Gary Larson’s The other side doesn’t seem like the best candidate for a feature film adaptation, considering it doesn’t contain any real narrative. But in the late ’80s, the iconic daily one-panel comic almost made it to the big screenthanks to Alan Rudolph, the celebrated director of unconventional films such as Mrs. Parker and the vicious circle And Mortal Thoughts.
Not much is known about the unproduced film, although thanks to actor Dirk Blocker we got a taste of what it might have looked like. In 2021, the Brooklyn Nine-Nine Star shared photos of a Wide side He recalls that although the project “didn’t progress,” the actors “laughed a lot and met the great Gary Larson.”
In addition to these vaguely cursed photos, Rudolph revealed The AV Club that his plan was to shoot a “sketch-based narrative with a loose story. Basically an examination of everyday life in which humans, non-humans and objects alike occupy (the space) with competing bizarreness.”
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How do you turn all this into a Hollywood script? The details are still a bit unclear, but the moderators of The The best films that were never made Podcasts, Producer Stephen Scarlata and screenwriter Josh Miller somehow got their hands on a copy of Rudolph’s script. Together with guest Paul Scheer, the podcasters provided some additional details about the Wide side Film – and it sounds like it could have been a total disaster.
As Miller described it, the script “closest to the story” is about an academic named Professor Henderson who is trying to develop an all-encompassing theory of existence in order to win something called the “Big Answer Grant.” To unlock the mysteries of life as we know it, Henderson (played by Night Court‘s John Larroquette during a test shoot) puts on a pith helmet and heads into the jungle, where he soon encounters an elephant wielding a knife, just like in the comic.
Gary Larson
Meanwhile, fellow academics Miller and Smith are also looking for the “big answer” and decide to travel to space. This allows the film to recreate some of Larson’s alien jokes. There is also a subplot in which “the monster from the black lagoon emerges from the jungle and hitches a ride into town with the Hunchback of Notre Dame… and they just wander around the film.”
In the end, “Miller and Smith screw the Martians, and the Martians come down to screw the Earth.” But then the Amazonian monster calms the alien invaders by assuring them that there will be “some changes” on Earth, resulting in “dogs rebelling against their masters” and “animals taking over.”
The problem with the script seems to be that it is just a continuous series of classic Wide side Jokes are retold in film form, which inevitably becomes tiring after a while. As Scheer emphasized, the story has “no engine” and is “at times aggressively unfunny.”
“They are only transcribed Wide side Cartoons,” Scheer explained. “They’re supposed to be funny, but they’re annoying. It’s like a delicious treat is being forced on you. After you’ve seen 10 of them, you think, ‘I’m done. I don’t need any more.'”
So maybe it is best that the Wide side The film was never made – although it served as the basis for some great cartoons, wall calendars and the world’s Thongs with dry humor.
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