Pitch Perfect

I'm afraid I've really been off the ball this month - until yesterday I hadn't even realised that the Edinburgh Film Festival was already underway. For some strange reason, I had the idea in my head that it ran concurrently with the main Edinburgh festival. Clearly, I was wrong. Anyway, the point I'm groping blindly toward is that this represents yet another missed opportunity. As you might recall, about a month ago I mentioned my regrets at having missed the opportunity of pretending to attend the Cannes Film Festival, seeing if I could convince people that I was off in France pitching a movie. Sadly, I've now missed the opportunity to try this same gag with regard to Edinburgh. Which is a real pity, as the other day I even came up with an idea for the fake film I would allegedly have been pitching - The Magnificent Seven, but with zombies instead of bandits.

That's right, I'm going for that cross-genre thing that seems popular right now, (Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter - need I say more?). The set-up is pretty straightforward: Mexican villagers being terrorised by zombies, or even zombie bandits - actually, I like that even better, the idea of a local bandit leader raising an undead private army - but the neither the authorities nor the Catholic church will either believe or help them. So, instead they send a delegation to a border town to recruit some bad assed gunfighters to protect them from the living dead. Cue the recruitment of two star actors and five other mildly well-known performers, all portraying characters with a variety of personal problems and character quirks. Heck, as this is a horror movie, one of them could even be a priest who has lost his faith! Leave no cliche unturned, I say! Anyway, I think sounds a reasonably plausible movie to claim to be pitching, all I've got to do now is wait for another film festival, then take a couple of days off work and see if I cam convince anyone I'm there making a pitch. It's worked a few times during the Edinburgh Festival, when I often tell people I'm performing a one-man show at the Fringe.

(And if I hear of anyone trying to develop a film along these lines, I will be suing, you plagiarising bastards!)