Ernest Fails Upward
Unlicensed is a blog where I deconstruct the creative process by working up pitches for non-existent licensed projects based on suggestions from readers. Today, I was asked to put together a proposal for:
So who the heck is Ernest, and why does he need a reboot?
Ernest P. Worrell is a character created by actor Jim Varney, originally as an advertising pitchman. But after thousands of commercials, he moved up to a TV show, and a series of movies. Along the way he saved Christmas, battled trolls, went to both jail and camp. And of course alerted everyone to the latest sales at ABC Warehouse.
The character has been retired since Varney’s death in 2000. There was a creepy CGI commercial. And a Son of Ernest movie in years of production hell, but the corpses of Son of Pink Panther, Son of The Mask and Ace Ventura Jr. will tell you that’s not really the best road to go down.
If I were tasked to bring the character back without Jim Varney, I’d push to do it as a licensed comic. That way, you can keep Ernest around without having to recast.
So what’s the importance of writing Ernest?
I’ll admit it. In the late 80’s and early 90’s, I was a big old Ernest fan. I met Jim Varney at the Detroit Auto show and was so starstruck I couldn’t even speak. I grew out of it over the years, but Jim Varney’s autographed photo still hung framed, on my wall well into college. Recently, I tried to rewatch some of it, and I couldn’t even get through a one minute clip on YouTube.
My memories of watching Ernest as a child did not match favorably to the experience of watching them as an adult. But when you’re bringing back a character, you can’t look at them cynically. I have to dig back and rediscover what I loved about him as a kid.
So what’s my take?
The first film, Ernest Goes To Camp, is a very simple movie. He’s placed in charge of a group of at-risk kids, despite the fact that he’s mentally inferior to all of them. He has no idea how high the stakes are, he’s just super proud of himself for the promotion. For the most part, the world around Ernest is realistic, and all the weirdness comes from his own personality.
He may be remembered for making faces and saying catchphrases, but the core of Ernest’s character is his ambition. He’s a dimwitted everyman that does menial grunt work, but who always dreams of something more. But not TOO much more. He’s the camp handyman who dreams of being a counselor. The bank janitor who dreams of working a counter. Despite his limited ambitions, his overconfidence still seems misplaced due to his lack of intelligence.
The most heartfelt moments come when Ernest realizes his limitations. But what if he actually found success? More success than he’d ever imagined for himself. What if his overconfidence placed him in positions of power he was completely unprepared for? What ridiculous chain events would have to happen for Ernest to move up in the world, and how would he handle it?
Here’s what my secret goals for the project would be.
(1) I’d make it a sort of fictionalized retelling of Jim Varney’s career as Ernest. He’d go from pitchman, to movie star, and then just as the Ernest movies did, his adventures would go from rural everyday hijinx to more bizarre and high concept as they went.
(2) I was always a fan of the more grounded Ernest, but there’s no denying that his movies got pretty weird on the regular. Dude couldn’t even go to jail without gaining unrelated superpowers. But I’d accomplish the weirdness with real, existing technology instead of fantasy… as well as make sure all the weirdness comes from Ernest himself, while the world he lives in feels real.
(3) I’d make it a commentary on the idea of being a pitchman, and the dangers of indiscriminately promoting ideas you may or may not believe in yourself.
Of course, that seems a little overthought for a comic about a guy that says ‘Knowutimean,’ so I’d keep all that to myself and pitch it as “Ernest becomes a movie star! And a CEO! And a supervillain! And a spy! And the President!” Each issue would be a mini-Ernest-movie plot that all added up to one big story about moving up in the world quickly.
So here’s my pitch for…
Ernest Fails Upward
Comic series, 7 issues (leading to a trade)
Ernest P. Worrell is working as a mailboy in Ottoco building and dreaming of moving up in the world into a full-fleged mailMAN. But when his mailroom screwup causes the ad men up on the 44th floor to lose the master copy of an important commercial, his excuses make the ad men Chuck and Bobby realize that Ernest’s earnestness can convince anyone of anything. They quickly reshoot their commercial with Ernest in the starring role and he becomes a phenomenon, being asked to be a pitchman for every product imaginable.
Due to his success as a pitchman, Ottoco Pictures casts Ernest in a movie. It’s a small role, but his on-set accidents lead the producers to think he’s a physical comedy genius, his costars to think he’s trying to upstage them, and the poor director is the only one who knows Ernest is just a klutz. But in the editing room, when the producer is frustrated by the bizarre, meandering, high concept plot about supervillains, spies and robots, he demands that they re-edit the movie to focus on the minor character played by Ernest. Now Ernest is a leading man, hated by all of his co-stars, and completely unaware of their attempts to sabotage him.
As Ottoco has a scandal over selling military drones to both sides of the same war, the owners realize that they need someone to either put a positive spin on it, or take the fall. They realize that Ernest, the pitchman and celebrity who can convince anyone of anything, is perfect for both positions. Ernest is named CEO of the entire multinational conglomerate, and bumbles his way through all of his duties. When he meets the 4-legged “Attack Dog” military robots, he realizes that they’re so cute he can cancel all military contracts and sell them to the public. He redubs them S.H.O.R.T.Y. and turns them into pets, seeing eye dogs and service animals.
It turns out that Ottoco is merely a front, to finance the evil plans of the megalomaniacal villain Dr. Otto. (a different Jim Varney character from an obscure part of what could be called the Ernest Cinematic Universe) All he needs to make his plan a reality is devotion from his underlings, and for his enemies to bend to his will. But Dr. Otto isn’t exactly charismatic. So he brings in Ernest to pitch his plans. Ernest has no idea that he’s becoming the bad guy as he ends up leading an army of evildoers. But when one of Dr. Otto’s captives tells Ernest the truth, he helps her and all of the prisoners escape.
The CIA enlists Ernest to feed them information about Dr. Otto’s evil plans. Ernest, excited to be a spy, completely defeats the purpose of having an undercover informant by dressing up like a movie spy and saving the world himself through sheer dumb luck.
As thanks for saving the world, the President gives Ernest a job in the federal government. A low level cabinet position with no responsibilities, but Ernest takes the imagined responsibilities to heart. He annoys everyone so much that during the State of the Union address, they ask him to be the member of the line of succession to stay behind just so that he isn’t there. But when Dr. Otto incapacitates the entire federal government with his drones, it turns out that Ernest is next in line to be the president until the crisis is over.
Dr. Otto has sent his flying war drones to enslave humanity. Ernest is the President of the United States and is immediately surrounded by military men pushing him into war. He is placed on Live TV and asked to pitch his war to the American people. But Ernest goes off-book. He says that he’s sick of being a pitchman, and making decisions for other people. He can’t even make up his mind about what he wants from his own life. He doesn’t want to be responsible for the lives of others. He can’t ask someone else to do something he won’t do himself.
That’s when Ernest realizes that he can activate S.H.O.R.T.Y. family pet robots all over the world to fetch the flying drones like Frisbees. He rides one of the robots into Dr. Otto’s lair himself, and makes on final pitch. For Dr. Otto to quit his evil plan and give up. He does, and releases the government.
Ernest heads back to his hometown with his dog Rimshot and his neighbor Vern, and gets a job as a mailman.
So that’s my Ernest pitch. Throw him into a lot of marketable situations, but in such a way that I can allow the humor come from the character being in over his head and real, high stakes situations he doesn’t fully understand.
