The Sketch-of-the-Week Club!

April 27, 2003:

The Underground Lair

Notes

Theory

All I know so far is that this sketch will take place in an underground lair.

I'd like to extrapolate from what we know about megalomaniacal villains to determine what things are like in the Evil Lair when James Bond (or whoever) isn't around. I'd like this to differ from Austin Powers in that we don't have characters overtly making fun of the conventions (like Scott Evil) or providing humor from deviations from the conventions (like Dr. Evil).

I dunno. I'm just babbling at this point.

This just in: 50 things this scene could be about, from Peter.

Bob's Commentary

Excellent - I want to know how Evil Villains can can justify having a cat. The damn thing will constantly be walking on control panels and yowling during televised threats to the President and the litter box has got to totally stink up the underground lair. Not that I want to focus on a cat. I like exploring the reality of Evil Villians the same way I like the reality aspects of The Tick (Ben Edlund), Megaton Man (Don Simpson), The Flaming Carrot/The Mystery Men (Bob Burden), Top Ten (Alan Moore, Gene Ha, Zander Cannon), Powers (Brian Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming), and Astro City (Kurt Busiek, Alex Ross, etc.) These comics all explore the 16 hours a day that superheroes aren't fighting crime. Hell, The Tick even does laundry (when he meets the Mole Men.)

It's like the Death Star/Constractor scene in Clerks. Someone's got to build and maintain the underground fortress, the villian needs a chef and some way of getting fresh food delivered, he's got to recruit flunkies somehow. What does the villian do after he's narrowly escaped certain death and he goes into hiding to lick his wounds before committing his next nefarious deed? Where does he go for inspiration? Does he hold focus groups with his minions to decide on the next Big Evil Project? Who's his mentor? Is there a Evil Big Brothers / Big Sisters?

More from Peter

My suggestion: it's not about the waffles. Even though this is set in an underground lair, we see characters pursuing fairly mundane objectives that we can identify with.

Now, one can argue that this is actually thwarting audience expectations -- i. e., when we see characters in an underground lair, by god, they'd better take over the friggin' world! -- so perhaps that can be the tilt of the scene. That is, we play up the setting of the Badass Underground Lair, and then the tilt is that this is actually going to be a scene about people pursuing decidedly non-grandiose objectives there.

Then, a second tilt would involve something going wrong that could only go wrong in a UL. "Whoops. Uh... why did that 'burninate' light start blinking?"

Footnotes