OSWALT IMPROV RANT INCLUDES GETTING DE PALMA TO WRITE OPENING SCRAWL FOR 'STAR WARS VII'
Above is an unedited version of a rant (or "ramble") Patton Oswalt delivers on tomorrow night's episode of Parks And Recreation on NBC. The opening scrawl for this video explains that Oswalt appears on the episode "as a man who launches a filibuster to prevent a city council vote. The producers asked him to ramble a bit about whatever subject he wanted. What follows is one continuous take of that scene - 100% improvised."
What Oswalt rambles on about are his ideas for "Star Wars VII," which he hilariously cross-brands with the Marvel universe, as both are now owned by Disney, and also with the mythical figures of Clash Of The Titans. But to start it off, he begins at the beginning:
"We begin with standard title sequence," says Oswalt, "John Williams fanfare, followed by a scrawl to be written-- I would like to mention that Brian De Palma wrote the original opening scrawl for Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. I think it would be a nice nod to the franchise if he were to write this opening scrawl."
In fact, it was De Palma and Jay Cocks who rewrote the opening scrawl. When George Lucas showed a rough cut of Star Wars to his friends, he'd had a long scrawl at the beginning that seemed to go on and on. Among the friends at the screening were De Palma, Cocks, and Steven Spielberg. Cocks recalled in the Nov/Dec 2002 issue of Creative Screenwriting that the morning after the screening, "I was sitting in a work room above a garage in [George Lucas'] house with a yellow pad with George and Brian and a couple of other people. Brian said, 'All right Jay, you sit down there at the typewriter. No one understands what this movie is about, we gotta set it up.' What I remember saying is: 'George, you gotta make other people understand this is a fairy tale.' We wrote something that [did] that, and in some form became the prologue to Star Wars or was part of the prologue to Star Wars."
Updated: Thursday, April 18, 2013 8:17 PM CDT
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