The afore mentioned Epic Movie, which features a parody of Snakes on a Plane, gets an extraordinarily harsh review from the San Francisco Chronicle featuring this comment about Snakes:
The movie even indulges in a parody of “Snakes on a Plane.” That movie is already ridiculous. It can’t be made more ridiculous.
Touche (there should be an accent there, I know).
Weird:
Bandar Seri Begawan - It was indeed a live enactment of the hit movie snakes on a plane when a real life snake allegedly smuggled by a Bruneian couple on budget carrierAirAsia caused a frenzy over one-hundred flight passengers boarding a tight from Kuala Lumpur to Miri on Sunday morning, the Malaysian daily newspaper Berita Harian reported.
The married couple however denied smuggling the pet snake which was spotted by a horrified passenger on the floor of the aircraft but admitted to illegally importing forty-six baby rats that they stored in a box, hidden inside a backpack they carried into the plane.
…
“The couple admitted to bringing baby rats by concealing them inside a box which they stored in a bag they carried into the plane. The baby rats were smuggled to feed the pet snake,” the official was quoted as saying in Berita Harian.
Which leads to the obvious question, what were they planning on feeding the snake to?
While Snakes on a Plane was nominated for no Oscars OR Razzies, it did win two GAG awards:
Nintendo’s Wii lets you make Miis (basically an avatar that you can then use in your games). Irrelevant was kind enough to whip up a couple images of his Samuel L. Jackson Mii.
Yeah, his name is Sam MuthaF and he golfs. I also put up a few images of his Bruce Campbell Mii if anybody is looking for more of this sort of thing.
While Snakes on a Plane didn’t receive any Oscar nominations, it appears to have snuck its way into the official marketing:
Who would have thought?
I bet you thought all the interviews were done, but I’ve got one last one for you. I got in touch with Keith Dallas who played “Big Leroy” (hell of a character name) in Snakes on a Plane and he agreed to do a quick interview. And to remind you of who he is, he included a few snazzy picture of himself on the set of Snakes on a Plane including shots of him with Samuel L. Jackson, Kenan Thompson, Elsa Pataky, David Ellis, Byron Lawson and more:
Snakes on a Blog: Tell us a little bit about yourself?
Keith Dallas: I was born in Jamaica, I’m a real simple dude, LOVE comic books, love martial arts movies, loved the Matrix, one of my favorite martial arts movies was called “Berry Gordy’s the Last Dragon”
SoaB: What effect has Snakes on a Plane had on your career?
KD: The effect snakes has had on my career hasn’t been all that much, I get recognized a lot from it, I get recognized a lot still from Romeo Must Die and other stuff I did. I’ve also booked 2 t.v. series that I’m one of the leads in, one is called blood ties and that’ll be out in march, you should be seeing the billboard on sunset one of these days and the others called intelligence, blood ties is about vampires and intelligence is about drug deals and mafia, that kinda thing.
SoaB: Your character’s name in the movie was Big Leroy, did you come up with
any sort of backstory for him? Or a last name?KD: There’s no real back story on Leroy, he was homeboys with Triple G’s back in the day, mo better friends with the Troy character, oh yeah, they did come up with a last name for Big Leroy, Dubois, go figure, I dunno, I felt my chracter was important to state the fact that black people can be hurt in film and not die, we needed light comedy in the film, thats what I was trying to bring, also sometimes brothas have to work harder to make an impact and I think I kinda did, I went to the premiere, when I said that line “Now that’s what i’m talkin’ about,” Hollywood lost it, it was an uproar of laughter, I was shocked, I wasn’t really aware until my friends started coming up to me and telling me I was gonna be a star and how this movie’s following is phenomenall HUGE, that’s when I kinda started to go online and see some things, not much though, I actually started seeing more once the movie was over, like, I started actually really checking out these sites.
SoaB: Were you involved with any of the reshoots to bring the movie from a PG13 to an R? Did it improve the film?
KD: I was involved with the reshoots, I had to reshoot me getting bit and screaming, I tried swearing when that happened and David Ellis said we can’t swear we only have a like 2 swear words and I think we should give ‘em to Sam, I’m like, alright cool, then they called me to do the re-shoots and they’re like, swear your head offf, cuss like u ain’t cussed in your life, David fed me lines like “get this brokeback snake off my ass” “get this motherfuckin’ snake off me!” stuff like that, do I think it made the film better….100%
SoaB: Does Samuel L. Jackson swear as much in real life as he does in film?
KD: Sam Jackson in real life is a cool dude, for real, seriously a nice guy, but when he don’t want to be talked to, you know it, just by looking at him, he’s not shy to let you know he’s chillin’, nice guy, he cusses, but he knows how to be respectful around people, like ladies and stuff, like he’s not gonna be cussing in the middle of a room filled with the younger kids from the movie.
SoaB: How about Kenan Thompson?
KD: Kenan is a big EVERYTHING as far as personality, I can hands down tell you he was the funniest guy on set, INCLUDING Sam and Flex, Flex THOUGHT he was funny, but he really wasn’t, I think Flex thought he was Three G’s for REAL, lol.
SoaB: What was it like acting with the snakes? Did you have a favorite snake?
KD: it wasn’t hard acting with the snakes, I actually wasn’t around them all that much, my favorite snake was “kitty” she was huge and I loved her, she was HEAVY, took like 12 of us to lift her
SoaB: Did being in the film give you any practical advice for what you should do if you ever found yourself in a plane with real snakes?
KD: If I was on a plane with real snakes I would start stomping and chopping, any advice if it happens to anyone on a plane, if you survive, sue the airline and get rich as hell.
SoaB: If you had to pick one person to be trapped on a plane with snakes, who would it be?
KD: Who would I like to see trapped with snakes in real life, hmm………….Flex Alexander, yeah, Flex.
SoaB: Did you have a favorite line from the film?
KD: My favorite line from the movie was when the captain was talkin’ about goin’ down faster than a thai hooker, I was in tears.
SoaB: What do you think the best title for a sequel would be?
KD: Snakes in the Pen: Sam goes to jail and some of us follow and they release snakes in the penitentiary, also Snakes in the Asylum, we all go crazy from what happened and get locked up and the snakes follow and kill us and all the crazy people, that’s what I’d call the sequels.
SoaB: Is there anything else interesting you’d like to say about the movie experience?
KD: Anything interesting……..hmm………. OH, before we started filming we kinda walked around set and met the stunt people and the props people and stuff, they showed me a fake snake they were gonna be putting on the plane, I said, you know what would be a good idea is if a snake is coming after me, leaping at me and I do a roundhouse kick while it’s coming at me, I was doing alot more martial arts back then, so we tried it out, they threw one at me and I roundhoused it 2 feet across the damn room, the props guys LOVED it, they said they were gonna show it to the stunt coordinator then David and try and have it put n the movie, no such luck, damn that woulda been sweet, I don’t even know if it ever even got to David to see, lol, well, that’s about it man, sorry my answers are so bunced together but in a bit of a rush.
Snakes on a Plane was nominated for worst poster and best teaser poster at the Internet Movie Poster awards. It lost both categories.
I know what you were thinking, you were thinking from the moment you first heard about Snakes on a Plane that it was going to be a contender for the Razzies. Deep down in your heart you knew it was a possibility. Well, the list was announced today and Snakes on a Plane didn’t earn one nomination. Congratulations!
A few new pieces of Fan Art for the masses:
At Fantent I’ve posted an easy to browse collection of every image I posted at Snakes on a Blog over the last year. The comics, video and sound archives are tentatively up, but they need a lot of work.
When Snakes on a Plane came out on DVD you knew it was only a matter of time before it was ported onto somebody’s video Ipod.
My computer is too slow for me to take strolls through Itunes, is Snakes on a Plane available for download or is this a conversion only option?
A while ago I talked about starting a new site, one that would be dedicated to cataloging all the fanmade content online. It was a lofty goal… too lofty for me to actually achieve. Shame, huh?
So, instead of doing it all at once, I’m going to do it in steps. Small steps. And, like I did with Snakes on a Plane, I’m going to start with a new blog and see where it goes from there. I present to you:
If people actually start reading it, FanTent.com will be the new home of Fanmade Content. The site is going to start slowly accumulating links to and copies of Fanmade Content from around the net, but it’s also going to track the burgeoning phenomenon of fans interacting with media through the creation of their own content. Here’s the first post to give you an idea of what I’m going for.
In all fairness, the site isn’t really done yet. There’s a few bugs to iron out, a few of the features on there don’t quite work properly yet, a few links don’t point anywhere and the content is thus far somewhat lousy. A ringing endorsement, eh?
It’s a work in progress, but what online project isn’t? I’m not a hacker, I’m not a coder, I’m not really a web designer… but this is a new venture for me and I think it could be a fun one. I’ve become personally linked to the idea of and the potential importance of fan-produced content in the last year and it should be interesting to deal with that more directly.
Snakes on a Blog, I think we can all admit, was winding down. I won’t be shutting the site down, and I’ll still post here, but I’ll be posting at the new site as well and if you want to come with me, that’s great. If not, also fine.
Ok, that’s it.
Sorry, I totally forgot that I had two prizes to give away for the final contest. The first prize was one DVD and one t-shirt to each of ten finalists sent directly by New Line. Those DVDs have recently started arriving, hooray. The second prize, which I never awarded, was as follows:
So, I’ve selected the top finalist for this prize. Congratulations Josh:
Having been demoted from first class, I was forced to “grit my teeth”, as the expression goes, and fly in coach. It was a step down, to say the least. In order to distract myself from the morbidly obese man sitting next to me (who was currently sleeping with his mouth open and his fingers encrusted with the remains of the pork rinds that he had been eating earlier), I took out my research papers and began to examine them. As the leading theological scholar specializing in the beginning chapters of Genesis, I was currently looking at the passages that were the foundations of original sin. Perhaps if I discovered that original sin did not exist, or some inconsistencies in the text proved that the story had been tampered with by other writers in the period between its creation and its modern incarnation, I would receive a nominal raise. Cheered by this thought, I set to work.
However, I was disturbed by a shout from my neighbor. I looked to my right and was immediately horrified. It seemed as if he had grown so large that his belly was about to explode, and that his hand, now a bloody stump, had already done so. A bloody circle formed at the bottom of his belly, and grew larger until eventually what was inside him burst out of his stomach and T-shirt: a snake. Perhaps it was the stench of the pork rinds that attracted the snake, or the shiny bag that enclosed them, but the snake had apparently chewed off the man’s hand, crawled through his arm and come out through his stomach. Needless to say, I was horrified, but it was nowhere near the terror I experienced when the snake turned to look at me with its two very shiny eyes. And then, along with what seemed like hundreds of other snakes, it attacked.
You know, I could remark at this point about this strange cosmic karma currently taking place: the unfortunate species punished from the Adam and Eve story, in the end, punishes its preeminent scholar. I could probably spout a philosophical world-view that could be surmised from this tale and bring some sort of resolution to this account of the last minutes of my life. But no, dear reader, I will not. I will, however, say this: after the darkness closed in on me, after the snakes breached the seat cover I had used as a defense for my face and got into my eyes, scratching my corneas, filling up my mouth, their bodies and fangs, venom getting into my nose, contaminating my insides as I clawed at the upright tray table in front of me, hoping to, somehow, get out of having my headstone read “killed due to sheer volume of snakes”, I felt no regrets. A life is a life, and whether you spend it on Biblical study or at the mercy of snakes on a plane, it is what it is.
Thanks to Damnation Inc. for providing such snazzy prizes.
Snakes on a Plane’s DVD premiered at number 1 for DVD sales last week:
“Snakes,” which grossed only $34 million in theaters despite a much-ballyhooed Internet marketing campaign, debuted at No. 1 on Nielsen VideoScan’s First Alert sales chart, nudging last week’s chart topper — “Jackass Number Two” — to second place.
It didn’t do quite as well as a rental option:
On Home Media Magazine’s rental chart, “Snakes” bowed at No. 5 with estimated first-week rental revenue of $4.9 million, one spot and $50,000 ahead of “Covenant.” “Little Miss Sunshine” bounced back to the No. 1 spot after three weeks in stores, bumping “The Devil Wears Prada” to No. 2.
Since I posted a recent complaint about how the movie (and presumably this site) might be aiding terrorists, I figured I’d pull out an old one. I had this email exchange back in April:
From: complainant
To: SoaB
are you not afraid that this can give terrorists ideas to bring in snakes on a plane, if they can bring in weapons snakes are a piece of cake.there is a war going on stop giving people ideas.From: SoaB
To: complainant
I presume you’re joking.
From: complainant
To: SoaB
no am not joking. is it impossible?.am already afraid of flying as it is
From: SoaB
To: complainant
I would argue two main points:
1. Why would you blame me, somebody running a webpage, and not New Line, the company who’s actually producing a movie about Snakes on a Plane? Clearly if somebody is giving ideas, it’s them more than me.
2. If a terrorist is looking to hurt people, they certainly don’t need movies to give them ideas. It’s not especially hard to think of scary things to do, adding more to the list doesn’t increase their opportunities or the likelihood that they’ll carry those ideas out. It’s not like somebody is sitting around saying “Gosh, I would love to do something terroristic but I just don’t have any ideas…” and then suddenly a movie comes on TV and they’re chock full of new, movie-inspired ideas. Quite honestly, the idea of a terrorist using snakes is much less frightening than the idea of a terrorist using bombs.
From: complainant
To: SoaB
is it actually less frightening at least there would be flight marshalls in flights to help but if there are dangerous snakes aboard (noone knowing where they are)even the marshalls would be afraid not knowing where they are hiding.when the film comes out you will begin to see the effect on the populace it’s all fun and good now. meanwhile i blame you for now because you are hyping it more than newline cinema.think future not just present. frequent flier miles will soon be on sale everywhere. airlines should start bringing out their PR guys to calm the public.for me bye bye planes hello cars and buses (at least they can stop and passengers can jump out the window)
At this point I asked her to write up her beliefs into something that I could post by itself, but I never heard back from her.
I’ve gotten a few of these in the past, but I figured I’d throw this one online:
i may only be 15, but i have some thoughts about this movie.1) i think it,looks retared!! 2) i have not yet seen snakes on a plane and i do not plan,to. i think that snakes on a plane is just another way that terrorist can,demolish the u.s. thanks to the person who created this movie a terrorist,could be thinking of more ways to kill us just by the poisinous snakes or,more deadfully tragic ways. so i am ganna say thank you to the guy who made,this movie. becuase if we are attacked this way i guess i would be right.
I always like the idea that terrorists are so dull-witted that the only way they can think of things to do is by watching Hollywood blockbusters. I expect we’re going to see a lot more terroristic cross-dressing and fart jokes in the near future… beware!
We’ve got a couple real world airplane incidents to report on. The first is this piece from the United Arab Emirates, talk about lax security:
I remember once on a flight from Goa to Europe there was a real, live snake found onboard. The man who brought it on the plane somehow disguised it at security as a belt, and managed to get his pet snake onboard. It escaped his waist on the plane and was found wriggling around the overhead compartments in first class. The plane had to be diverted to land as quickly as possible.
And, while this next one isn’t about snakes, it seems like it could be the makings of a perfectly viable sequel concept:
The scorpion bit David Sullivan on the back of his right leg, just below the knee, crawled up through his crotch and down his left leg, he thinks, before getting him again in the shin. Not what he was expecting on his flight home from Chicago to Vermont.
Yegads. The victim was apparently asked about the film:
He said he hadn’t seen the recent movie, “Snakes on a Plane,” starring Samuel L. Jackson. “I’m pretty selective about what I see,” Sullivan said. “Maybe I have to see it now.”
Yeah, I think you do. You’ll be better prepared for the next time this sort of thing happens.
UPDATE: For the bored we also have Mice on a Plane and Snakes in a House.
A few people have sent me emails commenting on a scene in the film in which Bruce James, playing the flight attendant, throws a snake into the onboard microwave. For a few moments you can see that this particular microwave in fact has ‘Snake’ as a cooking option. You may have noticed it in fleeting during the theatrical release, but the DVD allows for so much greater clarity (and screenshots):
During the audio commentary to the scene (it starts at 43:45 by the way), director David Ellis comments that this microwave was actually a prototype and, before long, all airlines will be equipped with them.
UPDATE: David Ellis set me straight: this was NOT in the original theatrical release and was added to the DVD as something that “only the fans would catch.”
