Midnight Ramblings

I really should be writing my latest column, but I just feel like doing nothing right now. I'm watching this biography of Drew Barrymore on TV right now. I'm still curious about that 20th Anniversary Special Edition of E.T. The Extra Terrestrial. I should get out and rent it sometime soon.

Here's a little tidbit about E.T. According to the Internet Movie Database, Steven Spielberg and E.T. writer Melinda Matheson did consider a sequel to E.T.. The working title was "Nocturnal Fears," and it was going to be about Elliot and his friends being abducted by aliens! These aliens would have been the arch-enemies of E.T.'s race, and E.T. came charging to the rescue. In this film, it would have been revealed that E.T.'s true name was "Zreck."

My favourite joke about an E.T. sequel comes from the classic cartoon Freakazoid!. We were on the set of E.T. 2. Elliot, now a teenager, is making out with some chick on his couch. From behind the couch, we see E.T.'s trademark hand and glowing finger reach up. He taps Elliot on the shoulder and says, "Elliot, I'm back!" Elliot just says, "Get lost! I'm in the middle of something." And then Steven Spielberg is kidnapped, and Freakazoid comes to the rescue.

Anyway, on TV yesterday, I managed to catch a little bit of the very first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. That is still high on my list of films that deserve a fully-loaded 2-disc super-special edition DVD. I mean, do you know the story of how that film was made? Even though TMNT was one of the biggest fads of the late-1980s, no studio in Hollywood wanted to touch the live-action Ninja Turtles film. Finally, the only studio that committed was a small indie studio called New Line Cinema, whose only mainstream success at that time was A Nightmare on Elm Street and its endless string of sequels. When Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles hit theatres in the spring of 1990, it was a massive hit. It became one of the top 3 films of 1990. Thanks to the profits from that film, New Line Cinema went from a little indie studio to the major Hollywood studio they are today. Even with the massive The Lord of the Rings trilogy under its belt, New Line Cinema still counts Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as one of the most profitable films in the studio's history.

So, yeah. The Turtles built a studio. That at least should deserve a 2-disc special edition. All I ask is a running commentary with director Steve Barron, and TMNT creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird.

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