Has Snakes on a Plane killed the influence of blogs? PC Magazine investigates:

If such a tsunami of interest leads to just a trickle of real revenue in the movie business, what does this mean for other favored blog causes? Will the blogosphere still be able to bring down political chieftains? And what role will blogs play in the U.S. presidential elections? A real test will come up in this year’s midterm elections, where close races are the subject of endless blog debate and attempts to sway public opinion.

I’m not really sure people look at the issue in the right way. Let’s assume (and not everybody does) that Snakes on a Plane was a financial failure. But what was interesting about Snakes on a Plane’s online phenom was not that it was necessarily generating revenue (although, of course, New Line would have hoped that it was). What was interesting was the sheer impact that Snakes on a Plane has had on the general culture. Today, for example, in a law school ethics class, my teacher, a partner in a local law firm, mentioned how he was trying to find a way to tie Snakes on a Plane into his upcoming lecture plans.

I don’t see that happening with many other movies. There aren’t a lot of grad school teachers discussing Beerfest.

Maybe Snakes on a Plane was a financial failure, but it has had a wide reaching impact, and that’s something that most films don’t. Maybe the internet couldn’t coerce people to see a movie that they didn’t have any interest in seeing, but it certainly made them aware of it. 50 years from now, people will still remember Snakes on a Plane, but nobody will remember Beerfest.

Well, 20 years anyway.

The official reviews from major papers are starting to stream in.

• The Boston Globe - 3.5 out of 4 stars
• Chicago Sun Times - 2 out of 4 stars
• The Toronto Star - 3 out of 4 stars
• The New York Times - negative positive
  
• The New York Post - 3 out of 4 stars
• Washington Times - 2.5 out of 4 stars
• Philadelphia Inquirer - negative
• Boston Herald - C+
• USA Today - 2.5 out of 4 stars
• The AP - 3.5 out of 4 stars

Please post new reviews in the comments.

A few weeks ago AICN posted a review, now Dread Central has one.  Is it real?  I don’t know, but it’s positive.  Here’s a small sample:

Snakes on a Plane delivers terror we haven’t seen in most modern horror films today. It’s not just the different ways a snake can creep up on you and deliver a bite, though that was pretty damn cool. It’s not just the FX guys going to town on some bubbling, twitching poison victims, though that did make me cringe more than once. It’s the “What If” factor thrown in. What happens to the guy in front when a bunch of people push down an aisle only made for single filing? What happens when a plane pitches and everything in the cabin comes loose? CARNAGE!! In reality, it wouldn’t just be the snakes you’d have to worry about.

Sure, Snakes on a Plane is about as subtle as opening the door to your house with a 50-lb. sledgehammer, but it never pretended to be. You have to respect that sort of honesty. This could have been the mysterious Pacific Air Flight 121. There is no mistaking a film called Snakes on a Plane. This is the swift kick in the ass this summer movie season has sorely needed.

I wonder how they got to see the movie early?

Snakes on a Plane has been mentioned on the Daily Show before (1 and 2), but yesterday it was graced with the presence of Samuel L. Jackson:

Samuel L. Jackson on the Daily Show

I don’t think I’ve ever seen more swearing in a Daily Show interview. It’s pretty good.

NBC is coming in a few minutes to tape something for the Today Show. My mom must be very excited.

New Line has been pushing Snakes on a Plane everywhere lately:

• Snakes on a Dell
• Snakes on a Cell Phone
• Snakes on a Treo

I guess we all have to hope that the Dell doesn’t burst into flames while the snake is still all wrapped around it… poor guy.

Also, FYI, Treo was kind enough to provide me with a Treo 650 so I could blog live from the premiere on Thursday night… be on the lookout for blurry pictures of all the festivities.

Bullz-Eye interviewed David Ellis a week ago and he was kind enough to give the following quote:

BE: How much do you love Brian F.? (Note: Brian F. runs the fan favorite snakesonablog.com.)

DE: He’s awesome. The guy should be president. He’s frickin’ amazing. I got to meet him at Comic-Con, and I started a dialogue with him very early on, on the site.

I hereby announce that I am seeking the SoaP party’s nomination for President. The sad part is that I might actually have some real competition in the primaries.

MSNBC has put together a Snakes on a Plane quiz.

How’d you do?

CNBC is here filming over my shoulder right now. They’ve asked me to type. It’s not very interesting to read this message, but hey, what else do I have to do right now?

I’m also doing an interview with NBC’s Today Show tomorrow morning. I guess both of these will be airing sometime during the week. I’ll get more information when I’m not just typing to fill time.

Ok, the CNBC interview is going to air during a piece on On The Money tomorrow (8/16) at 7:00pm EST.

UPDATE: CBS just wrote in to say they were going to air my LONG delayed piece on the CBS Evening News on Thursday night.

Snakes on a Plane is everywhere lately. Here’s a few examples that have been sitting in my inbox for a while.

• Entertainment Weekly (cover, full story, and funny Shaw Report)
• Maxim (Elsa Pataky photospread and contest)
• Instinct Magazine (interview with Lin Shaye).
• Another, online, interview with Lin Shaye.
• National Geographic has a collection of real life snake stories/photos.

A side note on Elsa Pataky: we were supposed to do a Q&A with her a while ago based on a modified version of the questions put to Agam Darsi. A member of her “management team” solicited questions from me which I sent to them on June 9th. They didn’t get me answers. Then, on July 15, I resent the list of questions at their request. They again didn’t respond. I don’t know if Elsa Pataky wasn’t interested, or if her “management team” didn’t forward the questions, but it was disappointing.

This isn’t really of any interest to anybody, but the Guardian ran a story a while ago that was your basic Snakes on a Plane media piece, but their description of Snakes on a Blog that made me laugh:

disturbingly meticulous

Harumph.

The Boston Globe ran a piece about a podcast about a real snake on a plane (I guess they were starved for news):

So forget the movie, and head over to pilot Joe d’Eon ’s website, Fly With Me. (Use a search engine and find the podcast Fly With Me Episode 12.) What you’ll hear is a flight attendant telling the story of what looked like a non poisonous snake that showed up between the windowpane and fuselage of a L-1011. The flight was full, so the captain asked the passengers if they wanted to be delayed forever while the plane was taken apart, or whether they wanted to fly. They opted to fly, and when the plane landed . . . the snake was gone.

I won’t spoil the story, but let’s just say when the plane took off the next time, the passengers weren’t told about the snake, which had disappeared. Or had it? So yes, there can be snakes on a plane, and they can be scary.

Without Monty Coles, this just isn’t a real story.

As a few of you have noted, there’s a book on Amazon called Snakes on a Plane: The Guide to the Internet Ssssssensation. A month or so ago I was interviewed by the author, but it seems that I’m not the only person he’s spoken with. The publisher has sent me a copy of the manuscript - here are a few pictures:

As you can see, the copy I got is in black and white, one-sided and spiral bound, but it’s enough to indicate the scale of the book. David Waldon apparently managed to interview pretty much anyone who’s done anything having to do with Snakes on a Plane including, but not limited to, Me, Snakes on a LiveJournal Blog, Jeff Rowland, Sticknstein, both contest winners, Damnation Inc., DCLugi, Subatomic Warp, Matt Barr, ShelfLife and many more (and he managed to get pictures of all of them). It’s actually pretty neat to see everyone collected in one place.

I don’t know if anybody who’s not in the book is going to be interested in it, but now you know what it’s like.

Ryan Pearson (who was the first reporter to interview me, and has subsequently posted several stories about or mentioning Snakes on a Plane) interviewed director David Ellis and screenwriter John Heffernan and put together a few plot and casting details that appear to be new. For example, Samuel L. Jackson’s role was originally envisioned for a younger actor (Taye Diggs or Blair Underwood). There’s also a short audio clip from the film’s composer discussing the difficulties of doing audio for the film, and this picture of David Ellis:

Esquire has a piece titled “The Snakes on a Plane Problem: The tragedy of the best titled movie in the history of film” where the author laments that the film is

like the Wikipedia version of a movie… if Snakes on a Plane is a commercial success (which seems wholly plausible), this brand of choose-your-own-adventure filmmaking is going to become a model. And that model will be terrible…

The Church of the Customer Blog has a well reasoned rebuttal.  So does crazymonk.

Samuel L. Jackson was apparently wearing more than just the shirt at the MTV movie awards. According to the Globe and Mail, Samuel L. Jackson was also wearing a themed necklace (although he’s clearly not wearing it on stage):

The article discusses a new wave of licensing film content for adult products, moving beyond the traditional children’s market. Well, I suppose fans looking to spend “$170 (all figures U.S.) for a sterling-silver replica of Jackson’s necklace, or $150 for a similar set of luggage tags” now have a chance to do so. Seems a tad pricey, and a tad non-fan-produced, but that’s a matter of preference.

Once again, a snake has found its way onto a real life plane.  The Toronto Star reports:

Dutch customs detected a live poisonous snake that was sent by airmail on a flight from Hong Kong to a collector in the Netherlands, the Finance Ministry said Wednesday. Inspectors thought the snake was a gag rubber gift when they first scanned the package, which was labelled “toy goods.” But then they scanned it again and saw it move, ministry spokesman Kees Nanninga said.

The snake was a Fea’s Viper, found in the forests of southeast Asia. It is rare but not on endangered lists, and known as highly poisonous but not usually aggressive toward humans.

The one thing this story lacks, is a Monty Coles angle.

Rolling Stone had an article awhile back discussing The Politics of Fear which included this line about former Senator Jesse Helms’ use of gay-baiting during campaigns:

”One of Helms’ political architects told me at the time that it was not about ‘values’ — it was about provoking a visceral, gut-level response,” says Bob Hall, who studied the campaign for the Institute for Southern Studies in Durham, North Carolina. ”It’s not rational — it’s Snakes on a Plane.” Helms, he adds, ”proved the value of gay-baiting in a campaign — even against a moderate opponent. He helped embed it into the culture of the right-wing political operatives.”

This is probably the first time Snakes on a Plane has been used to mean gay-baiting.

Asiance magazine emailed to let me know they had done an interview with Byron Lawson, who plays Eddie Kim in Snakes on a Plane. Asiance magazine appears to be for Asian American women, so it includes a lot of beefcake pictures of Byron as well as odd lines like this about the author: “L Nguygen is 1½ generation Vietnamese American. She loves to write on Asian celebrities who maintain their principles and do not get caught up in the Hollywood mainstream.” I’m not entirely sure what that means. Also, if you peruse the magazine a little, you’ll find an odd assortment of articles like this one on, uhm, shaving.

Anyway, here’s the relevant part of the interview:

ASIANCE: Tell us about your new movie “Snakes on a Plane”

Byron: Snakes on a Plane is exactly like the title. It’s about a crime lord (I play) and he kills this guy in the opening of the movie in a violent way. He and his men hang this guy upside down and I basically beat him with a baseball bat. We’re in Hawaii thinking we’re in the middle of nowhere, where no one can witness this. A kid on a dirt bike sees the whole thing taking place. After the murder is committed, he takes off and is an eyewitness. He goes to testify against me. So they have to fly him from Hawaii to Los Angeles. I have to get my people to take care of this eyewitness so I don’t have to be put away. We put 1,000 poisonous snakes on the plane, not caring who is on the plane. We just want it to go down.

The premise of this story is to prevent the plane from going down with all these snakes on the plane and hurting the people of Los Angeles.

ASIANCE: So you got to work with Samuel L Jackson?

Byron: Sam is the FBI agent who is assigned to protect this kid. He’s really nice. One of the calmest guys I’ve ever met. He’s not intimidating. He golfs everyday. A really fun guy.

ASIANCE: Did they want to cast and Asian actor for your role?

Byron: Well I was going to play a different character. Then they brought a bunch of actors to read for the bad guy yet again, which is the character I wanted. All I remember is that one of my good friends and I were going back in for at this meeting. When he came out he basically said, “Byron you better bring it! Bring it like you’ve never brought it before!” He actually wanted this other character. I went in and read for it and ended up getting it.

This character as far as I know was always named Eddie Kim. He was always Asian. But they never had him speak any other language. He was a mobster out of LA. I wouldn’t say he was the token Asian. They wanted a mobster so they happened to go with the Asian mob. It is somewhat of a stereotypical character, an Asian mobster but they could’ve gone any way; Italian mob, Russian mob, etc.

The excitement this movie is getting is incredible. It’s getting a lot of press right now.

David Spade had the Wayans brothers on and it somehow devolved into a Snakes on a Plane bit… although I’m unclear as to why. It’s sort of odd. (thanks noobles)

SoaP on David Spade
direct link - youtube link

All previous Fan Video.

Countdown with Keith Olbermann ran another piece about Snakes on a Plane tonight…

UPDATE posted 6/29/06 at 8:00am: Thanks to noobles we now have a copy of the clip:

MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann
direct link - youtube link
Originally aired 6/28/06