Ridiculous Pretenses

Making that list of Rob Paulsen stuff makes me want to talk about so many other related things. For instance, I just began to wonder who came up with the premise for the ninja turtles. No for real. Someone was sitting around at home when suddenly they thought, hey! What if turtles could become ninja fighters? They'd have to be taller. And faster. Oh, I know, what if a random radioactive event causes them to mutate and they grow? Yes perfect. And they need to learn ninja stuff from someone. A rat who was also mutated could teach them. Obviously they'd have to live in a sewer. And have a news reporter friend to hang around with. All good superheros are friends with a news reporter, unless they are a news reporter themselves. And a train engineer.

I mean how did they pick that scenario? It just sounds so ridiculous when you say it out loud. These are things I wonder about some movies I've seen. Go back and try to imagine how they pitched it to the studio. Then tell me most of the movies we watch aren't totally ridiculous.
I pointed this out to Dan as we were watching O Brother, Where Art Thou? and then forgot about it for a couple weeks. But if you think about that one it's a fairly ridiculous movie. There's the lead character who is a guy obsessed with his hair, the manic depressive bank robber who gets carted off to his own hanging with a smile, the crazy swindler with one eye, a kid who learned to play mean guitar from the devil himself, the old polititians who wear pants riding well above the waistline. And I've been told the pretense behind the storyline is actually a retelling of the Odyssey. Talk about wierd. I'd love to have seen how they pitched that one to the studio.