Reprinted from June 2005.

Hey kids, summer will soon be upon us like Julie Kaiser in 10th grade; long, hot and filled with endless entertainment possibilities. So let's make a jazz-themed summer blockbuster movie. It'll be fun, educational, bring newfound attention to jazz, and might just earn us all enough money to plunge ourselves into a nightmarish world of excess and megalomaniacal self-delusion.

You'll need:

• Two 35mm Panaflex cameras
• 15,000 feet of Fuji Eterna 500 film
• A baseball team's worth of big-name stars
• Scissors for editing (get mom and dad to help you with these!)
• A dolly grip, whatever the hell that is
  72 million dollars
• A hip, eclectic soundtrack
• A plot (optional—you can substitute a lot of special effects, explosions, car chases and/or nudity)

Where to begin?

First, we'll need a location, a place to shoot the film. We could use your back yard, like out of an Andy Hardy film. Providing, of course, your back yard could pass as both New Orleans and New York City, contains a state-of-the-art digital soundstage, and Mom doesn't require expensive shooting permits. Otherwise, we'll just used Vancouver, Canada, like everyone else in Hollywood.

Next, we'll need some sort of story. Can't just make a movie about nothing, two hours of meandering blather and jazz-themed intellectual platitudes, if we hope to stay out the art houses and have a chance at some real box office. So here's a scenario for our little project:

A long, long time ago in a New Orleans far, far away...

Martin Lawrence is