Sometimes the news writes your story for you. With Hollywood still feeling the crunch of the WGA strike, The Bad and Ugly is pitching news stories as films.
Ideas go to the highest bidder!
Authorities say 31-year-old Shannon Hunter, of Lebanon, Pa., used his cell phone to call 911 on Sunday from inside a portable toilet.
Police say Hunter had been drinking and had taken off his clothes. Somehow, he immersed himself in the holding tank.
The Pitch after the cut!
Title of the Film: Shit or Swim
Tagline: “Shit or get IN the pot”
Starring: Nick Nolte as Shannon Hunter, Maggie Smith as his imaginary friend (see The Twist) and Tommy Lee Jones as the Police Captain who eventually cuts him out. Mostly because we appreciate every time Tommy Lee Jones says “shit.”
The Plot: Nick Nolte plays Shannon Hunter, a midwestern nobody who one day wins the local lottery, making him an overnight millionaire. He quits his job as an elementary school band teacher and proceeds to spend millions of dollars building a ridiculous house on his suburban plot, quickly becoming a D-List celebrity for his opulence.
But, like most lottery winners, Nolte over-spends and is plungds into debt. He becomes a drunkard and frequently goes on loud tirades against modern technology and romanticizing “the good old days,” despite being 31 and those good old days being the 90s.
One night, he is at a bar, loudly ranting about Kurt Cobain when he wakes up naked, having just fell into the septic tank below a row of port-a-potties.
The Twist: Naked, unaware of the time and up to his navel in shit, Hunter begins hallucinating because of the methane fumes and follows an animated piece of feces (voiced by Maggie Smith) through his life, like A Christmas Carol but with poop.
Hunter is forced to remember that everything went wrong not when he won the lottery, but when he left a one-night-stand with child in the mid-90s (baby mama cameo: Angelina Jolie).
Meanwhile, Tommy Lee Jones goes through his entire boring day enforcing local law. Both characters meet and fall in love after the talking piece of poop leads Hunter to a floating cell-phone that may or may not have been there all along.
Why It Will Work: If you saw a poster of naked Nick Nolte standing waist-deep in poop and that poster was advertising a film called “Shit or Swim,” we guarantee the film will make it’s budget back just by people too curious NOT to see it.
Not to mention the critics will have no idea how to cleverly lance a morality play that takes place mostly in an underground septic tank, starring animated fecal matter voiced by a respected actress.
