$20M Total Recall Challenge

August 16, 2012 by Money Movies

total recall remakeI saw the new Total Recall remake, and found it to be the most unremarkable, unmemorable, nondescript movie in recent memory.

Nothing about it was notably good nor bad, and I can’t imagine ever wanting to see it again.

As such, for a tax-free $20,000,000, would you do the following:

* For one calendar year, you will be locked in a heated/air-conditioned one-room studio apartment (with windows), furnished with whatever furniture you want, including any exercise equipment.

* Colin Farrell’s Total Recall will be playing on an 80-inch TV for 15 hours per day.

* You’ll be allowed 1 hour/day to exercise/shower.

* The other 8 hours is allocated for sleep, and while the lights will be off, Total Recall will still be playing on mute.

* Your diet will consist of nothing but Honey Peanut flavor Balance Bars and bottled water. You get as much of both as you want.

* You can go outside for 1 hour/week OR 10 minutes per day. You choose this at the beginning of your excursion and cannot change it once you’ve started.

* Call Me, Maybe will also be playing on a loop from an upside-down boom box in the apartment. The volume will be slightly louder than the volume of the movie. This will also be muted during your 8-hour sleep period.

* You’re permitted to make 1 10-minute phone call per day to someone you don’t know and have never talked to before.

* You’ll pick this person and solicit their call on Twitter, which you will have access to. However, you cannot visit outside links, and you can only Tweet about 2012′s Total Recall, unless you’re Tweeting about finding your phone call recipient.

* Once per week – at a time of your choosing, you may watch the original Total Recall.

* Every other day, an emotionless person pretending to be a robot will deliver a delicious four-course meal consisting of your favorite foods to your apartment, where it will remain for one hour. If you eat any of it, you lose all your money. At the end of the hour, you have to throw the meal out the window.

* You’ll be informed of any family emergencies, and will have the option to end your experiment at any time.

Would you try to do this, and why or why not, and if so, what would be the hardest part about it.

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  • Eli_L

    The hardest part would be not purposefully deafening yourself from Call Me Maybe. Or bowel movements from that diet. Actually, neither of those. It would be reading twitter and not clicking on links. Anyone would lose in under 3 hours.

  • http://brian23.com Brian

    I wonder if it would be better to be in a total bubble from the world – you think? I dunno.

    *
    *

  • jimboch02

    is perhaps the better question “how much money would it take you to do this?”

  • http://brian23.com Brian

    and your answer is?

  • http://twitter.com/DearDanGilbert Sam Drew

    I don’t find any of that hard.

    I sleep with the TV on anyway. I have IBS and only drink coffee and eat cashews most of the time, so honey peanut flavor Balance Bars and bottled water sound like an upgrade. And, I was a vegetarian for 18 months when I was younger, so I have the will power to not eat what’s in front of me.

    I work from home and went two months without leaving the house once. I talk to my family on the phone maybe once a month, and most of my calls are to clients who I don’t know and have never met. Did I mention my parents took a trip to Jamaica during Thanksgiving once, leaving me behind without a family during the holidays?

    I just got out of a four-year relationship with someone who forced me to constantly listen to Blue October and Spice Girls, so “Call Me, Maybe” actually sounds enjoyable. Also, I spent one night tweeting about “Insidious,” in which I lost about 30 followers, so I can tweet about anything.

    The hardest part: knowing that you’re only asking hypothetically and don’t have $20 million to give away for doing it.

  • cazjuice

    No 

  • http://brian23.com Brian

    The missing element is experience being exposed to raw mediocre filmmaking for extended periods.

    On Aug 16, 2012 1:09 PM, “Disqus” <notifications@disqus.net>

  • http://twitter.com/DearDanGilbert Sam Drew

    When I was 7, my sister replayed “Dirty Dancing” during the entire summer, and I survived. That has to count for something.

  • Maieutic22
  • cazjuice

     aww you got an Avengers tweet too.  This ruins the whole specialness.

  • Miranda

    $20,000,000 is a lot but money won’t mean much if you die from scurvy…

  • http://brian23.com Brian

    There’s no bullet point about getting scurvy it’s not required

  • Miranda

    honey peanut balance bars have scurvy in them

  • http://brian23.com Brian

    oh no

  • ZeroKNS

    So many questions.

    -Am I allowed to change the furnishings of the apartment at any time or am I stuck with the things I request at the beginning of the year
    -Do I have to actively watch the movie or can I be doing other things while sitting in the same room with the movie, like, writing on a notebook, or doing voice recordings or accidentally napping from boredom
    -How much monitoring/surveillance will there be. Like, am I allowed privacy or do I need to be wearing clothes around the apartment
    -Do I HAVE to sleep 8 hours or if I sleep less can I still be allowed the full 8 hours with the movie/music on mute
    -Am I allowed vitamin intake or maybe some vegetables once a month, or at the very least, quarterly physicals to ensure the diet of Balance Bars isn’t doing serious harm
    -Can I request a random homeless person to be standing outside the window when I toss the four-course meal out
    -Are conjugal visits allowed

    Those are my questions off-the-top-of-my-head. Ultimately I wouldn’t do it because I’d miss my girls. Other than that it all seems rather appealing, actually.