by Abel Horwitz
Daily Lobo
Hollywood is a strange place.
There's no denying that with the amount of plastic surgery patients, bizarre religions and sequels to "Big Momma's House" that float around Hollywood, once and a while the absolute craziest of the crazies will rise to the top.
Ladies and gentlemen, may I present you with "Snakes on a Plane," a movie whose title says it all. There are snakes. On an airplane. With Samuel L. Jackson. I would have loved to be there when this idea was pitched.
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But the craziness doesn't end there. Once the community of film geeks on the Internet - which I consider myself an observer of rather than a participant - got word of this film, and especially the film's title, they went berserk. Pretty soon, Web sites began to spring up in appreciation of the film, which is set for release on Aug. 18. Fan-made T-shirts and movie trailers popped up almost overnight. The mother of all these Web sites is snakesonablog.com, which has become the unofficial Web site for all things "Snakes on a Plane" related. The goal of the blogger is simple - he wants to get on the guest list for the film's premiere.
However, he has achieved far more than that.
Recently, it was announced that the cast and crew for "Snakes on a Plane" were being called back for a five-day reshoot of the film to take it from the intended PG-13 rating to an R rating. New Line Cinema, the distributors of the film, saw the Internet buzz that "Snakes" is generating, and decided they wanted more gore, nudity, death, and, of course, snakes added to the film. Among the reshoots requested is more Samuel L. Jacksonisms, such as "I want these motherfucking snakes off the motherfucking plane." This line, New Line Cinema hopes, will take on cult status.
New Line shouldn't worry too much, though. "Snakes on a Plane" has already been embraced into Internet film geek vernacular. On urbandictionary.com the term "Snakes on a Plane" has been defined as many different things. Some definitions equate it to terms of dismissive resentment such as "Whaddaya gonna do?" and "Shit happens." Other definitions use it as a declaration of victory and joy. Any way you look at it, "Snakes" has become a word-of-mouth success without anyone having seen the film.
If "Snakes on a Plane" lives up to the expectations its generated, then perhaps Hollywood will look into more avenues of appealing to the Internet community. Comedians have already begun the lampoons, predicting the next batch of Hollywood-clone films to pop up will have titles like "Bears on a Cruise Ship" and "Hyenas in a Kindergarten." If one film does it right, then a dozen other films will pop up trying to imitate the original's success.
And that's how the craziness of Hollywood works. It's just snakes on a plane, man. Snakes on a plane.
