Failing. Again.

So, last night I got 0 pages of writing done. In my defense, I'm really trying to finish this corporate video, and it's complicated. I'm having to re-create about 9 openings to TV shows, and that means a lot of After Effects work.

I'm currently doing the Arrested Development one, but really didn't have the time to take the proper photos of the actors involved. So I'm going through footage and exporting frames to create stills(and then I have to mask them out like they're clip-art)...

A lot of work.

Then today, I have no writing done. Had some other horseshit(read: paying-the-bills stuff) to do, and had to go BACK to the eyedoctors because the new glasses they gave me are blurry.

After going, and checking my prescription, it turns out the lady ordering the glasses LEFT OUT A DIGIT. So my left lens, instead of being axis 156 she ordered axis 15.

So, I'm gonna do a little more editing and then try to write some more. Will let ya know if I did. Because you should be on me like white on rice, telling me what a lazy piece of shit I am, and I should get my writer's ass in gear and start piling up the pages!

Ha! Look! Procrastination!

Got home tonight from shooting at like 8pm. Think we got all the footage we need.

Not fun though. Some was out in the car, and it's pouring rain. Also, one guy we were supposed to shoot, who called out yesterday which is why we're shooting today instead--he shows up and says he can only shoot until 1:30pm. So we have to shoot ALL his parts in 3 hours.

What a fuckin' douche.

Anyway, home, am dumping footage to my hard drive, and came back over here to start writing! No TV or video games or editing until I get 10 pages done.

So I start writing, get about a page and a half done, so I come over here real fast...you know, to get this done. Procrastinating! Damn, this writing shit is hard. Always has been.

There's yer update! Just so you know, I was at pg 41 yesterday, got to page 45 last night. Will update this with where I am when I stop. So this blog can keep me honest.

Also, just so you know, listened to the new The Thing score by Marco Beltrami(which is really the only thing good about the prequel) while I wrote yesterday, and right now am listening to the 1988 Blob score by Michael Hoenig.

UPDATE(12:12am): Man, writing is hard! :) I am on page 51, so I am far short of my goal. I'm not sure how I'm doing, but the good news is that I've given myself chills twice(there's creepy stuff going on in this thing).

It has 54 scenes so far, which sort of worries me, as that's more than a scene a page, but I've been writing it as if I was breaking it down, meaning that if my main guy goes from the living room to the kitchen, it's two slug lines(and therefore 2 scenes).

Whereas if I was writing it to be read for others, I would simply put:
Bobby stands up.

IN THE KITCHEN

Bobby strolls in and snags a beer from the 'fridge.

Easier to read, but a freakin' nightmare if you forget to break that down in the shooting script as a separate scene. (ESPECIALLY if the kitchen and the living room are in different houses, which is very possible!)

Anyway, think I'm throwing in the towel on the writing. I really do have to get some editing done, as that's on a real deadline and I'm getting paid for that...

Scores listened to tonight: Candyman, Children of the Corn, a tiny piece of The Village(wasn't the right feel), H2(good score for a shitty, shitty movie) and Halloween H20.

Xmas Over

Super. I have grown to dislike it greatly. I'm not sure why. It just seems like a massive pain in the ass now.

Have shot about 70% of the video for my buddy's company and edited it all(including tons of After Effects work). Will post it here when it's done. It's got some funny parts, I think.

Am going to shoot the rest tomorrow, so I'm about to take an ambien and go to sleep.

I also decided, in a fit of irrationality, that I WILL FINISH A SCREENPLAY IN 5 DAYS. That's right, I started this one screenplay--I shit you not--five years ago. I have like 40 pages done.

I'm kind of angry at myself, so I decided today to attempt to finish it before the new year. I banged out 3 pages today, which is far short of the average 9 per day I think I need.

So tomorrow night I gotta sit down and really get to work. I probably won't do it, but I'll get close. Time to turn that TV off, put on some movie soundtracks, and really get back to the vibe.

Title of Next Dexter Book: Dexter Sucks Ass

Only based on the show. Because let me tell you, the show has some of the worst writing going on in the biz...(very very slight spoilers follow)

Let me count the ways...

From Dexter's sudden propensity for saying the amazingly obvious("He's eating a hot dog. He must be hungry.")...

...to inexplicable fits of Dexter being retarded(someone knocks Dexter out, he wakes up and sees a trap door WITH A TABLE ON TOP OF IT and thinks, "He must have gone down there...". If so, genius, how did he pull the trap door on top of himself and THEN move a table on top?)...

...to convenient plot creations(the police have found multiple homicides at a house, but they don't go in because "they're waiting for Dexter"...would never happen--cops would have to go in to clear the house, look for anyone who might be hurt--it only happens plot-wise because there's something inside that would incriminate Dexter.)...

...to convenient character motivations/actions that make no sense. This is happening EVERYWHERE, but the latest was last night. Dexter gets dunked in the ocean, but manages to make it to shore. His sister rushes in to find him at home, saying that the police found his wallet washed ashore(so she naturally assumed he was dead). She's overjoyed to see him, but that's where the convo stops. No question of "Hey, why was your wallet in the ocean? Why are your clothes wet?" (I feel like I missed something, because later she says "You almost died", and I'm wondering, did I miss the cover story he concocted? )

...to Dexter acting very un-Dexter-like. I understand their thinking that they need Dexter to grow as a character, but change and growth are different. For a guy who's always "I don't have any feelings", he constantly has them. And I don't think it's a matter of the character lying to himself.

Really, a show that went from pretty strong to pretty weak, pretty fast.

Fantasy Football

Not sure how, but once again my fantasy football team is kicking ass. Didn't think it was that great(and let me tell you, I have the weakest receiving corps I've ever had due to injury replacements...)

Also noteable, the top two teams are actually in the final game, which rarely happens.

I'm obviously the Marauders, if you wanna check the stats there. Will let you know if I win.

Casual Fucking Filmmaking

This area seems to have become pretty big on indy filmmaking, and a lot of them are using people from my crews, so I hear a lot of stories.

And they're REALLY frustrating to hear about. There's a ton of money, time, and wasted talent going into some super half-assed productions. I mean, productions with directors who drink on set while directing(and I'm not talking A beer), directors with no shot list or shooting script, and now...

...now I hear about a local film shoot that is starting to shoot with only about 3/4 of the script actually written. That's right, they don't even have a completed script. So you know the part they're shooting now has got to be draft 1...

There is literally only one thing we no-budget filmmakers can do as well as the big studios with deep pockets, and that is WRITE A GREAT SCRIPT. Spend a lot of time on it and do multiple re-writes until that thing is as good as can be.

And these guys, these local chumps, are spending a decent chunk of change(more than any single one of my movies has cost) to shoot draft 1 of their piece of shit script.

Meanwhile they got a bigger crew than I've ever had, they have people volunteering to work for free and bend over backwards for them...I don't get it...

On the GOH front, Chad has delivered the entire six-minute deleted scene that will go online shortly. It. Is. Unbelievable. So much better than the movie it will be in.

Man...can't wait to hear more, and to unleash it. Here, listen to a tiny snippet of it...

Monday starts more filming for another "Office" video...

Christmas Looms

and I've only bought 2 gifts. A new TV for the wife(our living room TV went out--and I only watch TV up there when we eat dinner together, which isn't that often--we've got weird schedules), and an ipad for my 8 year old.

I know, I don't have an ipad, why should he? Well, since I paid for all of it(my wife insists she and her parents are going to pitch in), I'm considering it partially my ipad too.

Hey, good news though. Remember that teaching job I did for a few weeks before they stopped paying? They owed me $2400, and that was like 8 months ago.

I finally got proactive and emailed the CCO, the CFO and human resources and sort of threatened to do stuff like create web pages about their company as well as email the companies whose workers I taught to tell them about how the company is run.

That was Friday. On Monday they overnighted a check for the full amount to me, along with a sternly-worded letter that said they'd sue me if I did any of that stuff.

So I guess I won't be teaching there any more, but at least I got what was owed me.

A buddy of mine owns pretty much the largest antique doll company in the world now. They have a big auction in LA at the end of every year, and a few years back they asked me to direct/edit some "The Office" like episodes about their family.

We've done 2 so far, and they're both online if you're bored. The second one is better, but still features a lot of in-jokes you may not get.

The 2008 one

The 2009 one

We're prepping the third one, and it should be the best of the bunch. We'll be parodying a lot of TV show openings, so it's requiring a lot more After Effects work than normal.

I also found a completely ridiculous thing we did for Muvico, the now-out-of-biz theater company. Will upload it soon.

GOH misery continues, but whatever. I'm as bored of talking about it as you are of hearing about it...

Music on GOH

Was having a hard time getting in touch with my composer on GOH. He was on across the pond in London and Tokyo and a couple of other places doing a tour for a video game(omitted because Andrew is paranoid) thing he created.

He got back and THAT day emailed me to tell me he was ready to get on GOH. Sounded excited.

Then I heard nothing. Sent him a couple of emails. Nothing.

Finally email-bombed him, and he replied. He apologized, but he'd been swamped with work for this other huge company I won't name but you might be able to figure it out by the only licensed name in this post. And if you post the name in the comments I will delete it.

Because he's wrapping that up now, but he's psyched to start GOH. The kicker is that he's going to be able to get some live orchestra on pieces of GOH, and he's bringing his whole mixing crew also, and he's billing that big company for it because they're not gonna know.

This is awesome stuff. He normally does great work because he's an awesome composer and has some great libraries that sound like true orchestra. But LIVE players are incredibly expensive, so nobody ever uses them.

He's still hopeful he'll get the "deleted" scene done this month, and then the other stuff will follow. Really no big deal because I don't plan on premiering the film until March or April.

Can't wait to hear some new stuff.

The Fear Goes Away

Quick thoughts today. Bleak, as normal.

I was just thinking about HH, and the thought occurred to me that as a writer you will never ever write the same thing in one period of life as another. Like, today if I had never written HH, I don't think I could write it.

The same way I am writing things today that I never could have written back then. I'm in a different mindset now than back then.

Which leads me to panic a little, because I feel like if I don't write something NOW, the time may pass and I'll never write that thing that could have been so great. It will elude me forever.

THAT lead me to thinking more about stuff like Why isn't John Carpenter making great horror movies like he used to? And Why isn't Stephen King's new stuff nowhere near as good as his old stuff?

And I think it's because you stop being afraid of stuff as you get older, at least, the supernatural/extraterrestrial/weird stuff. Your fears become so much more mundane that your imagination stops playing all those crazy what ifs it used to play.

I mean, I can remember walking home at night after watching Nightmare on Elm Street for instance, and I walked in the middle of the road so there would be no chance Freddy could jump out at me. Did I REALLY think he would? No. But still...

Nowadays, I'd walk down the sidewalk because Freddy isn't gonna jump out at me.

Sidebar: Anybody watch Fact or Faked on Syfy? Love the show. Super spotty on the science/investigation, but they do see some neat stuff, and the videos they discover are pretty cool. But what happened to the Asian chick this year? She got replaced by a black chick with no explanation.

Kinda wish I believed in ghosts, 'cause at least that would give me something to be scared of. I guess they COULD sort of exist...

Dark Knight Returns

The comic book by Frank Miller.

I see now where this comic book came from. It's the story of an aging Batman who has gotten out of public affairs. He feels like he's too old to do anything and can't compete physically with the new breed of crime.

But eventually he's pushed to it, and he comes out, and he kicks some ass. I can see what Frank Miller(the writer/artist of DKR) was feeling when he imagined this concept.

I feel old. I'm 41, which simultaneously doesn't look that old to me yet looks older than I ever thought I'd get.

I watch UFC and see these young kids out there slugging away, and I wonder, "Could I beat any of them now?"

Because I look back at the good old days and I fought a LOT. There's something called a glass jaw, and that's where a fighter gets known for taking one punch and lights out.

Let me tell you, I did not have a glass jaw. I have been punched in the face, kicked in the head, strangled...and I never ever blacked out.

Hitting me just made me angry. I had so much anger burning in me that it was hard to extinguish, I guess.

I think I told you the story about the guy who hit me in the face as hard as he could, and I slumped a little, and I smiled. This was at a high school party, and let me tell you, this got me some respect from the masses. People came up to me weeks later saying, "I heard Paul punched you in the face and you smiled, man!"

See, the usual response to getting punched in the face is not to smile. Smiling at that is, in high school terms, not right.

I would probably have lost that respect if they knew what I was thinking after I got punched. I would immediately picture myself as Captain Kirk in Star Trek in one of those bar fights, or Wolverine in a comic book. What would they do? They'd smile, and fight.

But there are no mind-readers in high school, so I got some props.

That brings me to wonder about if I got in a fight today. Would that all change? If I got punched, would I start doubting myself? Would I think, "I'm too old to fight any more" or would the beautiful, beautiful anger come back?

I dunno. Just what I was thinking about.

Movement

On one of the script fronts. I have begun work on it again. It was at page 30, am now at page 33.

The weird thing is that it's a character in the script who is forcing me to work. He's saying things and doing things that make me want to go write them down lest I forget them.

It's something that happens sometimes when writing is going well. A character really jumps out and takes over.

Only problem in this case is that he was a minor character that now threatens to overwhelm the lead. This has happened to me before. Some of my leads tend to be straight-laced characters who have a funny/sarcastic buddy, and the buddy naturally has more charisma and better lines.

So I have to beef up the main character when this guy is done taking over the script.

Right now, though, I'll just see where he takes it. He's got me working, so it can't be that bad.

PS: TV is bad. Really bad. I think I seriously need to start turning it off when I'm working.

I Got A Problem

Do you see those fucking Twilight Zone seasons? They are temporarily selling on Blu Ray for like $38 for season 1, like $43 for Season 2, and like $40 for Season 3.

I don't own the TZ on DVD(besides 2 discs that have my absolute favorite episodes)...and I LOVE me some Twilight Zone.

And these things are CHOCK full of extras. It would take weeks of watching to get through them all, maybe even months.

I don't have that kind of time. I wish I did, but I just don't.

And besides that...the problem is this: One of my little joys in life is stumbling on one of those Sci-Fi marathons they do once or twice a year(there's always one on New Year's Eve), and somehow--even though I have spent countless hours watching them over years of my life--I always manage to catch one I have never seen before.

So if I buy the seasons, and watch them all, that little joy is gone...

A hard choice. What to do, what to do...

Slackin'

All over the place. Here. GOH. Pretty much everywhere.

You can blame video games. Battlefield 3 came out a few weeks ago, and I spent a lot of time playing that.

Thursday night came Skyrim, the next Elder Scrolls game. I've played the last 2, probably put in a combined 200 hours of gameplay in those.

The line to get Skyrim at midnight on Thursday was near 400 people. Clearly I never should have dropped out of computer science and game programming. (I used to program games on my Atari 800XL when I was 14-21 years old)

But tomorrow I'm back at the looping game. Getting Richard's done. Trying to get Beau in but he's being pretty unresponsive.

I think this movie has certifiably kicked my ass. I'm just tired of it. I should be putting together a trailer, and I've messed around with it, but every time I start putting pieces together I just get bored and sick of it.

I need to stop having to do70-90% of the preproduction work, much of the production work, and then 100% of the post-production work. It's just too much.

The World Is Aflame...

...with talk of what's better, the new Canon C300 or the Red Scarlett. I don't care, but at first glance it certainly appears to be the Red. Whatever.

(an aside: this guy has found serious frame-drop flaws in the Red Epic, but I wonder if it has anything to do with shooting 25fps--he's in the UK, and that's standard there...but also, I enjoy hearing about his FCP having to spend forever exporting to ProRes because it can't edit 5K footage, but guess what can? It rhymes with Adobe Premiere)

That set another guy to make a bold claim that the Canon T2i can't shoot a movie, certainly not a movie worthy of distribution. Sounds like he's bitter about something, because movies have been shot with the 7D, and the T2i is basically the 7D in a cheaper body...

But who cares? Whatever.

Composer just got back from his Tokyo/London/etc trip and jumped RIGHT into GOH. I figured he'd want a day or two to rest up, but nope, he emailed me right away to tell me the timecode is off on the new copy I sent him.

I think I forgot to reset it to 29.97 drop-frame. Technically we shot in 24fps, but when it's exported for dvd it's 29.97. So when you drop the timecode filter on the clips it automatically goes to what the clips were shot at.

Man, this is pretty interesting stuff, right?

Let's talk about Halloween. Saturday night the wife and I went to a club and pretended we were younger than we are. Lot of drinking, some dancing. Laughing at costumes.



My costume(pic attached) is COMPLETELY unacceptable for bar use. It makes you hot, it's nearly impossible to drink(and even hard to HOLD a drink)...gotta remember that.

The wife didn't have a good costume, so she went as slutty schoolgirl. I really like it when she can't find a good costume.

Hey, I forgot I shot this! You know how you know it's Halloween? Slutty dancing girls! Courtesy of my iphone:
Slutty Dancing Girls

On actual Halloween night we took the kid out and around, then came back to give out candy. Once again there are people driving around and dropping their kids off in the neighborhood even though they're not from around here.

Annoying and a little pathetic. Not as pathetic as the 18 year olds walking around to get free candy. I mean, candy's not that expensive, is it?

I did make sure to raid the candy bags so we didn't give out any Snickers. Those don't get given out at my house.

Anyway, back to the GOH...crickets should be dead soon. Last of the looping, then go do all the foley...then wait for the score. I should have a clip from the movie to post in the next month or so, with score...

Week In Review

Mid-week edition.

Have not touched GOH since re-exporting it. Taking a break.

After hearing that Andrew guy talk about Blender all the time, I figured why not download it and take a look? I'm not sure why, as I own 3Dmax and Maya. Have used 3Dmax lightly since 1998 when it was affordable, but never tried Maya. Tinkered with Lightwave back in the day.

So I'm not a noob to modelling programs. But Jesus, could Blender be any more complicated and user-unfriendly? Holy shit, I spent about an hour just messing around and really couldn't do anything of note. I had downloaded a dinosaur just to play with, and it was all I could do just to figure out little things.

I don't know why I bother...should really spend more time digging deeper into After Effects, since I'm always using it.

Also want to get back to two screenplays I've been working on for 3 years. I NEED to finish them, and maybe shoot one dirt cheap next year on my T2i. I've been quietly acquiring stuff for it, from lenses to a nice carry bag to a Pico mini-dolly to an LED adjustable light to a mini-monitor.

My buddy Luke has a T2i now, so I could technically shoot some 2 camera setups if I wanted to.

So I should buckle down and get to work on those screenplays...except Battlefield 3 just came out, and it's REAL good...damn...

Still, have had time to knock some off the Halloween-watch list:
Trick R Treat - Like I thought, it's better now that I have lost the expectations I had when I first saw it. Man, it's a beautiful movie too. Full of gorgeous shots and great art direction.
Dark Night of the Scarecrow: Watched my Blu Ray of it. Still really dig it. The music still gets to me.
Cast A Deadly Spell -- Tried to watch it. Got bored.

Ones I will for sure get to: Halloween 2 blu and Pumpkinhead. The others may not get seen.

And hey, look how collectible my movies are! This is right from Amazon who, at the moment, are out of my movie, but I just sent them 10 more. For now, though, you will not get yourself a copy on Amazon for less than $998. Wtf?

Halloween Approaches

Too quickly. I'm not watching what I'd like to watch, not enough. There's too much regular TV to keep up with...

Wednesday night I went to a local premiere of a buddy's horror movie. Saw a lot of people I don't see a lot of, which was cool. Enjoyed the flick more than I figured I would, as I'm not typically a fan of campy-type horror.

Afterwards went to the after party(makes sense). I knew the other most famous filmmaker from GB was going, so I knew there would be drinking. I got one of my actors to drive me up there, since he only lives like a mile away from me, and he was going. Told him I'd buy his ticket and some drinks.

And man, was there drinking. My bar tab was $150 at the end of the night. There was some crazy stuff going on too.

Had a good time, came home and got sex-attacked by my wife.(I think she's testing to see if I got any nookie out...like, if I can't get it up, I must have just fucked someone...but the joke's on her--and you'd think she'd know this by now--I can ALWAYS get it up. So this way, if I actually DID cheat, it's like BONUS sex!)

Woke up once to puke, then didn't wake up again until 4pm. Feeling like hell. Tried to eat, didn't take. Kind of lazed around.

On the other hand, have re-exported the entire movie again now which should be the pretty-goddamn-close to the final cut. Have to send it to the composer, and hopefully he'll get right on it when he gets back from Tokyo.

Watched I Was A Teenage Werewolf last night. I guess I can see why I liked it as a 10 year old, but man, Michael Landon plays the world's most unlikeable protagonist...and the movie's ultimately pretty weak.

Broke down and got Dark Night of the Scarecrow on Blu Ray. I WILL watch it before Halloween.

Wife's having a pumpkin party tonight. Kind of a last-minute decision.

The Haps

Okay, after a marathon 20-hour session of editing, I have inserted about 95% of all the looped audio I recorded on GOH. Much of it works so good that I actually thought I hadn't muted the original track...

Am using every trick in the book to get it in there so the audience never knows how much work was involved.

Now I just need the exterior audio from 2 actors, and then the foley work for the scenes I've looped. Still a lot of work, but I've knocked a big chunk from it.

Have also added shake to the screen when "the Servant" storms around, to give the impression he's very heavy. But you gotta basically keyframe every footstep which gets tedious. (and also add the sound of his footstep)

The movie got a little tighter too, which normally would suck, as I sent the composer his copy already. But he's in Tokyo right now, so I'm gonna export him in a new copy and have it waiting for him when he gets home.

Movies Watched:
Species: Hadn't seen it in 10 years. Man, Natasha Henstridge is SO hot...how had I forgotten? Good God, if she really was an alien, it would be worth the death to bang her.

The Midnight Hour: A TV movie set on Halloween night that I had heard good things about. It started and I immediately recognized the director's name: Jack Bender. Guy has directed a TON of TV, most notably like 70% of the episodes of Lost. The movie is campy, goofy fun, and features people like Kevin McCarthy, "Bitches Leave" Robocop guy, and Levar Burton and Shari Belafonte both playing high schoolers even though they were 27 and 31 respectively at the time.

Most notable, that a bunch of undead suddenly break into a dance routine and music video at a party. Funny stuff.

I Am Number Four: Pretty forgettable but not atrocious-like-I-heard teen movie.

Last Man Standing: I remember seeing this when it first came out and was pretty disappointed in it. In retrospect it's not horrible. Not great either, but not as bad as I remember.

The Four Musketeers: I was a big fan of The Three Musketeers as a kid...I thought. I vaguely remembered it, and then when I recently tried to rewatch it I found it boring. I thought, no way did I like this as a kid. Turns out, it was the FOUR Musketeers, which is the same cast, which is the confusion. This was definitely the better movie.

Coogan's Bluff: Had never seen it. Watching Clint Eastwood be tough is always fun. Not a bad flick, but not on the level of the better Dirty Harry movies.

The Music

Hey, let's go off topic. Too early for a best-of the year list? I don't think so.

Here's some of my favorite albums I've been listening to this year. I think, once again, my taste in music will surprise you.

First off, love the Maroon 5 album, "Hands All Over". It's very hard to pin down my favorite track, as there's some great stuff there. If I had to say, it would be this:
http://youtu.be/BBiPHTtMV2Q

followed by:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5h03pDooOJc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5muc2axezlM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BP1PsqBmbvM

But really, the whole album is very solid. Only downside is it doesn't have the super-catchy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suRsxpoAc5w

Okay, on to stuff you might actually picture me listening to. The new KMFDM album "WTF?!" is actually pretty good too. I guess for me the standouts are:
Lynch Mob: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyYQCl9WxAQ
Krank: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4-sJX58S-o
Take It Like A Man: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0VO9sg-cYs
But they're all pretty good.

Honorable mention to Cobra Starship's "Night Shades" album. Not only do they sound like they're making music with my old Atari 800XL, they've got one song that's like if Erasure and New Order had sex and cranked this out(wait 'til you get to the chorus):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=png6lqxsqI8

Let's do random super-catchy tunes.

First off is this one that manages to be rather upbeat despite the talk of random school violence. If I had a nickel for every time I thought these lyrics back in high school, I'd probably have ten bucks.
Pumped Up Kicks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3ldsF65cLM

This is a new poppy, happy kind of song that I don't wanna like but I do anyway:
Faster: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPuqA94-qCo

Digging the guitar in this song a lot. Funny aside, I talked to their agent about using a song or two in my new flick, but apparently $150 per song is not enough for them(that's what I offered). You ever heard of kidneythieves? Yeah, didn't think so.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q5e7d7GKw0
Also, the KMFDM remix of their song "Spank" is pretty cool.


This is an unsigned group I'm thinking about using some stuff from. This is their best song. Very "Front Line Assembly" like, which I dig. The video sucks though...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-r0gjSfmIk

Anyway, there's your off-topic post for the year.

Young People Fucking

Did you know there's a movie called that? I just found out. Movie probably sucks, but that's a catchy name.

I happened to be watching the Night of the Demons remake, and was looking up some of the actresses in it, and one of them is in YPF.

Anyway, yep, that's one of my Halloween movies to watch that I've never seen. Saw the original, but not this one.

Also of possible interest to you, you know the hot chick from Serenity and V? She's naked in a movie called "Love and Death", just in case you cared. I wouldn't waste your time with the movie; just watch the first 10 minutes if you wanna see her knockers. You're welcome.

On the GOH front, I have only 3 more actors to loop, and the looping will be done. (Done, not inserted into the film yet)

We continue to work on the treatment for the flick we'd like to do next year. We looked at a warehouse that's probably not going to work for what we need.

Six Million Dollar Innuendo

So I just started watching the first couple of episodes of the Six Million Dollar Man. I need something in the background that I don't have to pay attention to while I work.

I loved this show as a kid. It thrilled me that my middle name was Lee, and that was the main actor's name(Lee Majors).

Anyway, the first two episodes are almost unwatchable now. The third and fourth episodes are part 1 and 2 of a two-part story.

And man, there's some crazy innuendo going on that's pretty funny now. Never would have caught it when I was 9 years old...

Steve Austin is on a boat. To escape, he ties up a woman, then rips out the porthole of the room they're in, punches his way through the wall, and before he dives out into the ocean says, "Sorry I had to violate your porthole." I'm not kidding, that is word for word what he said.

Later, the same woman after seeing him rip off his metal bonds says, "In Russia we heard all American men were soft and weak." He smirks at her and says, "Well, we rise to the occasion."

Funny, too, to note just how much stock footage is in the show.

Also watched Fearless Vampire Killers last night. I imagine it didn't age well. I didn't like it much, but it's hard to judge something that old from today's perspective.

TV show wise, Breaking Bad continues to be not just the best-written show on TV, but best directed. Man, gonna be a long wait between this season and next season...

The Halloween Begins

October's here, and this Halloween I'm gonna enjoy it. I was locked in production of GOH last year, so it went by without me watching a single horror movie.

Anyway, have started a list of movies I intend to watch this October, and it looks like this:
critters
tremors
dark night scarecrow
pumpkinhead
aliens blu
dont be afraid of dark(orig)
cast deadly spell
i was teenage werewolf
the midnight hour
trick r treat
starship troopers
walking dead season 1
7
night of the demons remake(only 'cause I haven't seen it and it's a halloween movie)
halloween 2 new blu
mimic director's blu
Species

Well, it used to look like that. I looped an actor yesterday, and afterwards watched the Mimic Director's Cut with Luke and Nelly. It's an okay movie, but it's been so long since I saw it that I have no idea what's different between the regular cut and this one.

Interesting that Rob Bottin designed the creature though. Also not sure why there are Screen Story By and a Screen Play By credits, when they're both by the same two guys...

Most of the flicks on that list I have seen at one time or another, and I watched Walking Dead on TV while it was on, but I was working on GOH at the time so couldn't pay 100% attention to it.

Here's a nicely-shot if predictable little short:
http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/blog/2011/10/03/frightfully-good-cutting/

Shoot Me Now

I shouldn't be posting this because it just forces me to think about it all the more, but did I mention how I have to foley/loop pretty much 50% of my new movie's scenes?

I don't want to think about it really, as it will probably paralyze me with anger and frustration. I just have to keep knocking at in chunks, not looking at the big picture. Chip away at the mountain and eventually it will be gone...

So I looped the main actor's dialogue the other night. For 8 hours. And that's not 'cause he's bad at it...there's just THAT MUCH stuff to loop. And we didn't even do the outside part, because there are crickets now, and there were no crickets that night we shot(in November)...

Then I looped two other actors the next night. I have like 8 more people to loop, then I get to recreate many of the scenes with foley. Basically just shooting the entire scene again with a microphone instead of a camera.

Fuck.

Hey, how about another sobering look at how shitty it is to be an indy filmmaker?

http://www.indiewire.com/article/the_death_of_indies_on_netflix_greatly_exaggerated_or_just_another_mistake/

Honestly, I wish I was not compelled to make movies. I could actually be making money doing other stuff since I'm a pretty smart guy.

Fuck.

You say it's your birthday...

Well, it was mine also over the weekend. I decided to go to a local horror show where John Carpenter and some other celebs were going. I booked myself a room at the hotel and went with absolutely nobody.

I'm sure it seems kind of weird to others, but I really dig being alone. I have always been a pretty solitary person, so every once in a while it's nice to get away.

Told the wife I'd be gone overnight, and when I tell her I'm not going with anybody she looks at me funny.

Anyway, I knew I'd see people there I knew. I got there about 3pm on Saturday, and who's standing outside with one other person, smoking a cigarette? John mutherfuckin' Carpenter himself.

I'm not one who bothers people, so I didn't say anything. It was nice to see that he appeared to be having a good time. (as opposed to the last time I saw him at a Con, when he appeared to hate everybody)

Inside, I'm a little shocked to see that it's VERY lightly attended. To put this in context, when I went to this very same show in Jersey to see Carpenter, we had to park about a half a mile away, and the line to see Carpenter went outside of the hotel...

I don't know what it is. Sure, there was another big show about 2 weeks ago within 2 hours of here, but their guest list was weak. And THAT show used to be in this same exact hotel, and was PACKED when they did it. So it's not the hotel...

The show didn't get busy at all. If you wanted to chat with Carpenter or Anthony Michael Hall or some of the True Blood people or Jeffrey Coombs, have at it. Frequently there was nobody at their tables.

I hung out a little at Dire Wit's table with my FX peeps from GOH, Jason and Kayleigh. I met up with a long-time fan Dominic. Richard Cutting, star of GOH, showed up, so I showed him and a couple of others some rough footage of the flick.

I started drinking Vodka cranberries about 6pm.

Pretty uneventful. Seemed like everybody had partied themselves out the night before. We hung out in the bar for a while, watching Anthony Michael Hall try to pick up chicks. Jason and Kayleigh took off about 2am or so, and I hung out with Dom and his Australian buddy Brett.

Brett works for some film company and had some stories to tell. (like, David Warner was the original Freddy Krueger for 4 days until he got fired 'cause he couldn't hack the prosthetics. I have never heard this story--there's no mention of it in the pretty comprehensive NOES doc--and this sounds like big news. Brett says he has a still of Warner in makeup to prove it, so if he emails it to me, I'll post it)

We talked about flicks in general, and about 5am we all packed it up. I had a decent buzz.

For some reason I woke up at 8:30am with a raging headache and couldn't go back to sleep. So I got up, went out and got breakfast, and came back. Good thing about having been to this hotel about 100 times is that I know how to get into the dealer's room without paying. No way I'm paying $20 to walk in to that tiny dealer's room just to say goodbye to my buddies.

Anyway, since I was up that way I stopped at Padonia Station Pub to grab some crab dip to go(some of the best in the state), and came home to watch some football.

If you want to see a link to the Carpenter Q&A that I missed, here it is. See Carpenter give someone the finger! (in that person's defense, I totally agree with him)
http://youtu.be/XxLLYUy2zOs

Pretty low key birthday, but it's cool.

The pic he just emailed me...I dunno, does it look like David Warner?

The Tiff

Remember when I said I wanted to get some smaller names in my flick that we'd like to shoot next year? My plan had been to go to Pittsburgh to meet up with Tiff, one of those names I mentioned, take her out to dinner and chat with her a little.

Well, some other local filmmakers cast her in a comedy(?) and brought her here, and my man Zig got on their flick as the Production Manager. So he kept an eye out for any spare time that I might be able to catch up with Tiff while she was here.

The production brought her in one night and things didn't go great at first. So Tiff had a night and a day free, so I took her, Zig and his girlfriend out to breakfast a couple of days ago.

Happy to report that Tiff is every bit as cool as billed. Very down to earth and funny, and has some pretty funny stories. (the ones we heard dealt with Lance H., the guy I'd like to cast in my flick, and W. Forsythe, who I do not want to cast in anything after hearing the story)

She's interested in the flick, and if I can meet her weekly "friend" quote and make sure her schedule is clear, she'd be in.

Here's a pic of us after breakfast at Zig's. Did I mention she's hot?

Long Time Coming

I am watching a movie right now that I haven't seen in 28 years.

First off, I'd like to reject the notion that I could have seen a movie almost 30 years ago, as I am only 24 years old. But anyway...

You might have remembered me talking about the summer of 1982 in this blog entry here, and the double feature movie I went to with my dad and brother. If you don't remember, well, that's why I put a link there.

I saw ET followed by Conan, and of course Conan overshadowed the movie ET. I had no idea at the time who Steven Spielberg was. I vaguely remember liking the movie more than I thought I would, but it was ALL about Conan that night.

Since then I've had thoughts about rewatching ET, and I'm not sure why I haven't. It's never playing on cable(have you noticed that?) like most other movies.

Tonight, that's changed. Am mid-watch. Not sure I can handle all these 80's flashbacks. D&D. Asteroids. Star Wars figures. Man, I was probably about as old as Elliot's brother in the movie when I first saw this...

Did you just discover this blog?

If so, comment and let me know how...

I'm just curious why this blog is all of a sudden getting a lot of hits...

I Am Peter Parker

Meaning, I am a paid photographer now.

A long while ago I started submitting photos to a stock photo company online.

Stock photos are where you go if you're lazy and/or just can't find that photo you want for your book/movie/ad/whatever. You just go to a site, search for the image, pay for it, and then it's yours to use.

The place I used is called Big Stock Photo, though Istock Photo is probably bigger. Big Stock is pretty picky. I've submitted 38 photos, but they've only accepted 7 of them.

I try to submit stuff I think people could use, like mysterious silhouettes and city shots at night. (you know, who else is gonna be stupid enough to go into an alley in Baltimore at night and shoot a photo?)

And a long time ago I'd shot a photo of Rick G from HH to use in the press kit...it was him in silhouette in my back yard with some smoke. A bunch of them came out nice, but this was on 35mm film. When I scanned them there was some artifact problems, but the pic was still cool.

Big Stock accepted 2 of them silhouette pics, plus some other assorted ones. I did some new silhouette pics with my Canon T2i, with me in the silhouette. They accepted one of those.

Anyway, they don't license for much money, and they don't pay out until you reach $25. Months went by. A buck here, a buck there. The Rick G silhouette seems to be the most popular one. It's funny, you can even see it on the cover a self-published book on Amazon here, and if you type the word "gunman" and "silhouette" into google, my image is the first link you'll get.

But this month I broke through, and Big Stock just paypal'd me $31.50...so that means I am now a paid photographer!

If you're bored and want to see my photos on Big Stock, you can click on the link below.
http://www.bigstockphoto.com/profile/miraco/

Angry, Sans Drive

Saw a blog post today titled, "Is anger stifling your creativity?"

After contemplating that for all of about ten seconds, I am prepared to answer "Very Possibly."

Lately I don't feel very creative. I've got about 7 screenplays that have 30+ pages each, but I get to a certain point and just feel like I've got nothing new to add. Every idea seems to be an idea I've seen somewhere else, and I don't like ripping stuff off.

Is it my anger clouding my mind? And if it is, what am I so angry about?

Well, for starters, I'm very angry at the internet. (he said non-ironically as he posted on his blog)

See, it's ruining everything. There was a time when my movies got picked up for upfront money. My first two films, in fact, made more money than they cost me and that was in upfront money alone. Who else has done that?

Everybody else was complaining they couldn't get a deal but I didn't seem to have that problem. Then the internet comes along and people are pirating movies, and studios now don't pick up anything for upfront money. I couldn't even get a decent deal for the sequel to a movie that made Lionsgate big money for a no-budget flick.

I'm also angry at the people on the internet, and not just for pirating movies. It would be one thing if they would be ashamed to pirate movies, but no, they feel like they're entitled to do it. I'm not sure why really...

But many of them also have horrible taste in movies. They see an incredibly well-made low budget movie with recognizable stars called "Insidious", and a TON of them are shitting on it. I think they want more Saw movies or Hostel 10, or some other "torture porn" movie that they call horror.

I feel like they're trying to redefine my genre, and I don't like it.

The internet is putting brick-and-mortar stores out of business, and that makes me angry also. I'm not really a pro-more-taxation guy, but when you can buy shit tax-free from Amazon and get it shipped to your door, well, it's hard to compete with that. One way or the other, they are going to have to level the tax playing field, and you know that doesn't mean getting rid of sales tax for storefronts, right?

I'm also a little worried about what exactly is happening to society. Everybody's got a smart phone, an ipad, a laptop, and no matter where you go they are buried in it. Nobody's paying attention to anybody else.

I know one guy who went out on dates with his girl and she'd bury herself in her phone all dinner. We are turning into one big anti-social society.

You may say, "Wait a minute pal, aren't you the poster-boy for anti-social?", to which I would reply, "Yes." I'm also a huge contrarian, meaning that I will typically do the opposite of the majority.

See my problem? You're all going anti-social, so you're going to force me to be more social just so I'm not like you. This makes me angry.

I know it's great we have all this technology, and we have a million games at the touch of our fingertips so we never have to be trapped with our, you know, thoughts...

But every time I look at what we as a race have accomplished with all this technology, I keep seeing in my mind's eye Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park:

"Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."

Do you think our society is getting better by people thinking less? (no one will be asking this question because the only real question they're asking is, "How much money will we make on this app?")

I don't know how to stop being angry...

So...hurricane...

Got the awesome news that the bitch Irene was headed our way. The news was making it out to be Armageddon, which I was pretty sure was just over-hype, like everything else they do.

And yeah, I was right. Storm came. Lot of rain. Lot of wind. Stuff blew around.

Everything was okay until Sunday morning about 1am when my power went out. I was mid edit, but saving frequently, so no big deal. It flickered back on, then off again.

And didn't come back on. Sunday into Monday, I played Angry Birds on my iphone. I played Scrabble. I checked my Facebook, Twitter. Was pretty boring.

Got a quick video of a downed power line across the street sparking violently. Inspired, stuck my microphone outside and got some nice audio of the hurricane winds, like 10 minutes of assorted low-to-high wind. Wished the fucking cricket in the bushes would have shut up though. Fuckin' thing is noisy.

Went to bed at 6am, early for me. Opened the window so there was a bitching wind blowing in, and pretended I was at the beach and that was the surf I was hearing.

Woke up Sunday at like 2pm. No power. Sunny outside. Went to a buddy's house to see if his house is okay, since he's in France for a month. His house is fine, and he has power, so I charge my laptop, my iphone, watch some preseason football.

Debate about going to see a flick by myself, but I'm hopeful my power will be back on by the time I get home.

It is not. Sunday night I am getting desperate. I plug my power inverter into the car and leave my car running all night. It powers my modem, my router, and my laptop. I watch some netflix on my laptop until a car fuse blows.

I go to the all-night Walmart at 2am and get two boxes of fuses. Blow all you want; I've got more.

Spend the rest of the night watching Netflix--I should be writing, but am feeling very uninspired.

Lunestra at 7am. I wake up at 2pm, but the power isn't on yet. My wife comes into the bedroom, and I tell her I'm not getting up until the power's back on. Back to sleep until 4pm, when I glance over and see the clock now shows a blinking time.

That means we have power again...about 37 hours of no power. Ever see Trigger Effect? Pretty under-rated movie, but I believe it's completely accurate as to how people would react if the power grid goes down for any length of time.

Earthquake 2011

Yeah, so there was an earthquake in Maryland today. Here's what happened from my perspective.

I went to sleep about 9:30am. I slept soundly.

A rumbling awoke me. My first thought was that a plane was taking off and really pushing that throttle, rumbling the house. That happens on occasion since we're close to the airport.

But then the house REALLY started shaking. I sleep in a waterbed, so it was like being in the ocean for a second.

Looking up, my ceiling fan is on and spinnning and I think: This is gonna Final Destination and drop down out of the ceiling and kill me.

I hopped up as the rumbling stopped and went to the front door--I could hear my dog barking outside.

That was it. I came downstairs and the only thing that had fallen was the Planet of the Apes poster that's on my wall. (the original, natch) None of my other posters fell.

Facebook went nutty, and the news broke in with some really terrible coverage. Caught with their pants down...

I dunno. Not impressed. It takes a lot to impress me, and I guess nothing short of an 8.0 is gonna do it.

Crom...sigh...

I love the original Conan movies. I love the original books by Robert E. Howard. I love the Conan comics, including Savage Sword of Conan which I used to buy with Fangoria at the News Centers near me when I was like 13.

I do not love the new "Conan" movie.

Where to start? My expectations were pretty freakin' low going in, so I thought hey...maybe there will be something cool.

And then we hear Morgan Freeman's voice starting the familiar "Know, O Prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis"...and immediately I'm thinking, "Not good."

Morgan's no Mako, and while he may be your traditional-sounding narrator, he doesn't fit in a barbarian movie. THEN--I kid you not--there's like 3 minutes of further narration attempting to setup the whole movie.

Hey filmmakers, free advice: If you need more than 30 seconds of narration to set up your movie, your script sucks. Heck, odds are good that your script sucks if you need narration at all before the movie starts, but there are exceptions. (LOTR, Star Wars trilogy)

This was not an exception.

We cut to a battle and see Ron Perelman fighting the mobs of barbarians while his woman is stabbed. She's pregnant. She wants to see the baby before she dies, and again--not kidding--he cuts her with a knife and pulls out the baby, shows it to her, and she names it Conan.

So...apparently this barbarian is a freakin' surgeon. He cut through exactly what he needed to without hitting the baby, and just popped it out. I mean, I saw my wife cut open for her C-section, and it just seemed a tad more complicated than that...

"Maybe I'm nitpicking," I think to myself as Ron holds the baby to the sky and YELLS in one of those high shots. It struck me as corny.

Then we get some Conan-is-now-a-kid sequences, and I think one of them is probably the sole good part of the movie. (Not that I'm encouraging it--frankly, I don't think we need any time with Conan as a kid)

Anyway, shit happens, Conan's father is killed in a ridiculous moment and Conan vows vengeance. Fade to black. Then Morgan Freeman starts narrating again. I think I actually laughed out loud.

He says stupid shit that you KNOW is unnecessary. "Conan searched for his father's killer but couldn't find him", "Conan became a pirate", blah blah. Then the very next scene Conan is on a boat with a bunch of pirates talking about how he can't find the man who killed his father.

Uh...hey, screenwriting 101 calling. Why the fuck would you waste my time in your 2 hour 9 minute movie with POINTLESS narration? Did you pay a lot for Morgan Freeman and needed to get your money's worth?

Man...

A lot of shit doesn't make sense in this movie and I'm not gonna break it all down. Little nitpicky things that bothered me:

Conan JAMS his sword halfway into the ground at least 3 times in the movie. It's like, if he wants to check out a footprint or something he'll SLAM that thing into the ground, check it out, then pulls his sword back out.

I can tell you that these guys would spend a lot of time keeping their blades sharp, so why would they continually dull their blades shoving them into the ground? (and yeah, he has a scabbard on him...didn't anyone tell him that's what they're for?)

People made of sand form and attack Conan, leaping in the air and landing in the sand, disappearing like it's water to them, then coming back out. Neat visual. So why the fuck would a sword passing through one of them kill them? They're SAND that can reform its shape.

Did you ever see Brotherhood of the Wolf? Love that movie, but there's a weapon in the end that pulled me out of the movie--this weird bone sword that would break down and magically reform. There is a similar sword in this movie that CLEARLY wouldn't work if it were powered by anything other than CGI.

Too many henchman for the bad guy. And they are all big, strong guys. So why the fuck doesn't Conan ever have a badass man-to-man brawl off with any of them? Remember the big guy with the hammer in the original? You KNEW Conan and him were destined to fight, and they did, and it was great and satisfying. Don't expect that in this, 'cause you are not getting it.

There are a ton of other problems. It's too long. Too little nudity. Action scenes are not good for the most part.

I'll give Momoa a little props. He was better than I expected, but some of his lines sounded like he was trying to sound growly. He still didn't really have that presence that Conan should have.

Fuckin' knew I should have gone to see Planet of the Apes.

Little FOC2 Treat

Seen my movie FOC2? If not, wtf are you waiting for?

Anyway, there's a scene where Old Man Horner's perving it up on his laptop, checking out a web site with boobies. I had to create that site myself so I didn't risk a lawsuit by surfing a copyrighted site.

And I just found that whole site on one of my thumb drives, and I uploaded it. It's small, one page that you can scroll down, but it's worth a look.

FOC2 Fake Porn Site

So You Wanna Make No Budget Movies?

I am currently on about the 6th cut of GOH, my new flick. It's getting down to where I'm trying to fix EVERYTHING short of sound now, and that means I'm doing composite work.

TECHNICAL DISCUSSION TO FOLLOW, so here's your boring warning.

What's that? That is where you basically are taking things out of your movie that you don't want in, or putting things in that weren't there when you shot it. (in a nutshell)

For instance, we attempted to do something in the new movie that we simply didn't have the time/budget for. We have a man in the movie who basically has an entire face on the BACK of his head.

I know, wtf? Our FX people fucked us at the last instant so that, if you remember, we had someone else come in and have to rush a face casting. This was gonna be the face that we attached to the back of the actor for longer shots. Then for closeups I planned on compositing the actual actor's face on the back of the head.

So, what this means in a perfect world is that for the shots from behind that are reasonably close, I attach tracking dots to the back of the actor's head. We shoot the shot. Then we put the actor's face in that same lighting situation so it can be composited in where those tracking dots are.

What actually happened was that most of the time we did not have time to attach tracking dots to the actor's head, and we DEFINITELY did not have time to shoot composite footage of his face in every lighting situation.

In the editing room I attempted to make it work, but it simply doesn't look realistic. And the fake face isn't believable either. I don't blame the FX guys--they nailed the other stuff, but it was short notice and we're dealing with the Red camera, which is SUPER detailed...

What's this mean?

It means I now have to REMOVE the fake face from any shot of the back of the actor. Sounds fun, huh?

It's incredibly time-consuming. After Effects has a phenomenal magic-based tool(It MUST be magic) called Rotobrush that helps quite a bit, but even on my fast computer takes a lot of time. How much time? It takes about 10 minutes of render time for a 4 second clip.

That's where I'm at.

The Happenings

So I guest-directed the opening scene to a buddy's comedy flick. It opens with a cheesy horror movie, and who gets that call? Yep, me. But I knew it would be fun, and it involved a big-breasted hottie.

Went out, helped them out a little while they were shooting some other scenes, then waited for night to fall for my scene. Biggest problem was that we were shooting at an old house(it's actually the house John Wilkes Booth lived in for a while), and our power was VERY limited.

We ran a 2K, a 1K, a 650K, and a china ball. And this is an exterior woods scene...the wides were very challenging. Crystal is the hottie, and she was a champ. And in case you were wondering, Off bug spray makes a great cleavage shiner.

We got about 4 pages done in like 6 hours. Had a little excitement when some drunken students came walking down the road around 1am. Jared went over to see what was up, since Jared's technically in charge of the house while we're shooting there. Jason, our FX guy who was also playing the Leatherface rip-off, went over with him. In full makeup, carrying a chainsaw.

The drunken kids had an airsoft pistol for some reason. No idea why. Jared made them put it down, and Jason kicked it away. The kids left and came back belligerent later, but nothing happened.

After the shoot the guys wanted to see some GOH footage, since many of them had worked on the flick. They were tired and had to get up early in the morning, but they still wanted to see it.

So I played some. Then some more. Kept waiting for them to say We've Seen Enough, but they were pretty excited. I heard "Wow, it looks like a real movie" and "Man, who would've thought it would turn out good?", etc.

Yeah, on the one hand it's a backward compliment, but on the other hand I think they're reacting to how much of the shoot seemed to be a crazy clusterfuck of things going wrong. Just further reinforces how important a shooting script is. If you have a plan to follow, you can never get too lost.

And they really like the scene that I just decided to cut out of the movie. It has cool stuff to it, no doubt, but it's gotta go. It'll be on the internet before the movie ever sees the light of day, so it's not like I'm burying it.

Anyway, went to the beach. Saw Crazy Stupid Love. It's okay. Not as funny as I thought it would be, but it has some laughs.

Later, watching bullshit on TV, nothing on at like 3:30am and I turn to MTV. Has some show called Disaster Date, and who's on an episode? One of my actresses from GOH who recently moved to L.A....crazy.

The End of an Empire(Y)

So, Saturday was the last open day of the store. I was there while we were open from about 1:30pm to close at 9 pm. Then I stuck around 'til about 12:30am packing up, taking things apart, and trying to organize.

Brought home a bunch of stuff, then sat around before going to bed.

Then Sunday, back up to the store at1pm. Luke showed up and helped me take apart some stuff and load some stuff into the car.

Later Luke left and Brad came over to help. Load, drive, unload. Hours of it. Take stuff apart. Hours of it. We make some headway. Sell a lot of boxes CHEAP when a dealer comes by, but fuck it, how much stuff can I take?

You literally can't walk in my living room now...there's the tiniest aisle through it. If my wife was home she'd flip, but luckily she's at the beach for a couple of days. I have a couple of days to try to sort.

Dropped Brad off at his house about 1:30am I think. Went and finished vacuuming, grabbed the last couple of items, and closed the door of my comic store for the last time ever. This coming Wednesday will be the first new-comic day in 16 years where I haven't owned a comic book store.

Weird.

Kinda thought I'd come home and get drunk, but shit it's 4am now...maybe tomorrow night.

Your Prayers: Answered

You been looking for something good to watch on Netflix streaming, haven't you? Well, look no further.

Under New Arrivals: TV is The Good Guys. This show is hysterical. Bradley Whitford makes this show--he plays one of the funniest characters I've seen on TV in a long time.

Give it a watch. It's one of those shows that got better and better. Then give the finger to Fox, who once again lets a great show die after one season.

Also: Called Luke. Had a good idea for something for the script we're working on. To over-simplify it, it's about a bunch of people trapped in one place, and they start getting killed off one by one. You know, Ten Little Indians, but WAY different.

Anyway, came up with an idea that pretty much gives everyone a motive for killing. I tell Luke and he says to me, "I said that when we talked last week."

I said no, this idea was definitely not discussed. I remember everything we talk about regarding the storyline. He says, completely serious, and I quote:

"Oh. Well I probably mentioned it in my head."

Yeah, he's funny sometimes.

Last Week Of The Store

Or, as I said to my customers in an email, So Long and Thanks For All The Fish.

So I'm packing it all up, taking shit apart, selling whatever I can. Throwing tons of shit on eBay, packing stuff that I've sold on eBay.

And then my D.P. from GOH calls me. "Hey, we're gonna be filming my comedy movie, " he says, "and the opening 3 pages is actually a horror movie. Wanna guest-direct it?"

I tell him to send me the script. It's actually a pretty funny little scene, so I tell him yes. So next Thursday I'm guest directing. Should be fun, since there really won't be any pressure on me. A one-day gig with a big-breasted hottie.

Then the very next day I'm gonna take a mini-vacation for a couple of days at the beach. Just a couple of days, and come back to begin some intensive looping/foley work for GOH, and plotting the script for the next movie...

See, Luke is going to France for like a month, and when he gets back we won't have much time to put together a treatment to show Tiffany at the convention where we'll try to get her on board.

Busy couple of weeks I have in front of me...what else is new?

And oh, Conan comes out on Blu Ray next week. Will be very tough to restrain myself from buying it day one. Sure, I own it on DVD, but it's one of my favorite summer movies ever...

Not Fifth & Final?

I know, I know. I said GOH was the fifth and final KK(me) movie. So how do we get to a place where we're planning the sixth?

It's Luke's fault really. He comes to me with an interesting idea AND a guy who's willing to put in almost three times GOH's budget.

Now we're trying to break the story and figure out where budget can go, and I'm even attempting to put some small names in the flick. We're going to have dinner at a convention in September with Tiffany rhymes-with-Pep-Iss in September. I'm going to see about getting Judah hatguy from the Tina Fey 30 Stone program. Finally, I'm looking into getting Leslie Vernon(the actor who played him) also.

I'm not putting their names in the post, as I don't want the search engines to hit. But I think we have a realistic chance of all three.

And this would help up our visibility. This would help us get into festivals, because nowadays your flick isn't gonna play in one unless you have either A) a contact who works at the fest or B) real actors in your movie.

We'd have a better chance at wider distribution and possibly an actual paycheck.

Meanwhile, the store is in the last 2 weeks of its life. Packing up shit as fast as I can. Doesn't help that it's like 100 degrees out. Loading comic boxes into a car and unloading them at the house...man, I'm too old for this shit. (thanks, Danny Glover!)

Plugging through the next cut of GOH...hope to send it to the composer soon while we loop/foley all the shit we need.