Here, we’ve scored some exclusive documentation from some of movie’s most put-upon bit players, who are probably questioning some of their career choices.

Box office rep, Phantom of the Opera

“Yes, good afternoon, madam, happy to serve you and your husband, whose patronage we value greatly. We’re staging Hannibal this fall, would you like tickets?”

“I’m so sorry, we’re no longer doing Hannibal due to a change of management, but the Paris Opera would be happy to offer you tickets to Il Muto! It’s starring Carlotta, and is sure to be a smash hit.

“My apologies, this is the Paris Opera – we’ve just had notice of a casting change for the Countess effective immediately; the new lead is going to be Christine Daae, a newcomer, so that will be a lovely discovery for our patrons!”

“Dear madam, please excuse the interruption, but due to some set-construction, staffing, and lighting issues at last night’s performance, we’ll be shutting the theatre for a few days. Of course we’ll be happy to redeem your tickets in the next week or so, to see either Carlotta or Miss Daae in Il Muto!”

“Yes, hello, this is the Paris Opera house again, I’m so sorry to trouble you, but Il Muto and the rest of our fall repertoire has actually been scrapped in favor of a new opera, Don Juan Triumphant, by a debut composer! What a thrill for you, our theatregoers, and I hope you’d like to keep your tickets? Opening night is sure to be delightful!”

“Madam, this is the Paris Opera calling, hoping none of the police action or chandelier casualties at last night’s show has changed your mind about supporting next year’s season? Please give us a call back at your earliest convenience.”

Rohan’s Prime Minister of Hairdressing, The Lord of the Rings

My Lady Eowyn,

I write you this note with all the respect and deference Your Highness deserves, but I have just had another undermaid leave Rohan forever and risk the vast plains alone rather than attempt to detangle Your Highness’s hair. Of course, Your Highness is welcome to stand outside in our punishing winds as many hours a day as she chooses. However, may I remind you that for all its well-known glory and renown, our incomparable city is not infinite, and there is a limited supply of young ladies that can be brought into Your Highness’s service, as most of them lack the upper-arm strength for the position. I ask for your patience as we begin the search for a replacement. I am forever your humble servant, etc.

My Lord Eomer,

Please permit me to address you, with humility and appreciation for Your Lordship’s greatness. Your squire is our kingdom’s most loyal, and I know he would give his life for Your Lordship. However, I did not know how to answer when last I spoke with him about Your Lordship’s personal care. Perhaps, not only for his sake but for your own, Your Lordship might consider cutting his hair so that his helm may be placed more quickly, and the source of wounds to the head and chest be discovered more quickly without sorting through Your Lordship’s lengthy tresses. I am not tactician, but I know Your Lordship’s squire fears for your life, and for his ability to find suitable shampoo in the field of battle. I am forever your humble servant, etc.

My Lord Legolas,

Please allow me to offer myself most anxiously and enthusiastically to your service, or the service of any of your people. Yours sincerely.

Lestat’s assistant, The Queen of the Damned

To Whom it May Concern:

I would like to apply for the position of personal assistant to the lead singer of your band.

I am experienced in the role, having been personal assistant to The Vampire Lestat until his recent decision to retire from the business. In general, my duties included household management, groupie wrangling, and providing meals, not that the latter two were at all related, because of course the vampire thing was just a gimmick I completely support but is obviously not a real aspect of his life at all. Well-honed skills I have include finding remote and private locations as sanctuaries for my clients, and ability to cram a remarkable amount of cargo, often two five-and-a-half foot black plastic duffel bags at a time, into even the smallest vehicles.

I am currently seeking a position that would allow me to make use of some of these skills in a combination different from that of my last employer, who was very fiscally generous but who often overstepped professional boundaries. I understand the life of a musician, and I will be the best possible assistant – I routinely go above and beyond my job description – but I expect the same sort of respect for privacy from my employer as I give in return. Live and let live, is my motto, and I have recently come to mean that in a completely non-metaphorical way.

That said, this looks like an ideal position for my talents, and the position sounds extremely exciting.I especially look forward to the many travel opportunities this position would provide, as I would love an expedient reason to leave the country unobtrusively.

Financially, my salary is flexible, though I would like the opportunity to set up and contribute to an employer-funded 401k program, as I have started to place an increasing amount of importance on my financial future; I know no one lives forever, but just in case.

However, some of the shows produced as pilots every year never make it to your screen. The Defenestration TV coverage team was granted special access to these unaired pilots, thanks to a screening room with a faulty lock and a big shadowy place in one corner just big enough for one person to huddle with a steno pad, and we can now bring you this exclusive coverage of five TV pilots that never stood a chance.

1. TRAUMA WARD

TV is riddled with medical dramas, but none have ever attacked the realities of emergency medicine with the urgency of TRAUMA WARD. Taking us behind the scenes of the emergency room, Trauma Ward’s pilot follows an emergency intake from both sides of the equation.

A family struggles to complete paperwork before their family member can be admitted, as an ambitious nurse watches, trying to gauge how many times the patient will probably vomit on her. A tech shortage reaches crisis levels as the hospital gets increasingly filthy; meanwhile, a drug-seeker is forced to confront how low he has sunk when he’s returned to the waiting room and forced to sit through two hours of The Bachelorette before he can be treated.

Terrible decisions will be made, and lives changed forever, in the TRAUMA WARD. (Pulled from consideration after an insurance-industry screener.)

2. THE GRIND

Gritty police drama THE GRIND bursts onto the scene with its tale of two passionate cops determined to screw perps right into the ground.

Brick Kale and Ward Johnson are two renegades in the Vice department of a gritty metropolitan city that probably looks a lot like Vancouver. These brave officers love nothing better than going undercover, as deep as it takes to ride their case to completion. Looking like a pair of ex-cons and trained in Black Ops techniques, Brick and Ward get tangled up in sweaty, heart-pounding action with every case, whether they’re sweating it out in a sting or pinning a perp to the wall. Not that this pair always get along – at least once an episode, they crowd the frame as they have intense arguments riddled with eye contact and veiled threats about what will happen if this case goes down.

But when they’re in a tight squeeze, these cops always manage to fight their way out, drive their way through, and prove once and for all that they’re the two manliest cops on THE GRIND. (Pulled due to accidentally being incredibly, incredibly gay.)

3. CONGENIALITY

In this groundbreaking reality show, contestants will have to lay it all on the line for a chance to win big money: but this time, everyone really is there to make friends.

Contestants on CONGENIALITY will be put through a series of grueling challenges (sharing circles, trust falls, karaoke nights), and will be judged not on individual prowess, but instead on their communication with fellow contestants, and the relationships they forge. (A particularly dramatic Group Potluck Night culminates in a tearful confession of romantic infidelity between two of the participants, followed by a brief crying session, and then a civil visit to the on-site counselor to begin evaluating emotional options.) Contestants will be judged each week, and the one shown to be talking the most shit on camera or being the most antisocial during team exercises will be sent home – unless all contestants vote to be Congenial and allow that contestant to stay.

Sure to be an emotional roller-coaster, Congeniality hopes to culminate in everyone deciding to split the monetary prize equally, since that’s the nicest solution. (Pulled due to the lowest ratings in the history of television rating systems.)

4. LADYPERSON

Cutting-edge dramedy LADYPERSON follows the life of a single woman in the big city as she tries to balance her life after leaving home – and a long-term relationship – behind.

Ladyperson, who takes an admin job in a corporation to make ends meet as she tries to pursue her dream of working in an arts-sector nonprofit, must contend with subtle workplace discrimination, unwanted flirtation by men she doesn’t know, a general feeling that her love life is a priority and open for public debate, social pressure to dress her slenderest possible shape in a manner men find attractive, and scorn over her chosen leisure activities of going to museums, watching television, and occasionally dropping in on her local dodgeball league. Will Ladyperson ever be able to find happiness? (Pulled from consideration due to proliferation of sensible footwear and a horrible nagging guilt on the part of TV execs.)

However, not just any vid will do. Having been on The Net earlier today, we are much wiser than you in the trends that the hip kids are using. Here, we’ve put together a list of Frequently Asked Questions to help get you on your way!

Q: I’d like to make a fanvid for —

A: Sssh, my darling, sssh. It doesn’t do us any good to name fandoms, not now. Either it’s a superpopular fandom and we’ll judge you for being mainstream, or it’s a fandom so remote you clearly chose it to impress us, and we are on to you. Just call it Bob.

Q: Okay. I’d like to make a fanvid for Bob. What is the first step?

A: First, you need to get your hands on top-quality footage and editing software. As you can see, here at Defenestration’s Abridged Classics office, we lovingly film our own footage using a broken camera-phone from across a large room where the film is playing, to maximize the size of every pixel in the finished product. Then we open our state-of-the-art video software that came with our 200 dollar computers, and get to work!

The result is a mess of movement using pixels as big as your thumbnail that make it almost impossible to determine what’s going on, which is just the way we like it. An air of mystery should be cultivated at all times!

Q. How about still photos?

A. Love them. There’s nothing that people on the internet love more than clicking a video and seeing that it’s really a collection of still photos. It’s like a sign from the universe to slow down and admire the little things in life.

Q. Okay, so I have my footage. How do I choose the right music for my video?

A. Whatever Evanescence song you like best should work.

Q. Wait, just Evanescence?

A. I’m sorry, is there any other band? Take a look on The You Tubing, and you’ll quickly realize that nothing captures the nuance of something quite like Evanescence. Why would you let artistry like that go to waste and pick some other song? Is that really a risk you can afford?

Q. Well, I was thinking about this one song –

A. This better end in “That Evanescence did.”

Q. …it does. It’s this one song that Evanescence did.

A. Wonderful! Then it’s time to begin editing. Keep a close eye on the tone of your piece as you go. If you are using “Going Under,” one of the lead characters in your video should scream (girls) or punch something (boys) at least once. The more they scream or punch things, the better the video will look. This is what makes picking the right fandom so important.

Q. But you told me not to tell you the fandom.

A. That’s because you might be making a gentle, melancholy fanvid about your two favorite characters and their doomed love, in which case you should use one of their lesser-known songs, like “My Immortal.” If you choose to go this route, make sure your characters do a lot of quiet staring. Then slow it down, and slow THAT down, until it’s physically impossible to have them go slower and still discern movement. That should be about right.

Q. This is not very good advice.

A. You should not have asked people who make their vids by setting up National Geographic bunkers across the room from their prey, then, should you?

Q. Look, I genuinely want to make a good video, here. I’m just trying to get some advice on how to layer tints on my footage to achieve a uniform coloration and how to pull sound from the original audio track in case I want to have some VO dialogue or something.

A. I think you are underestimating what we here at Defenestration know about Videoing. Here is an excellent example of the sort of fanvid that, if you follow these simple steps you can one day hope to make:

Q. Wait — that’s “My Heart Will Go On”! That’s not even Evanescence!

A. Well, two things for you:

1) Celine Dion is like the Evanescence of easy listening, and don’t you ever forget it

2) When you’re a true artist, you can bend those rules all you want! You have to earn it with your art, that’s all – if you have what it takes, someday you can tackle something like this. Only not this one, because that shit is TAKEN, young padawan.

We hope you have found this as helpful as this advice once was for us. Now go forth, artists, and beautify the world!

Obviously, I am not here to tell you that that trend has changed. Especially since we’re talking about Thomas Hardy, and even if you appreciate literature, you’ve probably given the occasional side-eye to Mr. Hardy, because he really loves making ladies miserable.

Case in point: Tess of the d’Urbervilles, recently made into a miniseries by the BBC. It’s four hours long, about three of which are taken up by the quiet, desolate sounds of somebody sobbing. The worthless parson/farmer Angel Clare, the worthless rapist Alec d’Urberville, the drunken milkmaids, the destitute mothers and sanctimonious fathers – all have their blubbery moment in the sun. However, it’s obviously Tess who suffers most, both in magnitude and sheer percentage of screen time. (Oh, is she onscreen? Bet she’s crying.)

And since the sheer amount of eye-water dropped during this made a normal Abridged Classic extremely tricky (it would have been 90% sobbing and rising violins), I went ahead and did what I had to do.

Below, Abridged Classics: Tess of the d’Urbervilles, helpfully “spell-checked” by my program to include a capital D, and containing a minute percentage of the weeping in this miniseries.

ETA: Almost forgot! Dear Hans Matheson, this is like the two hundredth asshole in a row that you’ve played. Just saying.

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Genevieve is a prolific writer of speculative fiction living in New York, but you’ll never find her there because millions of people live there and Genevieve likes her privacy. Examples of her fiction can be found in Strange Horizons, Fantasy Magazine, Federations, and numerous other magazines and anthologies. Her first novel is forthcoming in 2011. Also? She has terrible taste in movies.

However, for movie enthusiasts, this year’s awards season is looking a little thin on the ground (members of the Academy having already been ordered to give all Oscars to real movie The King’s Speech), and everything else inexplicably starring a series of unfunny, grooming-challenged men.

So, since 2010 is a bust, we’ve decided to look ahead to next year, and where we didn’t find the sort of movies we wanted, we just invented our own.

Below, our picks for the most successful and awards-worthy fake movies of 2011!

Photo credit: celeb photos and amazing octopus tentacle via GettyImages, borrowed with the hope that they’ll understand we’re too poor to sue unless they put a lien on the change Andrew finds in his couch cushions. All other photos are from schmancy photo shoots from Vogue, which is run by people who commute to work on their flying leopard-skin carpets, and we hope they don’t sue us because they’re too important to do their own typing and find us.

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Genevieve is a prolific writer of speculative fiction living in New York, but you’ll never find her there because millions of people live there and Genevieve likes her privacy. Examples of her fiction can be found in Strange Horizons, Fantasy Magazine, Federations, and numerous other magazines and anthologies. Her first novel is forthcoming in 2011. Also? She has terrible taste in movies.

And man, there was plenty to show you. Especially because writing about this movie just doesn’t do it justice.

It’s one thing to write, “The Native American characters are useless.” But it really doesn’t capture the true flavor of a director who said, “You know who needed saving by a white guy? Those Native Americans who let themselves get killed because they were a bunch of helpless whiners!”

And thus, Pathfinder was born. Because if there was anything that would have stopped that genocide, it was one white dude who Just Wanted to Belong.

And yet, even this picture of a tribe full of childlike, passive Native Americans cowering before the mighty sword of the white man doesn’t give the full effect. (Fun fact: this is the only promotional photo that even shows a Native American, so basically it’s a movie in which the Native Americans are only important to give Karl Urban something to save.) The full effect is that of slackjawed, creeping horror.

Luckily, it looks like we can’t blame this on Karl Urban. He’s giving us serious Hostage Eyes in this picture. (Oh, Karl, you had better have lost a bet or something. Seriously.)

There is some comfort, I guess, in knowing that the movie is shitty on every possible level, and is not simply a well-executed movie with weird racial undertones. This is the kind of movie where a blond, blue-eyed twelve-year-old can grow up to be Karl Urban.

This is the kind of movie where every line is delivered with all the portentous, ponderous clunking of a steel-tipped fortune cookie. This is the kind of movie where someone cuts someone’s eye out and we get a five-second close-up on the bloody eyeball rolling around in the mud!

This is the kind of movie where the bravest, most skilled warriors in the tribe are entirely wiped out because they fail to recognize one of Karl Urban’s traps – a trap that they would have had to teach Karl Urban how to make in the first place. A trap that Karl Urban somehow made overnight, despite the fact that it’s about ten feet by ten feet and in a wooded area far away from his cave hideout, and also he really doesn’t look like the Viking kid he was when they picked him up when he was twelve and where did he get the eye makeup and OH GOD, MOVIE, WHAT THE HELL.

While it takes the full two hours to really understand how horrible this movie is, I tried to get it in under the seven-minute mark.

And I did!

And then FOX took it down because they claimed it infringed on their copyright.

Now, this is not true, since I was very clear that I was using the clips for purposes of commentary under the policy of Fair Use. Therefore, I suspect that they are just super-embarrassed to have made this movie, which is understandable, because holy shit, you guys, you have no idea.

However, I didn’t want to leave you with nothing, so I storyboarded the movie for you instead. It’s not the same as seeing it play out in front of you, but you should get the general flavor of the film. Enjoy!

IN A WORLD…FULL OF NATIVE AMERICANS…

ONE VIKING…FEELS ALL ALONE…

JUDGED FOR HIS GENETIC PROWESS AT SWORD-WIELDING…

BUT WHEN THE VIKINGS COME…

ONE MAN…

…WILL CHOP THE SHIT OUT OF EVERY VIKING HE CAN GET HIS HANDS ON.

…THEN HE IS THE BOSS OF THE NATIVE AMERICANS, BECAUSE THAT IS HOW IT GOES WHENEVER A WHITE PERSON MAKES A MOVIE.

THE END

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Genevieve is a prolific writer of speculative fiction living in New York, but you’ll never find her there because millions of people live there and Genevieve likes her privacy. Examples of her fiction can be found in Strange Horizons, Fantasy Magazine, Federations, and numerous other magazines and anthologies. Her first novel is forthcoming in 2011. Also? She has terrible taste in movies.

That’s what I thought before I saw Lorna Doone.

Lorna Doone, a bizarrely slapdash version of R.D. Blackmore’s novel, has a cast that seems to have been a scientific experiment to track the effect of a terrible period piece on the career trajectory of a random sample of actors.

The cast of Lorna Doone includes:

- Aiden Gillen, the star of Queer as Folk and a number of indie movies

- Jesse Spencer, a star of House

- James McAvoy, who blew up like the Fourth of July and is currently trying to stick his comely fingers in whatever franchises he can get his hands on

- Michael Kitchen, who’s been in every project the BBC has touched in the last hundred years

- Amelia Warner, who was in Aeon Flux and then sort of fell off the radar, possibly because she has no facial expressions

- Richard Coyle, who came in from the BBC’s Coupling, and then vanished until Prince of Persia, in which he briefly ruled the Persian empire.

BBC scientists mapped the results like so:

After viewing this experiment myself, I organized the following Abridged Classic so as to provide a warning to others who might try to find some logic in this movie. You won’t find it. All you’ll find is a pile of actors who should know better, and an inexplicable number of wide shots of people harvesting. (I have no answers; science never will.)

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Genevieve is a prolific writer of speculative fiction living in New York, but you’ll never find her there because millions of people live there and Genevieve likes her privacy. Examples of her fiction can be found in Strange Horizons, Fantasy Magazine, Federations, and numerous other magazines and anthologies. Her first novel is forthcoming in 2011. Also? She has terrible taste in movies.

Remember that time Vikings almost wiped out all the Native Americans, except that other Viking was there to save them, even though he had been adopted by them and then outcast for no reason? Oh, Ye Olde Times!

It made no sense then, it makes no sense now.

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Genevieve is a prolific writer of speculative fiction living in New York, but you’ll never find her there because millions of people live there and Genevieve likes her privacy. Examples of her fiction can be found in Strange Horizons, Fantasy Magazine, Federations, and numerous other magazines and anthologies. Her first novel is forthcoming in 2011. Also? She has terrible taste in movies.

Then, Julian Sands was in Boxing Helena, and after that I couldn’t look at him any more, and that’s all I have to say about that movie that isn’t said in all caps as I flail like I’m covered in beetles.

I still haven’t gotten over that movie, to the point that when I saw him in a YouTube clip today I clicked away instantly, thinking it was from Warlock or something, but then I realized that it was a romantic songvid (don’t ask) and so Warlock it was not.

You know what it was?

It was his role as THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA.

How did I live this long without knowing about this movie? Well, I am taking care of that THIS WEEKEND.

I’m excited! It has some markers for genius filmaking: namely, changing the storyline (now the Phantom is raised by rats, you guys. Not deformed, just, you know, raised by rats), and Julian Sands’ wig, which is so bad that every time this music video cuts to him, I laugh out loud. I’ve seen this video four times. No joke, I laugh out loud. Every. Time. How many comedies can boast a 100% rate of return on a joke?

If you need further evidence that this movie about a bewigged rat-child stalking an opera singer who wears transparent dresses and runs around alone at night is worth seeing, check out the review, in three parts below.

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Genevieve is a prolific writer of speculative fiction living in New York, but you’ll never find her there because millions of people live there and Genevieve likes her privacy. Examples of her fiction can be found in Strange Horizons, Fantasy Magazine, Federations, and numerous other magazines and anthologies. Her first novel is forthcoming in 2011. Also? She has terrible taste in movies.

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Genevieve is a prolific writer of speculative fiction living in New York, but you’ll never find her there because millions of people live there and Genevieve likes her privacy. Examples of her fiction can be found in Strange Horizons, Fantasy Magazine, Federations, and numerous other magazines and anthologies. Her first novel is forthcoming in 2011. Also? She has terrible taste in movies.