I am currently in the process of writing "A Hattington Christmas Story" which is going to be a parody/tribute of the beloved holiday classic, "A Christmas Story". I've had the idea for this rattling around in my brain for a couple of years and now I'm finally writing it out. I've blogged before a bit of how we try to make our parodies fresh as well as really portray the original material in a good light. This is no easy task and we really do put quite a lot of thought as well as some research into these types of stories, maybe more so than the mainstream "parody" movies do (i.e. Superhero Movie). I'll share with you a little bit of my process so far.Over the past couple of weeks, I have had several long discussions with Steve, Michael, Andy and my wife, Michelle (she does the voice for Blonde) about exactly how I should tackle this particular project. As you will remember with "Hatman Clause" I took more of the base concept from the source material and wrote something entirely new and different. Well, with this I want it to be more close to the source material, and yet still tell an original story. Which as you might guess is going to be like a tightrope act in order for it to work.
So, in these various discussions I picked the brains of my fellow 3twins-ians and asked, "what scenes from the movie should we portray?" and "what should we try to shy away from or more or less alter in a way?". I'm not going to give you a whole lot of spoilers for the answers we came up with, because, where's the fun in that. However, I will give a few teasers as to what I've come up with:
A Christmas Story was set in the 1940's and was about a man recalling a particularly memorable Christmas from his past. Well, the approach I'm taking with my 3twins tribute version is: Setting it in the 1980's and it will be Hatman recalling a particularly memorable Christmas from his past. So, the story will have the same "feel" and we can still reference '80's things like the movie referenced '40's things.
The next question was, "Do we have our regular cast of characters play parts in this?" Or "Should we try to extrapilate a past for Henry Hattington out of what we already know and therefore, certain characters (i.e. Leppy, Indigo, Blonde...) who appear in nearly every single issue will be absent from this story?" And the answer we agreed on is the latter, many of our regular cast will not be in "A Hattington Christmas Story". However, I am working in new characters that will somewhat "fill the shoes" of the absent cast members as well as a surprise here and there for a few cameo's from people we have met in the Hatman universe.
As you can guess, this will be a bit of a departure from our normal adventurous style, however, I really hope that when it goes online, it will feel like a warm tribute to the classic Christmas movie that is number one for many people.
-Jason
If only Henry had a little brother who could always be bundled up in a snowsuit whenever they're walking around outside... we could call him "The Abominable Clothes Man!"
ReplyDeleteThen in the end the temp would go up to 90 degrees F all the snow would melt in late-December, the poor little Abominable Clothes Man would suffer from heat stroke and the entire issue would turn into a PSA against global warming :)
perhaps, when you read my first draft of the script you'll be pleasantly surprised that I had already incorporated something along those lines :) But not the global warming thing, because back in the '80's weren't they warning about the coming of a new ice age?
ReplyDeleteI wonder if both theories are correct then does that mean everything will just cancel itself out? lol