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            As they say in the movie business, when the release of a film gets delayed for a year and a half, there are problems.

            In an attempt to do a re-make of The Prisoner of Zenda, things got a little out of hand at More Town Studios. In no way was it my fault that they ended up with such a bizarre shooting script. I have only been called in to help construct the trailer. My reputation precedes me: The love interest in my scripts tends to be either a dominatrix or a vixen. “You’ll be poifect to square this circle,” brays CEO David Groschen over the phone.

            I have been a little too generous of late to some of my lady friends. I need the money.

            Here are the bare bones provided by the studio:

                                         Trailer – The Prisoner of Zelda

             Josh (a Sam Neill type character): (close-up) “Let me go, Zelda!”

              Zelda: (close-up; laughing toothily) “No-o-o-o-o!”

                Everything else is action sequences: car chases, things exploding, even if one of the “things” is a guy’s underpants.

                I view the screener, pausing to jot notes. I’ve discovered that the impression I get on the first viewing— the details that stand out— are a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I can watch the movie a dozen more times, but I’ll never have as fresh a take.

                This motion picture is in serious trouble, and I don’t mean they risk missing Best Picture at the Oscars. A low-budget slasher movie, Zelda locks up men and saws off their limbs. Of course, the last 30 seconds before the closing credits have got to be in the trailer: An old-fashioned, Sigmund Freud type psychiatrist in a book-lined study all in tones of brown— the furniture, the leather chairs, the psychiatric couch. He says, “But my dear, you must be suppressing a terrible anger.”

                There it is! A movie for modern times. I telephone Groschen and pitch

                                          Trailer – The Anger of Zelda

                Narrator: “Never before has a motion picture dared immerse itself in the seething cauldron of emotions that underlie the most basic tenets of modern life— extremism, fanaticism, rage, anger. Zelda, society’s Everywoman, experiences it all! JOIN HER in facing the terror, the hopelessness, but above all, the anger.

               The anger.

               The anger of Zelda.

               Coming to a theater near you, August 2012.”

                “Okay,” I tell Groschen, “worst case scenario, we change the last sentence to ‘Coming to DVD.’ It floats. It works.”

               “I dunno,” David replies, but even from across the Continental Divide, I can hear the wheels turning. “Do the edit and send me the rough cut. You know the drill. I’ll run it by a focus group. We’ll call it Zelda’s Anger. It’s a sexy title, it’s potent, it carries a punch.”

              Which he does. Sonofabitch, we’ve got a sleeper! The focus group loves the trailer, the idea, the concept, the rough cut, my narration (I’ve got a passable microphone voice), you name it.

               That the movie itself stinks in no way diminishes the quality of the $10,000 check I happily receive from More Town Studios.

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