Hey!
Daryl/Leviathan did a fantastic interview on the Canadian podcast Racks an Razors. Great stuff!
Thanks to Greg Tiderington for the dig!
Monday, May 31, 2010
Daryl Wilcher on the Racks and Razors Podcast
Hey!
Daryl/Leviathan did a fantastic interview on the Canadian podcast Racks an Razors. Great stuff!
Thanks to Greg Tiderington for the dig!
first look: boiler room
Oh come on, this girl can draw. People, seriously. Dig that rust.
This is where poor Tippy the clown is hiding out.
Poor Tippy. Poor poor Tippy. You'll see.
SD
first look: boiler room
Oh come on, this girl can draw. People, seriously.Dig that rust.
This is where poor Tippy the clown is hiding out.
Poor Tippy. Poor poor Tippy. You'll see.
SD
Day 6, get down on it, Clown Versus Monkey
Pro of thinking/planning/scheming/writing at Starbucks. The coffee. No one bothers you. The con, music pumped in that you have to tune out, no iPod, no luck, though right now Love Train is playing and that is never a bad thing. Want to break out into a musical dance routine, and there may have been a time where I would have attempted it, these days I am wise enough to know that others will not appreciate this and defiantly not join in with perfectly choreographed back up moves. Thus, the bitter pill I must swallow.
Shooting Day 6 of Clown Versus Monkey today, in 3 hours, have to run over to the Wal-Mart and pick up a pillow case, shoe polish, chips, food. The house was still and quiet this morning because the kids are at my parents, waking up to a quiet house is a weird feeling, like you've been punked and the world took a day off, everyone is on vacation or hiding in the next state. There's a SpongeBob episode about it.
Steph keeps trying to show me this video on quantum string theory that puts me to sleep superfast. It is a good video, the problem is we can never start anything until midnight and by then this old man is craggy and been half asleep for the last four hours. Pretty mind-blowing stuff however, Scott Backula is a genius.
If every possibility is… if we are collections of potential energy, can I put that on my resume… but if different dimensions exist and mathematically every possibility is playing out in some reality somewhere, right now somewhere there is a version of me typing this at the Starbucks while wearing a clown suit, or a half man/ half horse, A giant dying jellyfish trying to type this, an underwater Starbucks with the coffee dissipating into the water, fish baristas trying to work an espresso machine with fins ill equipped, and somewhere there are dead people watching me type this on interdemensional cable TV, complete with commercials for amazing interdeminsional products, dead jellyfish remover, and don't these people get board watching our loves play out in real time, without the aid of peppy montages set to Kenny Loggins music. Are they checking us out on something like facebook. Or are they just standing around like in Sixth Sense, or better, the Shining, or do they just hang around in my brain, now that I am observing are they as real as anything else, applied mind makes them exist? Potential energy?
I have seen that the more you apply energy to a thought, the more you wish upon a star, there is something to that, it doesn't always work out exactly as we planned, but if you are looking for end result, there it is, and it took basically some physical actions, but you can make the 90/10 argument, that it was 90 percent wanting it, and 10 percent doing, because boil it all down to time spent, calling someone took five minutes, thinking about the call too two hours, the physical manifestation is the anticlimactic externalization of all that dreaming. The dreaming is where the good stuff is, the physical manifestation is a big time suck of maintenance and… what the hell do you do with it once you have it?
And "why". That is a question I never ask myself. The why is missing, the why for me has almost become irrelevant. I just do and don't think about it. That isn't healthy. Makes me a bit of the moment's little puppet. But my mind is not equipped to delve into that, I trust that my gut knows things I couldn't. It has all those impressions being made on it, every second, and my mind is busy trying to figure out the boring practicalities, so my gut knows the why, shows me the way in the nagging voice, that I picture as a great white shark living in my peripheral vision, always trying to get me to swim in the right direction. I don't ask what direction that is, it is just swim, and don't worry about it. There are times where you can boil things down to list, wash rinse repeat, but not for the big things, too many living systems interacting, not a closed safe room with controlled conditions, and so the gut is all you have. I think there were times in my life when I just would boil it all down to one or two things in live and try to live in those controlled variables. I remember thinking Waffle House was the only safe place, and that I could run my life out of Waffle House with a pack of post-its. And once that proved to be too difficult, now walking into a Waffle House makes me claustrophobic and trapped, like being in a glass box, because for years I was trapped in that glass box, Eventually you have to escape the greasy womb.
But that need for control persists; shooting everything on a green screen may be the current manifestation. But it is the most practical solution. It makes me miss the chaos of a real time film shoot. How everything is there. The next film will be a reaction against this movie. An angry tirade against artifice. I dream of doing a Dogma 95 film. When in summer, we dream of winter, in winter, we dream of summer.
The perfect thing to do today would shoot this movie, and then go see Survival of the Dead downtown. But we will see.
LATER...
Shoot went fine, got lots of hacking up clowns and monkeys, will be a very bloody section of movie. Love working with the scripts, with these actors, on this location, with these artists. All I have to do is show up!
SD
Day 6, get down on it, Clown Versus Monkey
Pro of thinking/planning/scheming/writing at Starbucks. The coffee. No one bothers you. The con, music pumped in that you have to tune out, no iPod, no luck, though right now Love Train is playing and that is never a bad thing. Want to break out into a musical dance routine, and there may have been a time where I would have attempted it, these days I am wise enough to know that others will not appreciate this and defiantly not join in with perfectly choreographed back up moves. Thus, the bitter pill I must swallow.
Shooting Day 6 of Clown Versus Monkey today, in 3 hours, have to run over to the Wal-Mart and pick up a pillow case, shoe polish, chips, food. The house was still and quiet this morning because the kids are at my parents, waking up to a quiet house is a weird feeling, like you've been punked and the world took a day off, everyone is on vacation or hiding in the next state. There's a SpongeBob episode about it.
Steph keeps trying to show me this video on quantum string theory that puts me to sleep superfast. It is a good video, the problem is we can never start anything until midnight and by then this old man is craggy and been half asleep for the last four hours. Pretty mind-blowing stuff however, Scott Backula is a genius.
If every possibility is… if we are collections of potential energy, can I put that on my resume… but if different dimensions exist and mathematically every possibility is playing out in some reality somewhere, right now somewhere there is a version of me typing this at the Starbucks while wearing a clown suit, or a half man/ half horse, A giant dying jellyfish trying to type this, an underwater Starbucks with the coffee dissipating into the water, fish baristas trying to work an espresso machine with fins ill equipped, and somewhere there are dead people watching me type this on interdemensional cable TV, complete with commercials for amazing interdeminsional products, dead jellyfish remover, and don't these people get board watching our loves play out in real time, without the aid of peppy montages set to Kenny Loggins music. Are they checking us out on something like facebook. Or are they just standing around like in Sixth Sense, or better, the Shining, or do they just hang around in my brain, now that I am observing are they as real as anything else, applied mind makes them exist? Potential energy?
I have seen that the more you apply energy to a thought, the more you wish upon a star, there is something to that, it doesn't always work out exactly as we planned, but if you are looking for end result, there it is, and it took basically some physical actions, but you can make the 90/10 argument, that it was 90 percent wanting it, and 10 percent doing, because boil it all down to time spent, calling someone took five minutes, thinking about the call too two hours, the physical manifestation is the anticlimactic externalization of all that dreaming. The dreaming is where the good stuff is, the physical manifestation is a big time suck of maintenance and… what the hell do you do with it once you have it?
And "why". That is a question I never ask myself. The why is missing, the why for me has almost become irrelevant. I just do and don't think about it. That isn't healthy. Makes me a bit of the moment's little puppet. But my mind is not equipped to delve into that, I trust that my gut knows things I couldn't. It has all those impressions being made on it, every second, and my mind is busy trying to figure out the boring practicalities, so my gut knows the why, shows me the way in the nagging voice, that I picture as a great white shark living in my peripheral vision, always trying to get me to swim in the right direction. I don't ask what direction that is, it is just swim, and don't worry about it. There are times where you can boil things down to list, wash rinse repeat, but not for the big things, too many living systems interacting, not a closed safe room with controlled conditions, and so the gut is all you have. I think there were times in my life when I just would boil it all down to one or two things in live and try to live in those controlled variables. I remember thinking Waffle House was the only safe place, and that I could run my life out of Waffle House with a pack of post-its. And once that proved to be too difficult, now walking into a Waffle House makes me claustrophobic and trapped, like being in a glass box, because for years I was trapped in that glass box, Eventually you have to escape the greasy womb.
But that need for control persists; shooting everything on a green screen may be the current manifestation. But it is the most practical solution. It makes me miss the chaos of a real time film shoot. How everything is there. The next film will be a reaction against this movie. An angry tirade against artifice. I dream of doing a Dogma 95 film. When in summer, we dream of winter, in winter, we dream of summer.
The perfect thing to do today would shoot this movie, and then go see Survival of the Dead downtown. But we will see.
LATER...
Shoot went fine, got lots of hacking up clowns and monkeys, will be a very bloody section of movie. Love working with the scripts, with these actors, on this location, with these artists. All I have to do is show up!
SD
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
Clown Versus Monkey Day 6 prep
Weekend, lot to do. Create mime for Sunday. Easy. Mime wears death shroud over face and tape over mouth. Skin bleeding though the shroud. Red death in black and white. May need beret to sell the mimeness.
Create shooting script. Chop up the script, tape back together in shooting order. Done at my desk today. Make stuff list to bring to set. Short list, everything but clown and monkey suit are added later. Pick up monkey suit from Sass. Call him, run by. Send Nathan, Jimmy Lee directions.
Shooting Sunday. Saturday we see parents, Jayson’s new baby, celebrate his and stepson’s birthday. Dropping kids at mothers. Head home.
Showing personal all time favorite movie downtown, Carnival of Souls. Freaking 35mm! Stage show performs before, dancing girls to sweeten pot for people uninterested in 50 year old movie. Night before a shoot, uncommitted. Out of cash. Hit Coinstar.
Shoot day. Up at six. Hit Starbucks. Sit, make plan, have list of needed things. EEEEvil Wal-Mart next door. Run there. Snatch supplies. Food/drink. Food/drink the primary expense on project. Actors are friends come to help you move, should be treated to food/drink, finer things.
Everything in trunk. Giant Rubbermaid bins. Drive to studio. Hand truck it in, turn on lights, set up camera, wait for actors. They arrive at noon, get dressed. Shoot monkey then clown. Actor reads script off camera, other performs monkey, then vice versa. In beginning, prerecorded audio for scenes. Technical pain keeping inhuman CD synched up. Read it slowly, sped up, and altered in editing. Very specific looped movements like video game. Artificial. Zen. Basic movements characters do. Nothing wasted. No Redundancy. Movements rougher then reality. Stunted.
Shoot both sides. Packing, moving out at 4pm. Shooting 10 pages/day. Fast, no reality. No time for reality. No spending two years making animation. Collision. Hated on Zombeak time dictated what was added. Go go not cry cry. Now as need presents itself, as element becomes available, we add it. World doesn’t revolve around my time schedule, we add the peaces as they happen. In this format we can do it.
Script Dead Hooker Holocaust coming. Process: Movie I would rent if based on the title alone? DDH came from that. Random stream of consciousness draft. Undefined, inconsistent, filled with holes, characters disappearing/reappearing/changing names/changing sides, violence, action, gags. 80 page steaming pile, pick for certain ideas that came out during process. Now basic outline based on boring three act structure conventions. Write key scenes on pages, what happens on intervals, then smaller intervals, then fill in gaps. Deep outline on second pass. Uncommon method, each screenplay has its own. Method is boring, like talking about television sitcoms. Irrelevant to anyone not there.
Dream last night, going well, nice dream, then townsfolk kicked in the door, announced Pandemic hit. People dying. Seven neighborhood people already dead. Take everyone to holding station. Get off streets. Corralling militias. Scary as actually happening. Pandemics wiping out populations keep me twitching. 80’s child, nuclear war bothers. Biological warfare, air poisonous, convulse, die. Parasites. Designer suits killing millions, the fear that parents will kill you, eat the young so more meat at table. One ear is listening for rolling sirens. Thinking what if I feel a boom/shake somewhere because someone dropped the bomb on Dollywood. Impotent concerns, disempowering, to be quelled, Dream left me neurotic about these again. Big believer in self fulfilling prophecy, quantum physics where it doesn’t exist until observed. Movies killed Freddy by drawing the energy away. The genius of that movie.
SD
The information contained in this e-mail message is intended only for the personal and confidential use of the recipient(s) named above. This message may be an attorney-client communication and/or work product and as such is privileged and confidential. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or an agent responsible for delivering it to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that you have received this document in error and that any review, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this message is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail, and delete the original message.
Clown Versus Monkey Day 6 prep
Weekend, lot to do. Create mime for Sunday. Easy. Mime wears death shroud over face and tape over mouth. Skin bleeding though the shroud. Red death in black and white. May need beret to sell the mimeness.
Create shooting script. Chop up the script, tape back together in shooting order. Done at my desk today. Make stuff list to bring to set. Short list, everything but clown and monkey suit are added later. Pick up monkey suit from Sass. Call him, run by. Send Nathan, Jimmy Lee directions.
Shooting Sunday. Saturday we see parents, Jayson’s new baby, celebrate his and stepson’s birthday. Dropping kids at mothers. Head home.
Showing personal all time favorite movie downtown, Carnival of Souls. Freaking 35mm! Stage show performs before, dancing girls to sweeten pot for people uninterested in 50 year old movie. Night before a shoot, uncommitted. Out of cash. Hit Coinstar.
Shoot day. Up at six. Hit Starbucks. Sit, make plan, have list of needed things. EEEEvil Wal-Mart next door. Run there. Snatch supplies. Food/drink. Food/drink the primary expense on project. Actors are friends come to help you move, should be treated to food/drink, finer things.
Everything in trunk. Giant Rubbermaid bins. Drive to studio. Hand truck it in, turn on lights, set up camera, wait for actors. They arrive at noon, get dressed. Shoot monkey then clown. Actor reads script off camera, other performs monkey, then vice versa. In beginning, prerecorded audio for scenes. Technical pain keeping inhuman CD synched up. Read it slowly, sped up, and altered in editing. Very specific looped movements like video game. Artificial. Zen. Basic movements characters do. Nothing wasted. No Redundancy. Movements rougher then reality. Stunted.
Shoot both sides. Packing, moving out at 4pm. Shooting 10 pages/day. Fast, no reality. No time for reality. No spending two years making animation. Collision. Hated on Zombeak time dictated what was added. Go go not cry cry. Now as need presents itself, as element becomes available, we add it. World doesn’t revolve around my time schedule, we add the peaces as they happen. In this format we can do it.
Script Dead Hooker Holocaust coming. Process: Movie I would rent if based on the title alone? DDH came from that. Random stream of consciousness draft. Undefined, inconsistent, filled with holes, characters disappearing/reappearing/changing names/changing sides, violence, action, gags. 80 page steaming pile, pick for certain ideas that came out during process. Now basic outline based on boring three act structure conventions. Write key scenes on pages, what happens on intervals, then smaller intervals, then fill in gaps. Deep outline on second pass. Uncommon method, each screenplay has its own. Method is boring, like talking about television sitcoms. Irrelevant to anyone not there.
Dream last night, going well, nice dream, then townsfolk kicked in the door, announced Pandemic hit. People dying. Seven neighborhood people already dead. Take everyone to holding station. Get off streets. Corralling militias. Scary as actually happening. Pandemics wiping out populations keep me twitching. 80’s child, nuclear war bothers. Biological warfare, air poisonous, convulse, die. Parasites. Designer suits killing millions, the fear that parents will kill you, eat the young so more meat at table. One ear is listening for rolling sirens. Thinking what if I feel a boom/shake somewhere because someone dropped the bomb on Dollywood. Impotent concerns, disempowering, to be quelled, Dream left me neurotic about these again. Big believer in self fulfilling prophecy, quantum physics where it doesn’t exist until observed. Movies killed Freddy by drawing the energy away. The genius of that movie.
SD
The information contained in this e-mail message is intended only for the personal and confidential use of the recipient(s) named above. This message may be an attorney-client communication and/or work product and as such is privileged and confidential. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or an agent responsible for delivering it to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that you have received this document in error and that any review, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this message is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail, and delete the original message.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
from the unicorn diary
After the bucks today I had to call home to hear a friendly voice. It is a weird thing being the coffee sopper for an area. I do love it at times. the energy gets up and you start feeling like a supafreak after a minute. It is like being high off kung fu, and your movements are sure and trained and wack/wack/pack, and it is like the Matrix, and people are getting their buzz on that will spin them through the day, and people who work there are usually good conversation, you feel apart of the community… and then sometimes it sucks.
Mainly the attitude, it becomes a tight nit group at a store, you sometimes see them more than your family, and so you get into everyone's business, and so the kid gloves come off pretty quickly and everyone gets really comfortable around each other. This is good but it can also be a drama fest, the air can get toxic at times. Like being trapped in a submarine crashed at the bottom of the ocean. In those times it is all about get through the shift and tune out the madness. It is actually a good training ground for staying cool (or at least acting like you are) when everyone is losing their minds.
I really do enjoy the bucks, people get punchy when it is short staffed and you've been cranking for four hours and you feel like you've been sneezed on the whole time. Sometimes you leave a shift the consistency of a used paper towel, a psychic Kleenex.
But then at cube job, nothing like that at all, it is all abstract and removed, like working in the engine room of the Enterprise, one of those guys watching the blinking lights all day. Occasionally a red alert goes off and people start scrambling and you start hitting those blinking buttons faster, somewhere someone is being attacked by a Klingon, but you never see it, it is all abstract, and then the alarm goes silent and you go back to monitoring the random flows of data that mean something to somebody whom you will never lay eyes on.
For some people who are on the Enterprise it must go like this.
they - So what did you do after academy
he - Oh I was on the Enterprise
they - Wow! really! that must have been awesome!
he - I suppose.
they - What?
he - Ya know, it was alright I guess.
they - Well… did you meet James T Kirk
he - No, never saw him. He would say he'd come down to inspect the department I was in, but he would never show.
they - Oh. But I guess you saw a lot of action, space battles and what not.
he - Yeah, but ya know, a red light on the wall starts flashing, and then after a minute it stops, and then someone on the intercom says how we just destroyed a Klingon war cruiser, and then they'd email us a credit for a free ice cream in the galley.
they - Oh.
he - Yeah, and warp drive made me nauseous.
they - …
he - I'm in sales now.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't be a total belligerent pig of defiance to the whole "slipping into oblivion" thing. Clutch and dig in. Lock jaw into it. Boa constrictor it. Still slips through like liquid, it will not be denied, but you got to do it anyway, otherwise your spine goes, your taste for blood goes, it all becomes cold oat mill. A loosing fight, no prolonging the moment, but there is a saint for lost causes, no saint for cockroaches.
If we're all in agreement, then someone is getting away with something. You should get in their way, just because if they get a foothold, they'll start bending things. Antagonism and defiance keep it all in check. I respectfully disagree with everything you say just on general principle. Nobody deserves to ride for free.
sd
The information contained in this e-mail message is intended only for the personal and confidential use of the recipient(s) named above. This message may be an attorney-client communication and/or work product and as such is privileged and confidential. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or an agent responsible for delivering it to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that you have received this document in error and that any review, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this message is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail, and delete the original message.
FREEZE!
this is the best thing from Yarkoni, and the below is me and the Blank State group, I am in the "spanking the monkey" poster pose.
sd
FREEZE!
this is the best thing from Yarkoni, and the below is me and the Blank State group, I am in the "spanking the monkey" poster pose.
sd
no rest for the wicked
so!
Don't sit on the eggs, you need to be throwing those eggs and seeing what sticks. What are ya, a mother hen, are you in the coop, there is no basket to put all the eggs in anyway. you can't take the non basket with you. sitting on eggs goes nowhere, an egg forms, I know exactly how to cook it, or at least the next three steps ahead, which is all you need, but then I pet it, I hoard it, I become Golem and sit with my Precious and pet and gloat and obsess, when the egg is like this little Umpa Lumpa that could be out there running for you, splattering and changing one thing, and changing one thing changes everything.
It feels like a chicken coop in here. Hunt and pecking at the keyboards.
Office building are created only to fund the Chinese takeout industry. The world runs on duck sauce.
Yesterday I wrote a long tirade about the Cameron incident that quickly descended into a diatribe against humanity so I am keeping that one in the unicorn diary instead of creating a Karma-Rang of bad mojo by publishing it. All that rage rendered impotent in a snitty letter to myself. That outta do it.
But Steph wrote a letter and sent it to corporate. Inward vs. outward.
The gym is completely changing the system over at the day care to keep the kids from cracking through the boarders, so thus betta things come from incompetence. It is like the soul from which good things grow. See exhibit a: Zombeak.
Speaking of filmmaking (financing), it really is a screwed up system, best to ignore it and just reinvent the wheel as the wheel is prehistoric, and the cavemen are all dead, and they didn't have facebook accounts. Some old monkey invents the wheel and we are just supposed to sit back and go, "good, done. Nap time for humanity." Probably. but best to just go in there and shake it up just for the hell of it. Just to piss off the wheel builders.
Funny thing about the website building, like many things, I learned something way past the stage of irrelevance. I should have learned VCR repair instead. While learning web design Steph went out and hopped on Wordpress and made a very nice site for Hypnosteph all by herself using the tutorials. I'm proud of her but also damnit. But no, not dam nit, it put me head first into a lot of programs I wouldn't have had the discipline to teach myself on my own so all good. Starting your own web biz however is really cool for people living in 1998. So Go Joe.
Kevin Costner needs to hurry up and fix the Gulf of Mexico.
Talked to Seth Hancock the other day about stuff and we laughed about the movie Blade and how late 90s it all is, and he said he used to be able to tell you what music was typical of the period, but in the last five years or so he has lost touch and couldn't tell ya now. And I agreed, but for me it was about 96 I lost whatever touch I had on the "sound of the day", but working coffee you always hear what the monoliths are pushing so I told him for a long time it sounded like every band was Radiohead, who was someone I listened to in 96 but who I really can't take much of now. I tend to agree with Clueless that it sounds like cry baby college rock. And the other day I was listening to the oldies station, 99x, which has become tolerable now that they aren’t pimping the freeloader cards anymore, and this White Stripes song came on called "No Rest For the Wicked", and I was like of how nice for them. And then they announced it was some new band, and I went Whaaa? and they have a new album out with twelve versions of the same song with twelve different titles. Wha? and so I predict every band in the next two years will sound like White Stripes.
I'm just glad the whole "every band sounds like Limp Biscuit" thing is over. But really thank God for the internet otherwise I wouldn't listen to anything but the hum of white noise.
Zombeak was mentioned on a British website Guardian.com today, and it seems like a legit site that actually has articles about other things then cult films, so shocker. Now it was only mentioned in the comments section for a movie called Birdemic (jealous of the great title) so I instantly shot the link over to the Duchess of York, posted it on facebook, the blog, the tweet, the fan page, signed its name across my heart. And is all that narcissistic? It feels that way but until the day comes that I can walk into a some retailer or Blockbuster down the road and hold in my hands a copy of Zombeak, I will continue to cheerlead this project because it is my duty and my promise to myself and the cast crew, to take it as far as it will go. And you have to be a bit of a self promoting whore to get your name out there, even John Carpenter put his name over the title of all his movies. Be a whore, you'll last longer. Considering the movie has an advertising budget of ZERO! any song and dance I can do I probably should.
lots of new art yesterday for Clown Versus Monkey, posted up and working on the online store. Anyone who wants to contribute art to the movie is welcome to, it is an 80/20 split in favor of the artist. Out of my 20% cut I put half to the monkey charity and half to finance the operation. So if you want to draw back grounds/ monkeys/ clowns/ images from the script/ monkeys and clowns fighting/ whatever/ let me know, you send me the image and I stick it on a coffee mug/ t-shirt/ duffle bag on the zazzle store and what ever happens happens but beifits you /me / the movie /monkeys /and art in general. We still need more background artists, so if you want to get in on it, get in on it.
SD
The information contained in this e-mail message is intended only for the personal and confidential use of the recipient(s) named above. This message may be an attorney-client communication and/or work product and as such is privileged and confidential. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or an agent responsible for delivering it to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that you have received this document in error and that any review, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this message is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail, and delete the original message.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
loving some radioactive clown
The Yarkoni kicking this out of Seattle. Beware! Welcome Jimmy Lee (max from zombeak) to the fleet of minions. He will be helping with the swarm of backgrounds. -sd
loving some radioactive clown
The Yarkoni kicking this out of Seattle. Beware! Welcome Jimmy Lee (max from zombeak) to the fleet of minions. He will be helping with the swarm of backgrounds. -sd
Mention on the Guardian
Why I'm looking forward to Birdemic: Shock and Terror Phelim O'Neill Film guardian.co.uk
Very nice mention down in the comments section, putting us next to the classic Troll 2!
SD
Very nice mention down in the comments section, putting us next to the classic Troll 2!
SD
New Clown Drawing!
This is the start of some evil graffiti, also coming to a coffee mug near you.
sd
New Clown Drawing!
This is the start of some evil graffiti, also coming to a coffee mug near you.
sd
Monday, May 24, 2010
Good Morning Planet Earth.
So here we go. First day I've felt like a human being in a while. Feel all walking upright and what not. Not picking nits or throwing poo. Speaking of that, Cameron is going into pull ups. Should be an interesting transition. Training this fundamental skill can be an adventure, but I am putting out the expectation that it will go alright and the house will not end up resembling the padded cell from "Quills".
Cameron is all about hide and seek these days, and TV cartoons, and drinking white milk, and eating as much as possible as fast as possible. Sarah is all about sports and karate and beating me up. Steph is all about hypnotism and making Benjamins. I'm all about clowns, monkeys, and coffee, and sanity, and seeing horror flicks, and so its status quo with me.
Tomorrow night is producer night or writers night, can't remember, at the blank stage, and that is going to rock. It's a nice place to strategize how to get this movie stuff done, and everyone is an expert in their own areas. Since my area is clowns and monkeys and killer chickens, I think I bring a needed perspective to the table. I try to come out when possible, but with karate girl and destructo-bot at the house constantly hanging on Hypnosteph, it is sometimes impossible. And sometimes my head is about to split open and free the electric eels that reside within so best just to stay home in that case.
Last Sat, working coffee, the line of caffeine deprived suburbanites began to resemble locusts in North Face jackets. I wanted to wrap my head in steel mesh and swat them away. But that would have caused them to swarm. It is like being in a zombie movie some days, these lurching hordes stumbling in, Brains brains brains, and then you fix them and they scamper away. it is like the cookout scene in the first Night of the Living Dead.
other news, we are so behind on Clown Versus Monkey compositing that it is starting to nag at me. There will be time taken off from the cube to catch up. Halloween X edition has to happen, because how many times can you put out a Halloween X edition. Not too often. Once in a hundred years I suppose. So it is like the Zombeak premiere on 6/6/6, where the movie was in post for another year, but I had to show something on that night, because if you can, do.
CVM, the goal in the next few days will be to get prop list out to Cory and his mysterious friend, and to get a mime look going for the mime that gets slaughtered. Mime slaughtering should be in every movie. Oh and I have a clown mask being donated to the project, one with three faces, which is perfect as there is a concept where clowns that eat other clown's brain hamsters grow new faces to provide a voice to these inspirations. Manifested.
I finished a book recently on a dad who let his son quit school if he agreed to watch three movies with him a week. I don't know if I will ever be that cool of a dad. I will prob put the kid in an alternative school before I resorted to this. The kids are growing so quickly, and there is gray in my beard now and in my hair. This is the roller coaster. A day is a week, and a week is a month, and a month is a season, and a season is a year.
So we got to come up with a daily mantra. Put that in the background.
Today I am executing codes, like a hitman, pop pop pop. You dead codes. No mercy. The bureaucracy at work. The faceless cold hand of big brother. Pop pop pop. There will be spontaneous demonstrations of gratitude and joy toward the new policies implemented by the ministry of thought. Pop pop pop.
The group M.I.A is prob the closest thing to a sound track I have found for the new flick (working title) Dead Hooker Holocaust. But last night I was watching Black Hawk Down on cable and the level of detail and prolonged mania, and just all the dirt and blood and insanity in that movie, the putting your face into the madness and leaving it there, that will be stirred into the mix on this one. We will need a budget, but if we did it hand held, and made it look like an old school Abel Ferrera movie, it may be possible without going into debt, or bankrupting someone with a used car lot.
I do need street dancing clowns on this one who can use Katanas.
And massive amounts of bullet holes. We will be courting Renonda Anderson on this, who we clicked well with on Brent Brooks short film No Experience Necessary and who I wanted for CVM before it came clear that the movie was going to be purely conceptual and cut and pasted together. She would be a good fit with this, she did dead chicks for Brent already.
Re grouting/caulking the tub continues. Every episode of this old house has turning into a 13 episode season. It is like the old guy Tim Conway played on Carol Burnet recaulking the tub. I don't see how people did this pre internet. Now it is blah blah type it up and step by steps pop up and you just do it. I guess that was why we had time life books going on back then.
Survival of the Dead comes out this Friday, it is already on VOD, which is a way to see it, but it would be in sucky non letterboxed vision. And in the theater, that is really the only way to go if you are to do Romero. But I got to admit, the trailer looks like crap. But Diary really has its detractors, and I LOVED it. So I'm pretty much Romero's little monkey and when he grinds the organ I can't help but to dance. Zombies riding horses would be annoying any other time, but Romero we let it go. He is in his 70s, and can you imagine having a grandfather who made zombie riding horse films. You kinda gotta say, "all good all good".
Tonight we'll be uploading GAME ADDICTION up on stephs e-store. Anyone who is powerless to control their need to save Zelda could benefit from this. For me, once they added more than one red button and removed the joystick, I was out of the loop. So this, like Harry Potter and Lord of the RIngs is another cultural obsession that I have to sit out and watch the entire planet have the time of their lives. Freaking video games, no one invited me :(
Favorite new thing. The anti-meth commercials. I love these scary freaky commercials with teens covered in their own sick and scratching their faces off. I think if I was a preteen and saw these, I would be ready to write love on my arm and run as far away from any glass pipe that came my way. But I think most preteens are already on drugs, prescribed by their docs. Adderall and what not. BUT, that may be me getting older, I assume everyone is on drugs. Cracked out drug fiends on the make for cheap thrills and cheaper kicks. Get off my lawn hippie!
Mantra -should be something about foam. I was feeling like that thing at the end of Akira the other day. Just expanding and filling the room. I was thinking about how it is usually all about being an emaciated fetus, afraid to touch the walls of the womb, so always shrinking back until you become a shriveled raisin thing, but maybe the other way, the end of Akira way could be a change of pace. Get all huge and fill the room. Mighty nice thinking train.
More about toilet training, they should make the diapers biodegradable and filled with tomato seeds. Bury the diaper in your yard and a tree or watermelon plant is born. I think I saw a skit on SNL about it. But it is a good idea, regardless if Adam Sandler came up with it.
Zombeak, Tanya York at York Ent. posted that they had a good year at Cannes this time out, so does it bode well for Zombeak? Enquiring minds want to know. Via email or rain of balloons spontaneously raining from the ceiling.
Another thing that I never got the invite, freaking 30 Rock. Love the Fey, but that show is not funny. But it sure is a party every week, filled with colorful faces of the best and brightest the system has to offer. But for me it is one of those "ah" versus "ha". maybe that's the point. Maybe I should be coyly amused by it versus actually laughing out loud. Oh how clever you are 30 Rock. And who declared Robert Downey Jr. patron saint of brilliant acting?!? What happened? Has the world lost its mind?!?! Is he talented. Of course he is. Is he freaking Marlon Brando!? Yes he is according to James Lipton. But with all this salivating leading up to Iron Man, which was cool, but you know, cool is cool and not transcendental, not a game changer was Iron Man, now we have Sherlock Freak'n Holmes that gives us a twitched out murmuring click fest that is hailed as super great. I like Robert Downey Jr. I just wish John Turturro had been canonized instead. Color me bitter.
I'm starting to get that steel wire feeling that goes into the back of my neck and into my lower brain. BE GONE BRAIN WIRE!
SD
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Talk Myself into It
Sarah is eating her eggs like a dog, won't be able to do that one day, when she is a dignitary at Dragon Con so I'll let it go. We all eventually are beaten into the mold so I'll let her enjoy it while she can.
Cameron is watching some show about talking animals, is on a mountain of pillows and two blankets, he looks like a sheik. I expect him to clap his hands and belly dancers will come swarming in.
My brain is starving this morning, and need something to attach itself to, but I need to do this without moving as my body feels like it's been beaten with a stick. I have some weird eye thing going on where it looks like an insect has taken a bite out of the lower lid. Maybe I'll get superpowers now.
We got one of Steph's recordings up on line and the store working, so that happened yesterday; today I'm finishing the "game addiction" recording and will be getting it on line. Steph wants stuff up by Tuesday as that is when the book expo is going down and it would be great if people could go to her site and see she has products.
Sarah wants me to take her to the library today as she wants to read more about whales and sharks. She said she forgot how they move. A load of questions lately.
-What does spectacular mean?
-how is cheese made?
-how is shredded cheese made?
-sliced cheese?
-what are bacteria?
-what is a microscope?
-what does blood do?
It's a pretty day but I will need a pot of coffee before I can get the flow to go out into it. I really could just sleep another 12 hours.
My father in law Paul was in a play over the weekend as Soldier Number 2. This man has that "thing" that actors have that has always baffled me where they can suspend themselves and become something else. He loves the theater and if I could cast him in something that wouldn't get him arrested I would. Maybe he'll do some voices for CVM. But I'm saying he comes alive when he is a show. It is in his blood. He went to school at the Pasadena Playhouse, where he got a lot of accolades and has told me about the night all the actors went out and shaved Sid Haig's head because he was going into the military or staying out, I don't remember. But years later at Dragon Con I let him borrow my badge so he could go say hey, and Haig was all like, "So. What do you want? Buy an autograph."
I could now make a list of the million things I need to do today. But do I really want to fill up my brain to the point of mania and paralysis. I think I'll let it all come as it does. A plan is just a list of things that don't happen. The beginning of the day can be like a big blank page when you have writers block. Too many possibilities. So it's best to just start writing and let God, or the biographers, apply meaning to it later. We'll fix it in post. That will be my mantra today. Fix it in post.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Pure blogging, just a bunch of random thoughts on movies/life.
Daybreakers was last Saturdays midnight movie. What is to become a scheduled thing in the Conkle House. The week before was Last House on Left remake which despite my complete disdain for all remakes of classic exploitation 1970-1980s horror won me over because of the following.
1. Microwave Ending
2. Claw hammer with sink garbage disposal
3. well acted all around, especially by the dad.
4. scary performances by the white trash clan (in a non Rob Zombie way).
The scene in the woods was brutal, as brutal as the original but with the modern slick production values made it more offensive, as if it was the most misguided Timex commercial ever made. The original looks so crappy that it fits better with the subject matter. You believed there was something wrong with the creators of the original, like there was no way any of these people could ever have a regular day job, these were outcasts making garbage to freak out the straights. The remake is the straights with 9 to 5s making polished beautiful imagery of sadist acts of violence to freak out suburban kids. So if the remake doesn't work out the technicians and producers can always go make a Lexis commercial. In the original, it looked like some kind of home movie made in-between prison sentences.
Daybreakers was the best thing since the Descent. I am all about the Sperig Brothers and their laptop studio mentality. I am also all about Daybreakers for the following reasons.
1. They used real vampires with all the trappings (steak in heart, blood addiction, living forever) and didn't try to explain it as a virus. Kept it spiritual, like these are damned souls, sort of the whole point of the movie.
2. Sam Neil is the bomb in this as evil corporate vampire guy.
3. William Defoe with crossbow is great, and playing an Elvis junkie, even better.
4. Ethan Hawke I cannot stand (Hamlet BAH!), but he was right for the role and pretty good, makes a nice companion film to Gattica (and that is Alan Arkin's movie in my opinion).
5. Starbucks with blood. Hit home for me.
6. Teenage girl who looked like Twilight character has a great small role and is perfect antidote to sparkly vampires. People who do not like Twilight should see this.
7. Lots of nice ideas added to the Vampire mythos, my favorite is the vampires self feeding in desperation and hunger.
8. It is all a nice what if movie that has a great "end of the world" vibe to it, and erases the whole Blade Trinity thing from your memory.
9. It really used the blue filter, but at least it has some daytime and reds in it so your eyes are not starving by the end.
10. GORE GORE GORE, this thing is bloody. It gets an A for that.
Also, a special shout out the rubber suit vampire in the kitchen who really made it work and gave an excellent starving vampire vibes after (if you watch the special features) spending 12 hours in the makeup chair.
Last night I feel asleep to The Last Dragon, something I have never seen all the way through but is one of the corner stone movies of the thing I am writing right now (working title Dead Hooker Holocaust). Something about urban rot and kung fu just goes together. Last Dragon is a lot of fun, Bruce Leroy vs. Sho'nuff: the Shogun of Harlem, and everything is so light and fun and EIGHTIES, and really a simple, just a movie out to show you a good time and not tell you how screwed up the world is, because Oliver Stone had cornered the market on that.
Here are the top things I'm trying to cram into Dead Hooker Holocaust
1. Charles Bronson movies in the 80s made by Cannon Pictures, especially Death Wish 2, Acts of Vengeance, and Murphy's Law.
2. Big Trouble in Little China and Last Dragon.
3. Anime, as in the style of action and character design, with lots of really bizarre stuff going down where your mind pops. The movies Versus, Wicked City (live action), and Tetsuo The Iron Man.
4. All the zombie movies, but they are more like blood suckers, and use bullets to pop open heads and drink the blood, and out for revenge like in The Crow, but instead of Brandon Lee think a dozen dead hookers.
I've written an incoherent first draft that is all action and thunder and blood and guts, but no humanity. I'm ten pages into the rewrite now, and the trick is to blend these influences together into a nice smoothie of destruction.
I just heard in the cubes that Kevin Costner has spent over the years 40 million dollars of his own money building a centrifuge that separates oil and water, and now BP has given him permission to go and try it out in the gulf of Mexico. If Kevin Costner saves the gulf of Mexico I will eat my own brain.
Zombeak update - all is quiet, the movie continues to get mostly positive reviews from the Irish, and me hats off to them. Whenever I get a good write up I forward the link to the distributor just to remind them that a North American release wouldn't be a totally bad idea. It all has to do with what the buyers want, so I'll just keep tipping things forward and eventually there will be enough of a demand someone will go for it.
Clown Versus Monkey update - we are shooting on the 30th with Jimmy Lee and Fasmagger. I have the script and all I have to get ready is a mime look. But the big thing this week was I got two people to sign on to draw props. One is Corey Murdock, who was a big supporter of Zombeak and who's band Handsome Sweater played at a Zombeak screening back in 08. He was I guy I met temping and who has a really bent head. He has a friend that he says lives to smoke cigarettes and draw pictures, and that is exactly the people I am looking for. I am behind on the post production, but you know what, not worried. I see this as one big title sequence and I love doing this type of stuff, so once I start, it will be hard to stop. And! Jessica DeMaria has Saturdays off now so I can get her to start looping in some lines along with the other actors. CVM is going to rock people's heads right off. I'm thinking of just going ahead and advertising at "The Weirdest Film Ever Created".
Kids update - An addictive cuteness where they run up and attack me when I get home at night, Cameron screams "Daddy Hug!" and Sarah screams "Jump on Daddy".
This is for real stuff and I feel pretty lucky to get to experience it, despite the worry, mess, insanity, sleepless nights, covered in boogers, diapers, kids television programming, never leaving the house, constant demands, and instant loss of patience at times. It is ground zero for craziness. I pretty much blast my way through it using quad espressos as dynamite to push me in the right direction. On top of it all is the constant mundane drudgery of home ownership where there is always some portal of hell opening up that you have to patch up. BUT! Normalcy has its own charms. I prefer it to stewing in a dog chasing its tail self destructive cycle of mania. It also forces me to be more balanced. It is all about dancing for midgets, really that has become my life's profession. Guardian of the Midgets. And regrouting the shower actually has its place after dealing with abstracts in a cube all day. The textile immediacy is a good antidote to the mushy keyboard typing away at nothing. Building a better bureaucracy one spreadsheet at a time.
Steph update - She is having Hypnosis CDs handed out at a big New York book convention (New York Book Expo) where her mother is promoting a book on Astrological Soul Pairing. This is the book that Steph edited. The convention is pretty huge, and her mom has a booth on the main drag, so it will get the CD handed out to the right people. I've enjoyed this working relationship with Steph, she writes and records the inductions, then I listen and edit them, check the levels and add music. She is the creative and I am the technical on this project and it works a lot better than when we try to come up with a screenplay or something as our tastes are pretty much opposite. I want abstract carnage and she wants human people with relatable problems. So this has been nice to collaborate and not be at each other's throats. Getting a good collaborator is really tough! The whole Josh Ford thing has been actually the first time it has ever happened with me and actually worked. But Josh and I stay out of each other's business so that helps. I don't tell him what to write and he doesn't tell me how to direct it. Perfecto. But people ask me how anyone could be married to me and wonder what Steph must be like, she must be insane, or mega control freak, and I tell them she is the practical one, but about crazy things. I mean, she methodically goes about creating a business, but it's selling hypnosis cds. That seems pretty coo-coo to me. For me it is always set up an environment of chaos where maybe nothing successful happens but something unexpected and interesting might. Steph is much more think positive and let it happen. I'm much more blow it up and run away.
FIGHTEVIL
SD
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
What is good? I am filled with blood. Don't mean to throw that in the
face of anemics, but I am feeling pretty good about it right now. So
today, celebrate the fact that you have blood that would get all over
everything if you were to spring a leak, better that then the
alternative. Anemics, you will have your day.
face of anemics, but I am feeling pretty good about it right now. So
today, celebrate the fact that you have blood that would get all over
everything if you were to spring a leak, better that then the
alternative. Anemics, you will have your day.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Cannes is coming up so I thought I would repost the link to the 09 rundown.
It still seems bizarre.
http://ping.fm/LCBo7
It still seems bizarre.
http://ping.fm/LCBo7
a cool Belfast dude wrote a grovey review on Zombeak, he also wrote a book
on Argento! THE REVIEW -
http://ping.fm/pXa1d
THE
BOOK HE WROTE -
http://ping.fm/woTwg
on Argento! THE REVIEW -
http://ping.fm/pXa1d
THE
BOOK HE WROTE -
http://ping.fm/woTwg
Monday, May 03, 2010
Five Minutes for Sluggo
a depressing dressing room where clowns wait to go onstage, an audience of bitter monkeys await / the new background by YARKONI
Saturday, May 01, 2010
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