A Pair of Dream Projects for When I Become a Billionaire

 

One of these days, I’m going to strike internet gold or something and fall ass backwards into more money than any one person should possess. I mean like fictional character billionaire money; the kind of wealth that never runs out no matter how frivolously you spend it and how crappy your company is always doing.

Hey what the hell, I’ll build a crazy high-tech command center in the caves under my house where I can store space age vehicles and a super mega computer among other things. And I’ll have a special R&D division hidden in my company where we create crap like that and build stuff like nuclear infinite power bombs to hide under the city just so nobody will get them. After that, I’ll build a mecha suit to joyride in. Then I’ll build a couple dozen more and develop AI to run them all so I can have a whole swarm of them all to myself. After that, Imma blow those bitches up to impress my girlfriend and STILL be a billionaire. That’s how filthy goddamn rich I’m going to be.

But wait, I live in the real world where the awesome technology we imagine never arrives unless it’s being used to kill foreigners super dead. Plus, fighting crime is kind of…well, stupid. I need to give something back to the world. No, not the money. That’s mine and you can’t have it. Feeding the hungry is so passé. People are taking selfies of themselves throwing metal horns and other dumb crap at their relatives’ funerals to post on social media sites. Humanity should probably starve and die as much as possible at this point.

So my legacy shall not be one of helping my fellow man. My fellow man sucks, so this week’s column is all about me. Instead of reading, watching, doing, and writing about nerdy things nobody else likes like a peasant, I shall instead use my wealth to create awesome and nerdy things that probably nobody else will like. Let it be done.

 

My (grind)house is a very, very, very fine (grind)house.

Okay, first on my list I’m going to build the greatest crappy cinema there has ever been. And I’m not going to playing any modern Hollywood dreck. This movie theater will be a designated cult film fanatic zone. My first order of business will be to renounce and ban Michael Bay and all of his works and doings.

My mission will be to amass a collection of films covering all cult genres from the silent era to the exploitation days to Bollywood to modern underground flicks that don’t get theatrical release; everything from Akira Kurosawa to Maurice Devereaux and Ralph Bakshi. Harryhausen, killer sharks, Troma, old school zombies, chanbara, Roger Corman, anime, kung-fu, kaiju, slashers, Hammer, Argento, punk rock documentaries, Vincent Price, blaxpoitation, sci-fi; I want all of it and everything like it. Also, there should be a weekly MST3K night.

Not only do I want to put all of this stuff in rotation on the big screen to give fans like myself an experience we just don’t get to have in this day and age, but I want to make the entire theatrical experience more awesome. My idea is to create amazing double bills of grindhouse films and proper showings of epic classics for starters, but I also want to obtain the rights to short films. You know the type. They get posted on this site regularly.

Instead of just lame advertisements and trivia in between showings, I want to put on the big screen cool little films like Alma, The Backwater Gospel, Cleats of Imminent Doom, Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared, The Flying Man, and the original 9 along with some relevant music videos and old-school trailers; stuff that will make people like me want to come early and stay late. This is what my cinema dreams are made of.

 

Being more animated.

I don’t keep it a secret that I’m a grown man who loves his cartoons, and I’ve lazily designated a massive amount of my total writing output in a futile uphill battle to gain animation mainstream acceptance as something that isn’t just for kids. While America is fairly slow on the uptake when it comes to this concept, it’s never really been an issue in Japan, where anime, video game, and manga fandom is publicly acceptable. If only there was an American company with the talent and funding of a DreamWorks or Pixar who dedicated themselves to making quality animation for adults.

Best believe I’d make this a reality if I could. I’ve seen the internet. I know there is immense untapped artistic talent out there (see above image courtesy of DeviantART’s KatieKins1 for an example), and seeing that my talent level remains at zero, I want to tap dat. I’d love to bring together people like Monty Oum and any number of great artists and pay them what they are worth to make great animated American films and television utilizing Japan’s exceptional sensibilities to create entertainment that is both fun and occasionally sophisticated.

So what’s the first thing I would do as a big-shot animation tycoon? Well, you may have noticed my fondness *cough*obsession*cough* for all things vampire last month and my laments that even the best adaptations sometimes fail to capture the true spirit of the original work. And does anyone else think it’s weird that Dracula –arguably the most adapted novel of all time- has never been done in animation?

My dream project would be a different sort of television series (preferably for HBO or another premium cable channel without censorship) that would adapt classic vampire stories one after the other with a longer one like Dracula perhaps taking most of a season and others based on shorter stories taking only an episode or two and used as buffers between larger arcs. I’d love to recreate the classics as animated art.

Other adaptations I’d like to do would include brilliant comics like Strangers in Paradise and Punk Rock Jesus and some lesser known sci-fi and fantasy novels that I’ve come across in my travels. Obviously, there’d be original properties as well, depending on the talent I could pull in.

I just want to give people something different and make it so that Americans don’t always have to flee to foreign media to scratch that geeky itch. Animation should mean no limits and I think it’s time there was a studio in North America with the financial muscle to really put that into practice.

Yeah, yeah, I know; there isn’t much money to be made in catering to cult fanatics and giving such people what they want without taking double in return. It’s all about fooling (almost) all of the people all of the time by making up for shoddy quality with blanket advertising to make them think there are no alternatives to your swill. But that’s just it. In this fictional scenario I’m already rich, bee-yatch. I don’t need your money.

I wouldn’t care if these things aren’t super-profitable. I just want them to exist and would be willing to pay to make it so, provided I had the capability to do so. Something to bring together people like myself under one banner and give us something to share with the world, whether they want it or not.

So that’s my creative dream for if I were given a bottomless pit of money. What’s yours?