Dan's Papers - October 6, 2006 - Twentysomething...By David Lion Rattiner

They are thinking about making it illegal to use the cooking oil that McDonald's French fries and almost every other fried fast food product is cooked in. The reason is because this particular cooking oil is called partially hydrogenated cooking oil, which is, I guess, really bad for you. My buddy, Jim Rice, who is getting his masters at Brown University for chemical engineering, did his thesis on this particular subject at Northeastern University when I was in school with him. He managed to squeeze out 25 pages of jibber jabber which basically said, if you eat too much of this, you die. Jim is a very smart guy. I on the other hand, will eat a cell phone if you deep-fry it.

We all know that it is illegal to smoke in bars and we also know that Arnold Schwarzenegger is the governor of California. None of us ever thought we'd see this today, except for a couple of screenwriters from Hollywood.

I hate to be the guy that says this, but the guys that wrote the movie Demolition Man with Wesley Snipes, Sandra Bullock and Sylvester Stallone back in 1993 had some pretty impressive foresight. If you saw the movie, you may remember that in the movie Arnold Schwarzenegger is the President of the United States, all fast food is completely illegal except for Taco Bell, which dramatically changed its menu to meet the requirements of the future, and cigarettes are completely illegal. The writers of this movie, Daniel Waters, Robert Reneau and Peter M. Lenkov, should go into Wall Street and start predicting the future on stocks.

The movie also suggests that in the future, cursing will be illegal and that instead of using toilet paper in the bathroom, you use three seashells. However, the movie does not explain how those seashells are to be used. Which is good, because to be honest, I really don't want to know.

If you haven't figured it out already, I'm a movie guy. I'm not a TV guy, although I have to say, people start to go bananas when they talk about their shows, "Desperate Housewives," "Lost," "Nip/Tuck" or "Prison Break." They start jumping up and down when they talk about it. You don't see that with the movies lately. Maybe it's because they are making movies like Wicker Man.

The movies are what it is all about for me. In fact, I can't even imagine what the heck I would do with myself if there weren't movies. I'd be very bored with my life. It is because of movies that I can relate to a character when doing something. For example, I am James Bond when I order a martini, I'm Rocky when I go jogging, I try to be like Forrest Gump in almost every aspect of who he is and my car is the Batmobile. It is just the way things are. I don't relate to Spiderman, because it's just not realistic.

Recently however, movies have been kind of terrible. In fact, last week was the first time in my life where I seriously considered asking for my money back because the movie was so bad. And it was a Nicholas Cage movie, too. I'm talking about the guy in The Rock! Do not go see Wicker Man. I seriously would rather have looked at a chimpanzee chewing bubble gum for two hours than watch this movie. I would rather have spent two hours playing with my cell phone ring tones, deciding which ring tone best fits my own personality. I would rather have stared at a microwave oven for two hours. I love Nicholas Cage, he was so awesome in The Rock, but this movie was just "Oh my God this is the worst movie I have ever seen." The thing that really bothered me about seeing this was that a friend recommended that I see it because her friend said it was good. Just having a two distant connection with a person who liked Wicker Man felt weird to me.

The best movie that I saw this year was Snakes On A Plane, and that movie was supposed to be terrible. But you knew that going in. It embraced its terribleness, which made it a good movie.

The Hamptons Film Festival is exciting to me for two reasons. The first is that it gives you something to get excited about in the fall in the Hamptons and the second reason is because it increases my chances of the casting director for the next James Bond film to see me and then chase me down the street and beg me to be the next James Bond. I'd casually tell him that I was interested and he'd invite me for a drink and I'd order mine from the bartender like this, "I'll have a Vodka martini. Shaken. Not stirred."