Like a number of people, I was taken with the notion of Snakes on a Plane when I first heard about it. If I remember correctly, I found out from a brief sidebar in Wired magazine several months ago discussing the homegrown posters and t-shirts cropping up in response to the film. So I wasn’t on the cutting edge, but was let’s say I was an early adapter. Presumably the folks making said shirts, posters, and blogs were intrigued by a movie ridiculous or audacious enough to announce the sum total of its contents IN THE FUCKING TITLE of the film itself.

But even more than that, I was interested in the culture of those t-shirts and posters themselves. I’m endlessly fascinated by the ways people refuse to be passive receptors of popular culture, the ways they adopt and modify pop artifacts to take ownership of them. Do phenomena like Snakes on a Plane end up furthering the goals of marketers? Probably. Is Snakes on a Plane worthy of all the attention it’s gotten? Probably not. So Thomas Frank might not be all that down with what I’m doing, but then no one has a pure relationship with pop culture. The only way to stay pure is to take onself out of the game entirely. At any rate, I find the sci-fi fan boy culture in all its geekiness (and let’s face it, the Snakes thing is largely an offshoot of sci-fi-ish fan activity) infinitely more full of heart and individuality than another boring hipster getting into Wolf Parade, say, because Pitchfork tells them to.

So I thought to myself, “How can I make something that takes all this buzz and cultural activity and one up it? Make something about it and at the same time be part of it?”

But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself just a bit. The genesis of Snakes on a Day was a bit more gradual. So, like I said, I was into the whole cult that had developed around the film months before its release. For a week or so, I had one of the fan-generated posters as my profile picture on MySpace. My friend Tommy Cannon from Phoenix (who, by the way, is a member of the improv troupe Apollo 12, who will be playing in this year’s Out of Bounds Festival) messaged me and asked if the Austin improv scene was as obsessed with Snakes on a Plane as the improvisers in Phoenix were. I said no, as far as I know I was the only one. He mailed me back saying all the Phoenix improvisers were going together on opening day. Were people in Austin doing the same thing? Again, I said no, I think I’m the only one who’s into it. And then I made the kind of idle boast one makes when one is sending messages through cybersapce. I said, no, there’s not a big group of people going, but “I’m going to go see it ten times on opening day!” Like I said, idle boasting.

And then I started thinking about what I had written. Around that time, I had read this post on the blog of The Sound of Young America (which by the way is the best podcast in the country; you should go give Jesse a listen). The quote that got me was Jesse’s end line:

What I like about Marc is his commitment to thinking of cool things, then doing them. There’s not enough of that in the world.

Now, I doubt Jesse would think what I’m doing is cool; it’s probably a little too old-school irony for him, not enough his cherished New Sincerity. But the point is, why should one reject ridiculous but harmless thoughts rather than act on them? There’s an addage in the arts, hell I don’t know which art form, it’s applicable to all creative endeavors: First Thought, Best Thought. And I’m an improviser, and one of the core principles of improv is being open and receptive to one’s own ideas rather than shutting out the world by rejecting things and acting out of fear rather than acceptance. Also around that time I had heard about the book The Yes Man, about a man who said yes to every opportunity presented to him for a year. Something about the 24 hour idea was stuck in my brain, so I decided I should make it happen rather than letting it die inside my mind, which I normally do too often (and since you’re a human being reading these words, you probably do, too).

Now, I’m fortunate enough to know Tim League of the Alamo Drafthouse. I don’t know if the idea would have come to fruition any other way, but Tim’s into doing insane movie-related stunts as well. I pitched the idea to him and he liked it, and here we are.

Originally I was going to do the 24 hours on my own, something like the performance art activities of Vito Acconci or Chris Burden in the 1970s, or Chicago’s Lucky Pierre’s awesome Best Western project. And as with the work of those artists, I decided that it would need some kind of art world post-performance documentation for those who weren’t able to witness the event themselves, and thus the film documentary idea was born. Tim convinced me that this should be an activity that audience could participate in, which I agreed to (and which, I think, has some interesting artistic ramifications–I’ll save those for another blog post). He also came up with the charity angle, which I also like. I thought it only fitting, given the nature of the film, that the charity be snake-related. And let me tell you, there aren’t a lot of snake-related charities out there. The official Snakes on a Plane site link to venemousreptiles.org, and so they were the lucky recipients of Tim’s largess. The inital choice of them was perhaps a little ironic, but I’ve since found out they do reall good work, work that helps people as well as animals, despite some people’s ignorance.

And here we are. Come or don’t, it’s no skin off my back. There’s an inevitable backlash already gaining momentum against this harmless, action-candy film. If you want to be a backlasher, that’s fine with me. Like I said, I don’t have too strong a feeling about the movie itself. But I do know I want to live my life and create work without an eye on what brash young hipsters might think of it. And I bet you do, too.

Well, it seems like some folks are questioning the worth of thee fundraising portion of our endeavor.

Here’s a little missive I recieved from the head of Venomous Reptiles when he found out we were doing this. Decide for yourself:

WOW Shannon, Can’t tell you how much I appreciate this!!! Currently we are involved with a program to develop a new antivenom for the island of Sri Lanka, which - incredibly - does NOT have it’s own antivenom and yet it leads the world in snakebite deaths per capita. To put this into perspective, Sri Lanka is the size of West Virginia, but has 3.5 times as many snakebites as the entire United States, and 100 times as many deaths from snakebite. And of course the US has it’s own AV. Money talks obviously.

Sri Lanka however is a 3rd world country, but is inhabited by the most inoffensive people I have ever encountered. Currently, they import antivenom from India, which hosts 4 antivenom manufacturers, all of which are small-time operations in comparison to the US drug trade. Their product sells in-country for only $3 a vial! But unfortunately about 80% of the people who receive Indian antivenoms have allergic reactions to it, and it only covers 4 of Sri Lanka’s 7 venomous species, and those not very well. Recent research has shown that snakes of the same species only 20 to 50 miles apart can have venom variations wide enough to create severe treatment complications for medical practicioners. So you can imagine how different the venoms of Sri Lankan snakes would be from Indian snakes (of the same species).

By creating a regionally specific Sri Lankan antivenom utilizing cutting edge western technologies, we will significantly be able to alleviate the suffering of the Sri Lankan agricultural workers and other indigenous people. A huge amount of tea and cinnamon are exported to the US from Sri Lanka annually, as well as a huge amount of designer clothing - Banana Republic, Tommy Hilfiger, Columbia etc. The average worker there makes $3 a day by the way. At the very least, I think that we could all pull together to help alleviate the suffering of the rural population by spearheading this project and getting an efficient antivenom where it needs to be.

Certainly, any monies that you will contribute will go toward educational activities as well as this project.Thanks again,

Chris Harper, NREMT-P
Webmaster@VenomousReptiles.org
Pres., Southeastern Hot Herp Society, Inc.
http://www.venomousreptiles.org/

 

So remember kids, every dollar raised is one fewer dead Sri Lankan come to visit trucraig on his Tommy Hilfigered death bed. Or conversely, each dollar brings us one day closer to Ragnarok, wherein trucraig will be killed by the Midgard Serpent instead of Thor. Take your pick.

And don’t forget, you can find the Pledge Sheet here.

NOTE: Email from Chris updated from initial post.

All right, this is the option for the hardcore, the $1000 dollar option. But wait I hear you saying, how does this work again. I don’t have to pay 1000 clams to do this, do I?

No, you don’t, at least if you follow the rules. And the rules are simple. If you declare publicly, to the world, by signing up on the Alamo site, that you are in for the full 24 hours, then we have some incentives, or disincentives rather, in place to make sure that you’re not just talking smack when you say you’re hardcore. Let’s take, for example, Bob LaBruce, who says he’s a “S.O.A.P maniac, sure, what the hell, I can watch this movie for 24 hours straight. Bring it on, strong fighters. Ladies, c’mon and get to know me!” And then he watches one lone screening and decides he wants to go home and sleep under the nice duvet his mommy got him at Linen ‘N Things. That’s the guy we don’t want. That’s the guy we have no time for. So if that guy shows up, he’s going to have to give 1000 bucks to the folks over at venemousreptiles.org when he bails after one screening.

We don’t anticipate too many Bob LaBruces at this show. Okay, then, after each screening we cut the disincentive level in half. Make it through two screenings? Okay, so you’re Bob’s mom, only $500 for you. Three screenings? Maybe you were that kid who got stuffed in trash dumpsters by only slightly less nerdy marching band kids in high school and you still live with a burning need to prove something to yourself. But deep down, you’re still weak. For you, $250. Etc.

In an ideal world, we’d have a theater full of hardcore folks who don’t have to fork over a dime. It’ll be like Lord of the Flies. C’mon, you know you want to do it.

I know I don’t live in an ideal world, though. Or do I?