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Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Patton Oswalt proposal for Star Wars VII
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/showtracker/la-et-st-patton-oswalt-star-wars-filibuster-parks-and-rec-outtake-20130417,0,579336.story
Patton Oswalt is guest starring in this week's "Parks and Recreation," but the most impressive thing about his appearance is what you won't see on NBC.
As part of the episode, Oswalt's character was supposed to appear before a Pawnee City Council meeting and filibuster a proposed vote. Producers invited Oswalt to "ramble a bit about whatever subject he wanted."
Oswalt decided his topic of choice was a pitch for the upcoming "Star Wars Episode VII." While we wouldn't dream of spoiling the twists and turns the story takes, let's just say that he's found a brilliant way to merge two of the Disney corporation's biggest franchises (and even one they don't own).
The result is a single eight-minute take that was completely improvised, brilliant and much too long for the constraints of a half-hour network comedy.
Thank God for the Internet. The entire take is now posted in its entirety online, so that, hopefully J.J. Abrams will be able to study it and learn.
This has been quite a week for Oswalt, who penned a short Facebook post in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings that was full of hope and inspiration. The post went viral and made its way all over the Internet in just a couple of days.
As of Wednesday, it had been shared over 250,000 times and been reprinted in whole or in part on several websites, including the Huffington Post.
Also on Monday, Oswalt appeared as the Penguin in a Batman parody video posted on College Humor's website. While the video was meant to be a joke, it did appear that Oswalt could pull off a convincing Penguin, should the big screen franchise ever need the character to reappear. (Danny DeVito most recently played the character in Tim Burton's 1992 "Batman Returns.")
And to top it off, he was announced as the host of the 17th annual Webby Awards, honoring the best of Internet culture, which will be held on May 22 in New York City.
