25 Birthday Wishes

25

It is the title of the last episode of The West Wing that Aaron Sorkin ever wrote.

It is the smallest square that can be written as a sum of two squares.

It is the age Kevin Smith was when he made Mallrats.

It is when a kid starts having his/her Quarter Life Crisis.

It is the size of a Major League Baseball roster.

It is how old Zach Braff was when he wrote Garden State.

And it is the age I will be turning on Sunday the 9th of July.

To mark the occasion I’ve compiled a list of birthday wishes that I want to use to make Hollywood -and entertainment in general- into a better place to live and work. Why be so altruistic and not horde my wishes on selfish, material things? Here’s the reason: I know it’s only a matter of time before Steven Spielberg asks me to write his next movie. I already have a girl better than Natalie Portman (The Lady is much cuter, a terrific actress AND doesn’t mind my intense body hair. Darth Vader can keep the Portman.) And I’ve resigned myself to Dan Marino never winning a Super Bowl (unless I’m playing Madden). So I’m not going to waste my birthday wishes on those things. Instead, I’m going to waste them on this optimistic wish list of pop culture improvements. Especially number four. And since I’m an expert (candle) blower, I fully expect to see these wishes fulfilled. Even more especially number twelve.

1. I wish that Eddie Murphy would return to stand up comedy. I’ve been waiting for Eddie to drop an F-Bomb since the 1995 abortion known as Vampire in Brooklyn.

2. I wish Ben Affleck would make a glorious return to the silver screen. My world’s just not the same without the star of Surviving Christmas and Reindeer Games. After all, he was the bomb in Phantoms, yo!

3. I wish that The Last Kiss would become the spiritual sequel to Garden State (and with an equally great soundtrack).

4. I wish that Airborne, Rad and Monster Squad would get released on DVD with big fat honking special editions. They’re my three favorite films that aren’t on DVD, which is insane because ABC Family Channel used to play Airborne every three hours like clockwork.

5. I wish that Spielberg, Ford and Lucas would decide NOT to make Indiana Jones 4. Indy rode off into the sunset after finding the Holy freaking Grail. How do you top that? Ford is pushing 65; do they really expect us to suspend our disbelief that this AARP member is still believable whipping Nazi’s and running from boulders and bad blonde actresses? Let it go, guys. Let it go…

6. I wish George Lucas would make an indie movie, just to see what it would be about.

7. I wish the Arclight had a brother.

8. I wish there was a theater in Los Angeles that was solely devoted to showing new, digital works. There are interesting, captivating films out there, done by daring new digital filmmakers, but we have yet to find a suitable distribution venue for them, and as such, studios have picked the rights up to very few of them. This needs to change. And while we’re on the subject of things that need to change at movie theaters, I wish we could find a legal way to stop idiots from bringing their kids into R-Rated movies. Or Moms who bring their babies into Friday night shows. I wish we could find a non-lethal, fully legal way of tasering people who talk on their cell phones during the movie; or crushing the larynx of assholes who won’t stop talking, even when you do the half turn glance, then full turn stare, then full turn stare and “Ssshh” them, and then they glare at you. I hate people.

9. I wish Hollywood would make Dolph “I must break you” Lundgren the new Mickey Rourke, and start casting him as a badass in every Tony Scott movie.

10. I wish I didn’t hate going to the movies now.

11. I wish Tenacious Dwould hurry up and release their next album. I can’t keep listening to Tribute (It’s the greatest and best song in the world.), my iPod refuses to play it for the thousandth time.

12. I wish gratuitous T & A would make a comeback.

13. I wish James Cameron would hurry up already and make his goddamn next movie. Those IMAX movies don’t count. And neither does Aquaman.

14. I wish I didn’t know the ending of Rocky Balboa.

15. I wish John Hughes would come back (I bet Shermer, Illinois is a happening place these days).

16. I wish the Academy would break up their acting awards the way the Emmys and the Golden Globes split up drama and comedy. There are far too many comedic performances that get overlooked (Paul Giamatti in Sideways, Jim Carrey in The Truman Show, John Travolta in Get Shorty). The highlight of this change would be the possibility that Adam Sandler might eventually be nominated for an Oscar, a sure sign of the apocalypse and the end of mankind as we know it.

17. I wish Shane Black would make a sequel to Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (or Long Kiss Goodnight).

18. I wish Paris Hilton would just go away.

19. I wish Hollywood would stop knocking The Valley (Ahem, Entourage! Dicks.). It’s cheap, it’s not funny, it’s invariably not true, and it’s so 80’s to do it. So step off my turf, Hollywood, we like to keep it respectful in Camelot.

20. I wish they had made Angels & Demons first.

21. I wish Steve Kloves knocks “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” right out of the park.

22. I wish NBC would finally green light the Quantum Leap spin-off (Quantum Leap: A Bold Leap Forward) that I have been waiting for, for thirteen years. Everyone, please go and by a Quantum Leap DVD box set (I recommend season 3 for it’s heart-wrenching Vietnam-set finale), so we can show the network that this property is worthy of another go round.

23. I wish this movie would get made.

24. I wish people would agree with me about Keanu Reeves.

25. I wish that success in this industry wasn’t about getting on the cover of US Magazine, or blowing some low-rent casting director, or doing blow in a night club bathroom, or releasing a sex tape, or having pictures “stolen” from your house, or lip-synching on SNL, or doing a cloying reality show, or dating a troubled aging movie star, or pimping your religion, or fluctuating your body so harshly that no fourteen year-old in their right mind would want you as a role model, or picking scripts based on money and not based on quality, or becoming a brand name and spending all your time shilling your custom sneakers instead of working on your craft, or quantity over quality, or being mean to people who don’t deserve it, or being able to screw the little guy, or yelling at PA’s, or suing a tabloid when the story was true, or getting Botoxed, or releasing a vanity music project, or dressing like a whore on the red carpet, or revealing TMI in Vanity Fair, or mailing in your latest movie, or not respecting who and what came before you, or for trading on your celebrity to get free shit, or for generally being a stupid human being in the public eye and ruining the image of what a movie star should be.

I wish it was just about the work. Or at the very least, your willingness to show a little T & A.

Bangarang! (And Happy Birthday to me.)

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