Mike Stopforth

Remember Snakes on a Plane? Well, you wouldn’t. Snakes on a Plane, a movie successfully marketed in the US by ordinary citizens through social media for the better part of this year, still hasn’t been released. That’s right, with all the hype and buzz around it, it is a full-fledged web meme and not a single moviegoer has viewed a single scene yet.

Samuel L. Jackson, who plays a lead role in the film, had this to say at the 2006 Comic-Con while promoting the film:

I hope that people in studios are looking and paying attention and trying to figure how and why this (Snakes on a Plane) phenomenon took place. I hope there’s some young filmmaker somewhere that knows and understands that now they could put a premise on the Internet: ‘My premise for this film is - boom.’ ‘Now who has a scene?’ People will start writing the first scene for that particular film… until they end up with a whole film.

And then somebody will say, ‘Who do you think should be in this film?’ And they come up with a whole cast list of people. If everybody sends a dollar in and we can hire these people to shoot this particular film, and we’ll have a film that’s all inclusive, of something that a lot of people came together on, with a collaborative mindset about.

I think that would be kind of wonderful thing.

And yet in light of all the overwhelming evidence supporting the remarkable voluntary participation of ordinary citizens in response to Snakes, Paramount recently made an almighty blunder when they attempted to shut down movie blogger John Campea’s ENTIRE SITE for publishing a pic from the upcoming blockbuster Transformers.

Bloody heck. Just when you think corporations can’t yet any dumber, they totally redeem themselves.

Seems the issue’s been resolved but why the issue in the first place? It’s not like John was slating the Paramount brand or giving the movie bad PR. I don’t get it.

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