"Maniac Nurses" (1990) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski) |
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The full title is Maniac Nurses Find Ecstasy. Interestingly enough, Ecstasy was in Vermont, not far from Montpelier. Here's the formula to duplicate this movie: Shoot some cheap videotape footage of women walking around in white lingerie in your backyard. You don't need sound. In fact, it's more flexible without sound. Just make sure you shoot the women from behind when they are supposed to be speaking, so you can dub in some voices later without having to worry about lip-synching. You can even change the whole story later, if you choose to. This also gives you the additional advantage of having the movie in any language for later distribution. Why, just imagine your masterpiece in Catalan or Frisian, or even in Latin for its run in Vatican City. Include a little bit of nudity and gore, although this will have to be cut when the pope watches. Do your characters live in a house? Probably. Surely there is a beautiful old home near you which will make for some good exteriors to match up with the footage shot in your own backyard. Thanks to the magic of the zoom lens, you don't even need to get very close. While those appear as your establishing shots, your narrator simply needs to say something like, "Meanwhile, back in Stately Wayne Manor ... " "Hey, now that I have the footage of them doing various things in my backyard, how does that become a movie?" Easy. Make up a story. Any story. Just watch an old episode of Alfred Hitchcock on Nick at Night, and copy down a plot summary. Now have one of your friends with a deep voice read your summary aloud, and tape him. Add this here and there throughout your footage as a voice-over narration. It worked for Blade Runner, and it can work for you. "Hey, I did that and it's only 44 minutes long." No problema, amigo. Here's how to lengthen it. Watch a travelogue on TV and tape it. Let's say it's about Venice. Choose about 10 minutes of good stuff, insert that footage into your own footage, preferably somewhere near the end, and have one of the characters say something to introduce it as a flashback, something like "You wonder how it all began? Your mother and I met in Venice, where I was working as a gondolier." Have him recite some background activities, some interesting facts about Venice, or just some generic thoughts like "Those were the good times, I tell you. Yessireebob". If you have a friend who can say all that with an Italian accent, all the better. For that matter, any accent will do. People who watch movies like "Maniac Nurses" can't tell the difference between an Italian accent and Chinese. "Hey, there are no travelogues on tonight. Just some shark specials on Discovery." No problem, my friend. Just change the monologue to "Your mother and I met off the Great Barrier Reef, where I was hunting the great white with Captain Cousteau." Pretty much any real-life footage will work. "OK, done, now I still need another 15 minutes!" Easily fixed. This is where you add some fine art which will make your film greatly admired at Cannes. Does your script take place over four days? That allows you to photograph three sunsets and three or four sunrises, which will not only add to the beauty of your masterpiece, but provide an all-important time marker for your film, and do so much more subtly than if you resorted to the shopworn device of ripping the top page off a flip calendar. Are you still short of your desired running time? We have the remedy. Perhaps one of your characters is reading a magazine. Right after the footage which shows him/her reading, photograph several paragraphs and pictures from the article he or she was allegedly reading. It can be any article. If you show some warning signs of cancer or something, you'll not only add educational value to your film, but also provide redeeming social importance, which is so critical to those pesky obscenity trials. This technique has an added plus. Later in the film you can add the exact same footage back in as a flashback, while your character tries to remember what he was reading. It's simple to cobble it into the plot. Could one of the patients of your maniac nurses have cancer? Maybe. "Say, if only I could remember that third warning sign." You can use that same footage again and again to add to the fun, as you provide valuable insight into your character's psychological development, or memory deterioration, or whatever, depending on whether he can remember that critical fact. Now the only thing left to do is to dust off the mantelpiece, and make a little extra room for your Palme D'Or. IMDB summary: 1.9 out of 10. |