I Want To Write For TV Guide

By Turk on Thursday, October 8, 2009 at 1:26 pm

So I’m cruising through the program guide on Comcast yesterday and I stumble upon Prince of Darkness. It was one of my favorite pseudo-horror movies when I was a kid, so I was psyched. I clicked the info option to make sure it was the same flick and this was the description:

A priest (Donald Pleasence) summons a professor (Victor Wong) to an old church to see a canister of liquid Satan.

If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll recognize that the description is technically accurate, but fails to capture the real essence of the film. A better description might have been:

Trapped in an old church, a priest (Donald Pleasance) and a professor (Jameson Parker) try to prevent Satan’s return to Earth.

Not much longer, and yet it sells the story better. But I don’t get the sense that the TV Guide writers are trying to be accurate or sell the movie. They’re just cranking out copy.

Anyway, this got me thinking about TV Guide and whether it may actually be challenging to sum up a movie that badly in one short sentence. So I figured I’d give it a try. Consider this my audition to write for TV guide. (Feel free to leave a comment with your own movie summaries.)

  • The Bourne Identity – A man with memory trouble (Matt Damon) kills people.
  • Top Gun – A pilot with daddy issues (Tom Cruise) flies Naval aircraft recklessly.
  • Jaws – Three men (Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider) who need a bigger boat go fishing.
  • Titanic – Two young lovers (Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet) experience extreme moisture.
  • American Beauty – A man (Kevin Spacey) and his wife (Annette Bening) have marital problems.
  • Jurassic Park – A team of scientists led by Sam Neill visit an amusement park accompanied by a lawyer.
  • The Day After Tomorrow - The adventures of a climatologist (Dennis Quaid) studying weather.
  • Rocky – A boxer (Sylvester Stallone) who may be mentally disadvantaged and has an aging coach (Burgess Meredith) tries dating.
  • Forrest Gump – A mentally challenged man (Tom Hanks) waits for a bus and tells stories.
  • The Silence of the Lambs – FBI agent Clarice Starling (Jody Foster) deals with a difficult inmate (Anthony Hopkins).

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Comments (2)

Category: Movies, Pop Culture, Self-Promotion

2 Comments

Comment by slim_nick

Made Thursday, 8 of October , 2009 at 3:39 pm

Time Warner isn’t any better with those descriptions.

Flight of the Navigator – boy (Joey Cramer) falls in ditch, passes out, wakes up a few hours later then goes home.

The Usual Suspects – Criminals (Kevin Spacey, Stephen Baldwin, Gabriel Byrne, Benicio Del Toro) go to jail, then get released.

Comment by Turk

Made Thursday, 8 of October , 2009 at 7:27 pm

I think there is some generic TV descriptions company that cranks them out and everyone uses them.
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About The Quip

A psuedo-reformed political hack takes stock of his life, family, community, and living in our nation's capitol. If a good writer writes about what he knows, expect me to cover politics, technology, telecommunications, consumer gadgets, pop culture, the constant struggle that is parenting, the two best kids in the known world, the wife that makes me crazy, the odd moments I get to enjoy my hobbies, and a big goofy mutt named Kobi.