TVSquad

Not that kind, you dirty monkeys! For those of you who watched the American Idol finale, you were treated to Ben Stiller, Robert Downey, Jr. and Jack Black in a "hilarious" short that went on way too long. In that case, it was a video of Gladys Knight with the boys playing The Pips with general silliness and shenanigans. If only it had been funny. Well, MTV lurved the idea, so they've signed all three of those guys as well as Adam Sandler and Mike Meyers, who's also set to host, to create new video shorts for the MTV Movie Awards this Sunday.

Sandler's short features him in character from his upcoming film, You Don't Mess With the Zohan. Unlike in past years, where MTV created short parodies of some of the big films up for nomination, this time around they've put creative control of the shorts into the hands of the various stars. It's a great way for the star to essentially promote themselves to the "disposable income out the arse" demographic.

God knows if the kids think Jack Black is funny running around in his underpants in a short film, then they're going to love him (probably) running around in his underpants in Tropic Thunder. In this era of TiVo and fast-forwarding through commercials, the evolution of marketing continues. We've already been subjected to painful live promos of movies on American Idol (can you tell I reviewed that this year) with Jim Carrey and Mike Meyers, particularly with Meyers appearing in character from his latest project The Love Guru. And everyone knows how popular those "digital shorts" are on MTV.

The benefit of this is the potential return of an almost lost art form, the film short. It used to be standard procedure to air short films, both live action and cartoon, before major films in theaters. Shorts brought us the power of Disney, Looney Tunes and The Three Stooges, among many other classics. More recently we've had fun with Roger Rabbit and Pixar shorts, which always seem to be popular with audiences.

The internet has done a lot for short films (*cough*YouTube*cough*), though most are done by amateurs; a notable and famous exception are the "Pearl" videos with Will Ferrell. So far, there's been no real money in them, though. But now, you can brand a short as a marketing tool. Which means more big-name celebrities just might "stoop low enough" to get involved in them. If they're not too blatant of promotional tools, or just terrible in their own right (American Idol Ford "Music Videos"), then this could be a good thing ... right?