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Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me_ (And Other Concerns) - Mindy Kaling [43]

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for “Best Extreme Weight Loss Program.”

In the spring, when the networks trot out their lineup of new shows, you may idly think, Meh, maybe I’ll try this one or DVR that one, but I get a little paranoid trying to figure out whether any newcomer is going to beat us into a painful death by primetime scheduling. I’ve made a list of potential shows that I believe would kill The Office in the ratings:


• I Want to Be Able to Walk for My Wedding!: Jillian Michaels helps a morbidly obese couple confined to their sofa lose weight for their nuptials.

• I Want to Be Able to Walk When I Officiate a Wedding!: Jillian Michaels helps an obese priest, confined to his parish, officiate a wedding.

• Obese Priest: A priest who eats too much dessert helps a group of at-risk, but hilarious teens.

• Sing-Sing-Sings!: A singing competition in Sing Sing prison.

• The Weekly Hangover: A reality show where three friends are chloroformed and put in a random dangerous situation, like in the movie The Hangover, and have to piece back what happened to their lives.

• Interspecies Friendships: Have you ever seen that YouTube video where the elephant is friends with the collie? Or the one where the turtle and the hippopotamus are best friends? I could watch those for hours. These are the buddy comedies people crave.


I actually think I might create Interspecies Friendships. A smart, small observational show about two animals who are friends against all odds. It’ll be a tough sell at first, but by season two it’ll really come into its own. But it’ll never be as good as the original British version, Interspecies Chums.

Franchises I Would Like to Reboot

BY NOW YOU’VE seen what a savvy Hollywood person I am and wonder when I will be making my big jump from television to film. Here’s where I explain everything and tell about some of my most exciting film projects in the pipeline.

Nobody likes it when Hollywood reboots beloved franchises. When I was hired to write for the NBC remake of the classic BBC show The Office, everyone had the immediate physical reaction of being around someone who had just farted.

The thing is at least we were trying to remake something that was excellent. What I have never understood is the rebooting of already terrible things. For example, take The Dukes of Hazzard. This was a show whose two greatest claims to fame were (a) a car that consistently jumped over large objects at critical moments, and (b) introducing Americans to the Daisy Duke short-shorts, which single-handedly lowered the average age of sexual intercourse in this country by several years. I loved the show as a four-year-old, but even then I kind of knew The Dukes of Hazzard was for kids. I thought, This is good for me, or a five-year-old, tops. So, when it got remade as a movie, I didn’t quite understand.

But then I heard how much money it made and I thought, I need to get in on this, pronto. Here are some franchises I would like to reboot, for the love of the franchise and a little bit for the love of the money I think they would make.


A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN

Unfortunately, a bit of an uphill battle here. As fun and frothy as this movie was, it was based on an actual historical event. The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was a real thing. Also, I would reboot this movie only if I can play the Rosie O’Donnell part, and I’m pretty sure there weren’t many Indian women in the United States in the 1940s.


THE HULK

I feel like if they’re going to remake this every two or three years anyway, I want to get a shot at one.


OCEAN’S FIVE

Let’s be real here. The first Ocean’s film—not the 1960’s Ocean’s 11; how old do you think I am?—was great, but there were already four too many guys in it. Don Cheadle had, like, three lines in the entire movie. The films that came after Ocean’s Eleven, where they kept adding people, were hard to follow. There were so many characters doing different Vegas-related missions. It made you feel like someone behind the scenes was out of control, like, oh my God, if we don’t stop this person, all of the Screen

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