Recued .jpg 1394

This is the first time my brother ever airbrushed the "Shivers" makeup--he did it on himself! He then digitally changed his eyes and sent me the pic to see if I liked it.

Obviously, I did...(my only change involved switching the side that the smile curves on)

The Funny FOC poster(rescued .jpg #1408)

I might have shown this to one or two of you--this is the poster I created right after I put up the FOC teaser, and everyone began talking about how psyched they were for the film.

Now, I knew that FOC had fallen short of my expectations--if you went in with none, you might be entertained. But if you went in thinking it was gonna be the most kickass brutal horror movie featuring clowns ever, well, you were in for a disappointment.

So I made this and sent it to some friends for a laugh.

Exhibit B for "Father of the Year"

I've mentioned before that my kid is autistic. He's 3 and a half years old. He talks a lot, but most of it is hard to understand, and he repeats a lot of phrases.

He didn't have school today. So what happens is, I go to sleep around 7am and he wakes me up at 10am. I take him to the living room, get him a drink and something to eat, and then put on one of his favorite movies.

Then I go back to bed.

He's normally fine for the hour or so before his mom gets home from work.

So I'm sleeping, and a sound wakes me. Sounds like the front door. Logan, my kid, has recently learned how to unlock and open it, but he doesn't typically want to do it.

But I get up and go look. Here's what I see:

The front door is wide open, though the glass door is still shut. Logan is dancing in front of the television, and he looks at me funny. On the table next to the door is a package from Amazon.

It appears that the UPS guy knocked on the door and Logan opened it and took the package from him. For all I know he signed for it too.

The funny part is that what he does now when people come over is to shout "Come on in!" when the door opens.

So I'm imagining the UPS guy as he knocks, is greeted by the 3 year old autistic kid who shouts, "Come on in!", and then the UPS guy calling child services to report it. (after he delivers his package, of course)

Gonna have to get another lock on that door...

I didn't even own Photoshop when I did this...(rescued .jpg #289)

Sometimes I'd do jokey stuff just to make Rick laugh--like this one.

Sometimes I'm Bored(rescued .jpg #1823)

And I need to do stupid things to amuse myself. That's what this poster was.

Pic From The Limo(Rescued .jpg #13498)

This was the night of the premiere of FOC. Betcha wish you were there...
(In case you don't recognize them from that angle, it's Jacky and Lauren)

This Would Be Embarrassing...

You guys are in for some funny stuff--I think I mentioned quite a while back that I had a hard drive failure and had to use a recovery program to get my files back. Only problem is that it recovers files but not their names.

A spent some time checking and renaming files, but got sick of it. Now I'm back at it, and I've been finding some goofy things.

First up is an email that a guy I know accidentally sent me. He CC:d it to me without knowing, and I never mentioned it to him. You'll see why:

From:DELETED
To:mfoxDELETED
Sent from the Internet (Details)



Hey Sexy one(marlisa)yep tha's you,
Since you ask me to send you email will here goes nothing. Let me know what you think.OK.

Let's I can use you to make my own personal rootbeer float. First I will have to put you in the bathtub (your choice you can cover up with town since I'm a gentleman)or you can get in nude(but I be blushing the whole time!!hehe!!)because I can here you say, Randy, look what you're missing(hehe!!) and I probably agree with you, ya sexy thang!!

Now where we oh yeah, than I got add lots of vanilla ice cream to that hot chocolate body of yours(hmmn now you're making my mouth water just thinking about taking a bite off your steaming sexy sultry body). I wondering if you freeze from the ice cream or if melts on that body of yours I guess I just have to come over there and find out(hmmm!!).

Boy, do you sound delicious. Oh yeah, no smoking in the boys room(hehe!!), and for the finally ingredient I add Rootbeer to your delectable body. Now that what I call a rootbeer float I could add some trimmings but I leave that up to you. Now I going to have to get in the bathtub with you and eat inch by delicious inch-NOW THAT"S WHAT I CALL A ROOTBEER FLOAT!!!(Let me know if you want to try out some day (HEHEHE!!!)Enjoy!!

I certainly did imagining you in that. Just Let me know when you decide to model some sexy negligee', I be right over to give you my opinion-hell maybe I even buy it for you provided you look real good in it!!

You're Sweetypie(just kiddinG!)
Randy-PS- you never know if I might take you up on that offer(hehehe_I'm such a dirty old man!!)

Why I'm Not Helpful

Okay, on occasion I feel like people that come to this blog expect it to be like my man Bill Cunningham's DISContent or John Roger's Kung Fu Monkey. You know, like, informative.

And I think you'll agree that in general...well, it's not.

The other day I mentioned half jokingly that I'm too selfish to share what I've learned, and Bill said, "Share the wealth".

I thought I'd explain why I don't generally do that. First off, I am a pretty selfish guy in a number of ways. Like, when I go to the movies I'll buy my popcorn and soda and I don't want to share it with anyone. It's mine.

But I'll more than gladly buy you your own if you're short on cash(as some here can testify), so I'm not sure what kind of selfish that is.

So the selfish portion of me yells, "But you've spent twenty years of blood and sweat and lonely nights figuring this stuff out! You can't share it for free!" The rational part of my mind mentions that a large part of that learning was reading every book available, so I've been using others' information to help myself figure it out. That part of my mind gets shouted down though.

The selfish portion also points out that technically everyone out there is my competition, so if I pass on what has helped make me successful then others could theoretically use my information to succeed, and maybe their movies would be taking the place of my movies.

I know. Sometimes I'm not so wonderful a guy.

Lastly, I guess it's my insecurities that stop me from posting much about what I've learned. First, I'm not all that sure that everything I do is correct. If I start preaching the way I do things and someone says I'm wrong...well, what happens if I start questioning my process? Bad things, that's what.

So I guess it's a mixture of those things that stop me from posting much helpful information. But hey--that's why you have Bill and John's sites, you know?

Go check 'em out now.

Production Design

Sometimes called Art Direction.

What is it? My mom asks me every year when that category comes up at the Oscars. It's basically the overall "look" of a film. To me, what it boils down to is this: Imagine taking out two random scenes not featuring the same actor from ten different movies. You have twenty scenes.

If you figure out which scenes come from which movies purely by looking at them, that's probably good production design. (I say probably because there are other factors like film stock or color correction that would let you figure it out; think "Traffic" or "Blair Witch Project")

Anyway, I haven't had any production design in my films. You may say, "Wha-uh?" to that. But you gotta understand, on these micro-budget features, it's close to impossible to do.

We're using whatever locations we have access to. We don't exactly have time to decorate them from head to toe--frequently there's a last minute change and we have to move to a location we haven't even seen prior to that day.

Also, the budget doesn't exactly allow us to buy what I'd call "background props". Most of the time we can barely afford the props necessary to sell a scene, much less decorate it the way we'd like.

But I've been thinking about WC, and I'd really like to implement some production design on it. I'm not sure how, especially since I intend to shoot this one even cheaper due to its experimental nature(read: not as marketable).

I'd love the whole thing to have the look of one of those old Twilight Zone episodes like "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street". The kind of neighborhood that almost looks like a studio set.

Realistically though, how do I get that? I'd need to find a neighborhood that looks like that and convince four different owners to let me use their house for three weeks for next to nothing. Ask them if we can redecorate their houses for that time.

Problems. Gotta start solving them if I'm gonna have any chance of shooting it this year.

Children of Men

Went to see this the other night with Zig. He can attest that I'm not making it up.

We got to the theater about ten minutes early. There was no one else in the auditorium, so we sat down dead center. It was perfect. I figured since it was Monday, that's why it was so dead.

A couple minutes later two guys come in, and I shit you not, sit right smack dab behind us. This is a pretty large theater too. And here we are, all next to each other.

Zig and I couldn't believe it. We both looked at each other incredulously, and I think Zig even muttered fairly loud, "Are they kidding?"

It's too bad they didn't sit in front of us. I have this trick I used to use in my more juvenile days that I would have gladly dusted off for the occasion: If some dick sat in front of my when there were plenty of other seats, I'd wait a couple of minutes and spill my drink right under their seat, and apologize profusely as they moved to take a seat where their feet wouldn't get soaked.

There was a time I was proactive. When I'd sit down in a theater, I'd dump a little of my soda on the seat in front of me. If someone went to sit there I'd stop them and say, "Hey--that seat's wet, you don't wanna sit there." They'd thank me and move on.

But for people sitting behind me...not much to do. It didn't matter too much; by the time the movie started the theater had a lot more people. Someone probably would have sat there anyway.

Good movie. Guy's got a real interesting style, and some of the long shots without cuts are impressive. Guaranteed Oscar-nom for production design. Probably a few others.

But it probably put the nail in the coffin of the "Y The Last Man" movie.(if you don't know what that is, you must not read comics...)

Today

For Christmas this year my parents got my kid a swing set. Like one of them $1000 sets made of wood and plastic with swings and slides and a fort.

But uh...it doesn't come built. And no one builds it for you.

And did I mention that my backyard is an incline? Not too bad, but enough that you can't build a set on it.

Today my dad and my brother came over to help me attempt to level the ground. We had to level a 10X16 foot section. My dad, the engineer, came up with the plan. We had to remove the sod. He'd done some measuring and figured out how much dirt we'd have to dig up and move to get it level.

They don't operate on my schedule, so they showed up at 11am. That means only three hours of sleep for yours truly, and then I'm out there digging and rolling up sod.

Did I mention it was almost 70 degrees today? January 6th, and I'm sweating my balls off digging in dirt, moving sod, moving dirt. Once again I simply work and work and work. I don't know my limits; I forget I'm not eighteen.

And tonight I hurt. Something weird has been happening the past eight years. If I use my arms for anything strenuous they will start shaking later on and feel very stiff. I play tennis, it happens. I go bowling, it happens. I use a shovel, it happens.

It worries me. A little aside: My doctor is this no-nonsense guy who thinks everything can be cured by losing weight and doing exercise. I don't see him in his office often, but when I do he's always good for a "You're too heavy, you gotta exercise more."

The only time I have ever seen him concerned about something was when I mentioned my hand-shaking problem. He wanted to know more. Said to keep an eye on it and keep him informed.

Which is why I've never mentioned it to him again.

Anyway, we got finished. The set was supposed to have been shipped to me yesterday(it weighs like 600 pounds) but it didn't come. We hoped it would come today, but it was a no show.

But at least the area's ready for when it does.

2007

It's here. I gotta level with you: I thought I'd be long dead by now.

But no, 2007 and I'm still here. I don't do any of that setting-goals stuff or making resolutions. They're just invitations to let myself down. I've got kind of a life goal instead: Make a movie every year until I die.

I did it last year. It's gonna be tough--coming up with a good script that can be filmed for very-little money, then coming up with that money...it's not easy.

But I got my eyes on something this year. It's kind of a bid to get my creative street cred back. My first movie is very "indy"--it was a slice of me, bundled up in a high-concept, grainy, mean serial killer vehicle. If you check around myspace, a lot of the angry youths have it as one of their favorite movies.

With FOC I knew I wanted to do a horror movie in the vein of JC's Halloween. I knew clowns were an untapped market--there was a lot of people looking for scary clown movies, and there weren't many of them. So in a way I exchanged some of my indy cred for mainstream potential. I did it. The end result fell far short of what I tried to accomplish with the film, but yeah, Lionsgate came calling. Hard to call that a failure.

With FOC2, I did it because they asked, but more importantly--there was a story there that interested me. Still, in the end I kind of feel like it didn't connect with any of the themes I'm interested in exploring. It was great exploring the characters I liked, and I think the movie's far superior to the first, but still...

So now I'm working on "Wounded Creature". That's not the actual name--I'm keeping that low until we're farther into production. It's more of an idea of the theme. But I'm very excited about the screenplay. It explores an idea that has always fascinated me, and so it will bear a resemblance to a few movies that I connected to as a child. But I think it will be uniquely mine, as HH is uniquely mine.

Being excited about a film is half the reason I do it--it's good to be back there as the New Year starts.