Stop Making Movies About My Books

By Dr. Seuss
April 2, 2008 | Issue 44•14

• On the fourteenth of March, in towns nationwide,
• In every cinema, multiplex, on every barnside,
• Gleamed another adapting of one of my books,
• CGI-ed and digitized by another sly crook.

• Horton, my favorite—look how he's been treated!
• Stuffed with tinsels and tassels and promptly excreted!
• The puns! And the filler! The script fees you must save!
• While I tumble and grum-humble around in my grave.

• Did you learn all but squat from The Cat In The Hat?
• Please tell me you fired the prick who made that.
• I would have stopped writing, maybe sold Goodyear tires.
• If I knew one dark day I'd costar with Mike Myers.

• And Oh!
• Oh, dear! Oh!
• My poor Grinch, what they've done!
• They crammed in live-action and snuffed out all the fun!

• It's icky, it's tacky, it's awkward, it's wrong.
• The Whos look like ferrets, it's an hour too long.
• What a rotten idea to spend millions destroying
• This masterful tale kids spent decades enjoying!

• But still you keep making them!
• Just how do you dare?
• Sell my life's work off piecemeal
• To every Tom, Dick, and Har'.

• Why it's simply an outrage—a crime, you must judge!—
• To crap on my books with this big-budget sludge.
• My books are for children to learn ones and twos in,
• Not commercialous slop for Jim Carrey to ruin.

• Have you no respect for the gems of your youth?
• To pervert them on screen from Taiwan to Duluth.
• Even after you drag my last word through the dirt,
• I know you, you pirates,
• You'd cut out my heart for a "Thing 1" T-shirt.

• For eighty-some years I held you vultures at bay,
• knowing just how you'd franchise my good name some day.
• Not yet cold in my grave before you starting shooting
• the first of my classics you'd acquired for looting.

• Mrs. Seuss, that old stoofus, began selling more rights
• to Dreamworks, Universal—any hack in her sights.
• First The Cat In The Hat and then this, that and Seussical
• without a thought to be picky, selectish, or choosical.

• So to Audrey, you whore, you sad sack of a wife:
• Listen close. Pay attention, for once in your life.
• You give Fox In Sox to those sharks who made Elf
• And so help me, I'll rise up and kill you myself.

• No Sneetches by Sony—
• No One Fish: On Ice—
• Burn that Hop On Pop II script not one time but twice.
• Don't sex up my prose with Alyssa Milano…
• And no Green Eggs And Ham with that one-note Romano!

• This must stop! This must end! Don't you see what you're doing?
• You're defiling the work I spent ages accruing.
• And when it's dried up and you've sucked out your pay
• There'll be no going back to a simpler day,

• When your mom would give Horton a voice extra deep,
• And turn the last page as you drifted to sleep.
• Instead you'll have boxed sets, shit movies, and… well,
• You'll have plenty to watch while you're burning in hell.