An Unfinished Flick's Online Fang Club

'Snakes on a Plane' Takeoff Gets Direct Link to Hollywood

The titles of movie thrillers tend toward the quick, macho, boom! variety. "Firewall." "Inside Man." "The Sentinel." Lofty, bold labels that resonate with gravity and danger and import.

Then there's "Snakes on a Plane."

Brian Finkelstein, a first-year student at Georgetown University Law School, saw the title of the upcoming movie and turned it into a joke. And the joke turned into Internet buzz, and the buzz has turned into a feverish parlor game, making Finkelstein a short-term celebrity.

"When I first heard the title, I was a little shocked. The title seemed so obvious. But then I became enamored of the title," says Finkelstein, 26. To monitor the summer movie's pre-release life, he started a Web site, Snakesonablog.com.

"I thought it would be a joke for me and my friends. I never thought it would generate this excitement," Finkelstein says.

What he has inspired is a raucous conversation, mainly online, about a movie due in theaters Aug. 18. Other blogs appeared. New Line Cinema, the studio behind the horror-action flick, is paying attention. When the director went back to do more filming, he says he incorporated some of the blogger's ideas. At least the tone of them.

"The manna-buzz the movie is getting right now is a nonstop joy ride. It's a blessing," says "Snakes" director David R. Ellis. The movie is easy to imagine: Samuel L. Jackson, an FBI agent, is escorting a witness on a plane over the Pacific Ocean. An assassin wants to kill the guy and decides to scare him and every other traveler with a crate of snakes. In the film's trailer, big and bad Jackson says, "Enough is enough. I've had it with these snakes."

"You don't have to be hip to get this movie. Any person with the slightest bit of irony gets it," says Jeffrey Wells, editor of the film news blog Hollywood-elsewhere.com.

That's exactly what Ellis thought. "When they called me and told me the title, part of me said, 'That is a genius title,' and another part said, 'You got to be kidding,' " recalls Ellis, who directed the thrillers "Final Destination 2" and "Cellular."

It's obvious, it's fun, it's chilling. Though Jackson may not be his usually menacing self, next to his co-stars -- 500 live snakes, from a 20-foot python to a 5-inch eyelash viper, according to Ellis.

"No one is going to expect the subtle changes of 'Shawshank Redemption,' " says Finkelstein.

With lightning speed, Finkelstein's Web site became not only the place to exchange views about the title but a forum for satirical cartoons, poems, music videos, animated videos and submissions for trailers. The songs ranged from "Fly Snakes Fly" to "Baby, Baby, Baby (Shed Yo Skin)." And the posters took off on other movie products, suggesting "How Snakes Got Their Groove Back" and "Camels on a Submarine."