"After all, life hasn't much to offer except youth, and I suppose for older people, the love of youth in others."
-F. Scott Fitzgerald
I'm getting on a bus for DC in 8 hours. The bus snakes around midtown for awhile before the Lincoln Tunnel spits it out onto the New jersey Turnpike. I will arrive in Chinatown around 1:30 in the afternoon and have arranged for my usual escort to meet me there. Supposedly I'm going down there to document the struggles of making a low budget film. I am not privy to the details of the budget. When films reach a certain cost, it is impolite to ask. Just like scraping a price tag off a Christmas gift. It is less for the recipient's benefit and more about hiding your own embarrassment if you overpaid. I haven't been on a film set in over a year. If you're not a participant, most sets are about as fun as biting down on a fork. Between the repetition and the slew of obnoxious optimists, I'll probably lose my wood pretty quickly. I'll be on set for the next 2 weeks and I'm going to try and blog a few times about the goings on. Also, 58 pages deep on the new script. It's not a race, but it's nice when it starts to get thick.
Watched: Zombthology
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
À bout de souffle
"All right, I'll count to 8, and if you haven't smiled, I'll strangle you."
-Breathless
It is hot and sweaty even with the windows open and the fan on. Never end a sentence with a preposition. I would have ended the first sentence with the word "oscillating" but then I'd have to check to make sure I spelled it correctly. That first sentence looks increasingly poor upon second glance. Not just because of the foolhardy preposition placement. I notice that bad writers always use two adjectives to describe something when one will do just fine. Perhaps it is a holdover from writing book reports that had to hit a predesignated page count. I'm 46 pages into the script now and to think about it like that takes all the fun out of it.
Watched: Shocker
-Breathless
It is hot and sweaty even with the windows open and the fan on. Never end a sentence with a preposition. I would have ended the first sentence with the word "oscillating" but then I'd have to check to make sure I spelled it correctly. That first sentence looks increasingly poor upon second glance. Not just because of the foolhardy preposition placement. I notice that bad writers always use two adjectives to describe something when one will do just fine. Perhaps it is a holdover from writing book reports that had to hit a predesignated page count. I'm 46 pages into the script now and to think about it like that takes all the fun out of it.
Watched: Shocker
Monday, July 27, 2009
Illiteracy
"I don't like what I'm doing, Sport"
-Taxi Driver
If you are a non confrontational person and have friends that you never want to speak to again, write a script and send it to them. Tell them it's important. Tell them you respect their opinion. They will avoid you like the plague because they either a.) never read it or b.) read it and thought it was godawful. You'll never really know.
Watched: There Was A Little Girl (Madhouse U.S. Title)
-Taxi Driver
If you are a non confrontational person and have friends that you never want to speak to again, write a script and send it to them. Tell them it's important. Tell them you respect their opinion. They will avoid you like the plague because they either a.) never read it or b.) read it and thought it was godawful. You'll never really know.
Watched: There Was A Little Girl (Madhouse U.S. Title)
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Solipsism & Adoption
"The children had stones already."
I am in the middle of gathering materials together to send to New Blood Entertainment, a Canadian based distribution company. They showed interest in acquiring the non exclusive rights to "Cannibal Cheerleader Camp." They seem to think that they can make a few bucks from it and I was flattered so I agreed to sign the deal. Myself and the actresses involved worked on "Cannibal" for 3 days almost 2 years ago. Then I spent scattered days and weeks over the next year, editing the picture, finding the right composer, designing artwork, creating sound effects, and reshooting the tiniest little bits that nobody but myself noticed were imperfect. The finished product received some very glowing reviews and one extremely negative. The film was probably somewhere in between. We held a handful of small screenings that were all pretty awful and it failed to beat even mediocre competition at a pathetic local film festival. Truthfully, I never wanted the sceenings to be well attended and I didn't even go to the festival because I never thought the film was very good. It's not the sort of thing that a 25 year old should be laboring over. I'm grateful for the reviewers that genuinely got a kick out of it. They took the time to give well deserved ink to the girls and their hard work. The audiences were polite at best. But to try and flog something so inconsequential made me feel like a teenage girl stuffing her training bra. The whole thing is embarrasing and I'm glad it's someone else's problem now.
Watched: Le Dernier Métro
-The Lottery
I am in the middle of gathering materials together to send to New Blood Entertainment, a Canadian based distribution company. They showed interest in acquiring the non exclusive rights to "Cannibal Cheerleader Camp." They seem to think that they can make a few bucks from it and I was flattered so I agreed to sign the deal. Myself and the actresses involved worked on "Cannibal" for 3 days almost 2 years ago. Then I spent scattered days and weeks over the next year, editing the picture, finding the right composer, designing artwork, creating sound effects, and reshooting the tiniest little bits that nobody but myself noticed were imperfect. The finished product received some very glowing reviews and one extremely negative. The film was probably somewhere in between. We held a handful of small screenings that were all pretty awful and it failed to beat even mediocre competition at a pathetic local film festival. Truthfully, I never wanted the sceenings to be well attended and I didn't even go to the festival because I never thought the film was very good. It's not the sort of thing that a 25 year old should be laboring over. I'm grateful for the reviewers that genuinely got a kick out of it. They took the time to give well deserved ink to the girls and their hard work. The audiences were polite at best. But to try and flog something so inconsequential made me feel like a teenage girl stuffing her training bra. The whole thing is embarrasing and I'm glad it's someone else's problem now.
Watched: Le Dernier Métro
-Paul
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Slate
"And though I'm no Olivier / If he fought Sugar Ray / He would say / That the thing ain't the ring, it's the play. / So give me a... stage / Where this bull here can rage / And though I could fight / I'd much rather recite /... that's entertainment."
-Raging Bull
In early April, after a month of feeling miserable and thinking I was going to have a heart attack every time I walked up a flight of stairs, I finally broke down and went to a doctor. I've always been an amatuer hypochondriac, but I was losing sleep over the littany of health problems I was worried about having. After hooking me up to an EKG, taking my blood, and listening to my lungs (which even after 13 years of smoking, the doctor assured me were "as clear as a bell"), two separate doctors confirmed it was all in my head. They diagnosed me with having generalized anxiety disorder and depression. I've always believed that only boring people don't have some level of mental problems so I was a bit flattered. I think I was just getting bent out of shape being worried about what other people had and what I thought I deserved. I kept catching myself in the middle of conversations where I was desperately trying to sound like things were going better than they really were. It's like lying on a resume. Well, it was making me ill. It wasn't cigarettes, booze, red meat or pills that were wrecking my body. It was the serial name dropping and phoniness that pollute this whole sideshow and stop it from ever being an art. I've tried my hardest to apologize to people I've blown it with. I think the more sadistic of them enjoyed my prostrating. I'm writing off the last year because if I dwelled on it, I'd just get worse. I finished the first 32 pages of "Dysphonia" Thursday morning. It's going to be a feature length rape-revenge horror script. I've been watching as much Cronenberg and Argento as I can get my hands on as well as listening to Metallica's "Master of Puppets" to get in the mood. It's been rewarding to work on and I think it will be something special once it's finished. The teaser poster is below. Getting back in the habit of writing every day is tricky and it's easy to get derailed after a string of late nights and afternoon wakeups.
Also, welterwieght boxer Arturo Gatti was found dead yesterday. If you are unfamiliar with him, get familiar quick by watching some highlights from his trilogy of fights with "Irish" Mickey Ward. He was 37 and foul play is suspected.
Watched: El Orfanato
-Paul
-Raging Bull
In early April, after a month of feeling miserable and thinking I was going to have a heart attack every time I walked up a flight of stairs, I finally broke down and went to a doctor. I've always been an amatuer hypochondriac, but I was losing sleep over the littany of health problems I was worried about having. After hooking me up to an EKG, taking my blood, and listening to my lungs (which even after 13 years of smoking, the doctor assured me were "as clear as a bell"), two separate doctors confirmed it was all in my head. They diagnosed me with having generalized anxiety disorder and depression. I've always believed that only boring people don't have some level of mental problems so I was a bit flattered. I think I was just getting bent out of shape being worried about what other people had and what I thought I deserved. I kept catching myself in the middle of conversations where I was desperately trying to sound like things were going better than they really were. It's like lying on a resume. Well, it was making me ill. It wasn't cigarettes, booze, red meat or pills that were wrecking my body. It was the serial name dropping and phoniness that pollute this whole sideshow and stop it from ever being an art. I've tried my hardest to apologize to people I've blown it with. I think the more sadistic of them enjoyed my prostrating. I'm writing off the last year because if I dwelled on it, I'd just get worse. I finished the first 32 pages of "Dysphonia" Thursday morning. It's going to be a feature length rape-revenge horror script. I've been watching as much Cronenberg and Argento as I can get my hands on as well as listening to Metallica's "Master of Puppets" to get in the mood. It's been rewarding to work on and I think it will be something special once it's finished. The teaser poster is below. Getting back in the habit of writing every day is tricky and it's easy to get derailed after a string of late nights and afternoon wakeups.
Also, welterwieght boxer Arturo Gatti was found dead yesterday. If you are unfamiliar with him, get familiar quick by watching some highlights from his trilogy of fights with "Irish" Mickey Ward. He was 37 and foul play is suspected.
Watched: El Orfanato
-Paul
Friday, July 3, 2009
Independence Day
"The tragedy of modern war is that young men die fighting each other - instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals."
-Edward Abbey
This is an imperfect country and a young country. We cannot hide behind our youth forever. Today I deleted all the old posts on this blog and will be starting over next week.
Watched: All The President's Men
-Edward Abbey
This is an imperfect country and a young country. We cannot hide behind our youth forever. Today I deleted all the old posts on this blog and will be starting over next week.
Watched: All The President's Men
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