Blogger’s Rehab: A Remote, Old Movies and Too Much Time

I’ve been watching a lot of old movies this week. It’s one of the easier things to do with a broken wrist.

And it keeps me out of Bob’s way. Because he actually does have some projects and deadlines.

Me? My job for now is lying on the living room couch with my pain pills, my splinted arm, my remote and an endless supply of comedies from the 80s and 90s. Waiting for recovery.

I’ve always had a love affair with movies. In fact, in my younger days, after I left teaching but before I found my true life’s passion, I launched a short-lived, entertainment-themed business.

On one of those giddy, anything-is-possible days, I struck on an idea that was born from my love of movies, my insanely intense need to make people laugh and my passion for helping people realize—and be recognized for— their talents.

On that crazy evening, scrawling on the back of cocktail napkins, my biz and life partner Bob and I hatched our plan.

We would create and act out original, fun and funny employee recognition programs based on current popular movies. We took the plots and crafted them to fit the specific industry, job positions and personalities of staff our clients wanted to honor, wrapping it all up in a multi-media ‘Oscars’ ceremony, complete with the gold statues.

And so Korporate Comedy Concepts was born.

Even though we launched the business in southern California, coming up with the idea was decidedly easier than getting clients to pay for it.  We had a few gigs, but decided to pull the plug when our seed money ran out.

Revisiting these films this week, in the midst of my restlessness and boredom, got me to thinking. Some of them would make prime plots to drop bloggers into.

Here they are three:

Home Alone

In this remake of the 1990 John Hughes holiday classic, Kevin McCallister, all grown up, is a blogger, WordPress expert and social media celebrity. When he oversleeps and misses the van to the airport for the last remaining flight to BlogWorld 2010, his first-time conference speaker plans are spoiled and he finds himself stuck at home.

As BlogWorld execs 3,000 miles away are cutting his photo out of 5,500 conference programs, Kevin has his own challenges. Hackers threaten to duplicate his blog content on a tacky WordPress for Short People site. And when evil spammers start lurking outside his blog, plotting to take it over with disgusting Viagra ads, he sets a series of ingeneous traps that go way beyond CAPTCHA.

In perhaps the film’s most touching scene, Kevin learns the true meaning of Christmas when he helps his cranky old neighbor open a Facebook account on Christmas Eve so she can find out if her high school love is still alive, mend her relationship with her long lost grandson and creep out her great niece by ‘friending’ her.

This Is Spinal Tap

In 1982, movie lovers were reintroduced to the sights, sounds (and smells) of one of music history’s greatest fictional rock groups. In this rockumentary, This Is Spinal Tap, the British heavy metal group, billed as the ‘world’s loudest band,’  stages their much anticipated comeback tour.

In this 2011 remake, the team at For Bloggers By Bloggers, has lost its way. In a blogging world where content is still king, they haven’t published a single blog post in 8 months. In a comeback bid of momentous proportions, Judy Dunn has a scheme for bringing the blog traffic back with a series of well-calculated appearances on top blogs.

When her plans for becoming a weekly contributor for ProBlogger fall through, she tries unsuccessfully to get guest spots for the group on the Where Is This Blogger Now? blog, only to be rejected and humiliated publicly. She perseveres through the pain and in the end finds guest gigs on a bunch of up and coming niche blogs like snorkelingnuns.com, Horny Toads Rock and the popular Swedish blog Lutefisk Today.

When that pond is all fished out, the bloggers, once in demand, have no choice but to go their separate ways. In one of the final scenes, that brilliantly captures the group’s downward spiral to obscurity, Judy is helping a group of senior citizens at Rolling Hills Assisted Living Center brainstorm topics and create an editorial calendar for their new blog Rockers and Rollers.

Rain Man 

This 1988 Best Picture movie has been beautifully remade, updated with a decidedly post-Millennium, social media flavor.

On the death of their father, a frustrated, angry and almost broke blogger Charlie Babbitt meets his autistic brother Raymond who doesn’t remember. As they drive across the country, it becomes clear that Raymond has an uncanny ability to select blog topics that Charlie’s readers are wildly interested in. He can also predict the times of day when posts will get the most page views and social media shares.

It’s just the kind of information Charlie needs to attract more subscribers and advertisers.  He becomes convinced that Raymond is key to turning his failing blog around. Reader to subscriber conversion rates go through the ceiling as Raymond seems to instinctively know where to place the calls-to-action for the best results.

In an interesting twist on the hilarious boxers vs briefs scene in the original movie, Charlie gets a glimpse of Raymond’s resistance to change when his brother insists that blog post headlines must always be five words—no fewer, no more.

Finally, in an act of desperation, Charlie pulls the car over and jumps out, gesturing wildly:

“What difference does it make how many words it has? A headline is a headline! It is a headline whether it has 3 words or 9 words or whatever!”

In this pivotal scene, Charlie begins to understand that his brother’s needs are different. At first intent on using Raymond to grow his subscriber list to 10,000, he now wants what’s best for his brother. Which makes that final train station scene even more powerful.

What about you?

Any other movies you see as ripe for a remake with a blogging theme?

What movie would you like to have the lead blogger role in?

This post was published in its original form on bestbloggingtipsonline.com.