I remember an incident in gym class some time in elementary school. Good ol’ West Tisbury Elementary—and Pat Schofield, a nice woman who was the gym teacher forever. Her husband, Jay Schofield, was the gym teacher at the high school. Good folks.
We were playing basketball. The ball bounced out of bounds. I chased it—and was mere feet away as it bounced up against the wall—
Smack in the middle of a fire alarm—
And, of course, triggered the fire alarm to go off.
“Everybody line up, let’s go!”
So I joined the entire school in assembling outside as the fire department arrived, and the faculty were buzzing with concern as, obviously, this was not a scheduled drill.
“Excuse me,” I said to anybody who would listen, “I saw the basketball hit the fire alarm.”
This was probably well before The Next Generation, but I was having a Wesley Crusher moment.
“DO YOU GET IT? IT WAS THE BASKETBALL!”
I don’t blame the teachers or staff for acting as they did, but that was so frustrating...and probably just one of many examples where, as a kid, I couldn’t believe how stupid the world was.
So you can imagine that Idiocracy is one of my favorite movies!
I truly love this movie. I can watch it anytime. I think it’s a comic masterpiece. Bless Mike Judge for giving the middle finger to the entirety of corporate America—which caused Fox to bury the movie.
But it does have an oddness to it in that there seems to be too much narration.
The movie was on cable the other day and as I watched, I thought, yeah...this must have been cut down.
So I sought out the script—and sure enough, it’s much longer. Many scenes that play out without dialogue, under the narration, are abridged from a longer version of the film.
I haven’t read the complete script yet, but some of the extended/deleted scenes don’t seem all that sharp.
So maybe it was a creative decision to cut them down and use the extra narration.
Anyway, if you adore this movie like I do—enjoy!
“THAT’S WHAT I THOUGHT!!!”
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