Is Sprockets the funniest script never made?
Genre: Comedy
Premise: When German nihilist and talk show host, Dieter, learns that his monkey is kidnapped, he must head to America to find him.
About: One of the most infamous projects never made, “Sprockets” was notoriously days from production when Mike Myers pulled out of the project (and a 20 million dollar payday). His problem, according to lore, was that he didn’t think the script was ready. More specifically, it is said that he felt his character, Dieter, was too passive. At this time, Mike Myers was one of the biggest comedy forces in the world. The project falling apart sent shockwaves through the industry. Rumor is that, in order to not get sued into an economic black hole, Myers was forced to make The Cat In The Hat for Universal as a make-good.
Writers: Mike Myers, Michael McCullers, and Jack Handey
Details: about 125 pages – written in 1999
Readability: Fast
Some have called this the funniest script never made.
I have read the script and I have two responses to that:
1) that may be true… but it also may not be… And b) don’t touch my monkey.
Nihilist German, Dieter, who believes that happiness is a worldwide sham, has the number one show in Germany, a talk show called Sprockets where he invites on strange German guests and dances with them. However, all is not rosy on Sprockets. His monkey and co-host, Klaus, hates him. And to make matters worse, Klaus is the only reason anyone watches his show.
So when Klaus disappears one day, it is a mad scramble on the Sprockets set since everyone knows, without Klaus, there is no Sprockets. Dieter soon receives a call from a scrambled voice saying unless he pays the titanic sum of $50,000, his monkey will be murdered. The kidnapper also sends a proof-of-life e-mail with with a picture of Klaus… which clearly shows the Hollywood sign in the background.
Klaus immediately heads to Los Angeles where he starts off by hiring a professional monkey finder named Daryl (Will Ferrell). Daryl ensures Dieter that while he’s never actually been successful at finding a monkey, he’s the best in the business.
Their primary target is David Hasselhoff, who’s somewhat of a rival to Dieter. Ever since Klaus stopped appearing on Sprockets, Baywatch has moved ahead of Sprockets as the top rated show in Germany. I mean, of course it has to be Hasselhoff, right? But when Dieter crashes the set of Baywatch to bust him, Hasselhoff gives him irrefutable proof that he was nowhere near Germany at the time of the kidnapping.
Dieter and Daryl decide that Plan B is to go to the FBI. But since they know the FBI won’t care about a kidnapped monkey, they tell them that Klaus is actually an overly hairy little boy. The FBI sets up a sting operation with a suspicious cabin in the woods tied to Hasselhoff (for which they inform Dieter that the only place they can adequately hide their wire is on his scrotum – a decision that backfires when, while walking to the cabin, Dieter is startled by a deer and pees himself) but when they get to the cabin, the FBI learn that Dieter has been lying this whole time and that Klaus is a monkey.
The FBI immediately arrest Dieter for lying and send him and Daryl to prison surrounded by a forest called “Snake Forest.” The two make a prison break but Daryl is immediately killed by a python. The cops say there’s no way Dieter made it much further and was clearly killed by snakes as well. Cut to Dieter taking a quick nap in the forest, using a coiled up python as a pillow.
Dieter can’t shake the feeling that Hasselhoff is somehow involved and confronts him at his home only to find…. A SECOND HASSELHOFF. This is Maurice Hasselhoff, David’s unknown twin. Maurice has been carefully planning to take over David’s perfect life. But he realized that Sprockets would always be a thorn in his side, competing for the best show in Germany, which is why he decided to kidnap Klaus – to lure Dieter to Los Angeles and kill him. Will Dieter be able to take him down? Maybe with a little dancing? The script is here so you can find out yourself!
I don’t know, man.
I think Mike Myers dropped the ball by not making this.
One of the reasons comedy is so frustrating is because you never truly know if something is funny until you try it out. And sometimes you can talk yourself out of something being funny before you try it. That seems to have happened here. Because this is easily funnier than 90% of the comedies we’ve seen in the past decade. EASILY. And it’s definitely better than any live action movies Michael Myers has made since 2000.
Here are some highlights:
– Dieter reading Nietzsche as a 10 year old boy.
– A flashback after his father died where we pull back to reveal Young Dieter and his mom eating on a coffin, accompanied by Dieter’s voice over, “We could not afford to bury Father so we used his coffin as a table. Mother was always very clever around the house.”
– Dieter on his mom: “I never told my mother I loved her. (beat) And with luck I never will.”
– An American reporter asks Dieter a question: “Dieter, is it true that you and Dick Van Patten, the father from ‘Eight is Enough,’ were once lovers?”
– An early exchange between Dieter and Daryl – DIETER: “I must find Klaus. Tell me everything.” DARYL: “Well, there is a secret society of horrible, despicable degenerates, sort of like a monkey underground. They do things to monkeys you couldn’t even imagine.” DIETER: “What, have sex with them?” DARYL: “Jeez, no! That’s awful. I never would have thought of that!”
– A chat at a Hollywood party with the love interest, Gena – GENA: “Hi. I’m really glad you could make it.” DIETER: “I never miss a decadent expression of bourgeois hyperbole.” GENA: “You mean a party? Do you always have to intellectualize fun?” DIETER: “In Germany, fun is for the elderly and the mentally deficient.”
– While getting a back rub, Dieter remembers Klaus – DIETER: (emotional) “This reminds me of the times Klaus would scratch my back.” DISSOLVE TO CLOSE-UP – A MONKEY’S PAW – Is scratching Dieter. DIETER: “Thank you, Klaus.” PULL BACK to see that Dieter is actually being scratched by one of the little monkey paw back-scratchers, which Klaus himself is holding.
As for the assertion that it wasn’t active enough, I’m not sure that I’m seeing that here. Dieter actively goes to Hollywood. He actively hires a monkey catcher. He actively pursues David Hasselhoff. His choices pretty much drive the entire movie.
I know that another worry they had was that Dieter wasn’t likable enough. Intellectually, I can understand that. He’s a miserable human being who thinks only about death, lol. But comedy screenwriting has a secret weapon when it comes to likability. And that is that, as long as the character is funny, we’ll like him. To use another film from that time as an example – Swingers – Trent (Vince Vaughn) is the world’d biggest asshole. He’s a giant heartless womanizer. But we like him because everything that comes out of his mouth is funny.
Dieter is the same way. Everything he says is funny so I don’t know how we could not like him. But again, I also know that when you’re putting together these giant comedy movies, people freak the hell out about everything – whether it’s not funny enough or stupid or boring or “the main character isn’t active enough.” I don’t think they realized what they had here. Which is something special. Or Mike Myers didn’t realize that.
The most impressive thing about this script is that Dieter is one of the more gimmicky comedy characters in the SNL vault, and yet Sprockets is, for the most part, a fully fleshed out screenplay with quite an intricate plot. Most of the comedy scripts I read are Filler City but I didn’t feel like a single scene in Sprockets needed to be axed. They really thought this through.
Most of these old famous scripts end up being duds. I’ve found that if something’s good, it will find a way to get made. The unique thing about Sprockets is that only one person in the world could play the main character. So it wasn’t like a ton of studio types questioned whether the movie should be made. It was just Mike Myers. Which is why Sprockets is an exception to the rule. It’s an abandoned project that’s actually good. Not only would this have been a comedy classic, but it would’ve birthed an entire vocabulary of one liners into the zeitgeist that we still would’ve been saying today. It very well might’ve been a comedy classic.
Script link: Sprockets
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: How to find a flaw for your hero – The one misstep in Sprockets is that they didn’t explore a flaw for Dieter. Even though it was staring them right in the face. People always ask me, what flaw should I give my hero? I tell them, “Listen to your character. He’ll tell you.” What is your character’s identifying characteristic? Dieter’s identifying characteristic is that he doesn’t believe in happiness. Everything he says revolves around that. So that’s your flaw! Thats’s what’s holding him back. They should’ve explored an ending where Dieter was required to see the good in the world – to be happy for once – in order to achieve his goal. Or, because it’s a comedy, they could’ve doubled down at the last second and Dieter insist there is still no such thing as happiness. As long as you establish that as a flaw, the reader has something to look to forward to as far as our main character growing. Will he find happiness or will he continue to live a life of depression?
