GET SMART! TOP SECRET HIGH-TECH GADGETS NO MOVIEGOER SHOULD BE WITHOUT

Who wouldn’t want a shoe phone?  Or a Cone of Silence?  The return of Get Smart makes us long for the days when super-spy gadgetry was all the rage, and every third movie wasn’t based on a television show that had already got it right anyway. 

Me, I ache for the day when the technology that produced the ejector seat and the knockout-gas pen will get going on something to take the guesswork out of going to the movies, and keep all of us from wasting valuable time.  Here, then, is a list of on-paper prototypes for some battery-operated wonders whose time has come. 

THE WILL IT SUCK-INATOR – Simply point the highly-sensitive coil conductor at the screen during the first twenty minutes of any movie, and an intricate matrix of voice-activated microchips begin to collate such factors as dialogue, actor intonation, sound effects and musical score.  The sound-coded information is fed through a database that includes sensors pre-programmed with the structural theories in Aristotle’s Poetics, Syd Field’s Screenplay, Robert McKee’s Story and Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers. Within less than half an hour, a printout on the device’s tiny screen weighs in on whether or not the movie is going to turn out to suck and whether or not you should get out while the getting is good.  Many practical uses for the filmgoer whose time is precious.  Also, since it provides ample reason to leave the theater early, it is particularly useful to those who are only there to get lucky.

THE POPCORN CAM – It looks like an ordinary box of popcorn, but in reality it is a sophisticated video camera which not only takes footage of the dipwad behind you who won’t shut up during the movie, but feeds his image via satellite to the movie screen itself in ten second intervals.  This effectively puts the annoying twit on a kind of cinematic Jumbotron that not only interrupts the movie but also allows everyone in the theater to feel your pain.  If all goes well, they will turn on the talker en masse, thereby potentially scarring him for life and instilling the momentary sense in all of us that life is occasionally fair. 

THE POCKET WATCHER – This tiny wonder allows its owner to enjoy all sorts of visual content on a screen no bigger than the display on one’s cell phone.   From TV dramas and comedy skits downloaded from the Internet to irreverent home-grown, YouTube-style quickies, the Pocket Watcher puts the power of choice in the viewer’s hands, foretelling a whole new way of interacting with entertainment and potentially eliminating anyone’s desire to ever sit through the insufferable three-act structure of inadequate movies ever again, thus putting an end to the communal experience of movie-going as we know it.   However, do not worry, for of all these gadgets, they tell me this is the one that is the furthest away from ever actually being available.  Well, thank God for that. 

James Napoli is an author and humorist who has also written and directed the award winning dramatic shorts “The Priests” and “Nobody Gets Hurt.”   He is a graduate of the London Film School.