The Constitutionality of Storyboarding
With a tip of the hat to Gilda Radner’s old SNL character Emily Litella, I present this blog entry on the constitutionality of storyboarding:
America has a serious question to answer about storyboarding. I’m not talking about whether or not storyboard artists should join the writer’s guild and go on strike this week, or about whether “storyboard” is supposed to be written as one word or two. I’m talking about the more serious issue of whether or not storyboarding amounts to torture. Somewhere, in a parallel two-dimensional universe, I imagine last week’s Attorney General confirmation hearing of Michael Mukasey looked something like this:
What? Water boarding? Ohh. Nevermind.
(This thought popped into my head shortly after I woke up this morning, and it wouldn’t go away until I posted it. Don’t know why.)
Comments
Brilliant. Simply brilliant.
Posted by: Kevin | November 5, 2007 9:28 AM
Well, it made me laugh.
Posted by: Miles | November 5, 2007 9:49 AM
As a filmmaker I can tell you that storyboarding most definitely DOES amount to torture, and that if it isn’t unconstitutional, it certainly should be.
Posted by: Andrew | November 5, 2007 10:29 AM
This is genius! I am glad you were able to work it all out on the web. I hate it when an idea gets lodged with no outlet.
Posted by: Jordan | November 5, 2007 10:34 AM
I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t even know what waterboarding was until last week when I was linked to a video showing the technique in detail.
To me, the name “waterboarding” sounds pretty harmless. It sounds like snowboarding but on the water. Scary.
Posted by: Jack | November 5, 2007 1:38 PM
Sorry, David, but this post inappropriately makes light of America’s ongoing war crimes. That waterboarding is torture is non-controversial. Mukasey is unwilling to admit that waterboarding is torture solely because he would then be compelled to indict Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld for the war crimes of which they are guilty under U.S. and international law.
In other words, Mukasey is an accessory to war crimes and Congress an enabler to dictators. This isn’t about waterboarding vs. storyboarding. It’s about the creation of a dictatorship where once we had a democracy. In such times, trivial comedy is a “bread and circuses” distraction, not a help.
Posted by: PeaceLove | November 5, 2007 5:18 PM
I’m always disappointed when a light-hearted post is taken the wrong way by my fellow readers. I remember reading the comments on the post from a while back where David commented on how an (IBM?) advert reminded him of the WTC Towers with smoke pouring out and how much flak he copped from that. Then there was the one talking about militant groups’ logos (which I thought was a great idea, by the way), and then just recently the “Is this racist?” post which was pulled before I was able to read it - I can only imagine what happened there. I’d also suspect that his inbox gets messages a lot nastier than the comments here.
Just because the subject matter might be a bit heavy, it doesn’t mean you can’t take a light hearted look at it (or a completely different, tangential look, as in the “logos” post).
For the record, I hadn’t heard about this before and so it has at least provoked one reader to find out more about this serious topic.
Posted by: nickf | November 5, 2007 8:30 PM
Brilliant.
And somebody please put a bullet in my head the day that it really becomes “inappropriate” to use satire to explore and illuminate important issues.
Posted by: Ex-Fed | November 6, 2007 6:51 PM
Wonderful.
And really, the day that satire is no long an “appropriate” weapon to illuminate and attack wrongdoing, just shoot me in the head, please.
Posted by: Ex-Fed | November 6, 2007 8:18 PM
Best chuckle of the day. I love the actual storyboards. Thanks.
Posted by: yellojkt | November 6, 2007 10:11 PM
I agree with Ex-Fed on this one. Satire is a brilliant way to spotlight a troubling issue. Because of the post, at least one commenter (and probably many readers) got curious and discovered the truth.
Posted by: namowal | November 9, 2007 3:41 PM
Also, does anyone know why (at least here as it seems from news coverage of Hong Kong) no pictures or video are taken at court hearings but sketches (which the storyboards here reminded me of) are ok?
Posted by: Joe Bloggs | December 27, 2007 7:53 PM
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…REALLY!, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Posted by: Mel | August 18, 2010 1:28 PM