Japanese Tonka Poem. How about them apples?

So read these fine fine entries with a critical eye and vote for your favorite at the end.

A macaque monkey escapes from a UC Riverside animal testing laboratory and immediately exposes the student population to Ralph Lauren’s highly unstable new fragrance Liquid Sexy-Time Obsession. The monkey, primed with a scent 1794% more amorous than roses, eludes capture time and again as it races across the country, all the while reducing nearby humans into gibbering horndogs compelled to dry-hump anything in their paths. But Ralph Lauren’s resourcefulness rivals his enthusiasm for pedophilia and he quickly deploys his expert escaped-monkey-recapture team into the field. Team leader Jonathon Frankenberry is willing to do anything to quell the olfactory threat — including introducing the dreaded monkey bounty hunter Tornado McGraw into an already combustible situation. For Frankenberry knows that Ralph Lauren is not a merciful master and saving the nation’s overstimulated libido is his only chance to recover his young daughter Tilly Frankenberry from the lascivious clutches of his garishly garbed overseer.

A solitary horticulturalist lives alone, hermitlike, outside of Dallas, meticulously tending his heirloom roses. From out of nowhere, a tornado descends upon the area, flattening the surrounding towns and demolishing his precious rose gardens. Half-crazed with grief and with nothing keeping him in Texas any longer, he hits the road where he is befriended by a stray cat – try as he might, he cannot chase the cat away and he slowly becomes attached to it. Their journey takes them to the Gulf Coast where despite his inexperience he gets hired as a deckhand on a shrimp boat. The cat is useful as well, quickly ridding the boat of its infestation of vermin. Shrimp are scarce this season, however, and the man is soon laid off, returned to shore with only 53 cents in his pocket. Realizing that he is in desperate need of cash, he dons a cheap pair of sunglasses and attempts to rob a convenience store, using a pair of scissors as a weapon. He is soon arrested and thrown into jail and, appalled at the treatment the prisoners receive, decides to go on a hunger strike in protest. The warden’s men put him in restraints and force-feed him an all-liquid diet. His spirit all but broken – he wonders what has become of his cat – he remains in jail long enough for his hair to grow into a ponytail. Then one day, not long before his release, he comes across a familiar picture in a magazine in the prison library: it’s Tyler, Texas, “Rose Capital of America.” Filled a longing for his flowers, he heads north when he gets out of jail, arriving at the Tyler city parks administration in time to apply for a summer groundskeeper position. As we fade out, he is moving among the roses again, finally at peace (except for wondering about his cat).

I’m a pet detective, Hutton Ambrose by name, and when all of the stray cats in Los Angeles suddenly disappeared, I knew who to talk to - Blind Willie always has his ear to the ground. I found Willie wearing his trademark wraparound sunglasses and selling gypsy roses to the tourists out on Sunset. When I asked him about the cat-nappings, he just shrugged and painted me a familiar picture: “It’s the same old-same old, Hutt. Big dog blows into this town like a tornado and all the shrimps are dyin’ to give him what he wants. This time, the big dog wants cats.” I shook my head in disbelief, my ponytail snaking over my shoulders like a snake. Blind Willie reached out his hand but all I had to crease his palm with was 53 cents – that’s an insult, not actual cash - so I told Willie I’d get him on the return trip. He shrugged, knowing I was good for it. I had to find out who was responsible for this latest catastrophe. LA is a big town but the people here like to talk about who and what they know, and the best way to make the canaries sing is to wet their whistles. A few liquid lunches and I’d be able to cut through the bull like a pair of scissors through tissue paper, and find out what’s really going on here.

Piper gazed at the reflection of herself in the dressing table mirror. A cold and unexplained chill ran through her at that moment as she picked up a familiar looking picture that she discovered just this morning. She was tending to the roses with a pair of scissors in her garden when she found a box buried in the earth. Two faces, a man and a woman, stared back at her from inside the steel-plated box and she noticed that they bore a strong resemblance to herself.

In another state, unbeknownst to Piper, her fellow cult brothers and sisters have descended onto a farm where an old couple lives. Armed with cleavers that glistened like stars in the night sky, they barged into the humble abode of Mr and Mrs Fletch, hacking them to smithereens. The commanding officers of this cult were seen after this brutal murder taking puffs on the porch. Fitz and Nick were their names and they remain loyal to Piper. ‘Saint Piper’, as they call her had dropped from the sky one August afternoon thirteen years ago.

Carried by a tornado that blew her from a small farm in Idaho, the child had miraculously survived and acknowledged thereafter as godsent by the cult settlement that found her. All of them would give heir lives and limbs for her and it was with this purpose that her parents were killed on this fateful night. They needed for themselves, and more importantly for her to believe that she did in fact fall from the Heavens.

Terry Tornado thought she had put her past behind her. She had tried so hard, anyhow. Years of electroshock therapy helped, but mostly it was the drugs. And here she was again, moving out of Branson and onto a new chapter in her life. The time had come to pack her things up, so she put on some sweats, collected her long, black hair into a ponytail, and settled down in front of her closet.

Before long, she came across the one box she had forgotten about - the one she didn’t want to find. In it, she stumbled upon that familiar picture…and there they all were again. She in her Hello Kitty sunglasses, a 5-year old holding her stray cat Roses, her mutant parents, oozing that nasty green liquid from their ears, in the background, holding a pair of scissors to her neck. She never did figure out who took the picture, and she never could fathom it.

But she had brushed all these memories away, like the days when shrimp cost a mere 53 cents per pound. However, was not the time to run and hide from her past like Scooby and Shaggy. Now was the time to confront it; to find her metaphorical Mr. Weatherby, take off his mask, and send him where no Scooby Snack had gone before.

Wally used the pair of scissors to cut the outside of the container, holding the shrimp. He liked shrimp, he hadn’t had it in a while.

After his first bite, he realized why he hadn’t had it in a while.

HE WAS ALLERGIC!

Desperately, he reached for the phone, only to find that, due to the tornado outside, the lines were down.

With wind howling, he made it to his car. He drove, trying to steer clear of all the flying debris. He thought he even saw a cow flying through the air, but then realized that it must be a reaction from the shrimp.

There was a dinging on his dashboard. He was almost out of gas. He pulled into a gas station. Checking his pockets, he only had 53 cents. That wasn’t enough to make it to the hospital!

His throat was beginning to swell shut.

He began to collapse.

Seeing this spectacle, a trucker took off his sunglasses.

“Well, this is a familiar picture” said Bubba Jones, an ex EMT driver turned long haul trucker. “It looks like he just ate shrimp only to find out he is allergic”.

Bubba fixed his ponytail, picked up Wally in one arm, a stray cat in the other and loaded them into the back of his truck.

“Be careful back there, I’m hauling liquid nitrogen. I’m trying to earn enough to buy Betty Lou a bouquet of roses. Then, I’m going to retire.”.

The two headed off the dangerous path to the hospital.

(This took the form of a Japanese Tanka poem 5,7,5,7,7 syllables)

A Pair of Scissors,
Jutting out of a stray cat
This wasn’t unique
Was a familiar Picture
Serial Killers start young.

53 cents won’t buy you much anymore. But 53 cents and a familiar picture of a girl the ponytail and sunglasses are all that Jeff has left.

That loose change won’t even get him on the bus out of town after and incident with a pair of safety scissors and his covert operation trimming the neighbor’s roses for the government.

With only a stray cat with a shrimp allergy to offer advice along the way, will Jeff ever find the girl that he’s never met again?

Hello future plot movie writers out there. It is Piper of the Lazy Eye Theatre Pipers and I would like to launch another Plot Farm assignment. If you need a refresher on how this works, check out this past post. Feel free to read these entries from the first round and see how I got totally rooked by Fletch. My entry was so good even his wife voted for me. But I’m not bitter. Noooooooo.

Anyway, here are the rules really fast.

1) Choose from the 10 words or phrases below to create a truly original movie plot.

2) Remember, you do not have to use all 10 words or phrases.

3) When you have your truly original plot, e-mail them to me by next Monday, May 12th.

From there, the plots will be posted and people will vote on them so make them good.

Here are the words/phrases.

Pair of scissors

Shrimp

Tornado

53 cents

Sunglasses

A familiar picture

A ponytail

Stray cat

Liquid

Roses

Good Luck.

Alright. Piper here from Lazy Eye Theatre with a follow up on The Plot Farm.

If you remember, the assignment was to create an original movie plot from the 10 words or phrases that I provided. I wrote the word Thursday in there a couple of times and that threw some, but it was no mistake my friends, just part of a greater plan of which I have no idea. So for a refresher, here’s the original post.

So now here’s your chance to enjoy the fruits of everyone’s labor. What we lack in entries we make up in content so take a gander below and maybe you’ll be inspired to participate next time. Read away and don’t forget to vote for your favorite entry.

Bob was a pathological liar. Often times, he’d tell his cubicle mates intricate yarns about nights playing dice with people’s lives on the lines or tales of adventure with the Cleveland Confederated Motorcycle Club. When doing so, he felt like a stand-up behind a microphone, feeling the power of guiding the audience along to the big finish.

But today was different. It didn’t seem different to anyone else - just another Thursday on the journey towards the weekend. An unexpected visit from a talking avocado had not only awoken Bob from his pillowy slumber, but it just might’ve given him the key to life.

Hey there, Piper from Lazy Eye Theatre here and I’ve got an assignment for all who are interested.

It’s time to test your movie plot writing abilities and I’m here to help.

A while back on the ole’ Lazy Eye Theatre I came up with a little something called Plot Farm. It’s where I give you 10 words or phrases and you use those to write a truly original movie plot. I then take that plot and shop it around Hollywood and take all the credit for myself and make millions and you hunt me down because you’re super pissed and you find me snorting coke off the breasts of a stripper and you try to kill me because I’ve made all this money off your hard work. Okay, that last part is kinda bogus, but everything else is legit. For reference, check out these previous posts on Lazy Eye Theatre.

You can make the plot short and sweet or as long as you want. And you don’t even have to use all the words or phrases if you don’t want. How easy is this? Let’s see. Here are your words.

A Key

An unexpected visit

Thursday

A Microphone

Thursday

A pillow

Dice

An Avocado

Pathological

A motorcycle

Okay, so now go write and write and write until you can’t write no more. And then e-mail them to me by next Wednesday 4/23. They will all be posted and then bloggers will vote on their favorite. So make ‘em damn good.