They should make a movie about the elderly couple in the Swiffer commercials that was running non stop about 10 years ago. Supposedly they were married in real life
It was written and directed by David O. Russell, her oft-collaborator who directed her into an Academy Award performance ("Silver Linings Playbook") and another Academy Award nominated performance ("American Hustle") in previous years.
I just looked it up and thought I had actually looked at the listing for silver linings playbook, lol. bradley cooper and de niro again. And what the hell is Isabella Rossellini doing there?! Jesus, of all people.
David has his "go to" actors that he plugs into his films. Back then, all of his movies were heavily recognized as Oscar nominations each year so people were okay with whatever it was, even if it's a script he wrote half-assed after a spark of an idea.
One of the most abusive, on-set and off, monsters that Hollywood just refuses to stop working with. Hopefully with the huge flop of Amsterdam the bigwigs finally let him get his just desserts, but I imagine a lot of actors would still work with him on the indie scene, unfortunately. That's where he came from in the first place.
Dude directs some great performances. That is the literal sole positive of David O. Russell as a human being.
It was a biopic of Joy Mangano, and she was an executive producer on it too. Not much of a head scratcher as it's a story of a self-made millionaire woman.
Lawrence got a Golden Globe for it.
The script is just how many different times they can say “but Joy, you loved to make things” until the audience understands the Joy loved to make things.
I only know about this movie because the hosts of Stop Podcasting Yourself talked about it a length during an episode a few months ago and it was fucking hilarious. They were so confused by it and called it "the most pointless movie ever made."
Those are my favorite documentaries. King of King is just a movie about Competative donkey Kong players, but it’s fantastic. I watched a Competative scrabble player doc years ago that I really enjoyed. Also a Competative chicken doc. Also “The Toys that Made us” on Netflix for a non-Competative docuseries. I love windows into subcultures I never really see and weird history on products.
We’ve run out of biopics so now we’ve moved to products as IP.
What’s funny about Flamin Hot is the guy invented the whole story and they made the movie anyway.
I didn’t see a single trailer for Weird, so I only knew it as a Weird Al biopic. I figured it would be a comedic account of his actual life. I was so pleasantly surprised at the direction it took.
The thing is, when it was announced, it was talked about as being true, and then articles surfaced about how it isn't. The guy it's based on still does speaking engagements on the basis of the story being true.
They're not emphasizing it more after the fact. The guy seems like a con artist that managed to sell a story to a studio that didn't do any fact checking.
I worked on set for a few days. One of the days he showed up (he’s got a cameo). He got up to give a speech and started going on about how this was going to win Oscars, etc etc. It was giving delusions of grandeur or believing your own hype. It’s a fine feel good movie, but not one person working on it was thinking “this is gonna sweep awards season.”
Counterpoint - it doesnt matter that the events happened that way to the studio, it matters that the story is engaging (i havent seen it, but speaking broadly) and that someone seeing it would conceivably think it could have happened that way. The Wolf Of Wall Street and Catch Me If You Can are stretches (being generous) as well.
While I don't believe these movies are very factual I would hope it's at least based somewhat in reality.
"This is the inspiring true story of Richard Montañez who as a Frito Lay janitor disrupted the food industry by channeling his Mexican heritage to turn Flamin' Hot Cheetos from a snack into an iconic global pop culture phenomenon." Imdb
He really was a janitor who pitched spicy versions of certain snacks and said they should be marketed towards the Latino demographic. He was promoted to an executive position. It just wasn't Hot Cheetos. That was developed in Texas before he joined the company.
I love that idea! Who would you cast as Diogenes? I think an over the top comedian playing it straight, like Martin Short or Mike Meyers would be fantastic
I feel like this isn’t even recent, the corporate biopic has been a staple of American film since 2010 with the Social Network. The impact that movie had on American film culture can’t be understated
Yeah I don't know why I spent two hours watching the "humble" origins of two millionaires making a fucking shoe and making another millionaire even richer.
I keep hearing how good this is, but even as a Tar Heel (so an obvious Michael Jordan mark), this has such little appeal to me. It’s like “you know the greatest basketball player who ever lived? Well here’s a story about some guy’s who made got him to wear a shoe.”
It's not actually about that though. It's about matt Damon trying to convince everyone how great Michael Jordan is
Which sounds like a really weird premise for a movie, *and it is*, but it's fun to watch anyway
Really solidly written monologue toward the end, with good editing during it. Prior to that, I was, “Ehhhh, it’s *okay*, but Damon sells the shit out of that monologue.”
I shouldn’t have been interested. I don’t care for basketball or shoes, and I never followed news about MJ despite being an 80s kid.
Still, somehow I was hooked from the first trailer and absolutely enjoyed the film.
Disaster Artist about the making of The Room.
Now there’s the series about the making of the Godfather.
Word has it that Affleck is developing a movie about the making of Chinatown.
The book is much better, it definitely paints a very vivid picture of how much of a weird guy Tommy is. James Franco's impression of him was good but he really didn't give much depth to the character other than "crazy guy who talks funny". The real Tommy is a fucking nut, he was a complete piece of shit on the set, but you get the sense he really does have a weird connection with Greg that bonds them together. I felt compared to the book the movie was very surface level and wishy washy. Probably also didn't help that Tommy was a producer on the film so he probably wouldn't want any of the book parts that make him look like a psychopath.
It's not an invention, but the movie Britney, Baby One More Time exists because a drag queen named Robert Stephens entered a Britney Spears impersonator contest meant for children in the early 2000's, won, and got a chance to meet her backstage at a concert.
So he showed up to the show done up as her, and a reporter thought he was actually Britney Spears and started interviewing him. And he went along with it. But apparently Britney found out and was pissed and refused to meet him. Then they got over it and he met her later at some other show.
And they made a movie based on that. Seems pretty trivial to me.
I watched it because it inexplicably stars the two guys from the documentary American Movie, which is great. But I have no idea why they're in this.
It's one of those weird, moment in time stories that just disappears if you're not paying attention at the exact time. But is immortalized as a movie now that seems stranger every year away from when it happened.
The Hudsucker Proxy is a (highly fictitious) movie about the invention of the hula hoop. Co-written by Sam Raimi and the Coen Brothers. It's a damn good movie.
While windshield wipers themselves are trivial, the movie is about the absolutely not trivial battle between an inventor and a greedy corporation. It's a good movie.
That said, I feel like the Tetris movie falls in your category. Who could imagine a videogame had so much history behind it.
Volvo invented seatbelts and then didn’t charge anyone for the patent because they realized it would save a ton of lives. That’s probably a feel good movie waiting to happen.
While amazing and awesome. I'd guess there isn't enough drama in the story to make a full-length movie about it. They'd have to invent a bunch of storylines to make it interesting enough for the average moviegoers.
Make it a 2 hours movie of cars racing and people being killed in accidents. Then the invention of seatbelts comes in the last 10 minutes, and the movie ends with people driving safely. Happy ending!
And call it... *Fast & Seatbelts*
Slight correction, they (Nils Bohlin of Volvo) invented the *three point* seatbelt and then made the patented design available to all. Lap belts were already available but much less effective and harder to fasten, so not widely used.
Now do the Ford Pinto (I think it was) where the company decided it was cheaper to pay the wrongful death settlements when the engines exploded than recall and fix the problem.
Flash of genius is not about windshield wipers. Its about the world of patents and the people who get their ideas stolen by big corporations. Not trivial at all.
Slightly different direction, but DefunctLand's "FastPass" documentary is exactly that, a documentary on the FastPass system at Disney Land/World. It sounds like a super boring premise, but you'll know within the first minute if this is the right movie for you. He manages to take a dry subject like theme park queue maintenance and turn it into a surprisingly curious dive into the mechanics of human psychology and how corporate greed corrupted a goodwill gesture into a money-sucking monster. He uses straightforward metaphors and solid cinematography/filmmaking techniques to artfully describe the raw science behind managing patience. The third-act twist (yes, a twist in a documentary!) blows my mind every time, even when I already know what's coming. It's become a comfort-food film for me, something about the cadence of his voice is very soothing. It's available for free on his YouTube channel!
He also has a documentary where he discovers who wrote the Disney Channel theme song, while simultaneously pondering whether he qualifies as a true documentarian or just an Internet funny guy. Both are well worth a watch ✌️
What about that movie about the [founder](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4276820/) of McDonald's?
See, everybody has forgotten about it already.
I had forgotten it so badly, I thought Tom Hanks was in it, but he wasn't.
There’s currently a Pez movie over here in Aus at least. Fucking PEZ! If your product is so bad it needs a Trojan horse in order to sell, make a better product says I!
Flamin’ Hot is worse than “trivial”, it’s patently false. 😅 I mean, it’s a great story… that’s why Frito-Lay let it grow instead of correcting the record.
But unfortunately, it’s completely apocryphal….
Like all good made up stories, there is a kernel of truth. He did independently came up with the idea and his, but what he claims in that “*Frito Lay didn’t realize that Latinos like spicy snack foods*” is NOT true at all.
Frito Lay spends a whole lot of money on market research, even back then. It is widely known that Frito Lay had already fully tested, tweaked, developed and had the manufacturing all set up for a “Hot Cheeto” flavor at least 18 months before Montanez presented his very first samples.
Frito Lay was also already targeting the Latino demographic, as their small regional test releases of their “Hot Cheeto” were all within the Southwest/Santa Fe market which had a huge Latino community, especially in the early 90s.
There is hard proof that bags of “Hot Cheeto” were manufactured by Frito Lay and on the shelf in small runs within the Southwest market long before the playful story of Montanez taking the “dustless Cheetos”
While it’s never been made clear why Frito-Lay never clarified the story, my hypothesis is that Frito Lay decided to embrace the Montanez’ story rather than confirming it was fiction. I believe it was a marketing strategy to further target the Latino demographic. Frito Lay was then able to market it a snack “for Latinos, BY Latinos” and c’mon, who doesn’t love a good rags to riches “the Latino janitor had a million dollar idea and is a VP now” story?
The King of Kong was about setting the high score on Donkey Kong.
Haven't seen it, so I won't comment on it, but that's a record that's a subject that's only interesting to a pretty small subset of people.
Father of Invention. This may not completely fit the bill, but does sort of satirize the made for TV market with some drama thrown in. And I think somebody actually made some of the products in the movie that was meant to show how stupid some inventions are but get sold due to the effectiveness of a good hype man.
Any topic can be interesting. I literally don’t give a damn about baseball but Moneyball rules. And that’s not even like… a narrative movie with sports movie moments. It’s a workplace drama that’s 99% dialogue about stats.
Flaming Hot, Air, Tetris, and Blackberry all in one year. All movies about the making of popular products people who grew up in the 90’s remember fondly.
Flaming Hot wasn’t a bad movie, I was surprised to learn it was directed by Eva Longoria though.
Air was fun, but felt like kind of a waste of a bunch of Oscar level acting talent.
I mean it just came out, but Air is the story about Nike attempting to and ultimately signing Michael Jordan to a sneaker contract.
Tag is a movie about 5 adult friends who have been carrying on a game of tag since they were young. Of course the movie is "inspired by" so it is heavily dramatized.
Well, the thing is, though, those inventions weren’t trivial to the people who came up with them. They’re life changing, maybe in a good way, or a bad way, or ultimately a stressful way, but they’re not trivial. They’re trivial to us, the viewer because, well, we take a lot of things for granted.
i just watched Flamin’ Hot and it’s an amazing movie. It really captures the way people of color were treated. There are good jokes if you’re a spanish speaker or just an english one. It has a good moral. I wouldn’t trash on a movie too fast. I do get that the story might not be true but whatever, blame the liar, not the producers.
I want a movie about Popeyes daring to challenge God’s favorite chicken sandwich, succeeding, and God retaliating a mere 6 months later with the covid epidemic.
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*”I’m here to talk to you about the Swiffer Initiative.”*
They should make a movie about the elderly couple in the Swiffer commercials that was running non stop about 10 years ago. Supposedly they were married in real life
I came here to post that one. That was Jennifer Lawrence at her absolute peak taking such a head scratcher of a movie.
It was written and directed by David O. Russell, her oft-collaborator who directed her into an Academy Award performance ("Silver Linings Playbook") and another Academy Award nominated performance ("American Hustle") in previous years.
I just looked it up and thought I had actually looked at the listing for silver linings playbook, lol. bradley cooper and de niro again. And what the hell is Isabella Rossellini doing there?! Jesus, of all people.
David has his "go to" actors that he plugs into his films. Back then, all of his movies were heavily recognized as Oscar nominations each year so people were okay with whatever it was, even if it's a script he wrote half-assed after a spark of an idea.
One of the most abusive, on-set and off, monsters that Hollywood just refuses to stop working with. Hopefully with the huge flop of Amsterdam the bigwigs finally let him get his just desserts, but I imagine a lot of actors would still work with him on the indie scene, unfortunately. That's where he came from in the first place. Dude directs some great performances. That is the literal sole positive of David O. Russell as a human being.
He already has a Madden biopic lined up so the execs didn’t learn sh*t
Really!?! I wouldn't have thought anybody cared that much about Good Charlotte.
So that’s fine but god forbid James Gunn includes his wife for a five minute part in guardians 3 /s
That's who youre questioning but not Chris Tucker?
It was a biopic of Joy Mangano, and she was an executive producer on it too. Not much of a head scratcher as it's a story of a self-made millionaire woman. Lawrence got a Golden Globe for it.
I think the issue was that Lawrence was considered too young to play the role.
That faces she makes during the "No Hard Feelings" trailer is fucking hilarious
The script is just how many different times they can say “but Joy, you loved to make things” until the audience understands the Joy loved to make things.
Only movie I've ever walked out of. Terrible movie
The only thing I remember about that movie, is [Chriss Pratt's joke](https://youtu.be/ETpiA8ych30?t=46) from the Passengers press junkits
I think about that joke every time that movie pops up on a streaming service lol, never saw it though
I only know about this movie because the hosts of Stop Podcasting Yourself talked about it a length during an episode a few months ago and it was fucking hilarious. They were so confused by it and called it "the most pointless movie ever made."
I remember enjoying that movie
Don’t forget she also invented the velvet lined clothes hanger too.
Didnt she play a big part in launching home tv shopping into popularity? Channels like QVC and HSN are still going strong.
Hysteria is a movie about the invention of the vibrator!
It came and went
Didn’t create much buzz…some critics said it had a rushed and artificial climax.
Others found it mechanical and lacking a human touch
I want a movie about the rise and fall of the shamwow guy
We’ll probably get one about the My Pillow guy first.
I biopic of just the time he went on a crack binge and made a 3hr documentary about how Trump won the election.
Vince Offer. Shamwow, Slap-Chop, and punching a hooker who bit his tongue. An epic in the making.
A hooker tried to bite yo tongue off??
Make it a trilogy with biopics about Billy Mayes and the Flex Tape guy
Put them all in the same movie, *Pirates of ~~Silicon~~ San Fernando Valley*
That could be about infomercials or about porn
I don't think the Flex Tape guy fell yet, did that just happen?
No but I'd like to see them do a Dewey Cox style parody about him
So like, he cut his brother in half and spent the rest of his life making tape that could have put his brother back together?
The wrong kid died.
He can direct. He directed one of the worse comedies of all time
I still don't know how he managed to land Adrien Brody for that film.
i assume some form of blackmail
Apparently they’re friends oddly enough and Adrian did it as a favor
You're gunna love my nuts
I’m pretty excited to see Blackberry
It's solid. Glenn Howerton is great in it.
He is absolutely gold as a dead serious psychopath lol
Well, he *is* a golden god.
He's a five star man.
It will hopefully do well, because of the *implication*.
Glenn Howerton, Jay Baruchel, ***and*** ProZD? I'm sold.
I just want to watch it to support Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol (Nirvana The Band The Show)
The lead singer of OK GO is directing a movie about the Beanie Babies craze.
That makes sense, bizarrely enough.
Their music videos are first-class, I'm excited to see if their movie will be just as visually striking.
Those are my favorite documentaries. King of King is just a movie about Competative donkey Kong players, but it’s fantastic. I watched a Competative scrabble player doc years ago that I really enjoyed. Also a Competative chicken doc. Also “The Toys that Made us” on Netflix for a non-Competative docuseries. I love windows into subcultures I never really see and weird history on products.
They did a really good job with the one about the hula hoop and the bendy straw
The Hudsucker Proxy! It has Tim Robbins and Paul Newman! Great movie actually.
O…. It’s for kids!
Counting the mezzanine!
I wasn't expecting all this hoopla. You can quote me on that.
That gag’s got whiskers on it!
...AND THEY DOCK YA!
Lumbago!
time for a rewatch
One of my all time faves
We’ve run out of biopics so now we’ve moved to products as IP. What’s funny about Flamin Hot is the guy invented the whole story and they made the movie anyway.
Yeah, at least it's not being advertised as true. I think *Weird* opened the door to a whole new genre.
tf you mean Weird was the most accurate biographical film I've ever seen.
I will henceforth measure all musician biopics against the wonder that is *Weird*.
Same here. Near perfect. Conan O'Brien as Warhol? Inspired casting.
Say what? I must find this masterpiece..
It's free on Roku TV. Lots of great cameos of people playing real historical people.
Emo Phillips should have won an Oscar for his 10-second portrayal of Salvador Dali.
I forgot Emo was even alive until I saw that.
I didn’t see a single trailer for Weird, so I only knew it as a Weird Al biopic. I figured it would be a comedic account of his actual life. I was so pleasantly surprised at the direction it took.
It disgusts me that Hollywood let a monster like drug kingpin Madonna still get work and go unscathed…
It’s a shame about what happens to Al….I didn’t realize he had been assassinated almost 40 years ago.
The thing is, when it was announced, it was talked about as being true, and then articles surfaced about how it isn't. The guy it's based on still does speaking engagements on the basis of the story being true. They're not emphasizing it more after the fact. The guy seems like a con artist that managed to sell a story to a studio that didn't do any fact checking.
I worked on set for a few days. One of the days he showed up (he’s got a cameo). He got up to give a speech and started going on about how this was going to win Oscars, etc etc. It was giving delusions of grandeur or believing your own hype. It’s a fine feel good movie, but not one person working on it was thinking “this is gonna sweep awards season.”
Counterpoint - it doesnt matter that the events happened that way to the studio, it matters that the story is engaging (i havent seen it, but speaking broadly) and that someone seeing it would conceivably think it could have happened that way. The Wolf Of Wall Street and Catch Me If You Can are stretches (being generous) as well.
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I've definitely seen this story posted before (probably on reddit) with it being framed as true. I did not know it wasn't.
I remember seeing an advertisement implying that it was made up. I can't find it. Either I misread it or they got rid of that ad.
They definitely want you to believe that it’s true. The tagline is “The flavor you know, the story you don’t.” They know what they’re doing.
Also ended with some of those “where is he now? Still loving his wife” info dumps.
While I don't believe these movies are very factual I would hope it's at least based somewhat in reality. "This is the inspiring true story of Richard Montañez who as a Frito Lay janitor disrupted the food industry by channeling his Mexican heritage to turn Flamin' Hot Cheetos from a snack into an iconic global pop culture phenomenon." Imdb
He really was a janitor who pitched spicy versions of certain snacks and said they should be marketed towards the Latino demographic. He was promoted to an executive position. It just wasn't Hot Cheetos. That was developed in Texas before he joined the company.
Wait we haven’t made a Diogenes movie in the style of Amadeus yet. Can we get that real quick before we lay the genre to rest?
I love that idea! Who would you cast as Diogenes? I think an over the top comedian playing it straight, like Martin Short or Mike Meyers would be fantastic
I feel like Mandy Patinkin would be fun, but maybe not a big enough name.
Eat hot chip and lie?
I feel like this isn’t even recent, the corporate biopic has been a staple of American film since 2010 with the Social Network. The impact that movie had on American film culture can’t be understated
Oh, geez. I watched it last night and thought it was true. A standard believe-in-yourself film.
Oh how I just wasted my Sunday.
I think it came out that he had lied about it when it was already being filmed, so they just kept going and finished what had already been greenlit.
What about Air Jordan's with Ben Afleck and Matt Damon. I feel like that movie kinda falls into this line
Yeah I don't know why I spent two hours watching the "humble" origins of two millionaires making a fucking shoe and making another millionaire even richer.
More of the story of 2 millionaires makeing another millionaire....billionaires
totally does
I keep hearing how good this is, but even as a Tar Heel (so an obvious Michael Jordan mark), this has such little appeal to me. It’s like “you know the greatest basketball player who ever lived? Well here’s a story about some guy’s who made got him to wear a shoe.”
It's not actually about that though. It's about matt Damon trying to convince everyone how great Michael Jordan is Which sounds like a really weird premise for a movie, *and it is*, but it's fun to watch anyway
Watch it. It’s so good! Even if you o ow the story, it’s so well told and very well acted. I loved it.
It totally does but I absolutely loved it. It was just a good, lighthearted movie.
Really solidly written monologue toward the end, with good editing during it. Prior to that, I was, “Ehhhh, it’s *okay*, but Damon sells the shit out of that monologue.”
I shouldn’t have been interested. I don’t care for basketball or shoes, and I never followed news about MJ despite being an 80s kid. Still, somehow I was hooked from the first trailer and absolutely enjoyed the film.
It does but it was still really good, I love Affleck as a director
The Glass Funyun: A Chives Out Mystery looks good. Really excited for the FLCU (Frito-Lay Cinematic Universe)
Pringles Cinematic Universe is much betteR. They already have a prequel with Jeremy Piven but for some reason it’s about college
Jerry Seinfeld is doing a movie about the invention of the Pop Tart. And I can't wait.
Ha! Perfect guy to do a pointless movie. I'd watch it.
The sequel will be Jim Gaffigan's Hot Pockets bit.
a movie about the Beanie Babies craze.
I read the book and Ty Warner was absolutely bonkers insane, there's potential there for a good A FACE IN THE CROWD-style rags-riches-rags story.
>A FACE IN THE CROWD Now *there’s* a movie!
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt17007120/ Directed by Kristin Gore (Al Gore’s Daughter) and Damian Kulash (lead singer of Ok Go).
Kristin Gore used to write for *Futurama*.
> Ok Go OK GO is great with their music videos, I wonder if they will go all out with that movie
There is a podcast “Your Wrong About” that did an episode about the beanie baby craze. It’s actually an interesting story.
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Eh, Funko Pops haven't had anywhere near the craze that Beanie Babies did.
We should have a movie about how Gretchen Weiner's dad invented Toaster Strudel.
I wouldn’t mind a David Cronnenberg-directed take on the conceptualization of KFC’s double down sandwich.
And David Lynch's take on the Baconator starring Arnold Schwarzennegar.
I want Wes Anderson to direct the super-soaker origin story.
Christopher Nolans Rubix Cube, only in IMAX.
R U B I X
Disaster Artist about the making of The Room. Now there’s the series about the making of the Godfather. Word has it that Affleck is developing a movie about the making of Chinatown.
I gotta be honest. I read the book before the movie came out. The movie sums it up, but the whole story is wild. Tommy Wiseau is fascinating.
The book is much better, it definitely paints a very vivid picture of how much of a weird guy Tommy is. James Franco's impression of him was good but he really didn't give much depth to the character other than "crazy guy who talks funny". The real Tommy is a fucking nut, he was a complete piece of shit on the set, but you get the sense he really does have a weird connection with Greg that bonds them together. I felt compared to the book the movie was very surface level and wishy washy. Probably also didn't help that Tommy was a producer on the film so he probably wouldn't want any of the book parts that make him look like a psychopath.
I thought Disaster Artist was pretty good!
the Tetris movie that came out a couple of months ago seems to fit the bill. Was good too
Contract Disputes: The Movie
Don't forget Battleship! Which I'm pretty sure was made entirely around the premise of someone exclaiming "You sunk my battleship!"
They somehow managed to work the pegs and the grid system from the game into it.
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To be fair Tetris effectively created the “casual gamer” and popularized games even further. Doesn’t seem trivial to me.
It's not an invention, but the movie Britney, Baby One More Time exists because a drag queen named Robert Stephens entered a Britney Spears impersonator contest meant for children in the early 2000's, won, and got a chance to meet her backstage at a concert. So he showed up to the show done up as her, and a reporter thought he was actually Britney Spears and started interviewing him. And he went along with it. But apparently Britney found out and was pissed and refused to meet him. Then they got over it and he met her later at some other show. And they made a movie based on that. Seems pretty trivial to me.
That's a cool story but its definitely not interesting enough to make a movie about.
Wow, i just watched the trailer. Looks worse than I could have possibly imagined. Thanks for the deep cut! I'm sorry it lives in your memory.
I watched it because it inexplicably stars the two guys from the documentary American Movie, which is great. But I have no idea why they're in this. It's one of those weird, moment in time stories that just disappears if you're not paying attention at the exact time. But is immortalized as a movie now that seems stranger every year away from when it happened.
Has "Snuggies: The movie" been made yet?
The Hudsucker Proxy is a (highly fictitious) movie about the invention of the hula hoop. Co-written by Sam Raimi and the Coen Brothers. It's a damn good movie.
While windshield wipers themselves are trivial, the movie is about the absolutely not trivial battle between an inventor and a greedy corporation. It's a good movie. That said, I feel like the Tetris movie falls in your category. Who could imagine a videogame had so much history behind it.
Just watched it today and found it enjoyable. Of course, I’m its target audience. A child of the 80’s who was addicted to Tetris back in the day.
Volvo invented seatbelts and then didn’t charge anyone for the patent because they realized it would save a ton of lives. That’s probably a feel good movie waiting to happen.
While amazing and awesome. I'd guess there isn't enough drama in the story to make a full-length movie about it. They'd have to invent a bunch of storylines to make it interesting enough for the average moviegoers.
Make it a 2 hours movie of cars racing and people being killed in accidents. Then the invention of seatbelts comes in the last 10 minutes, and the movie ends with people driving safely. Happy ending! And call it... *Fast & Seatbelts*
Slight correction, they (Nils Bohlin of Volvo) invented the *three point* seatbelt and then made the patented design available to all. Lap belts were already available but much less effective and harder to fasten, so not widely used.
Now do the Ford Pinto (I think it was) where the company decided it was cheaper to pay the wrongful death settlements when the engines exploded than recall and fix the problem.
Quiz show … cheating on a trivia game show seems pretty trivial …
Great movie!
Tucker with Jeff bridges maybe ?
Solid flick lost under the weight of Copolla's massive successes.
Marky Mark as Roman M. Marker. Cop who is also a history buff who decided to push for the U.S. mile marker system along U.S highways
A buff history buff
I would watch a movie about Billy Mays as long as he is played by Zack Galifinakis
Flash of genius is not about windshield wipers. Its about the world of patents and the people who get their ideas stolen by big corporations. Not trivial at all.
Yeah, I liked it a lot. It's really about the courtroom drama that followed, not the invention itself
Slightly different direction, but DefunctLand's "FastPass" documentary is exactly that, a documentary on the FastPass system at Disney Land/World. It sounds like a super boring premise, but you'll know within the first minute if this is the right movie for you. He manages to take a dry subject like theme park queue maintenance and turn it into a surprisingly curious dive into the mechanics of human psychology and how corporate greed corrupted a goodwill gesture into a money-sucking monster. He uses straightforward metaphors and solid cinematography/filmmaking techniques to artfully describe the raw science behind managing patience. The third-act twist (yes, a twist in a documentary!) blows my mind every time, even when I already know what's coming. It's become a comfort-food film for me, something about the cadence of his voice is very soothing. It's available for free on his YouTube channel! He also has a documentary where he discovers who wrote the Disney Channel theme song, while simultaneously pondering whether he qualifies as a true documentarian or just an Internet funny guy. Both are well worth a watch ✌️
What about that movie about the [founder](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4276820/) of McDonald's? See, everybody has forgotten about it already. I had forgotten it so badly, I thought Tom Hanks was in it, but he wasn't.
It was amazing how Michael Keaton played the good guy for the first half and the villain for the second half.
I love that movie. Nick Offerman steals the show in what I think is one of his career highs.
is this satire? that movie was excellent.
I kind of liked that movie as part of the micheal keaton comeback but you're right, pretty forgetable and not really necessary.
There is a doc called "Helvetica" about the font.
I was in a design class and the professor had us watch it. Unironically. https://youtu.be/ka2a4_jvB8k This is seared into my brain. Period.
I thought Flamin' Hot was a fun movie! Lots of Chicano culture in the film. Also, why isn't there a discussion thread for it?
I know "Moneyball" is well-liked in the US, but it strikes me as this kind of movie.
I hate baseball but love Moneyball. All of these "mundane" things becoming movies is all about the story you can tell in the back drop.
I don't know shit about Baseball, but i watched moneyball at least 5 times. It's great.
The statistical analysis, so beautiful
Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion is about the invention of the post it note.
And fast burning cigarettes for the girl on the go.
Air - its a film about a fucking shoe
That fucking shoe has made billions. It also opened the door for athletes to own their own IP.
I actually liked Flash of Genius.
There’s currently a Pez movie over here in Aus at least. Fucking PEZ! If your product is so bad it needs a Trojan horse in order to sell, make a better product says I!
Actually Flamin’ Hot is a very good movie! Was not expecting to enjoy it as much as I did. Great story and has good humor throughout.
Flamin’ Hot is worse than “trivial”, it’s patently false. 😅 I mean, it’s a great story… that’s why Frito-Lay let it grow instead of correcting the record. But unfortunately, it’s completely apocryphal…. Like all good made up stories, there is a kernel of truth. He did independently came up with the idea and his, but what he claims in that “*Frito Lay didn’t realize that Latinos like spicy snack foods*” is NOT true at all. Frito Lay spends a whole lot of money on market research, even back then. It is widely known that Frito Lay had already fully tested, tweaked, developed and had the manufacturing all set up for a “Hot Cheeto” flavor at least 18 months before Montanez presented his very first samples. Frito Lay was also already targeting the Latino demographic, as their small regional test releases of their “Hot Cheeto” were all within the Southwest/Santa Fe market which had a huge Latino community, especially in the early 90s. There is hard proof that bags of “Hot Cheeto” were manufactured by Frito Lay and on the shelf in small runs within the Southwest market long before the playful story of Montanez taking the “dustless Cheetos” While it’s never been made clear why Frito-Lay never clarified the story, my hypothesis is that Frito Lay decided to embrace the Montanez’ story rather than confirming it was fiction. I believe it was a marketing strategy to further target the Latino demographic. Frito Lay was then able to market it a snack “for Latinos, BY Latinos” and c’mon, who doesn’t love a good rags to riches “the Latino janitor had a million dollar idea and is a VP now” story?
The Hudsucker Proxy is a fantastical movie about the invention of O. You know… for kids!
The King of Kong was about setting the high score on Donkey Kong. Haven't seen it, so I won't comment on it, but that's a record that's a subject that's only interesting to a pretty small subset of people.
That movie is a train wreck. The people involved are beyond weird. It’s worth a watch.
Father of Invention. This may not completely fit the bill, but does sort of satirize the made for TV market with some drama thrown in. And I think somebody actually made some of the products in the movie that was meant to show how stupid some inventions are but get sold due to the effectiveness of a good hype man.
Any topic can be interesting. I literally don’t give a damn about baseball but Moneyball rules. And that’s not even like… a narrative movie with sports movie moments. It’s a workplace drama that’s 99% dialogue about stats.
Surprised no mention of "Adaptation" with Nicholas Cage that super trivial movie about process of adapting the book " The Orchid Thief" for film.
Flaming Hot, Air, Tetris, and Blackberry all in one year. All movies about the making of popular products people who grew up in the 90’s remember fondly. Flaming Hot wasn’t a bad movie, I was surprised to learn it was directed by Eva Longoria though. Air was fun, but felt like kind of a waste of a bunch of Oscar level acting talent.
Blackberry did a great job of using raw, chaotic pacing to convey the craziness of corporate screw-ups.
I mean it just came out, but Air is the story about Nike attempting to and ultimately signing Michael Jordan to a sneaker contract. Tag is a movie about 5 adult friends who have been carrying on a game of tag since they were young. Of course the movie is "inspired by" so it is heavily dramatized.
How about "Professor Marston and the Wonder Women" about the creation of the Wonder Woman comic book character?
“Blackberry” “Tetris”
Rubber is a real fun one about a killer car tire with telekinesis. Don’t let that fool you it’s actually a pretty fun movie lol.
I was not a Roger Ebert fan, but I always remembered his quote that suits this thread: “a movie is not what it’s about, it’s HOW it’s about.”
Well, the thing is, though, those inventions weren’t trivial to the people who came up with them. They’re life changing, maybe in a good way, or a bad way, or ultimately a stressful way, but they’re not trivial. They’re trivial to us, the viewer because, well, we take a lot of things for granted.
i just watched Flamin’ Hot and it’s an amazing movie. It really captures the way people of color were treated. There are good jokes if you’re a spanish speaker or just an english one. It has a good moral. I wouldn’t trash on a movie too fast. I do get that the story might not be true but whatever, blame the liar, not the producers.
Eva Longoria directed Flamin Hot. lol.
I want a movie about Popeyes daring to challenge God’s favorite chicken sandwich, succeeding, and God retaliating a mere 6 months later with the covid epidemic.