DAY 5 – Saving Mr. Banks

“You sign this right now, or I’ll cut your stupid English bitch-face right off your stupid English bitch-face.” – Tom Hanks

OH MAN! FINALLY!

I think that I, like pretty much every single other person on the planet, has been waiting with bated breath to have this one simple question answered: “How did they get the film rights to the Mary Poppins books?”

Dear readers, I’m sure that you, like me, have had many horrible sleepless nights pondering this one question. It has gnawed at you. Eaten you from the inside. You try to enjoy your life, you go through the motions, but really, what’s deep inside you is the burning question. “How did they do it? How did the Disney corporation get P.L. Travers to sign that document?” You’re looking at the menu at the restaurant but all you see is release forms and when the waiter comes you just scream in her little, witless face, “DO YOU KNOW!? DO YOU KNOW HOW THEY DID IT?”

You, like me, I’m sure, have written piles of letters. Sent emails. Filled out comment cards at Disney World. “TELL US!” we all scream in unison, write in large print. “TELL US HOW. IF YOU COULD TELL US IN THE FORM OF A BIG BUDGET MOVIE STARRING TOM HANKS AS WALT DISNEY, IT WOULD BE EVEN BETTER, BUT REALLY, YOU COULD JUST TELL ME PERSONALLY I DON’T CARE!”

Well, my dearest friends, we can officially stop begging ride operators in the Epcot center, groveling at the feet of employees at the Disney store. The company has finally made a film to pat themselves on the back for a job well done on making a movie 50 years ago, and they called it Saving Mr. Banks. 

Thank Christ. I was beginning to think I might die not knowing. If Hell could burn any hotter, I don’t know how.

So, the movie does star Tom Hanks as Walt Disney, which is cute. I never met Mr. Disney but I’m pretty sure he had to be exactly like Tom Hanks. Then we have Emma Thompson as giant bitch P.L. Travers, who is apparently also a little australian girl with a really alcoholic Colin Farrell father who never appears to be drunk, but we know he is, because he coughs blood up a lot, and you know, that’s what people do when they’ve been drinking.

Anyway, blah blah blah, Tom Hanks makes Emma Thompson get on a horse, B.J. Novak and Jason Schwartzman write all the songs from Mary Poppins (this part was fun because you get to see Jason Schwartzman sing songs from Mary Poppins) and then she finally signs the document because Walt Disney manipulates her traumatic childhood experiences into a reason to sign her books away. Or something like that.

Teaches you to rip off things that aren’t out of copyright, Walt. Yeah, better go remake some more ancient European Fairy Tales, turns out living authors are just horrible, and you have to like, talk to them and stuff. Yuck!

I’m really looking forward to the sequel, “Saving Mr. Hanks,” where Tom Hanks has to get Tom Hanks to sign over his autobiography so Tom Hanks can star as Tom Hanks in the film version.

NOTES:

1) Paul Giamatti again?! This man will literally take any job, and I don’t blame him.

2) I thought Mary Poppins was from like the 40’s, not the 60’s. I think I might be stupid.

3) I was really hoping that, when P.L. Travers forces her way into the premiere at the chinese theater, the movie would just continue with a full-uncut viewing of Mary Poppins, with like a frame around the screen, so it could be a movie within a movie. I know someone will end up making this version on Youtube.

4) I hope Disney makes a movie explaining the making of Mighty Joe Young. Would love to take a behind the scenes fictional look at the group-think insanity that must have produced that piece of shit.