Wednesday, November 28, 2018

MoviePass: The Ongoing Saga (Part 9 of ?)

Well, I'm willing to admit when I'm wrong.

It seems that MoviePass actually did offer some movies on their app over Thanksgiving weekend, after all. In fact, for the first time since the unlimited days of August, my wife and I were both able to go to a movie theater, check in to movies on our apps, buy our tickets with our cards, and go see the movie together...ALL ON THE SAME VISIT.

It's a Thanksgiving miracle! MoviePass working AND offering something other than Indivisible!

I mean, full disclosure: we went to a 10:45am show and got there at 10:15am right when the theater opened to make sure we got our tickets before they shut the app down for the day.

Still counts.

After The Legendary MoviePass Two Weeks of One Nation, Indivisible, With No Liberty or Justice For All...there may be cinematic light at the end of the tunnel.

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And so on a lighter note, this is just kinda hilarious.

I didn't receive this new email promotion, but many folks I know did. MoviePass is joining forces with Winc Wines to offer $30 off plus free shipping on your next order from Winc Wines.

I mean, it's way too easy to make jokes about Winc and MoviePass finding synergy in their efforts to get people so drunk on one company's wine that they forget their account with the other company is mostly useless. Or to say MoviePass wants you drunk all the time so you'll stay home rather than try to go out to the movies. So let's not do those.

It never fails to blow my mind out the front of my face when I see brands still willing to partner with MoviePass. I mean...these companies have seen the Internet, right? Or even had experiences IRL? Because online or IRL, your brand is irreparably tainted when you team up with a company that generates so much ill will from their customers.

Here, let me offer some assistance to Winc Wines. I will come up with an ad slogan they can use at no charge. Free, I promise. Use it, Winc, I won't sue! Here you go:

Winc Wines: The MoviePass of Wines.

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And while we're on tangents this week, have you heard of Amazon Mechanical Turk? (Yes, yes, I promise we'll eventually get to the mega-scandalous MoviePass stories this week about no one using their accounts and the company finally legitimately getting sued in a class action lawsuit by their disgruntled customers. Be patient!)

Basically, it's Amazon's lowest-common-denominator crowdsourced online workforce. Anyone worldwide can join and get paid pennies a minute for endless hours of online work of all sorts. It's how cheapskate (and not-so-cheapskate) companies begrudgingly farm out online work they can't get robots to perform. Yet. (You heard about Amazon warehouse jobs? Well, these are the online equivalent of those.)

I told you that to tell you this: I always wondered how MoviePass handled ticket verification back when that was a thing. Did they really look at every single ticket every single one of their millions of members submitted through the app?

Yes.

And I just randomly found a reddit page for the Amazon turk (Mturk) employees who evaluated these tickets!

It's basically a failblog where these (massively underpaid, presumably disgruntled) Mturk workers submitted pics of the sloppiest ticket verification submissions. It's hilarious on that level, but also fascinating to see what the screen looks like when they evaluate these tickets.

It's 2018. You don't have to wonder about anything anymore. You can find out how the sausage is made, every step of the way!


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I have a coworker who casually mentioned she never uses her MoviePass anymore. She's not alone.

But at the same time, she mentioned that she calculated how many tickets she got with her annual plan back in the unlimited days and decided it already paid for itself, so she's content to let her year run out without making a big deal of it. She's being rational and reasonable about her MoviePass account. Unlike a certain writer...

...of this blog.

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And yeah, yeah, the big news this week is the class action lawsuit against MoviePass is officially for real, for realz.

I'm sympathetic. MoviePass yanked the rug out from below a whole lot of us back in August and they weren't tactful about it. It was needlessly sloppy and mean.

Why can't we all be more like my coworker, who's not angry unlimited is over, but just glad it happened?

Why can't MoviePass and the rest of us just get along?

[checks the MoviePass app]

"GAH! 12:30pm and they ALREADY got 'THERE ARE NO MORE SCREENINGS AT THIS THEATER TODAY' up for every theater! They said I'd be able to check in to Green Book today, those lousy bait-and-switchers! I can't get to the box office the MINUTE they open EVERY time, give me a break! How do I join in on this lawsuit, I'M SUING!!!"


-B.P. Kasik/Phony McFakename

I wrote the book on MoviePass TWICE, once from a positive perspective, and once from a more realistic perspective. I also wrote a horror book about a sort-of evil MoviePass.

My "legitimate" books are on Amazon here and my Phony McFakename books are on Amazon hereI exist on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram but I only really post regularly on Instagram.

Wednesday, November 21, 2018

MoviePass: The Ongoing Saga (Part 8 of ?)

Light news week for MoviePass.

Just kidding!

As always, they're going bankrupt.

And as always, no it's really happening this time!

And as always, the company will keep slithering along, shedding enraged customers like a snake shedding skin.

The part about them firing their entire HR department (two people) was sketch, but nothing too remarkable. This is the world we live in, where crazy-pants and crazy-pills stories about corporate shenanigans are just business as usual.

There are murmurs around the edges of these stories and on the message boards of people getting tidbits of information from customer service that changes are on the horizon. There are always changes on the horizon. Three-tiered plans, the return of unlimited, the company finally lightening up on the schedule limits, etc. Wars and rumors of wars. We shall see.

Events like this will affect us in the future, for the future is where you and I shall spend the rest of our lives!

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Despite MoviePass parent Helios & Matheson's share value going from $5000+ to $.01 from Fall of 2017 to Fall of 2018, a more interesting article this week is one saying MoviePass is on the verge of financially breaking even.

By their magic of nonstop customer screwovers and app shutdowns (multiple times this past week my wife and I have been presented with different movies/showtimes at the same time on the app, so I can not say this enough: the problem with media stories about MoviePass is that no journalists are actually using the service so they have no idea of the nonstop insane stuff going on with the app), they've got their customers down to seeing .8 movies a month. Good job?

But at the same time, they say they have to get every customer down to seeing .55 movies for the company to break even. A company initially offering customers 30 movies per month needs its customers to see .55 movies per month to survive.

Wha?

Let's break this down. At every customer paying $10 a month and average nationwide ticket cost at $9, .8 of a $9 ticket is $7.20. So they're currently making $2.80 off every customer. Speculation ranges that they have between one and two million customers. Let's be conservative and say one million. So they're making at least $2.8 million a month.

$2.8 million a month. That's not enough to break even? Cut your ridiculous CEO's salary and rehire your HR department!

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I live in a town with a random arthouse theater (That mostly plays mainstream movies, thanks for nothing!), an Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, and a Regal.

I've written about Alamo extensively before, in book and blog form (TLDR: Mixed feelings). But the Regal gets almost every movie (sometimes showing more art movies than the local "arthouse" theater) and it's reliable. Alamo is slowly lurching toward a subscription service, but Regal is still dragging their feet and remaining noncommital.

If Regal gets their act together and makes their subscription plan reasonably priced, I'm dropping MoviePass like the bad habit it is and getting Regal.

At least, I hope that's what I'll do. Am I addicted to this cinemadness? Am I too far gone? Has MoviePass infected us all? Is it too late?

Probably.

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Shifty fee-happy lawsuit-bait MoviePass-competitor Sinemia gets a pretty decent review here, which explains their features and pros and cons mostly objectively. Though they say 3D movies are available on the unlimited plan and they are not. Once again making me wonder if the people who write about these services in the media actually use them.

Sinemia recently offered a couple different price plans for people that only go to the movies once a month. One of them is $4 a month for one weekday ticket. Sounds like a good deal, right? Add a $2 processing fee and a $2 convenience fee and that's a $8 ticket.

$8 a ticket. That's $1 more expensive than a Tuesday ticket at full price at our local Alamo.

Great deal, Sinemia!

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Alright, here comes Thanksgiving weekend. May you and yours have a nice holiday together with slow-burn tension and intermittent eruptions of rage and resentment and happiness!

My MoviePass prediction: they will block all ticket purchases by any means necessary. There is no way anyone will get any usage of their MoviePass accounts this weekend.

Godspeed, any of you maniacs who attempt to get a ticket before next Monday! This will be the weekend where they will generate the most ill will and account cancellations ever!

Huzzah!

(UPDATE: So far my prediction is dead-on. Today is Wednesday, November 21, and an actual wide-release movie is listed on the schedule for checkin today, Bohemian Rhapsody. And I noticed our local theater box office is opening at 9:45am today for early holiday showings. Means you can probably snag a ticket before they shut the app down for the day, right? Hahaha, nope. 9:04am and there are already "NO MORE SCREENINGS AT THIS THEATER TODAY." Stay golden, MoviePass!)


-B.P. Kasik/Phony McFakename

I wrote the book on MoviePass TWICE, once from a positive perspective, and once from a more realistic perspective. I also wrote a horror book about a sort-of evil MoviePass.

My "legitimate" books are on Amazon here and my Phony McFakename books are on Amazon hereI exist on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram but I only really post regularly on Instagram.

Tuesday, November 20, 2018

"Eric Roberts 3: Lord of the Screen" Deleted Scenes

My third and final volume in the Eric Roberts trilogy is now complete and available. The truth* has finally been told!

Oh, and I don't think I mentioned this anywhere online, but I also published Blog Cash-In 2 and the final entry in my PDEMF! trilogy, Please Don't Eat My Face 3!: Florida Strong. There, they've been announced. That's the extent of my interest in marketing these days.

Moving on, here are some bits of truth from Eric Roberts 3: Lord of the Screen that got trimmed at the outline stage. All of the below things actually happened, they just didn't quite fit in the book's narrative. Enjoy!


2008: Witless Protection

Eric Roberts witnesses a convenience store robbery and the cops overreact to this minor crime and put Roberts in witness protection. Roberts knows he could do better than these coppers, since he'd done undercover and contract work for law enforcement before. So he decides to formally join the police. 

It was also to study up for a movie part, but they didn’t need to know that. The police were too giddy with excitement to have him around to care about the reason he was there.

He discovers they’re terrible at keeping secrets and gets an inside look at the workings of L.A. politics and politicians, political-thriller-shenanigans ensue...



2008: Law & Order: Criminal Intent

Roberts is deposed as a witness in a convenience store robbery. Chaos ensues as a rogue hypnotist hypnotizes everyone in the courtroom. “I have criminal intent!” he screamed.


2008: The Dark Knight

A guy attacks the police station wearing black knight armor. Roberts defeats him, chases him down, catches him by the La Brea tar pits.

It’s revealed that the dark knight is really the mailman. He attacked the police station to lure Roberts out. He wasn’t killed in the first book, after all. He screams at Roberts, cursing him for ruining his career by inventing email.

Roberts apologizes and they become friends.


2008: Dark Honeymoon

Roberts decides he hasn’t been spending enough time with his wife (that attempted romantic weekend at the cabin kinda backfired what with all the death and destruction, so he never had a proper honeymoon), so they go to Hawaii. He’s surprised by the dark-armored knight leaping out. “Now I shall have vengeance!” He attacks and they sword-fight and ruin several people’s honeymoons and volcanoes are involved, mucho mayhem.


2010: First Dog

There is a rumor that Roberts appeared on Celebrity Rehab for allegedly using drugs again.

You can take a wild guess as to whether or not this is true.

(It’s not.)

The truth is, he sent his cyborg to appear on that show so he could accept a top-secret mission from the President. He was called in by the Prez to train the Prez’s dog.

“I’ve never done that, man!”

“You can do anything. You’re Eric Roberts!”

“True.”


2011: Chillerama

Roberts visits a graveyard of refrigerators. You can guess what happened next.


2012: Bullet in the Face

(Original version:) Roberts still fumes every now and then about not being able to stop 9/11. But he wanted to do what he could. So he stormed into Pakistan and shot Osama bin Laden in the face. He called the president and told him where the body could be found and told him he could take credit for it. Then he walked into the sunset. This had been a good day. A bullet in the bad guy’s face, a smile on Roberts' face.


2012: Stealing Las Vegas

For all his great deeds, he still didn’t have mad bank. So he decided to pull a casino heist.

His wife leaves him in response. “Casino heistery? I don’t even know you anymore, Eric Roberts!”

Roberts goes forward with the greatest heist of all time, which I can neither confirm or deny he actually did himself. (He did.)


2012: The Dead Want Women

Roberts is lonely. He reads a book on mad science and brings some classic Hollywood actors back from the dead to compare notes on acting with them. The zombies want women.

“I do too, guys! But what I really want is my wife back.”

“What happened?”

“I pulled a casino heist.”

“Oh, she didn’t want you to live a life of crime?”

“Nah, she resented me for not bringing her in on it.”

They sympathize and have dudebro adventures.


2012: Christmas in Compton

(Original version:) Roberts rides around in a Google driverless car. Word hit the street that Roberts was the real killer of bin Laden. His gangbanger neighbors back in L.A. think he's cool, so they invite him over for Christmas. It's nice. They make him a nice vegan meal out of respect for his dietary preferences and toast with some nice non-alcoholic sparkling cider.


2013: High Heels, Low Standards

He tries wearing high heels to get into character and understand his female co-workers.

His standards for male footwear go way down afterward. “Anything’s better than heels!” he said.

He then goes out for a mission and discovers a secret underground lab.

Scientist tells him Roberts’ blood is the cure to cancer.

Since his blood was the strongest in the world and the blood-curse against using his gift of flight had cancerous qualities, once it was purged of those qualities, it became the anti-cancer. (Convoluted explanation with gratuitous jargon.)

“Not bad.”

While fiddling around, Eric Roberts invents Dolly the sheep, the first cloned animal, and clones the first human stem cells.

And thus, Eric Roberts cures cancer.


Revelation Road 2: The Sea of Glass and Fire

(Original version:) Roberts takes a family road trip and it goes horribly wrong. Highway turns into glass and catches fire in the 2013 16,000 acre wildfire burn in Colorado. His wife Jana rescues everyone.


2013: Wrong Cops

Roberts dials the police when someone robbed his house. The wrong cops show up.


2013: Assault on Wall Street

Roberts gets angry at investors after he noticed all his savings were destroyed in the 2008 crash. He knows the real cause was his decision not to act in movies, but still...those bankers on Wall Street bore some of the blame, too. So he rampages. The script for this movie was actually based on his deeds. It's practically a documentary.


2013: Paranormal Movie

Roberts has a ghost in his house. He tries to record it and finds the ghost doing stand-up comedy and making fun of The Dead Want Women. He calls the Ghostbusters. They’re busy. So he busts the ghosts himself. He tries to start his own paranormal elimination service but gets sued. Legal drama spoofery ensues.


2013: The Devil's Dozen

Roberts meets the Devil in a grocery store. They have an act-off. The devil loses and angrily storms off with a dozen eggs.


2013: The Hot Flashes

The devil wasn’t gonna go down like a punk, though. He starts infecting Roberts with the heat of Hell’s flames. Reveals he was the one who burned down Roberts’ house all those years ago.


2014: Camp Dread

Getting sick of the big-city drama, Roberts heads out to the country. But he’s scared of life in the country. He dreads it, after getting attacked by the hillbilly rednecks. He works to overcome his dread of camping.


2014: It's Not a Date

Roberts reconnects with his estranged wife. They get together. But it’s not a date. Roberts is sad, walks home alone.


2014: Halloween Hell

On Halloween eve, the devil takes another shot at Roberts. Roberts takes him down like Bugs Bunny, the devil has Acme devices that he uses to attack but they all backfire. Extended cartoony chase/back-and-forth.


2014: Janie Charismanic

Roberts starts dating a manic pixie dream girl named Janie. It's all very literary fiction-y, with the older male learning lessons about himself and coming to understand how shallow the youth of America are. Bla bla bla.


2014: Scenes from Powned

Annoying kids try to prank Roberts while he fights for justice. Hidden camera hijinx in classroom. Buncha nonsense.


Alternate 2015: Cowboys vs Dinosaurs

Roberts gets thrown back in time and discovers that dinosaurs walked the Earth during Wild West times. As he suspected.


2015: Devil Dogs

Someone asks Roberts why he’s acting in so many movies. He says he’s accumulating a small fortune to put his plan into effect.

It’s a secret (but we all know what it was, as we all know what Roberts finally managed in 2016).

Having been defeated over and over, the devil sends his dog after him, but Roberts is a master dog trainer, so was able to easily divert and stop the dogs’ attack. He then travels back to the present.


2015: Zombie Dream

(Original version:) Roberts’ old Hollywood zombies wake up from hibernation and tell him all about their random dreams.

“Pretty boring stuff, guys.”

“Dreams usually are.”

“It’s actions that count, not dreams.”

Showdown on an empty movie set for an alien movie.

Aliens raise zombies from the dead, Roberts recognizes this as the plot for Plan 9 as well as the original pitch for Walking Dead.

Defeats them.

“If you zombies thought you could beat me, you must have been dreaming!”


2015: L.A. Slasher

(Original version:) A few dozen people get murdered in L.A. Roberts takes his P.I. test and becomes a private investigator/lawyer/cop. So obviously, Roberts is on the case. He solves the murder and stops the killer. Roberts has a subway showdown with him. Then he randomly meets a dude who discount-prices things at a factory outlet. He’s known as “The L.A. Slasher.”


2015: Sicilian Vampire

The mafia reveals that they’re all secretly vampires. Roberts agrees to keep their secret as long as they don’t prey on humans and also reveals that he has vampire blood in a vial that he will drink in order to turn himself into a vampire in case his life is ever threatened by them.


2015: Sorority Slaughterhouse

The L.A. Slasher (the killer, not the discount seller) escapes prison and attacks a sorority. Roberts: “There are sororities in L.A.? I could understand Greek life in a small town where there’s nothing else to do, but here!?” Roberts saves the sorority, then lectures them on the frivolity of Greek life.

The mailman finds him.

“Time to stop screwing around and start fighting the gatekeepers of infinity!”

Roberts stops screwing around.


2015: The Human Centipede III (Final Sequence)

(Original version:) While doing Slamurai meditation to prepare for the fight, Roberts' 21 year old daughter interrupts and mentions Human Centipede, explains the concept.

“Man, what’s wrong with people?” He gets offered a role in the third one. He says “There was a SECOND?”

He says no.

“Do it dad, do it!”

He had been teaching Eric Roberts Jr. how to invent legendary inventions and do robotics wizardry.

So after he leaves to fight, ER Jr. programs Roberts' cyborg clone to act in Human Centipede 3 instead.

He was awfully proud of that prank.

Roberts Sr. took it in good humor and never revealed it wasn’t actually him in Human Centipede 3.


(This was deleted from the 2015 gatekeeper showdown scene after I changed the ending:)

The gatekeeper smiled. “And in this dimension, I am imbued with your powers, as I have accessed and drained them directly from your alternate reality counterpart.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Fast as you are, Mr. Roberts, in this world, I am faster.”

“Is that right?”

“It is right.”

Roberts pulled out the device from his pocket.

“Let’s risk all space and time!”

He pushed the button.

Time froze.

Roberts didn’t know if he’d just destroyed all spacetime. But he’d certainly put it all on pause.

Destroys glass wall so his twin is freed and pulls him out and shut the door before the gas started to pour down.

(I deleted this because resolving the final conflict with a time-stopping device was hacky. I needed to go weirder. And I did!)


2016: Maximum Impact

(Original version:) Someone comes up to Roberts at a bar and starts trash-talking Phat Girlz. Roberts punches him in the face with the hardest hit a human has ever been hit with. A tavern dweller gasps and says, “That was maximum impact!”

Roberts: “You got it. You mess with the bull, you get slugged in the face.”

Roberts walks away, then turned back.

“And by ‘bull,’ I mean ME, Eric Roberts.”


2016: Oiled Up

Roberts hit that guy pretty hard, but thinks he could still hit harder. So he tries weightlifting. Everyone in the place scrambles to be the one to oil up his perfectly chiseled figure. “Please, there’s plenty of me to go around!” Oiling ensues.


2016: Eyes of the Roshi

Roberts is floored to realize that the Pope’s prediction from 1984 came true. He really was in 40 movies in 2015. And that doesn’t even include his TV shows.

Roberts decides to study Buddhism again, . His highly venerated senior teacher in Buddhism--a roshi--develops vision problems. Roberts takes him to the optometrist.


2016: The Last Wizard

President Roberts bumming around in the parallel dimension where he never existed.

He misses Jana, but he just can’t handle being back in his home world where his beloved fellow celebrities keep dying. He needs a break. He DESERVES a break.

He visits every now and then. Since he acted that one time, in Relentless Justice, when he got his powers back, they’ve been clamoring for him to take political office in the parallel dimension.

He proves to be the best president ever.

None of them believe him when he tells them who the president is in the other reality.

The mailman tells him it’s time to come home.

(This was deleted when I realized - SPOILER - the original Roberts from this parallel world was freed and could be sent back there to take his rightful place.)


2017: Lux in Tenebris

Roberts reads first two Phony McFakename books about him and tracks down the author to talk to him.

“Eric Roberts! You’re amazing!” says Phony.

“I know.”

“I’ve been watching your last few movies! Las Vegas Vietnam: The Movie, The Terror of Hallow’s Eve, Fatties: Take Down the House, The Demonic Dead, Fake News, Get Naked!--"

“I know my movies, they’re all awesome. I came to talk about the book. About the books.”

“Oh. Come on in.”

They discuss what it all means.

Phony asks if he wants to negotiate for the rights.

“For the rights…to my own life story?”

“Uh…to the books, yeah.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so, pal.”


Deleted from 2018: Something

Maybe this isn't the best story. But that’s how it goes with the truth. It’s not always a good story.

You want a good story, try the “Fiction” section, bub!

But if you insist, let me wrap up all the threads you’re probably wondering about: Yes, Trump’s meeting with Kim Jong-un was arranged by Eric Roberts.


(And this last one's a MAJOR spoiler. It happened early in the book, then I forgot I wrote it and did something very much like it later in the book. So I deleted it and completely rewrote this section. This book was a mess. It took two heavy rewrites to get it to make any sense and then another couple heavy rewrites to make it good.)

Roberts is told by the Infinite to leave this world where he never existed.


“First things first, I ain’t leaving this world right away, not in the shape it’s in.”


The Infinite looked around. “I’m sorry to say, but this reality is in shambles. How do you plan to fix it?”

“By acting.”

The Infinite smiled. “Brilliant.”

So Eric Roberts flew down to the nearest movie studio, walking into the office of a depressed Universal Studios executive. The executive brightened up at the sight of Roberts and immediately hired him to star in a movie based on Roberts’ smile alone.

The film in question, Eric Roberts: The Movie, was shot and released within a month.

It was the highest-grossing film in that dimension’s history.

Smog and pollution disappeared.

Humanity’s morale went through the roof.

Roberts flew from city to city, taking a victory tour of joy as everyone cheered for him, crying:

“Hail to the mightiest, most charismatic actor in all the world!”

“Greatly to be praised!”

“Eric Roberts, you are the best!”

Roberts smiled, soaring up above the stratosphere. He looked down on the world. And saw that it was good.

Finally.

He smiled. “Alright, Infinite. Let’s do this. I’m ready to leave now.”

And Roberts gave up his flying ability of his own free will so he could return to our world and protect and grace us with his presence and performances.

Editor: I’m crying AGAIN!
Author: I know. It’s beautiful.

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If you thought these deleted scenes are bad, the actual book is even BETTER! (Because I cut this too-crazy stuff out and left the just-crazy-enough stuff in.)


-B.P. Kasik/Phony McFakename


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My "legitimate" books are on Amazon here and my Phony McFakename books are on Amazon hereI exist on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram but I only really post regularly on Instagram.