Silly Poetry Friday 30

Yup, late yet again. At least I'm consistent! Consistently silly, that is...

So I'm wondering, what do all you folks think about all the movies that have been made in the past few years, on Dr. Suess's books? I'm thinking of movies like the recent Horton Hears A Who, The Cat In The Hat and The Grinch. Did you watch them? Did you like them? Me, I could not watch them. Nope. Not ever. In fact...

I could not, would not, on a boat.
I will not, will not, with a goat.
I will not watch them in the rain.
I will not watch them on a train.
Not in the dark! Not in a tree!
Not in a car! You let me be!
I will not watch them in a box.
I will not watch them with a fox.
I will not watch them in a house.
I will not watch them with a mouse.
I will not watch them here or there.
I will not watch them ANYWHERE!

Well, you get the point. I did see the trailers for all those movies, and they just made my skin crawl. Why in heaven's name would you mess with such a good thing? Well, apparently that's what good ol' Dr. Seuss was thinking, too! Mind you, I do believe he shuffled off this silly mortal coil a while ago, but somehow, courtesy of The Onion, they managed to get in touch with ol' Mr. Geisel, and this is what he had to say:

Stop Making Movies About My Books

On the fourteenth of March, in towns nationwide,
In every cinema, multiplex, on every barnside,
Gleamed another adapting of one of my books,
CGI-ed and digitized by another sly crook.
Horton, my favorite—look how he's been treated!
Stuffed with tinsels and tassels and promptly excreted!
The puns! And the filler! The script fees you must save!
While I tumble and grum-humble around in my grave.
Did you learn all but squat from The Cat In The Hat?
Please tell me you fired the prick who made that.
I would have stopped writing, maybe sold Goodyear tires.
If I knew one dark day I'd costar with Mike Myers.
And Oh!
Oh, dear! Oh!
My poor Grinch, what they've done!
They crammed in live-action and snuffed out all the fun!
It's icky, it's tacky, it's awkward, it's wrong.
The Whos look like ferrets, it's an hour too long.
What a rotten idea to spend millions destroying
This masterful tale kids spent decades enjoying!
But still you keep making them!
Just how do you dare?
Sell my life's work off piecemeal
To every Tom, Dick, and Har'.
Why it's simply an outrage—a crime, you must judge!—
To crap on my books with this big-budget sludge.
My books are for children to learn ones and twos in,
Not commercialous slop for Jim Carrey to ruin.
Have you no respect for the gems of your youth?
To pervert them on screen from Taiwan to Duluth.
Even after you drag my last word through the dirt,
I know you, you pirates,
You'd cut out my heart for a "Thing 1" T-shirt.
For eighty-some years I held you vultures at bay,
knowing just how you'd franchise my good name some day.
Not yet cold in my grave before you starting shooting
the first of my classics you'd acquired for looting.
Mrs. Seuss, that old stoofus, began selling more rights
to Dreamworks, Universal—any hack in her sights.
First The Cat In The Hat and then this, that and Seussical
without a thought to be picky, selectish, or choosical.
So to Audrey, you whore, you sad sack of a wife:
Listen close. Pay attention, for once in your life.
You give Fox In Sox to those sharks who made Elf
And so help me, I'll rise up and kill you myself.
No Sneetches by Sony—
No One Fish: On Ice—
Burn that Hop On Pop II script not one time but twice.
Don't sex up my prose with Alyssa Milano…
And no Green Eggs And Ham with that one-note Romano!
This must stop! This must end! Don't you see what you're doing?
You're defiling the work I spent ages accruing.
And when it's dried up and you've sucked out your pay
There'll be no going back to a simpler day,
When your mom would give Horton a voice extra deep,
And turn the last page as you drifted to sleep.
Instead you'll have boxed sets, shit movies, and… well,
You'll have plenty to watch while you're burning in hell.

Comments

[Isabella]

Ya!

[Cipriano]

Amazing that both the Grinch [Jim Carrey] and the Cat [Mike Myers] are good ol' Canadians, huh?
I favor the work of Myers.... thought he was fabulous in Le Chat Dans Le Chapeau but I love both actors just this side of gayness!

[Ellen]

great post! I haven't seen any, simply because taking a little picture book and making it into a feature length movie is generally absurd. Sometimes it works (Jumanji) but it's pretty rare. Love the Onion poem.