This post was originally going to be called “Sad Face” because I’d been struggling to get the outline for the short done before tonight, and didn’t think I was going to make it.

My original idea wasn’t panning out. The one after that was becoming too complicated.  The more I tried to figure things out, the deeper my self-dug metaphoric hole of frustration was becoming.  It got to the point that I was having dreams about it, and that’s just scary.

Would I have to accept the fact that I wasn’t going to make it?  Well, maybe.  But I wasn’t going down without a fight.  I just needed that one spark of creativity to get me going again.

And that spark came to me in the shower, of all places.  I already had a lot of the story elements in place.  What if I tried a different approach in tying them all together?  But how?  How about if the question of what happened is an absolute unknown?  That’s it!  Brilliant!

Oh, wait. That sounds like THE HANGOVER. Okay. Don’t want to seem like I’m completely ripping that off.  Maybe a variation on that.

And I was off.  Two and a half hours of writing, editing, researching and double-checking later (occasionally saving to prevent heartbreak if it accidentally got erased), I had the outline for what I think is a pretty good story.  It has now been happily sent to the director.  I hope he likes it.

-Movie of the Moment. THE LOVE GURU (2008) aka The Movie That Almost Destroyed Mike Myers’ Career.  Bad doesn’t even begin to describe it.  Non-stop, rapid-fire jokes that aren’t funny.  Despite a running time of 1 hour, 27 minutes, we zipped through it in about 45, and it still seemed too long.

This seemed like another case of a megastar project where nobody wanted to say ‘no’. How else to explain a Morgan Freeman vocal cameo, or Sir Ben Kingsley  making an ass of himself?

Only high points: Stephen Colbert and Jim Gaffigan as hockey announcers.  Sorry to say their scenes were the funniest parts.

If you value your time and sense of humor, DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE!  And if this wasn’t proof that Myers has gone to the ‘throw every joke at the wall and see if anything sticks’ well more than once too often, I’d forgotten that there’s another Austin Powers movie in development.

I’ll do my best to rectify this situation with my next scheduled Netflix delivery: SUPER 8.