Pitch Meeting

Thanks to Eric D Snider and his eerie command of the NSA archives, we now have a complete transcript of the pitch meeting for the new Lone Ranger movie.

Let’s listen as the geniuses at Disney work their magic.

DISNEY EXEC. #2: What’s your concept for it? A faithful recreation of the classic character just as people remember him wouldn’t work, obviously.
DISNEY EXEC. #3: That never works.
DISNEY EXEC. #1: Not that we’ve ever tried it.
DISNEY EXEC. #3: Well, it doesn’t take a genius to see that when people go to a movie about a fictional character they’ve loved since childhood, the LAST thing they want is for the character to be portrayed the way they remember him.
JERRY BRUCKHEIMER: No, of course. Our version is going to be different because we’ve got Johnny Depp to star in it.
DISNEY EXEC. #1: Johnny Depp as the Lone Ranger??
DISNEY EXEC. #2: That doesn’t make any sense at all!
DISNEY EXEC. #3: We love it!
JERRY BRUCKHEIMER: Not as the Lone Ranger — as Tonto.
DISNEY EXEC. #1: Johnny Depp as Tonto??
DISNEY EXEC. #2: That makes even less sense!
DISNEY EXEC. #3: We love it more!
DISNEY EXEC. #1: That’s $300 million domestic right there. People love Johnny Depp!
DISNEY EXEC. #2: Audiences are in no way tired of his quirky oddball performances!
DISNEY EXEC. #3: A disheartening sense of sameness definitely has not crept into those performances!
DISNEY EXEC. #1: He was great in the three “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies.
DISNEY EXEC. #2: There were four “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies.
DISNEY EXEC. #1: Get outta here!
DISNEY EXEC. #2: There were!
DISNEY EXEC. #1: That can’t be right.
JERRY BRUCKHEIMER: Now, Johnny has a few stipulations…
DISNEY EXEC. #2: The movie has to be bloated, overlong, unnecessarily complicated, yet somehow also simple-minded?
JERRY BRUCKHEIMER: For starters. He also feels strongly that the Tonto character should be a dignified representative of Native Americans, and he wants to convey this by wearing a dead bird on his head.