Better than gainful employment

Concept art! It's great tasting, less filling, and fun for the whole family. And what do we do with concept art children? Eaaat concept art! Or we can place it on the internet... but good try kids.



Where am I going to get glass...?



Or a... sewer... maybe?



Or a beard?! Doomed!

Concerning Profitable Rape

I think it was Rodriguez that said, "at some point working in Hollywood you realize you've become a whore". I'm sure others have offered up witticisms of a similar vein, but he's the one I keep a picture of under my pillow, and he's the one I quote.

I don't work in hollywood, but I want to, and I'm willing to become a whore to get there. In that way, the principle applies. This script is so grindhouse/exploitation it's ridiculous. This is my El Mariachi project after all. Do anything it takes to shoot a feature. Sell to local home video distributors. Repeat. Hopefully you don't go to jail in the process.

It's exploitation because the baser elements sell, and everyone knows that. Sex and violence easily overcome shortcomings in your story, actors, and budget. Exhibit A:



The first draft of my (still untitled) project is finished and I like to think I've woven a compelling human drama into mindless violence. Beneath the surface it's a haunting meditation on the primal nature of mankind. Now, all I need is a coolly obscure and arguably irrelevant title like Straw Dogs. Who are we kidding though? If anyone watches this crap they will do so because the rating box promises "adult situations and nudity".

Screenwriting woes

Robert Rodriguez is a personal hero which shouldn't come as much of a surprise. An aspiring filmmaker who finds Rodriguez's story inspirational? Shocking! He's more of a god to me at this point. I read his book like it's the freaking bible, going over certain passages again and again until the mantra soothes my troubled mind.



I plan to follow in his footsteps (possibly with great historical accuracy) and make my first feature length film this summer. Microbudget of course. Shot on digital. The problem is a need a script, and I suck at writing. You may have noticed...

I'd say it's a bad idea to read much of Warren Ellis before you start work on a script. I use him specifically, but really it's a bad idea to read a lot of work by anyone who is worlds more talented than you when you're trying to do your own stuff. For me, every professional writer who ever lived, now lives, or will live falls into that category (maybe even freaking Hemingway).

Wine and Film: Part Deux

I recently accomplished what the greatest minds in the history of mankind have tried and failed to do. I discovered the purpose of life. I'm not talking about the final chapter of Solomon's Lamentations either. Though, that is a pretty good answer.

No, with respect to the wisest man that has ever lived, the purpose of life is not to serve God. The purpose of life is to drink wine and watch films. Like many great discoveries, this was stumbled upon quite by accident. I'd opened up a bottle of zinfandel and popped Wes Anderson's latest work into the PS2. I think I may have been in a bad mood when this started. It's hard to say. Everything prior to my enlightenment is like a rapidly fading dream. At any rate, around the time Bill Murray fails the catch his train I realized that I was happier than I had ever been in my life. For a time I was content to sit back and let the waves of euphoria wash over my being, but it wasn't long before my more analytical personality subset stepped in. In true scientific fashion, I tried to replicate the experience the following night. I rented Punisher: War Zone from the red box (only a buck!) and this time went with a pinot noir. Hitting play on the DVD menu, I took a sip of wine readied myself for bliss.

I immediately began to have suicidal thoughts. I'm talking about within the opening credits. By the time I had gotten to Ray Stevenson kneecapping some (irish?) parkour freak with a sniper rifle the knives on my counter had taken on a tempting light. It would be quick, I told myself. Painless, just like Mike Altman promised. Fortunately my roommate came home soon after that and I was able to passive aggressively vent all of my negative energy directly onto him.

Shaken, but undeterred I continued with my dark experiments. At this point I fancied myself the protagonist from some work of Lovecraft. I would defeat the cliched pessimistic ending however. I entered the fray with a militant flair. The following night found me seated in the living room dual wielding a bottle of Gnarly Head old vine zin and a plate of homemade pesto shrimp fettuccine. I'd brought out the heavy artillery; Lawrence of Arabia. No one could have a suicidal thought while watching Lawrence of Arabia. I'm sure of it.

Success! Maurice Jarre's epic score filled the room, and, once again I found myself floating in a blissful state normally reserved for the most diligent of Buddhist priests. Keep in mind, at this point, I'm only staring at a freaking black screen. Can you imagine the sensations once actual vivid anamorphic 70mm images began to assault the senses?

I'm telling you, religions could be founded on this.

New New Wave

The interwebz have changed our world as everyone knows at this point. Within it's labyrinthine depths, the internet has spawned a new digital universe that is parallel to (and entwined with) the physical one we inhabit. Entire cultures and subcultures have sprung up in this homegrown alien landscape. Their raw energies have breached our own culture and changed the face of entertainment, politics, socialization, and... grammar. I grit my teeth here with such intensity that Jared Leto can hear it from across the room.

Everyone knows about the powerhouses. Google. Youtube. Facebook. These are the phenomena with mass equivalent to an PHP moon. Even in the real world we can feel her server side processes dynamically altering the HTML tides of our lives. My, that was an unwieldy analogy.

Something that fascinates me is a single facet of the youtube effect. Namely what I see as the unintentional creation of a new new wave. A (very) brief history: in the late 1950's through the 1960's a maverick group of french filmmakers and critics formed theories and films that flew in the face of convention. These iconoclastic auteurs questioned everything that had come before essentially tore down the ruling class of the filmmaking world.

Today we can watch dark jedi Tom Cruise killing Oprah.



The old gods of cinema are no longer sacred thanks to a new generation that has grown up with cameras in their phones and wifi connections. We have a veritable army of kids with film studios in their laptops. They are untrained, uneducated masses with power, and they play without restraint in a chaotic digital landscape.

15 years ago King Leonidas would have inspired awe and fear in the populous. Today he break dances in a bear suit and guns down Chunk with a tommy gun. Or is that Captain Picard? Then again, everyone seems to want a piece of Chunk, even Jack Bauer.

Youtube new wave. Where you can watch Korben Dallas fight Neo. Neo fight Robocop. Robocop fight The Terminator. You can watch Simon Pegg gun down Charlize Theron (and just about everyone else), or, if you're among our female viewership, you can watch the touching story. of two star-crossed lovers. Didn't notice those homoerotic undertones the first time you watched Back To The Future, did you?

Hitler raves about his stolen car. Obama gangster raps (badly), and badgers dance to techno raves of "don't taze me bro" and Christian Bale cursing out his DP. Both of those albums would come with the parental warning sticker for sure.

Sure, it's mindless entertainment. Internet memes that will be remembered only by the truly hardcore geeks. To me though, it has the spirit of irreverence that I find when watching À Bout De Souffle. These people are taking the movie icons of a generation and turning them into unwitting puppets. The parts of a film that used to make you hold your breath without realizing it are reduced to 2 minutes worth of comedy on your lunch break.

It's part of something much larger for sure. This is a transition to the future, but I love what it is right now. Youtube new wave.