Off Screen

ANOTHER YEAR is upon us. You probably noticed. New Years don’t creep in quietly, they descend with a thud that leaves your head ringing for days (It’s called a hangover – Ed). Having spent so many years now on the Hollywood beat, it is hard to build up the enthusiasm to face another one. So to save us all the bother, I’ve compiled a definitive guide to what to expect from the world of the movies in 1994. Call me when we get to ’95. We can do lunch.

JANUARY

Arnold Schwarzenegger makes his directorial debut, a big budget version of E.L. Doctorow’s Lives Of The Poets, in which he stars as Percy Bysshe Shelley, with cameos from his Planet Hollywood cohorts Bruce Willis as Byron and Sylvester Stallone as Rimbaud. In a typically Schwarzeneggerian promotional coup, Arnold becomes the first man to appear nude in the centrefold of Playboy. In an accompanying in-depth interview, the former Mr. Universe declares he wants to be admired for his mind and not just his body and says his greatest wish is to help achieve world peace, by the use of force if necessary.

Demi Moore appears giving birth on the cover of Vanity Fair.

FEBRUARY

Controversy rages over the marketing of Steven Spielberg’s latest film, Schindler’s List, a harrowing black and white drama about the holocaust. Lunch boxes featuring a Nazi insignia on one side and the Star of David on the other are deemed to be in bad taste and model kits of Auschwitz are withdrawn after complaints from parents of gas leaks. The head of UIP’s marketing department is sacked, although he insists he was just following orders.

MARCH

Schindler’s List does serve its purpose however. Having been conspicuously spurned by his contemporaries on the Academy Awards committee for his entire career, the world’s most successful film maker finally achieves a nomination for Best Director in the 1994 Oscars. Unfortunately, Spielberg’s lifelong friend Martin Scorsese, acknowledged by most critics as the world’s greatest living film maker yet also spurned by the Academy Awards committee for his entire career, is also nominated as best director for Age Of Innocence (the first Scorsese film to contain no swearing or physical violence).

On the night of the Oscar awards ceremony, the two friends give a joint interview to state that being nominated is an honour in itself and it doesn’t matter which of them wins, although Spielberg adds that obviously if they gave the award according to which director got the most bums on seats he would win every year and Scorsese jocularly retorts that some people make films for artistic reasons and not just so they can put another jacuzzi in their mansion. After an ugly incident in the lobby if they are seated at opposite ends of the auditorium.

Tensions rise as former Best Director Oscar winners Clint Eastwood and Kevin Costner team up to open the envelope. “And the winner is . . .” announces Clint, “Arnold Schwarzenegger for The Lives Of The Poets.” Martin Scorsese tips over the table and storms out in a huff. Steven Spielberg accosts Schwarzenegger and suggests he couldn’t direct traffic. Schwarzenegger decks Spielberg. Spielberg’s wife, actress Kate Capshaw, throws her drink over Schwarzenegger’s wife, TV presenter Maria Shriver.

Schwarzenegger decks Capshaw, grabs hold of a chair and says he’ll take on anyone else who’s got a problem. In the confusion, Spike Lee, who had failed to even achieve a nomination for his film Yo Honky Motherfuckers, Kiss My Black Ass leaps on stage, grabs the Oscar and scarpers through the exit.

APRIL

Michael Jackson has his day in court. Although the prosecution produces damning video evidence, Michael is found innocent of all charges. “I did it for John De Lorean, and now I’ve done it for Michael,” announces his lawyer after the trial. “Am I the best or what?” Hounded by tabloids and irate parents, Michael announces his retirement from public life in a bitter speech that ends with the tearful declaration “I always preferred Coke to Pepsi anyway!” He is followed to a Beverly Hills Plastic Surgery clinic, yet although the press camp outside for three months, Michael never emerges again. Rumours abound that he left disguised as one of the nurses, but this is never proved. Later in the year, Miss Michelle Jackson, a hitherto unknown distant relative of the Jackson’s from the white side of the family, has a number one hit single entitled ‘’Boys Boys Boys’.

In an effort to be taken more seriously as a boxer, Mickey Rourke picks a fight with Lennox Lewis. Rourke is left in a coma. Doctors agree this should not seriously affect his career.

MAY

So many stars confess in interviews to being members of Alcoholics Anonymous that the organisation decides it is time to go public. As part of a major recruitment drive, Bruce Willis appears in a television ad, saying, “Got a drinking problem? Hey, don’t be embarrassed, I’ve got one too. My problem is that my doctor says I’ve got drink fuggin Perrier water for the rest of my life or my liver’ll collapse. But seriously, there’s no need to be shy. Come on down to an A.A. meeting and we’ll help each other stay off the sauce. And you can even bring your wife. Hell, I bring mine. Come on down to the A.A. today: it’s friendly, it’s free and you never know who you might meet.”

Live on Oprah Winfrey, Madonna confesses to using a body double for all her steamy sex scenes. “Nudity makes me squeamish,” she tells Oprah.

JUNE

In ’93 it was dinosaurs. In ’94 it is gerbils. The furry little rodents take the world by storm in the Spielberg-produced, Robert Zemekis-directed Gnaw. Tom Hanks stars as the biophysicist who discovers gerbils are actually the most intelligent creatures on earth, descendants of an ancient race from another galaxy. Julia Roberts plays a crusading journalist who joins forces with Hanks and the gerbils to stop the destruction of the rainforest, the gerbils’ natural habitat.

The film is a box office sensation, making an overnight star of Gerry, a highly trained gerbil who, in the tearful climax, sacrifices himself to save Tom and Julia. Cuddly gerbil toys, gerbil books, gerbil slippers and badges bearing the film’s most famous line (“Is that a gerbil in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?”) sell in unforeseen quantities. Pet shops cannot get enough gerbils to meet the demand, and start trying to pass off hamsters and rats as mutant gerbils. The RSPCA is forced to start a campaign to remind people gerbils are for life, not for deviant sexual practises.

JULY

L. Ron Hubbard returns to earth in a spacecraft, but still fails to convince more people to take Scientology seriously. He is immediately arrested by the IRS for tax evasion.

AUGUST

After bush fires, riots and earth tremors, Hollywood suffers another disaster: a chronic shortage of mineral water. When thousands of abandoned gerbils are discovered living in California’s reservoirs, even ordinary citizens take to purchasing bottled water, and stores run dry. There is not a Perrier or an Evian to be found anywhere in L.A. Exclusive Hollywood restaurant Spago’s is reduced to serving filtered tap water with a twist of lemon. Elizabeth Taylor bursts into tears on Oprah Winfrey’s chat show, confessing that she hasn’t bathed in days. “Imagine what that tap water would do to my skin!” she weeps. Concerned viewers start a national Perrier drive.

Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman separate. In bitter divorce proceedings they fail to agree who will get custody of the child they illegally adopted in Mexico. The court decides to send the baby back.

SEPTEMBER

In an effort to extend her career a little further, ageing fitness queen Jane Fonda resorts to more plastic surgery, removing another two ribs for an even more wasp like waist (taking her rib total down to 3 on either side) and inserting inflatable bags with automatic pump in her breasts so that they can be adjusted according to the requirements of the role (also useful in motoring collisions, when they will act as a kind of built-in crash bag). Not to be outdone, Cher too goes for further surgery, taking another inch off her nose, putting ribbed clefts in her buttocks, having the name of her latest toy boy tattooed on her clitoris and adding a third breast with detachable nipple.

They release competing videos: Jane Fonda’s Hospital Workout (in which the former militant feminist exhorts the women of America to undergo surgery without anaesthetic, employing her familiar slogan “No pain, no gain!”) and Cher’s Total Surgical Fitness Guide (which includes a state of the art investigation of her beautiful interior organs by a micro probe, revealing that she has had the name Sonny tattooed on her liver). Both videos are outsold by Roseanne Barr’s bestselling Slimming By Liposuction.

OCTOBER

After a night on the town celebrating the signing of a deal to co-star with Gerry the Gerbil in a remake of Casablanca, Richard Gere is admitted to hospital for emergency surgery. His agent is forced to deny rumours that he has had a radical gerbilectomy, claiming Richard was merely suffering from painful bleeding haemorrhoids. Cindy Crawford says she will stand by her man, since all he can do is stand for the foreseeable future. Gerry the Gerbil is not available for comment.

NOVEMBER

Macauley Culkin books into the Betty Ford clinic.

DECEMBER

Hot Press editor Niall Stokes suffers a psychotic breakdown after receiving a letter from John De Lorean’s lawyer announcing he is suing for libel on behalf of Michael Jackson, Jane Fonda, Cher, Richard Gere and Gerry the Gerbil. Stokes, a secret survivalist enthusiast, and neo-Nazi, goes on a heavily armed rampage through the Dockers pub before moving on to the POD and Lillie’s Bordello, almost single-handedly wiping out the entire Irish music business. Police put the Hot Press offices under siege when Stokes takes much-loved film critic Neil McCormick hostage, threatening to cut his copy. It all ends violently, in slow motion.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose Lives Of The Poets turned out to be a box office flop, signs up the film rights, casting himself as Irish police Captain Rick O’Shea, Jean Claude Van Damme as Neil McCormick and Danny DeVito as the villainous Stokes.