My Culpability in the Stupid Snake Movie

09/15/2005 @ 09:13:07 PM MDT
We captured two Sonoran mountain kingsnakes (Lampropeltis pyromelana) on the Labor Day 2005 Gila trip. I gave one to Tom Wyant, head of the Wildlife Center snake rescue program. The other I kept, this small yet very spirited female. Before she escaped (never to be seen again,) I took this picture along with another and submitted them to Defamer.com as artwork for their coverage of the movie Snakes on a Plane. As you may already know or have imagined, it's a horror film where someone releases many snakes on a plane in flight. Mayhem ensues.

As it turns out, New Line Cinema used this very photograph as the basis of their title artwork. Not that it was any great stretch of the imagination for anyone involved:

''The inspiration initially came from the Internet after [fans] did their own art,'' says director David R. Ellis of online designs like Defamer.com's. ''New Line took that and ran with it.''

By the way, New Line; here's my bill (scroll down to the last comment.)