We're continuing our 12 Days of The Movie Advocate Series today with 3 movies that we would love to make if we had no obstacles.
Miranda's List:
3. Careers: The Movie 
Careers is a board game designed to be an alternative to Life and Monopoly. Life has a standard “American Dream” goal: a family of pegs and a house that is paid off. For Monopoly, you need a pile of money and fewer friends than when you started playing. In Careers, you set your own formula of hearts for love, stars for fame and $$$s for money. I have a small collection of these games. I still think they’re fun to play with friends, especially when you can find things like the space explorer spot “Meet Mars lady - 10 hearts” adorable.
The way I see it, the movie has two ways it could go.
1. The creator James Cooke Brown’s story of staying up late designing the game on his own time, as well as its changes throughout the years. Either a documentary or probably James Franco could play him. See Readymade article here:
http://www.readymade.com/magazine/article/designing_his_own_careers
2. The lawsuit over the 90s remake called Careers for Girls, the patronizing brainwashing tool for preteen girls with dumbed-down or belittling career choices. Thinking it could be a legal drama. It crumples my heart when I see that the Super Mom career requires a liberal arts degree to be free to enter.
2. Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
A moment with Wikipedia and IMDB tell me that Alexie did make a PG-13 movie called Smoke Signals. Hello, #1 on the Netflix list. What I would wish for is this: an insanely popular movie for kids based on The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. I want kids everywhere to get this message: life is hard, but you can transcend your circumstances, whatever they are.
Additional reading
1. The Persian Pickle Club by Sandra Dallas
This one actually might happen. Now, I admit a bias here. Also, Justin and I live in Georgetown, Colorado where we share the streets with famed Colorado author Sandra Dallas. Her novel The Persian Pickle Club focuses on a group of women in Depression-era Kansas who form a quilting circle. In part, it is a mystery, but the main themes are friendship and kinship between women in differing circumstances. The story unfolds in a world that I thought was truly rich and interesting. Also, it caused me to make ham and grits with red-eye gravy three times in a week.
Word on the street is that this movie is in negotiation. If some astute movie maker out there set for a Google Alert for “Persian Pickle Club movie” and is reading this, (hello!) do contact me. My mother, Cindy Harp, would be perfect as an advisor to the production as far as accurate quilts and stitch coaching. She’s currently the president of the board of directors of the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum in Golden. She can get you in touch with Denver-based quilters to round up as many extra hands as you need. Let’s make this movie happen!
Look: I know that this might sound like the opposite of a normal Movie Advocated story. I know you’re a smart, hip, movie-loving person. Wouldn’t you watch a movie that is basically a period murder mystery that you could enjoy with your mother or grandmother?
Justin's List:3. We3
There is apparently an unproduced screenplay adaptation of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's comic, We3 sitting in a desk somewhere in Hollywood. We3 is an excellent comic, and would lend itself to a really entertaining movie. The plot is essentially Homeward Bound plus The Terminator as 3 weaponized pets fight their way home.
2. Giraffes on Horseback Salads
I'd need a time machine for this one... Legend has it that Salvador Dali wanted to make a movie with The Marx Brothers. It's best to let Dali's script speak for itself:
The "Surrealist woman" is lying in the middle of a great bed, sixty feet long, with the rest of the guests seated around each side. Along the bed, as decorations, are a group of dwarfs caught by Harpo. Each is supported on a crystal base, decorated with climbing flowers. The dwarfs stay as still as statues, holding lighted candelabras, and change their positions every few minutes.
While love tears at Jimmy's heart, Groucho tries to crack a nut on the bald head of the dwarf in front of him. The dwarf, far from looking surprised, smiles at Groucho in the most amiable way possible. Suddenly in the middle of dinner, thunder and lightning begin inside the room. A squall of wind blows the things over on the table and brings in a whirl of dry leaves, which stick to everything. As Groucho opens his umbrella, it begins to rain slowly.
Cinematic gold.
1. A Huge 10 Part Ken Burns Style Documentary About the History of Comic Books
Maybe it's just my love for comics coming out here, but I think that a Big Important documentary about comics history is missing. It would fit nicely in with Burns' own Jazz and Baseball as another uniquely American institution. If I were going to make this, I'd start with an hour on the great old newspaper comic strips like Little Nemo and Krazy & Ignatz, move on to the creation of Superman and the Golden Age of comics, then continue like that through the DC New 52 relaunch that happened this year.
Please note, that before I settled on this list, Day 3 was going to be "3 Movies that would make Sweet Video Games." Ever the stalwart trooper, Luke actually made his list, here it is:
Luke's list, in no order other than the order that they came to him, but numbered just the same:
3. Bedknobs and Broomsticks or Twin Peaks:
I think either of these movies would make brilliant "Kings Quest" or "Monkey Island" Style Adventure games. Pointing and clicking around the bizarre locales, finding things and putting them on other things to finally open that door. You know, when games used to be so tedious we weren't sure whether or not we understood the term "fun."
2. Sliders
Sliders may not be a movies, but I think it's being divided into episodes would serve itself well if ever adapted into a "Kingdom Hearts" style ... whatever the heck kind of game that was. And instead of mashing up Disney and Final Fantasy, they could mash up Sliders and Quantum Leap!
1. Casshern
Explosions, super armies, and a big sort of undead boss fight at the end? Sounds like either a Castlevania or Devil May Cry type game to me! Seriously though, this movie is basically already a video game, so I don't really know how well that would work. But it sure would look pretty!