Best Movie Never

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Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm going to tell you about the best movie that will never be made. Why will this movie never be made? Some of the participants are...well...dead. So I'm going to ask that you momentarily follow me into a land where some time lines have been shifted. The germ of this idea was sprouted while having a conversation with my barber when I got a haircut this week. We'll pause for a second, so that some of you can have your moment of humming the Pavement song “Cut Your Hair.” Done? Welcome back!

This motion picture has no title, no studio attached to it, or anything like that. But what it does have is a ballpark to play in, and a ballpark I want you to keep in your mind while reading about it. This is a movie that will play as a cross between a Bing Crosby and Bob Hope “Road” picture, and The Muppet Movie. For one, it's a cross country “road” movie. For the other, it's going to have celebrity cameos in it. Are you ready? OK, here we go.

Picture Boston in winter. Picture a busy airport, where there is lots of people, and chatter over the possibly of a MAJOR snow storm moving in. Picture the camera moving along shots of a screen showing flights being canceled. The camera eventually lands on the actor Vincent Price, talking on his iPhone. Vincent Price is distraught. He needs to make a flight back out to Hollywood, so he can appear on The Nerdist podcast to promote his newest movie, an adaption of Poe's The Pit and The Pendulum, directed by Ed Wood.

Vincent happens to remember that his good friend, movie director Tim Burton, is also in Boston scouting locations for his next film. He calls him in hopes of seeing if he has transportation out of Boston—the snow hasn't begun yet, so road travel is possible. Tim knows of one way out, he has a buddy with a vintage Chevy pick up truck who can drive them cross country. That buddy is Mr. Rogers. Vincent Price, Tim Burton, and Mr. Rogers, all driving from Boston to Hollywood, in a Chevy pick up truck.

Along they way they run into all kinds of crazy characters. Jimmy Stewart running a small gas station right off the interstate, Jon Hamm as the mechanic who works on the truck when it breaks down, things like that. There's a montage in the middle of the film when they pause to do some shopping. They bond, and they all exit a store together, laughing, and wearing the same cardigans. They make it Hollywood in time, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Yes, this is truly the best motion picture that will never be made. There won't be any blu-ray, DVD, digital copy release. No 3D version that plays only in IMAX. No “special edition” where George Lucas comes in and adds someone screaming “No” at the end. Nope. This movie will only exisit in our heads. Unless we can convince the respected estates of the dead to sign off on it, Tim Burton to OK it, and Pixar to make it (call me, Disney!). Yeah. Then it COULD work.

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