It sounds weird to say it, but I”ve missed you guys.
One of the things I enjoy most about Ask Drew as a format is that you are the writers of the show. You”re the ones telling me exactly what you”d like to know about, and as much as I can without getting anyone (including myself, hopefully) in trouble, I will answer whatever questions you send me.
I”m going to confess to how fragile I am sometimes here. When I saw Steve Weintraub from Collider start using a nearly-identical game to my Movie God (created almost 20 years ago by myself, Patrick Morgan, and Scott Swan) in his interviews, it bummed me out so much that I sort of gave up on Ask Drew as a whole. I”d played the game for years as part of my now-defunct podcast, and here on the TV segments, and it”s a favorite of mine. Seeing someone simply rip it off wholesale like that in a way that is impossible to stop them from doing not only upset me because of how long I”d known Steve and how surprised I was that even when it was brought up, he simply refused to stop doing it, but because it pointed out how nothing you do online will ever be valued properly. I”ve been writing online for two decades, and in that time, the “borrowing” of ideas has always been a problem. I”m as guilty as anyone of indulging the Wild West mentality in the early days, but to see that it”s still so prevalent and there is still no protection from it just made me feel like throwing in the towel.
Enough of that. I know how long Movie God has been part of things, and so do you guys. It”s our game, and if people want to borrow the format, I should just see that as a sign that the format is irresistible. Why not bring it back and play it again with you guys? I”ll even bring back another game that was part of the podcast, Remake This!, which is fairly simple and explained at the end of this episode. For those of you who might not have played the games or heard them explained, the rules for both are simple.
For Movie God, you are declared Movie God, and you are given two things to compare. For example, Star Wars and Star Trek. As Movie God, you must eliminate one of those things completely. It is stricken from the record, and it never existed. That means you have to consider the ripples. If you eliminate the movie that turned someone into a movie star, then you have to consider the possibility that you might change that career, too. One thing survives, one thing is gone, and that”s all there is to it. It sounds simple, but the right two things can tie a true movie nerd in knots.
For Remake This!, you simply pick a film you think is impossible to remake, and then I have to come up with a filmmaker and the cast and the take right there on the spot. It”s a test to see how flexible I can be in my thinking as a movie nerd, and it can make me positively frantic.
Some good questions this week, and we”re shooting a new episode on Monday, so send your questions to video@hitfix.com as soon as possible. Remember… I don”t want to see the questions or hear them until we”re shooting, so don”t include me!
And here”s hoping this time around, Ask Drew sticks around. Thanks for watching.