Drawing A Complete Blank

Grosse Pointe Blank is easily one of my top ten films... and not just because I have an inappropriate crush on John Cusack. So imagine my excitement when I stumbled across this.

Now, I know what many of you are saying. "Chris," you're saying, "you really have to stop hanging out in my front yard... it's getting creepy." But look, setting your selfish needs for privacy and personal space aside for the moment, can't we just agree that this really is the sequel to Grosse Pointe Blank that we've all been waiting for?

Let's face it, Grosse Pointe Blank was really an alternate reality sequel to Say Anything. One in which Lloyd/Martin never gets back together with Diane/Debbie after she gives him the pen. Instead, he freaks out, joins the army and becomes a professional killer. That's what he does.

The clues are all over the place. First, Lloyd's dinner conversarion during Say Anything with Mr. Cort. Remember, Lloyd's father is a colonel in the army. Wants him to join. But he'd rather kickbox. Tell me that training didn't pay off in Martin/Lloyd's hallway fight with the former KGB assassin in Grosse Pointe Blank.

And speaking of that fight, odd how quickly he thought of a pen as a death-blow-delivering device, isn't it? Painful memories associated with that writing implement... a poison pen that he incinerates, right along with his past.

His old teacher in Grosse Pointe Blank is amazed that he went nowhere with all the potential he had, but we knew from Say Anything that what he lacked was direction... a purpose in life. Diane gave it to him, but without her it's easy to see how he would've ended up doing what his father wanted him to do and how he would be open to the sort of epiphany of meaninglessness Martin experiences on the oil fields (especially as hurt and embittered as he was after Diane dumped him).

It even makes sense that Martin/Lloyd would hire a woman -the only woman he would let himself trust- who reminded him so much of his sister.

Yeah, it's a whole Donnie Darko-esque alternate reality for Lloyd that hinges on Diane's dad not going to jail. After all, she didn't realize she needed Lloyd until her father was arrested.

Don't believe me? Watch Say Anything up until the phone call Lloyd makes to his sister in the rain. Stop the movie after he says "I gave her my heart... she gave me a pen." Now put in Grosse Pointe Blank. It's almost seamless (right down to Jeremy Piven's character being essentially the same guy).

So there's no reason this new one couldn't be yet another alternate reality sequel to Grosse Pointe Blank... a sort of "What if?" Martin had gone through with the hit on Debbie's dad.

What do you do, Martin?