Available in English Created by Cleolinda Jones | Owner Cleolinda Jones Current status Online | |
Website community.livejournal.com/m15m | ||
Movies in Fifteen Minutes (known as m15m for short) is primarily the name of a set of Internet-based movie parodies by Cleolinda Jones (a pen name). The parodies first appeared in 2004 on Jones' LiveJournal, but have now been moved to a LiveJournal community of their own.
Contents
Background
Jones wrote the first parody, Van Helsing in Fifteen Minutes, for fun; it appeared on her personal blog on 9 May 2004. Van Helsing in Fifteen Minutes proved surprisingly popular with readers on the internet. Jones' blog became so popular because of the m15m that she ran out of space for members, so she created a community for the parodies that would accept more members; she then posted subsequent movie parodies in this community.
Book
In 2004, Jones was asked by British publishing company Orion Books if she was interested in writing a book of the parodies. She was, and the book, Movies in Fifteen Minutes: Hollywood Blockbusters For People Who Can't Be Bothered was released in October 2005. It contains "the ten biggest movies ever," parodies not published online. The book is not currently available in the United States, though it has been published in Europe, where it met with praise.
Characteristics
The parodies, written in the style of a screenplay, have a wide appeal, at once scathing and affectionate, with plenty of references to pop culture, Internet fan culture, movie trivia, and just about anything else. Font sizes and punctuation are used inventively (perhaps most memorably in The Matrix in Fifteen Minutes).
Jokes are made at the expense of plot holes, inconsistent character arcs, and bad dialogue amongst other things. The world of Internet fanfiction is also made fun of, with Jones making straight-faced, ridiculous claims about the characters even wilder than those made by the fanfic authors themselves.
Popularity
The parodies are popular on the Livejournal site especially, despite being famous Internet-wide. This has caused various other people to write their own parodies, sometimes under the "Movies in Fifteen Minutes" name. Jones is the owner of the trademark ("Movies in Fifteen Minutes") under the common laws of the United States, and has said she is not comfortable with people using the name for their own parodies.