By DANNY GALLAGHER

These last weeks have been filled with one horrific tragedy after another. My life has become one long Ingmar Bergman film.

First, Ray Charles and Marlon Brando die within a week of each other.

Then, radical militant terrorists started beheading innocents while asking for impossibly high demands for their safe return.

For the last few days, John Kerry and George Bush have been going out of their way to make each look stupid on television - short of pasting each other's heads on the guy in the new Paris Hilton sex tape. Give them a week.

But now, the bad news avalanche has finally peaked and what a peak it's become. I feel like I'm standing on top of a Mount McKinley sized hill of depressing news, and here's the flag that's planted at the very top.

Executive producer Paul Maslansky told to the Hollywood Reporter he's making an eighth edition of his "Police Academy" movie series.

I'll give you a second to let the tragedy sink into your brain because if I don't, the sheer magnitude of the news might expand slowly in your mind and make your head explode. If that's already happened, I apologize. I don't make up the news, I just tell you about it.

In fact, right now, you're probably thinking in your slowly swelling brain, "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN, HOW COULD YOU ALLOW SUCH A THING TO HAPPEN??? Oh yeah, and war, that sucks too, BUT THIS...WHAT DID WE DO TO DESERVE THIS?"

My reaction was about the same except it took the police about three hours to talk me down from the roof of my apartment.

Let's face it, if you're a struggling filmmaker who's got huge dreams of bringing new, insightful ideas to the big screen, the only way this news could be more depressing is if your paperboy threw the fish wrap at their crotch.

What possible plot could a group of writers come up with that wouldn't make an audience want to flee the theater in horror? The only way I'd watch another "Police Academy" movie is if I knew all the characters were going to be killed off one by one so that another "Police Academy" movie would ever get made again.

So far, there's no talk of a plot, but that shouldn't be a surprise. None of the other "Police Academy" movies barely had a plot, don't try looking for one in this new addition. You've got a better chance of finding Amelia Earhart in a game of "Hide and Seek."

But even though it hasn't gotten a distributor or even written yet, it will make it to the big screen. It's a shoe-in at this point. Studios won't have to market the film as much since it's a well known movie series, even if it's a bad one at that. It's how "Dude, Where My Car?" gets greenlighted for a sequel. Talent, schmalent - you could film a home movie of your dad hit in the goods with a whiffleball and if a studio released it nationwide and it made less money than "Waterworld," you'd have a sequel and a cameo from Sean Connery because people would remember it as the "whiffleball" movie.

Oh God, that means a "Gigli" sequel could be right around the corner! I'm going up to the roof for a minute, I can think much clearer up there.

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©2004 by Danny Gallagher

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