I'm a programmer by profession and I write screenplays as a hobby. After way too much coding, caffeine, and sleep-deprivation, I decided to watch Aliens. As I was watching, I realized I could rewrite the final battle in Perl. Synopsis: Ripley, the heroine, is trying to protect the little girl Newt from the alien queen by strapping on a Heavy Loader and attacking the queen: 
if ($newt =~ /chased by alien queen/i) {
    RIPLEY: {
        use HEAVYLOADER;
        kill $alienqueen || undef $newt;
        open (AIRLOCK, ">>hackneyedstoryidea.dat") || last RIPLEY;
    }
}

[download]
I think I should address my caffeine/sleep-deprivation problem.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
RE: Perl Screenplays
by takshaka (Friar) on Jun 10, 2000 at 02:25 UTC
    All Alien(s) humor is worth a ++; Alien(s) humor that incorporates Perl, doubly so.

    You may have stumbled upon a new contest idea: rewrite a scene from your favorite movie in Perl.

[reply]
      Funny you should mention that. I was just composing my contest entry when my machine crashed.

      No bonus points for guessing which OS I'm using

[reply]
      i like this idea. you can get extra points for using core modules.
[reply]
RE: Perl Screenplays
by Rydor (Scribe) on Jun 10, 2000 at 01:27 UTC
    lol! i love the undef $newt! it's brilliant!

    @///usr////((:::::bin:::::::::perl::::>
[reply]
[d/l]
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
RE: Perl Screenplays
by Q*bert (Sexton) on Jun 17, 2000 at 15:10 UTC
    You forgot a line:

    tell ($alienqueen, "You bitch!\n"); #my fav. part

    --Quinn Weaver (no relation, unfortunately)

[reply]
      Should that not be:
      tell ($alienqueen, "Stay away from her, you bitch!\n");

      Has anyone read Chip Salzenberg's super article in TPJ on the Perl debugger where he prefaces sections from the article with with quotes from the Aliens movie? e.g.

      STEP ONE: ENLIST
      "... every meal a banquet, every formation a parade!" -
      SGT. APONE

      STEP TWO: KNOW YOUR WEAPONS
      "I'd like to introduce you to a personal friend of mine."
      - CPL. HICKS
      This article wins my vote as the most enjoyable hairy technical article ever. Even if you didn't know perl, you'd still enjoy it. The guys enthusiasm, mastery of perl, and clear exposition really gleams... great stuff!!

[reply]
[d/l]
        what about: 
        @android=split(/-/,"Bish-op");

        [download]
        :-) josh
[reply]
[d/l]
RE: Perl Screenplays
by young_yang (Acolyte) on Jun 12, 2000 at 05:00 UTC
    Can you release your code? I'm interesting in it!
[reply]
      Nope, I have no code to share. Just the little snippet above. I've thought about others, though. I think Genesis would be a very interesting Perl script. However, I'll leave that to others with a better knowledge of Perl than I.
[reply]

Back to Meditations