Cocoanuts Redux

Greetings, patrons of the arts, if there happens to be some art going on where the beer is flowing.

The guy who puts on the local musician shows in LIC usually closes his sets with, oddly enough, Irving Berlin's "When My Dreams Come True". This song, some of you may recall, was the theme from the Marx Brothers first major movie "The Cocoanuts".

That movie, in another odd coincidence, was a spoof set in an astounding Florida land boom that was just beginning to tip into utter catastrophe when the movie was shot in 1929. I thought it would be a great opportunity to remake this with a Groucho-esque Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo, (Chico and Harpo)-esque general contractors looking to flip houses, Margaret-Dumont-esque FDIC chairwoman Sheila Bair, but damned if I couldn't figure some fit for the Zeppo-esque character, an affliction that seemed to challenge some legendary Paramount writers as well.

Fortunately, while browsing the better resources in the financial press, LOLFed.com (LOLCat has the "I can haz cheezeburger" cat, LOLRus has the walrus and his bukkit, LOLFed has "Emo Bernanke" and Citi CEO Vikram Pandit with a bandit mask) I found this article which gave it to me on a platter

"Coming soon to an internet near you is a company called eModifyMyLoan, which sells software (for $199, but if you act now, only $97) that purports to help homeowners modify their own mortgages. Its CEO is one Chris Mozilo. Yes, Mozilo. Angelo is his uncle, Chris himself a veteran of Countrywide, now profiting off some of the very customers that his father’s company helped into their present predicaments. So that’s clever."

For a modern actor for this role, I was kind of thinking Vince from the ShamWow/SlapChop thing.

There is a ready-made chunk of soundtrack (mentioned above) sung by Gus Rodriguez and Jeneen Terrana. Gus records under the name "Silbin Sandovar". His CD well rewards listening.