SpoutBlog on spout.com

Under discussion:

Animal Crackers  (1930)

Jaws  (1988)

King Kong  (1933)

Manhattan  (1979)

Tron  (1982)

Tombstone  (1993)

Office Space  (1999)

X-Men  (2000)

Solaris  (2002)

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang  (2005)

The Love Guru  (2008)

Twitter, the popular micro-blogging service, has turned into a powerful tool in the hands of not only consumers but marketers of all stripes as well. Comcast, Paramount Pictures and a handful of others have all latched on to it as a way to communicate with customers, acting not only as a distribution platform but a conversation hub and customer service hub as well. Some of the biggest names in the social media marketing world are spending serious time brainstorming how to use Twitter for marketing, debating its usefulness and otherwise hashing out a series of best practices for utilizing the service.

Media outlets have also turned to Twitter for many of the same reasons. TV Guide, Fox News and even Spout have a presence there to, again, promote their content and, in some cases, even engage in a back-and-forth with readers.

But did you know that Darth Vader is twittering? How about Cobra Commander?

In one of the most widely-discussed instances of fictional characters with Twitter accounts, the staff of Sterling Cooper - the ad agency in the hit AMC series Mad Men - have all been posting 140 charcter status updates. Initially thought to be an official effort by the cable channel, it was later found that no, these were fan efforts that almost fell victim from what was later construed as “miscommunication“, but which at first apparently looked like a take-down notice filed under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

With all these movie and TV characters expressing themselves, we thought it would be fun to see who our followers on Twitter thought should make their thoughts known in 140-characters or less. Here’s what we got back.

Characters played by Val Kilmer appeared twice in the feedback. @treobenny put in his vote for Doc Holiday from Tombstone and Ryan Budke nominated Gay Perry from Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang.

@sabine24 put forth a bunch of names, including Frank N. Furter, Stanley Kowalski and Jack Sparrow. The Big Lebowski’s The Dude got the nod from @povertyjetset and @champura went deep into the well to bring out Daniel Plainview from There Will Be Blood. @tigershungry went even further for Pistachio Disguisey, Dana Carvey’s character from 2002’s Master of Disguise.

Finally, @ryananderson will be taken out back and horse-whipped for suggesting Jar Jar Binks.

In addition to this worthy list of nominations, here’s who we’d like to see on Twitter:

The Guru Pitka (The Love Guru): Yes, the movie might have bombed and forced Mike Myers back into re-evaluating Austin Powers 4, but the pithy Pitka’s bumper-sticker life lessons are made for the format.

Carl Dehham (King Kong): “Rough day. Locals speak of something we think translates to ‘big angry monkey.’ But filming continues. Ann seems wary, tho.”

Capt. Jeffrey T. Spaulding (Animal Crackers): Come on. I’m a little ashamed of everyone - and myself - that a Groucho Marx character wasn’t among the first ones I thought of. I’m going with Spaulding simply because I think he gets off some better one-liners than my other choice, Duck Soup’s Rufus T. Firefly.

Wolverine (X-Men): “Stabbed guy with claws. Had beer.” (repeat time and time again.)

Gypsy (Mystery Science Theater 3000): The robot in charge of the Satellite of Love’s operations would be the ideal candidate to report on how Joel, Crow and Servo are holding up, as well as throw the occassional “@drforrester: You suck.”

Master Control Program (Tron): Every post would conclude with “end of line.” Plus, he could brag about how easy it is to crack into Windows servers.

Isaac Davis (Manhattan): Imagine the possibilities of Woody Allen’s character obsessing over the minutia of his relationships as well as sending missive after missive about his love of New York City and Ingmar Bergman film to all his followers. (Side note: Mariel Hemingway’s character Tracy would, on the other hand, have a Tumblr blog.)

Peter Gibbons (Office Space): Maybe it’s a cop-out to think of Gibbons venting on his frustrations with his boss on Twitter (likely under a pseudonym to protect his shaky job) but it would still be pretty funny.

Matt Hooper (Jaws): “Got call from some hick sheriff with what’s probably just an over-active imagination. At least he’s paying for the trip.”

Chris Kelvin (Solaris): Just because every other post would be “Did I just see my dead wife? WTF!!!”"

So who do you think would make a good presence on Twitter?

“Lee Atwater destroyed the business of politics by going negative,” said Terry MacAuliffe yesterday. introducing an Impact Film Festival screening of Stefan Forbes’ Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story. “Democrats don’t fight hard enough. They play tougher on the other side. The bottom line is that these guys will do anything to win.”

Forbes’ film, which caused such a ruckus at its premiere in June at the Los Angeles Film Festival, essentially functions as an ideological ink blot––people see what they want in it. It’s possible (and, based on the director’s comments after the film, probably preferred) to see Boogie Man as a vicious indictment of the political operative who mentored Karl Rove and George W. Bush whilst helping the latter’s father overcome the Iran Contra scandal to win the presidency, destroying Michael Dukakis’ political career in the process. But Forbes, to his credit, also clearly explicates Atwater’s appeal. You might need to put blinders on a bit, but it would be possible to walk away from this film cheering McCain to turn Obama into the new Dukakis.

In fact, after the screening, Forbes acknowledged that there are lessons the left could learn from the enemy. “When a fight gets dirty, do you have to join? If you just play defense, you end up looking guilty. You have to turn the attacks into a referendum on the other party.”

That is, if you can get beyond emotions. The partisan crowd here at the DNC was loudly demonstrative of their feelings towards the players on screen. They giggled and jeered at slow-moed images of Atwater walking with the Bushes or Reagan, set to the kinds of cheesy blues rock riffs that Atwater himself cranked out to prove how “down” he was with black people. They groaned when W first popped up on screen, and literally hissed and booed for footage of a younger Dick Cheney lying on behalf of Bush the Elder. Maybe the loudest reaction came to footage of George H.W. saying of Dukakis, “I’m not questioning his patriotism, I’m questioning his judgement.” That one produced a number of audible gasps of deja vu. The IFF, according to a statement by co-founder Jody Arlington, was sparked by the “idea that the artistry and urgency reflected in these films could have a real impact on political discourse [and] rally leaders and citizens attending both conventions to engage in nuanced discussions about the domestic and international priorities explored in these exceptional films.” But sometimes a choir is so eager to be preached to that the nuance temporarily gets lost.

That IFF is presenting same basic slate of films will be presented to radically different crowds could prove to be a fascinating experiment in knee-jerk partisanism: considering how warmly the Democrats embraced its message, will Boogie Man’s RNC screening on Wednesday incite Republican rage? Forbes says “the other side” is surprisingly receptive to the movie, because Republicans “don’t get why Democrats don’t fight back. They’re like, ‘We’re punching you. If you don’t want to punch back, okay, but we’ll win.’”

It’s hard to imagine, however, that an Atwater fan wouldn’t get a little riled up by the film’s subtext that, as one talking head puts it, “life gets even with you in the end.” It’s said to foreshadow Atwater’s demise and eventual death, and it’s not the only time that Forbes’ subjects suggest that Atwater’s brain cancer came as punishment for his crimes against Democrats. But by the same measure, the idea that the ends we come to is the result of what do or chose not to do could be twisted into a comment on the failure of Democrats. Towards the end of the film, we see a somewhat aged Michael and Kitty Dukakis benignly puttering around their very middle-class looking home, reduced to mediocrity by an inability or unwillingness to fight back. When the images of Atwater at 40 dying of brain cancer, his face puffy from radiation, come on the screen, I heard more than one murmured, “Jesus.” Even if Forbes wants to sell the idea that Atwater got his just deserts (and I’ve not entirely decided that he does), the crowd most primed to walk away with that reaction can’t help but feel the humanity of what that entails.