Similes that may go nowhere...

Papa John's has made pizza creation an exact science. When you order a large pepperoni pizza, the dough is pre-measured, slapped out in a uniform way, sauced with an exact portion of sauce, topped with two cups of cheese, and pepperonis are placed in three rings; the outer ring should have 24 pepperonis, the second 16 and the third 6. The company has a distribution wing that delivers the same product to each store, and they procure their products from the same sources continually, thus guaranteeing that every time you order a pepperoni pizza, it will be exactly the same product that you ordered last month.

I'm all for quality control, and I understand its the goal of the pizza empire to assure that its product is uniform, that their customers can expect the same quality of pizza from any store they order, any time they order it. My guess is also that these exacting measures wind up saving the stores in food costs, etc. What I wonder is, if we were offered a taste test - Papa John's uniform pizza process as it stands today, or a pizza from John Schnatter's original pizzeria in Louisville, KY, which didn't have any of these systems in place to ensure uniformity of product, which would we prefer?

My money is on the original product. While I know what to expect from a pepperoni pizza at Papa John's, I also think back to years ago when we first heard about the franchise, and it strikes me that I liked the pizza back then a lot more than I do now. Has the quest for uniformity erased the unique touches a creative person may have felt inclined to add to the product when those strictures weren't in place? While I agree that there's a lot of science you can consider while cooking, at the end of the day good food is more art and passion than science.

Like Papa John's pizza, I think some producers have discovered that they have 'perfected' the movie industry and on-screen storytelling in general, and that there is a uniform product that can be dispensed to theaters nationwide that will guarantee 'x' return in box office proceeds. Light hearted romances are a prime example of my point - it's exceedingly difficult for me to discern any real tangible difference between The Ugly Truth, How To Lose a Man in 10 Days, or The Proposal. It's not that the films are bad, it's just that they follow a formula that's been honed in Hollywood over the past 20 years or so into an extraordinarily predictable film. The jokes are a little different, but you know that two people are thrust into an awkward situation and fall in love, and they do so at a stunningly similar pace.

There's no question that people remember Gone With the Wind and Casablanca as remarkable love stories and treasures of the movie industry. Which romance film of the past twenty years lives up to those older films now? I would think that a truly special movie is rare in any day, and I think it's true that when Casablanca came out studios were releasing a film a week, so perhaps it's inevitable that with so many monkeys typing at once you'd be bound to get a copy of Hamlet or two. What does our generation have to look forward to, in terms of quality film? What makes a film unique storytelling experience?

What's the process these movies follow to get made? Are these uniform films developed by a committee? While playing an online game I had the fortune to briefly meet the author of the blog Kung Fu Monkey, who writes and produces the TV show Leverage and also wrote the original script for the movie Transformers. I remember asking him what the storyline was, since the film was still in production at the time, and he told me that after everyone in Hollywood had their say about it, the film would be nothing like his original draft. Does every script get shredded so badly by Hollywood these days, that no matter how original or interesting the script initially was, it inevitably becomes cliche by the time it is released?