Well, J. M., it was a great idea to buy the rights to Le Sang d’un poete, cause everybody knows it’s a total classic. I mean, who doesn’t want to see a remake of that one? And we think we’ve got a swell idea for turning it into a summer blockbuster that’ll just blow everything else out of the water. We’ll call it Talk to the Hand.
All we had to do was update the story a little bit for the twenty-first century. Like, instead of a painter, we make the hero a comic-book artist. So it’s about this guy who draws comic books, right? Cause everyone likes comic books. And he has a crush on this cute girl, but he can never speak to her, because he’s a shy artist type. She’d really like to go out with him, but he doesn’t know it. That’s romance, see? You gotta have romance.
So one day he draws a mouth on a close-up of one of his superhero characters, and he doesn’t like it, right? So he rubs off the mouth with his hand. And now the mouth is on his hand, and it starts talking! Just like in the original movie. But fans will love how we’ve updated it, cause now we’ll do it with CGI. And here’s where you have to hold on to your hat, cause this is where it just blows you away: see, the mouth talks in jive talk, right? You know, like colored people do. We can get Eddie Murphy for the voice. Can you imagine how the kids will love that? It’ll be colossal! The mouth will be the big breakout character in the movie, see.
So the mouth is always mouthing off—get it?—and the guy doesn’t know what to do, cause the mouth on his hand is always saying the darnedest things. And he can’t let anyone know it’s there, cause it’s like there’s this mouth. On his hand. I mean, that makes him a freak, right? So, like, whenever the mouth says something outrageous, he has to pretend that he said it, except he has to pretend he was trying to say something else. It’s hilarious! The jokes just write themselves.
And the mouth sees—well, knows, anyway, cause it isn’t an eye, it’s a mouth—that the artist guy wants to get together with the cute girl, so the mouth starts doing everything to make him get together with her, and it’s just hilarious. And think of all the jokes about where the mouth is when he puts his hand here or there! We’re going to have this totally hilarious hand-washing scene in the kitchen.
But meanwhile the FBI is after the artist guy, because they know about the mouth and they think the guy is an alien or a mutant or something. We haven’t worked that part out yet. The main thing is that he’s being chased by the FBI for some reason, so there’s conflict. And if he gets chased, then we can blow stuff up, cause kids need things to blow up in a movie.
And the girl gets involved too, cause he has to go to her apartment to hide, or maybe the FBI thinks she’s his girlfriend and goes after her, or something. Anyway, they go on the lam together, and she finds out about the mouth, and she and the mouth are like buddies, and there’s a happy ending, but he’s still got the mouth on his hand, so we can do the sequel in 2017.
So that’s it, J. M. It’s the movie Cocteau would have made if he’d had a hundred fifty million dollars to work with. Totally brilliant idea to buy the rights. You’re a genius, J. M. You know that, right? Course you do.