Archie's Blood Car Blog

David Foster Wallace Discusses Skittles Blenders

2012-01-05T20:24:00.000-06:00

David Foster Wallace was an avid candy lover. These essays were found in a drawer underneath the final manuscript of The Pale King along with a personal note to his longtime editor. It concisely states, "When will candy be discussed on the same level as religion or ethics? Isn't it worthy?"

I am in the passenger's seat of my companion's 2001 Honda Accord driving down Interstate 57 towards Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. This interstate is one of the many concrete afterthoughts of the US Highway System, beginning (or ending) near Chicago and dying just inside the border of Missouri where it literally shrivels into state route 60 and spends its retirement snaking through the Mark Twain National Forest(1), the namesake of which probably saw the forests at one time but never the sign bearing his name. I've been scheduled to appear at a Literary Arts Festival and my companion is visiting a friend at one of southern Illinois's many wineries.

For this ride I've packed Skittles Blenders, a new candy in a neon-yellow package which glows in the opaque black canvas of my messenger bag. I like to have something to munch on during the three and a half hour trek from Bloomington and the sugar rush sustains my conversational duties as passenger. This is a new release from Skittles and for this edition(2) they've engineered different fruits (and an alcoholic drink) together in hopes of breaking new flavor ground in the ongoing confectionary war being waged adjacent to America's checkouts, about eye-level with America's toddlers. Comic books call these crossovers and the history in that medium is legendary. Examples include Archie meets the Punisher(3), Robocop vs. Terminator and Superman vs. Muhammad Ali. This is a baby step for the Skittles brand in what hopefully will jumpstart a dynamic and revolutionary movement in candies. Imagine the media explosion to follow the unveiling of Skittles Twix, Almond Joy Double Bubble or Twizzlers versus Kit Kats(4).

This first Skittle I taste is Mango Lemonade. It tastes more like peach lemonade than mango lemonade and is about the color of the peach crayon. The makers were clearly intending for the sour taste of lemonade to carry the flavor burden but it overpowers any attempt at complexity. This is not a good start. Next is Watermelon Green Apple Freeze, which is probably the most complex and successful of the Blenders. When your teeth break through the candy coating, it clearly tastes of watermelon(5); and yet, the tartness of the green apple doesn't surface until the after-taste. In some cases, it happens slightly before that. Tart green apples and refreshing watermelons epitomize what the Blenders seem to be aiming for - a proper marriage of two flavors with irreconcilable differences. It's a smooth combination. Why they've tacked the word 'freeze' onto the name is both baffling and disconcerting. Nothing is cold or frozen about the flavor and neither apples nor watermelons are regularly frozen, at least not in any kitchen I've ever visited. Skittles is clearly hoping to capitalize on the trendiness of the word 'freeze', which evokes the frozen gas station drinks commonly known as slushies(6).

This brings us to Skittle Blender number three of five: Cherry Tropicolada. It's worth acknowledging because they've successfully combined these two flavors into one, but it has one fatal flaw: excess cleverness. It's too clever by half(7). This portmanteau of tropical and colada would probably find favor with Louis Carroll. I imagine they brainstormed the name before they had a Skittle for it. Cherry Tropicolada fails mainly because four flavors, not two, are being combined into one. A pina colada is pineapple juice, cream of coconut and rum. Rum is absent from the ingredients list though it could be found under the blanket of 'Artificial Flavors'. Nevertheless, you have cherry, pineapple juice and coconut all blended together in a hard candy. These all sound like tasty morsels, but united they fail. Pina colada does not have as storied a candy flavor history as cherry or strawberry or even coconut, so it might be ahead of its time. Or maybe it is just more successful in a tropical climate. But then why not have a real, slushy pina colada?

Melon Berry Burst - Like most berry-flavored consumables, manufacturers just seem to toss in arbitrary quantities of different berries and then hope for the best. This laziness is often represented by clusters of berries and a few melons happily coexisting on the labels of said consumables. Advertising can be a misleading fairy tale. It's like a high school photograph where the cool kids (read: berries) stand in front while the oversized and overweight melon kids are pushed to the edges or the back, nearly falling off the picture - always second fiddle to the vibrant sweetness and tartness of berries. To pour salt on the wound, melons are really not even properly represented in the color of the Skittle. Outside on the packaging, melon berry burst is purple; inside, the actual Skittle is blue. Both colors are primarily found in berries. It's hard not to imagine some parallel with the civil rights struggle here, but I won't bore you or my companion with that.

Strawberry Lime Blast - This is definitely heavy on the lime and light on the strawberry. Again, I'm puzzled as to what this alleged blast is. Is it supposed to happen TO me? Am I supposed to physically feel blown off my feet or ejected from the seat of the car? Is it referring to the process by which the Skittle was made? Maybe it's a reference to the personification of the Skittle as a brash and loud candy. Or perhaps it refers to the collective act of the Skittles Blender brand coming onto the confection stage? And how is it different than the burst of Melon Berry? How can one Skittle be a burst and the other be a blast and one be a freeze and one a lemonade and one a tropicolada? Is each Skittle a different species? As I become frustrated, I pour the rest of the bag into my cupped hand and throw them back into my mouth. My cheeks bulge. I chew and chew and chew and chew. I guess now it's a blastburstfreezelemonadecolada.

1. Mark Twain National Park seems to have been christened in 1938 to preserve the remaining forests in Missouri from logging, timbering and excessive wood consumption.
2. Past editions of Skittles include Wild Berry, Tropical Skittles, Crazy Cores, Skittles Sours and the poorly reviewed and rarely consumed Chocolate Skittles.
3. In this crossover, The Punisher is asked to go undercover in Riverdale to apprehend a drug dealer WITHOUT using lethal means. Please refer to Wikipedia entry for complete plot synopsis.
4. This final battle would be presented by Dark Horse comics, whereby Twizzlers resemble Wellsian Tripods and land on Earth hoping to exterminate candykind. The Kit Kats, taking the form of flying battering rams, counter attack and a gooey, chocolatey-licorice battle is waged. Soon enough, the Twizzlers locate the manufacturing center of the Kit Kats and melt the chocolate with their heat rays. An underground Kit Kat resistance forms, but they have a difficult time keeping the chocolate from melting and eventually become extinct.
5. I do not mean actual watermelon, but the flavor of watermelon as conceived by the flavor scientsits in the candy industry.
6. Over the past decade, there has been a quiet and steady march by gas station drink producers toward renaming their frozen drinks freezes in lieu of slushies, e.g. Coke Freeze. The word 'slushy' (or slushie) evokes a cheapness associated with beverages sold at gas stations, historically a proving ground for drinks that in any other setting would be considered radioactive. Slush, to anyone living in a region that sees significant snow, makes you think of the thick, brownish-black liquid in the area where the crosswalk meets the gutter. Ironically, this is the same color as a Coke Freeze. Now, the word 'freeze' conjures a much more natural image: water freezing, the Arctic, the transparence of ice, etc. Additionally, 'freeze' is monosyllabic where 'slushie' is on the hefty side of two syllables. This rebranding movement is also sad because 'slushie' is one of the more nifty autonyms.
7. 'Too clever by half' is a chiefly British expression which refers to something whose excessive cleverness has undermined the result that the cleverness was intended to achieve.

Volume 6

2011-12-28T17:25:00.002-06:00

In 2011, I reached volume 6.

Light Study No. 1

2011-10-10T19:03:00.000-05:00

A Rodin from Tower One - 9/11 Remembrance

2011-09-03T15:01:00.000-05:00

Photo by Michael Falco (NYT)

Read the story.

Tumbling Woman: 9/11 Remembrance

2011-09-02T09:16:00.002-05:00

Read this news story.

About the artist.

Viral Fundraising Video No. 25 - The Grand Canyon

2011-06-13T09:43:00.001-05:00

Viral Fundraising Video No. 25 - The Grand Canyon from mike brune on Vimeo.

Viral Fundraising Mashup Video No. 2 - Congratulations!

2011-06-12T11:47:00.001-05:00

Viral Fundraising Video Mash-up No. 2 - by Jean Baugnon from mike brune on Vimeo.

Viral Fundraising Video No. 24 - Congratulations!

2011-06-12T11:46:00.003-05:00

Viral Fundraising Video No. 24 - Parking Garages from mike brune on Vimeo.

Viral Fundraising Video No. 23 - Congratulations!

2011-06-12T11:46:00.001-05:00

Viral Fundraising Video No. 23 - Thrift Store Special Report from mike brune on Vimeo.

Viral Fundraising Video No. 22 - Congratulations!

2011-06-12T11:44:00.001-05:00

Viral Fundraising Video No. 22 - Driveways from mike brune on Vimeo.

Viral Fundraising Video No. 21 - Congratulations!

2011-06-12T11:42:00.003-05:00

Viral Fundraising Video No. 21 - Harakiri from mike brune on Vimeo.

Viral Fundraising Video No. 20 - Congratulations!

2011-06-12T11:42:00.001-05:00

Viral Fundraising Video No. 20 - Movies from mike brune on Vimeo.

Viral Fundraising Video No. 19 - Congratulations!

2011-06-12T11:41:00.001-05:00

Viral Fundraising Video No. 19 - Television from mike brune on Vimeo.

Viral Fundraising Video No. 18 - Congratulations!

2011-06-12T11:40:00.000-05:00

Viral Fundraising Video No. 18 - Corporations from mike brune on Vimeo.

Congratulations! - Thank you for donating Video No. 2

2011-05-31T17:53:00.001-05:00

Week 2 Thank You Video - Congratulations! from mike brune on Vimeo.

Viral Fundraising Video No. 17 - Congratulations!

2011-05-31T17:52:00.002-05:00

Viral Fundraising Video No. 17 - Endodontics from mike brune on Vimeo.

Viral Fundraising Video No. 16 - Congratulations!

2011-05-30T10:04:00.000-05:00

Viral Fundraising Video No. 16 - Networking from mike brune on Vimeo.

Viral Fundraising Video No. 15 - Congratulations!

2011-05-30T10:03:00.002-05:00

Viral Fundraising Video No. 15 - Table Tennis from mike brune on Vimeo.

Viral Fundraising Video No. 14 - Congratulations!

2011-05-30T10:03:00.001-05:00

Viral Fundraising Video No. 14 - Foondenrizen from mike brune on Vimeo.

Viral Fundraising Video No. 13 - Congratulations!

2011-05-30T10:02:00.000-05:00

Viral Fundraising Video No. 13 - The Dark from mike brune on Vimeo.

Viral Fundraising Video No. 12 - Congratulations!

2011-05-30T10:01:00.000-05:00

Viral Fundraising Video No. 12 - Workshop from mike brune on Vimeo.

Viral Fundraising Video No. 11 - Congratulations!

2011-05-24T19:32:00.000-05:00

Viral Fundraising Video No. 11 - The Stat Game from mike brune on Vimeo.

Viral Fundraising Video No. 10 - Congratulations!

2011-05-23T19:10:00.000-05:00

Viral Fundraising Video No. 10 - Baseball & Obesity from mike brune on Vimeo.

Congratulations! - Thank you for donating Video No. 1

2011-05-23T19:09:00.000-05:00

Congratulations! - Week One Thank Us from mike brune on Vimeo.

Viral Fundraising Video No. 9 - Congratulations!

2011-05-23T19:08:00.002-05:00

Viral Fundraising Video No. 9 - The Woods from mike brune on Vimeo.

Viral Fundraising Video No. 8 - Congratulations!

2011-05-23T19:08:00.001-05:00

Viral Marketing Video No. 8 - Graduation from mike brune on Vimeo.

Viral Fundraising Video No. 7 - Congratulations!

2011-05-23T19:07:00.001-05:00

Viral Marketing Video No. 7 - Milk vs. OJ from mike brune on Vimeo.

Viral Fundraising Video No. 6 - Congratulations!

2011-05-23T19:06:00.002-05:00

Viral Fundraising Video No. 6 - Global is the new suck. from mike brune on Vimeo.

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2011-05-23T19:06:00.001-05:00

Viral Fundraising Video No. 5 - Meat & Potatoes vs. Hollywood from mike brune on Vimeo.

Viral Fundraising Video No. 4 - Congratulations!

2011-05-23T19:05:00.001-05:00

Viral Fundraising Video No. 4 - Unmarked Cars from mike brune on Vimeo.

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2011-05-23T19:04:00.000-05:00

Viral Fundraising Video - No. 3 - Objectivity from mike brune on Vimeo.

Viral Fundraising Video No. 2 - Congratulations!

2011-05-23T19:02:00.001-05:00

Viral Fundraising Video No. 2 - Whodunit? from mike brune on Vimeo.

Support our film

2011-05-13T17:45:00.002-05:00

Viral Fundraising Video No. 1 - Missing from mike brune on Vimeo.

Sahkanaga - A Photo Essay - Part 4

2011-05-05T11:13:00.021-05:00

Two years ago in May 2009 my family suffered two of its biggest tragedies – the death of Pat Brune, my grandfather, and the rapid onset of my grandmother’s (Pat’s wife) dementia - which was a direct result of losing the man she was married to for almost 60 years. Gramps, as he was affectionately called, was the patriarch of our family. He was a father, husband, gardener and Cadillac-owner. He could often be seen caning a chair, driving a riding lawnmower over his half-acre yard or exalting the Nutrageous Candy Bar. These events brought my father as near to emotional collapse as I’ve ever seen him. He cried often. He asked for help and he demonstrated that even the most stoic men have their limits. You always need your family, but sometimes you REALLY need your family. This was the first time I experienced death on the level that it can (or cannot) be comprehended by those left living. The doctor brought us all into the room and explained that there was nothing more they could do and that is was only a matter of time. This doctor ceded control over my grandfather’s life to my grandfather’s heart, which didn’t have the strength to beat any longer than another twenty-four hours. This lack of control over life seemed unfair and I was petulant. I remember telling my brother Matthew, “They just told us Gramps is going to die and there is nothing we can do.” Imagine that. My family is Catholic and we’re all healthy and strong. I have three brothers and we can scrap like hooligans if need be. Physical strength is futile in these situations.

Two years ago in Feburary 2009, I was asked by John Henry Summerour, a filmmaker and fellow Southerner I had met at the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival the year before, to read his script Sahkanaga and join his production team as a 1^st Assistant Director. I read the script and I loved it. I thought it was bold, touching and personal. His short film Chickamauga, on which Sahkanaga is based, screened along with a film of mine and we tag-teamed a Q&A of attentive moviegoers in a large meeting room in downtown Birmingham. I was struck then by his restrained, beautifully shot film about a boy who finds a dead body in the woods. Everything that drew me to that short film was present in the script for Sahkanaga. I was eager to work on the film.

When my grandfather was hospitalized a week before I was supposed to travel up to Chickamauga for pre-production, I informed John I might be a bit delayed. He said, “Take all the time you need.” I did not know then, walking westbound on North Avenue across Peachtree St. toward Emory/Crawford Long Hospital, how quickly Gramps’s condition would deteriorate. For the next several days, my family and I built a home in the Cardiac Care Center. My brothers would arrive after work or school. My parents were semi-permanent residents like so many others before them. We could not bring flowers or food inside. My grandfather asked for fried chicken, but we were told not to oblige him. He was on a strict diet – strict meaning bland and colorless hospital food. To this day, I regret not walking over to Gladys Chicken and Waffles, just a block away, to buy some fried chicken and smuggle it in under my shirt.

My father called me around 130AM on Wednesday morning and said that Gramps had passed. I drove over to the hospital. My father and grandmother were there in the room. Gramps lay there dead. The funeral home was notified and their crew dispatched to us. My mother, who had gone home for a shower and some sleep, was driving from Alpharetta. This was the end. I’d shed enough tears the day before during the “Your grandfather is going to die and there’s nothing we can do” speech that I had none left. I just felt motivated to help, to be there, to be present, to be around family. The hardest part – caring for my elderly grandmother who was knee-deep in clinical dementia and excruciating grief – fell to my crippled father and mother. Where will she stay? Who will take care of her? Why is she blaming the hospital for Gramps’ death? Why are she and my dad fighting all the time? She can’t use a telephone. She can’t drive. She can’t cook. She can barely dress herself and needs a cane to walk. How can she possibly think she can take care of herself? Does she not realize it? I wish she could have held a press conference, but we kept our mouths collectively shut and decided to ‘be there’ for her.

I felt conflicted about leaving for six weeks following such an earth-shattering event. On the one hand, I felt like I was leaving my family when they needed me. On the other hand, I had made a commitment to work and to a film that I believed in. As insignificant as the latter may sound, it was not just another job. Had it been, I would have replaced myself. Perhaps it was a way to cope, to not become lost in grief, to avoid despondency and self-pity, to ‘get back to work’. Perhaps not. As anyone who has worked on a film will tell you, it’s a demanding job. It demands your time and energy and, when the stars align just right it demands your soul and your heart. But moving on is a natural part of grief. One cannot, or should not, grieve forever.

A week or so after the funeral, I headed north on I-75 toward the northwest corner of the fine state of Georgia. Chickamauga was the destination. Mountain Cove Farm, my home for the next six weeks, was in a valley of hay and cornfields between the mountains. It was a brand new five-bedroom house with borrowed furniture, one phone line with an area code I’d never seen before, six New Yorkers, a sound mixer from Jersey, a musician from Birmingham, an adopted kitten named Crash and me. I remember walking into the garage one day before shooting and seeing production designer Kay L. with a can of black spray paint standing next to a prop crematorium-incinerator made out of wood. It stood about five or six feet tall and was probably only one fifth the size of a real crematorium b/c it was going to be filmed in shadow in the foreground of one or two shots.

Another item that was called for in the script were dead flowers. Well, if you’re asked to go out and buy dead flowers, you can’t really do that because chances are your local Florist doesn’t sell dead flowers. You buy flowers that are alive and wait for them to die. Moreover, who decides when flowers are dead? Is wilted the same as dead? Maybe dead flowers are actually dead. Maybe they are just dying. They’re still alive and there’s nothing you can do, but they’re not dead yet.

Our story followed a teenage boy who finds a dead body in the woods and keeps it a secret, for better or for worse. Based on true events that befell many of the residents of the Tri-State area around Northwest Georgia, Sahkanaga was filmed with the support of the surrounding community. We filmed in the Walker County Civic Center, which during the scandal served as a refuge for bereaved who wanted the ashes of their loved ones examined by specialists to determine if the urns on their mantles contained the remains of family or just concrete dust. Several Sheriff’s Deputies who appeared in the film served when the scandal broke. Many involved in the film had relatives whose remains were called into question.

During the six weeks that followed the family of Sahkanaga was built. We woke together, went to work together and ate together. With any independent film, you see the family of the filmmakers come out in full force to support their sons, daughters, brothers and cousins. Movies bring people together. Whether you are making them or watching them – movies magnetize people. They build families all their own. Perhaps the same can be said of traders on the NYSE or coal miners in a mountain – their work synthesizes them into a single force with a mission.

The cycle of this film comes full circle as it has (or had) its premiere this week in both Boston and Atlanta. May Sahkanaga live a long and healthy life and be welcomed into the grand cinema canon we all cherish.

I'll leave you on a lighter note with this last photo. Taken on a mountain overlooking Mountain Cove (We are down there somewhere.), some fine soul inscribed a message that future generations can learn and pass on to their children. It sums up not only a generation, but this whole crazy world we live in. You may need to click and enlarge the photo to read it. It's carved into the rock.

"Fuck da haterz"

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Photo 1 - Setting up a shot in the Sheriff's visitation scene

Photo 2 - Me

Photo 3 - Pathway to overlook from highway

Photo 4 - Kay L., Janet S., and Gennaro M. on porch

Photo 5 - Rosey the kitten's grave (No kitten was actually harmed in the film though some may argue it was traumatized by living with a bunch of film people.)

Photo 6 - See above.

Sahkanaga - A Photo Essay - Part 3

2011-04-26T22:43:00.010-05:00

The crew for Sahkanaga consisted of both paid and volunteer personnel. Pictured above from left to right are Sahale J. (2nd AC), James M. (1st AC), Damian W. (DP), Rodman S. (Key Set PA), Gennaro M. (Gaffer), Trevor N. (lead actor), and Michelle C.(2nd AD). I had asked everyone to pose as if they were campers on some excursion in a Hollywood horror film, pre-murder. Most people seemed to embrace the direction, but several clearly were not in the mood to pose for a picture. Then again, maybe they're conveying something deeper than cannot be captured with a photo.

Here is a photo of John S. and Kristin R. (lead actress) overseeing the building of a 25 foot (approximate distance) dolly set up in a cemetery.

John S. rehearses a scene with Kristin R. and Trevor N. in the woods behind that same cemetery. They are in the bottom right hand corner. You can see Kristin's white shirt.

I hid in the garage for this shot because they were filming in 360 degrees. That is John S. in the Piggly Wiggly shirt. Though normally a cute and lovable icon, the wiggly piggly here actually looks rather sinister. Two mottos used on Piggly Wiggly t-shirts are "I dig the Pig!" and "What happens at the pig...stays at the pig!" The latter was more famously used for Las Vegas, which never credited Piggly Wiggly with the creation.

Sahkanaga - A Photo Essay - Part 2

2011-04-25T16:50:00.018-05:00

So, as I said, we filmed Sahkanaga in and around Chickamauga in northwest Georgia in June of 2009. The key crew members (Producer, Director, DP, Gaffer, Production Designer, Gaffer and 1st AC) lodged in a house together at Mountain Cove Farms for the duration of pre-production and principal photography.

Our first set of photos is of Mountain Cove Farms, an 11,500 acre tract of picturesque land bordered by Pigeon Mountain on the east and Lookout Mountain on the west. Mountain Cove Farms is at the very southern end of what's known as McLemore Cove, which lives in the greater Chickamauga Valley.

This is the entrance to Mountain Cove Farms from Highway 157. Cows grazed on one side of the road. It led to a winding road cutting through the mountains down into the valley. The heifer in the bottom right corner watched me while I took his or her photograph.

This picture was taken as I was driving away from the house for the last time - back to Atlanta. This was our home during the production of the film. We lived here, worked here and shot many scenes from the film just a stone's throw from the house. It was a newer house meant for tourists I imagine. It had four bedrooms, rented furniture, one phone line with a strange area code, six New Yorkers, a sound mixer from New Jersey, a musician from Birmingham, an adopted kitten named Crash and me living in it. In order to notify the Fedex man, someone hung this homemade cardboard sign with our address: 856. 856 Dougherty Gap Rd. We often had important packages sent to another address because mail service was spotty.

You'll notice in the first black and white photo, the land stretching up to the house is bare, but in the second, it's flush with hay. The second photo was taken before the hay was harvested. We filmed during the fever of hay season and saw the mobile hay balers in action on more than one occasion.

I see the appeal of the living in the mountains, removed from urban life. To be able to wake up every morning and walk outside to the porch and sit in a lawn chair and look at the mountains and drink some orange juice (If I drank coffee, this would sound more literary, but I like orange juice.) is a great luxury. It's quiet. It's peaceful. It's unknowable. It's similar to waking up near the ocean. It's a place where the world seems infinite and human life is intertwined with the Earth. During these moments you feel like a guest, like someone is pampering you, but in reality no one is. I remember talking to John S.(writer/director) about the film we were making and he said, (Forgive my paraphrasing here, John.) "When we die, our bodies become part of the Earth again. As sad as death is, there is something comforting and right about that." He may have never uttered those words, but that's what I took from it. With that, I'll leave you with this photo of John lying on a driveway collecting his thoughts (or catching a quick catnap) during one the shooting days.

Sahkanaga premieres in Atlanta this Friday at 6pm at the Atlanta Film Festival. Go see it.

Sahkanaga - A Photo Essay - Part 1

2011-04-25T12:41:00.004-05:00

Here is just a little taste of some 35mm black and white photographs I took while on the set of Sahkanaga back in May and June of 2009. Working on that film (I was the 1st AD.) was one of the highlights of my life. I will post some each day leading up to the dueling guns premiere of this wonderful film at the Independent Film Festival Boston and the Atlanta Film Festival.

Go see it!

Abandoned Movie Theaters or Our Churches are Crumbling

2011-04-06T09:38:00.004-05:00

For 74 more photos of movie palaces, castles, cathedrals, chateaus, citadels and just plain old houses, click here.

Lumiere Painting Premiere

2011-03-09T23:58:00.003-06:00

Great & Plentiful Photos from Cairo

2011-02-10T10:58:00.006-06:00

Click Andrew Burton to see more photos and read his story.

David Foster Wallace Speaks About Mike & Ike Italian Ice

2011-02-07T11:09:00.008-06:00

So, I’ve reserved the conference room in our office all day today in order to conduct a solo taste test of Mike & Ike Italian Ice, a chewy candy from the Just Born corporation. Typically, an employee may only reserve our conference room for two hours. So, to get around this, I went around to numerous employees and vending machine restockers claiming the conference room sign-up sheet was actually a civil union petition for my home state of Illinois. Surprisingly, the people in my office are not quite as open-minded on this matter as those resupplying us with Butterfingers and Sprite.

I received from a friend of a friend employed by the Nabisco Corporation marketing department sample instructions from a taste test recently completed in San Diego for a new type of cracker and I’m applying these rules to the taste test. They are as follows: (1)

1)Don’t take a test if you’re sick. I am feeling well today.

2)Don’t eat or drink anything strong before the test. No garlic or coffee because those tastes linger. (2)

3)Do not smoke before testing. Smoking deadens your taste buds. It interferes with your nasal epithelium, which affects your sense of smell, which is linked to taste. Nicotine, when it enters the brain, can tie up nerve centers typically involved with taste, thereby reducing the brainpower you have to devote to tasting Mike & Ike Italian Ice. Very important.

4)Avoid strong perfumes or fragrances. I hope showering with soap doesn’t count.

5)Avoid talking during the evaluation. I am alone and will try very hard not to talk to myself.

6)Please turn off your phone. I left it at home.

First of all, Mike and Ike(3) is a chewy, fruit flavored candy with five flavors to each box. The different flavor themes are Original Fruits, Tangy Twister, Tropical Typhoon, Berry Blast, Italian Ice, Redrageous!, Lemonade Blends, Jolly Joes and Mike and Ike Zours, which is a sour-infused blend. The Italian Ice flavor is a relatively new addition to the Mike and Ike family and capitalizes on what is historically a cool summertime street dessert sold from wheeled carts. The candy version is not served cold, but at room temperature and just in case you’ve hastily purchased the candy for the first time and been wooed by the cool, icy-colored box into thinking it belongs in the freezer, there is a kind warning reading “To enjoy this Italian Ice, you do not need to freeze this product.” I would have capitalized the word ‘THIS’ just for clarity’s sake, but Just Born clearly knows its customers more intimately than I do.

The flavors are Lemon, Orange, Cherry, Blue Raspberry and Watermelon and I’ve poured out the entire box on the large conference table to accurately judge the color against the dark Formica. Atypical with the Italian Ice flavor is that they are actually inside a small, antiseptic white bag whereas most Mike and Ike candies just rest comfortably in a rectangular box board case with a convenient (though impossible to perforate without a Bowie knife) finger-sized dispensing slot. When opening this opaque bag, there is a powerful synthetic fruit fragrance to the candy, triggering flashbacks to former olfactory addictions to glue and turpentine. The pastels of the candies, shaped like inflated child's Tylenol, seem ripped from an Easter Sunday coloring book and my first taste is the lemon. Lemon is one of the most common frozen Italian Ice flavors and the Mike and Ike captures the modesty of the flavor quite well, to the point that you barely remember which flavor you just consumed. Most consumer lemonades should take a hint from this candy, in my opinion, and take it down a notch.

I decide to engage the watermelon next and it instantly calls to mind Big League Chew, which, having never played baseball as a child, I don’t have much experience with. Again, the taste comes and goes like a drive-by shooting. The cherry tastes quite like that artificial cherry flavoring found in most cough drops but not in actual cherries and I realize I’m only twenty minutes into this taste test. How I am going to fill the next seven hours is a slow-growing tumor metastasizing on the conference table next to my pool of Mike and Ike candies. I decide to smell the bag again and it has surprisingly lost none of its original scent. I inhale deeply, letting the fumes of the candy seep deep into the bronchial branches of my lungs, where hopefully they won’t rot away my ability to breathe like the candies will my teeth's ability to grind peanuts.

Mike and Ike prides itself on being both ‘naturally and artificially flavored’, yet it’s unclear which flavors are flavored naturally (and what that means) and which ones are flavored artificially (process also unclear). The ingredients list confoundingly includes pear juice from concentrate yet there is no pear-flavored candy. There is not even a relative of the pear within this flavor assortment.(4) I picture crates and crates of unsold pears day after day watching their apple, orange and banana brethren fly off in trucks to school lunches, grocery stores and sandwich shops when just before they begin to rot, the JustBorn team arrives in blue, embroidered vests to whisk them away to be squeezed down into juice concentrate and then inseminated along with magnesium hydroxide and Red #40 into a line of candies that doesn’t even claim pear as a flavor. Perhaps JustBorn should consider Pearnado! as a potential flavor for us Midwesterners sick and tired of seeing apples and bananas walk away with all the gold medals. We used to have a pear tree in our front yard that annually bore fruit, which the garbage men plucked and ate and left half-eaten in our yard. Pears are clearly second-class fruits. Apples are immortalized in the idiom ‘American as apple pie’ and cherries remain an omnipresent cocktail garnish while bananas provide the rare potassium in our diets and countless opportunities for phallic jokes, leaving the pear unknowable and unrecognized. It’s patently offensive to the pear to include it in the ingredients list.

Mike and Ike also boasts itself as a gluten and fat-free candy, though including ostensible selling points for healthy eating habits on a box of sweets seems to portray a candy in the clinical stage of denial.

1 - It is not clear if these rules are listed in random order or in order of importance.

2 - Since I am a coffee drinker and beginning this taste test in the morning, this is most regrettable as I might either fall asleep or grade every chewy Italian Ice flavored Mike and Ike with the bitterness and anger of a man denied his morning cup of Joe.

3 - Mike and Ike, despite being a box of dozens of individual candies, seems to be both a singular and plural noun, in the same category as deer, fish, squid and sheep.

4 - I consider an apple to be cousin of the pear. The closest relative to a pear in Mike and Ike Italian Ice is probably the cherry, but I’d label them no closer than second cousins once-removed at best.

Mahmoud Didn't Shoah - Another letter to the President of Iran

2011-02-01T17:11:00.012-06:00

Dear Mahmoud,

What happened to you last weekend?! Are you okay? I waited and waited and waited, but you didn’t show up. A world leader’s schedule is probably very busy and I will just assume something came up. Maybe there was a hiccup in your nuclear program that you had to attend to. I’ve never owned anything nuclear, but I imagine whatever it is requires a lot of upkeep. My Corolla, even though it’s a Toyota, needs constant attention.

Well, since you missed out on the movie, I’ll do my best to go over the bullet points (no pun intended) and some of the moments that most impacted me. However, I warn you that this recounting is a woefully inadequate substitute for experiencing the film in person. I can unequivocally state that I’ve never seen anything like it. Before I go into the film, I thought I’d set the scene for you a little.

I brought the following snacks to the movie: two clementines, one apple, a PB&J and Mike & Ike Italian Ice. My companion (Yes, I thought you might not make it so I invited someone else.) brought mini-boxes of NERDs. I also bought some popcorn during the second half. Outside the theater, my companion saw a man doing jumping jacks and upon finishing, he said, “Alright, I’m ready.” A man in the row in front of me brought microwave popcorn. I’m not sure where he microwaved this because movie theaters do not offer that service here (maybe they do in Iran?). Perhaps it was under his seat or he popped it at home and then brought it with him, which would have made it cold. During hour three, a woman in front of me leaned over to her husband and said, “What does SS stand for?” Her husband replied, “Secret Service.” Actually, sir, it’s Schutzstaffel, but I think she got the idea. A few audible ‘Oh my God’s and muddled gasps of exasperation were uttered as well, in addition to numerous sighs (mostly by one woman sitting in front of us) during the last two hours, when the film takes a strange turn chronologically and narratively by focusing on the Warsaw ghetto.

-Well, the movie opens with long scrolling text describing Simon Srebnik, one of the only two survivors of Chelmno, an extermination camp in Poland. An important note here is that this was not a concentration camp, but an extermination camp, essentially a killing factory designed for rapid, efficient killing of Jews and other people the Nazis weren’t fond of. We’ll talk more about this later. Anyway, Simon was only a boy while at Chelmno and was kept alive because he could sing beautifully and excelled at jumping and running contests among the inhabitants. He was actually executed with all the other Jews before the Soviets were to arrive. Shot in the head, the bullet luckily missed all vital brain areas and when he awoke, he crawled to a neighboring farm and eventually found his way to a doctor. He’s a modest, humble man who shows no signs of being shot in the head as a boy and when Claude Lanzmann (the director) brings him back to Chelmno, Simon remarks at seeing just forest and empty fields, “It’s hard to recognize, but it was here. They burned people here.” He says this very matter-of-factly.

-A survivor of the Vilna ghetto who unloaded corpses from the gas vans into mass graves said that the first time he unloaded them, he cried. On the third day, he saw his wife and children, placed them in a mass grave and asked to be killed, but the Germans wouldn’t kill him because he was still strong enough to work.

-Jews working in the camps were punished if they referred to corpses as ‘victims’ or ‘corpses’. Instead, they were told to use words like ‘rags’ and ‘puppets’.

-The Germans renamed some Jewish cities with German names after resettling Jews.

-A historian says the Final Solution was an invention, like a combustion engine or the Bessemer process. It was mechanical and industrial.

- The Treblinka gas chamber used a tank engine to create the deadly carbon monoxide fumes.

-Gas vans had hoses funneling the exhaust fumes from the van into the cargo area with all the Jews. They were driven to the mass graves and on arrival, the Jews would be dead. If they drove too quickly, they would still be alive and so they had to driven at a specific speed.

- Some gas chambers could kill 3000 people in 2-3 hours.

- A mother slit her daughter’s wrists herself to escape being killed by the Nazis.

- The Treblinka memorial consists of jagged stones, each representing a Jewish town or village that was exterminated at the camp. You heard that right - entire towns were wiped out.

-Lanzmann and company drive around Europe in a van resembling a VW bus visiting Chelmno, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka and other sites. It is white with a thick red racing stripe that runs around the chassis. It reminded me of an ambulance – a documentary ambulance.

-A camouflage unit made up of Jews was charged with taking branches from trees and weaving them around barbed wire to disguise it. This was an important part of making an extermination camp not look like an extermination camp.

-Another example of this includes an ‘infirmary’ with a red and white cross painted on it. In actuality, prisoners who entered this building were led to the edge of a ditch where bodies were continuously burning. They had to strip naked and then sit on the edge of the pit before they were shot in the back of the head. Then they fell in the ditch and burned. This is an example of the point the historian is making when he says ‘invention’. Someone had to invent or think of this in order to create it.

- In the Warsaw ghetto, one often had to step over the dead bodies of fellow Jews as one walked down the street. These dead bodies were Jews who had either starved, contracted disease or were just executed. I may be leaving out another method of execution, so forgive me for that.

- Oftentimes, right outside the ‘funnel’ at Treblinka, as people undressed and realized what was imminent, they would evacuate themselves. In other words, there were five or six rows of shit and feces outside the gas chambers, according to Franz Suchomel, an SS officer. It’s called ‘death panic.’

- Abraham Bomba, a survivor of Treblinka and barber who cut off the hair of Jewish women before they were gassed, is interviewed at his busy barbershop in Israel. He is cutting the hair of a customer during the interview. He describes a barber friend of his whose wife and daughter arrive to have their hair cut at Treblinka. He stops and cannot continue. He is filmed in this silent struggle for what seems like an hour as he tends to his customer. Lanzmann waits, then asks him to go on. Bomba cries, composes himself and eventually goes on. His friend could neither speak nor warn his wife and daughter of what was about to happen because the SS were right behind them and punished any talking with torture or death. In addition, since many of the incoming Jews had no idea what was going to happen, those working in the camp felt it was pointless to tell them they were about to die. I read on Wikipedia that some of this hair was used for make yarn-socks for U-boat crews. So, a German U-boat solider may have casually said to his mate, “My socks are made from the hair of a Jewish woman who was gassed at Treblinka.” Sounds unspeakably awful, doesn’t it?

- Claude Lanzmann asks this barber to imitate how he cut the hair of the Jewish women in the camp. The barber complies and demonstrates on one of his customers. This is a good example of the level of detail Lanzmann demands of his subjects.

-There is not a single swastika in the movie. There is one old photograph of a Nazi for a few seconds, so there could be a swastika on his uniform, but that’s the only possibility.

- The historian also describes in vivid detail the cost of running these trains. Someone had to pay for them. It was not free. He describes that when many Jews from Greece were forcibly removed, that in some instances their confiscated belongings and wealth were used to pay for their own transport to the death camps. Yes, some Jews essentially paid for their own voyage to the death camps.

Well, I hope this gives you an idea of what the movie is like. I’m afraid I cannot really do justice to such a landmark ten-hour film in just a short letter. Roger Ebert has a wonderful review of the movie here. The film is currently making the rounds here in the US, so this is the perfect time to book it for a theatrical engagement in Tehran if you have any favorite indie movie houses? Or maybe the Tehran Regal 16 might show it? In the USA, chain movie theaters don’t usually show long movies like that.

The film continues to play at the Gene Siskel Film Center for another week if you can make it up this way. If not, I’ll let you know about other upcoming films that might interest you. What kind of movies do you like? Comedies, indies, documentaries, sci-fi, comic book movies? The Music Box Theatre is showing Death Wish 3 tomorrow night. Do you like Charles Bronson?

Yours,

Mike Brune

P.S. The ticket was $20. Can you reimburse me? They wouldn’t give me a refund.

*Thanks to Script-o-rama for making the film’s transcript available online. Thanks to Wikipedia, too.

Digital Photo of the Week

2011-01-23T23:17:00.001-06:00

Old Mercedes Benz on Pine Grove Ave.

Chicago, IL

My 2nd letter to my new cinematic Pen Pal - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

2011-01-18T11:21:00.005-06:00

For clarity's sake, you may want to read our first correspondence here.

Dear Mahmoud,

We’re less than a week away from the screening of Shoah at the Gene Siskel Film Center here in Chicago and I wanted to check in and make sure that your travel plans are in order. Are you flying into the O’Hare or Midway airport? I have bought our tickets already. You can pay me back in Iranian money so that I can add it to my foreign currency collection. Is your photo on the currency? It should be $20 total. I went to the actual box office to buy tickets so we could avoid those unjust Ticketmaster fees. Do you have Ticketmaster in Iran? If you do, let me give you some friendly advice for your next election: Get rid of it. The Iranian people would love you for it and probably overlook any prior human rights violations, election tampering or squandering of their country's reputation.

Since there is not assigned seating, I wanted to inquire about where you like to sit when you go to the movies. As a head of state, you’re probably used to a private box in the balcony with a security retinue. Regretfully, they don’t have private boxes or a balcony, but I can assure you that even though I might not be much to look at, I’m a pretty tough cookie and can easily protect you from anyone throwing popcorn. However, if someone tries to stab you, I’ll probably get out of the way. My health insurance deductible is quite high. Don’t get me started on health care!

So, do you like the middle or the back or the aisle? You don’t seem like a front row kind of guy, though for this movie it might be best if you were up close. If for some reason your flight is delayed and you’re running late, I can save you a seat. Normally, I don’t like to do that because of all the dirty looks and questions this generates, but I’ll make an exception in your case. Believe it or not, some people are just as intolerant toward ‘seat-savers’ as they are toward Holocaust deniers. Nevertheless, you’re traveling quite a distance to be here and I want to make sure you get a good seat.

When I told a friend you were joining me for this film, she explained that your presence might cause a disruptive uproar at the theater because of some of your previous statements regarding Israel, the Holocaust, et al. We certainly don’t want the viewing experience of this special screening marred in any way, so I have a Chicago Cubs baseball cap and jersey for you to wear so you won’t be recognized. Do you have baseball in Iran? It’s our national pastime and quite a wonderful game. If it was spring or summer, we could attend a game. They might even let you throw out the game ball since you’re a President. Our Presidents do it all the time. Better warm up that arm just in case there’s a pickup game!

I hope to hear from you soon and I hope you’re as excited as I am about the movie.

Celluloidally yours,

Mike

Digital Photo of the Week

2011-01-14T14:29:00.001-06:00

Belmont Ave. Hardware Store - Chicago, IL

David Foster Wallace Speaks about Holiday NERDS Rope

2011-01-13T15:09:00.010-06:00

I've recently fallen in love with the writing of DFW and here is a little tribute to his genius:

Most people who work at East Coast magazines rarely frequent places that sell NERDS Rope let alone ingest it. Our Editor-in-Chief didn’t even know it existed and when presented with a sample, mistook it for a souvenir from Honeydukes, the sweetshop at Universal Studios’ Harry Potter Theme Park, which now sees more tourists per annum than most European countries. Our Managing Editor thought it resembled a ‘holiday’ vertebral column(1) his son made in his 1^st grade science class. A grizzled proofreader said it looked like someone ran down the bead aisle at Michaels with a glue-soaked Twizzler. He asked me if there was a razor inside of it. I told him I was about to find out.

The Holiday NERDS Rope is in a festive, sparkling green package cinched up tight on both ends. Dancing, flying, laughing, cavorting and plummeting along the wrapping are little red, green and white NERDS – tiny, bi-pedal creatures in stocking caps that resemble either shaved, dyed rabbits or cartoon germs. Didn’t I see these things battling my white blood cells in a seventh grade video on influenza? Wonka’s press kit states these are anthropomorphized versions of the candies, which begs the question of which human characteristics they possess. Are they loyal like a labrador or compassionate like a hospital nurse or violently insane like the Kool Aid man/pitcher? The packaging is not clear. NERDS look neither intelligent nor good conversationalists, but rather romping and brainless with the groupthink of lemmings in a gymnastics class with no teacher. No razor, by the way.

It’s easy to open and presented on a cheap, long cardboard shelf that slides out like a security deposit box. Tootsie Rolls and Almond Joys have this same shelf to ostensibly keep them from being bent or broken in transit from the candy factory to your grocery store. It would be elegant if the cardboard wasn’t perforated and almost as flimsy as the rope itself. There is something just unclassy about perforations. Why they try to intimate shapely elegance with a primordial, formless candy kids will undoubtedly whip their friends with is beyond me.

The package’s eating instructions call to mind phrases you might hear at an underground S&M club. Bite it! Chew it! Twist it! Pull it! I was so terrified by these commands I WHACKED it against my desk in a panic and the NERDS flew around the room like shrapnel from a claymore. My coworker still has a NERD in her tympanic membrane, giving all words entering her left ear a Wonkafied absurdity.

The taste is described as Soft Gummy Rope Covered With Tiny Tangy Crunchy NERDS Candy.(2) No commas are used, so these flavors may happen individually or in a simultaneous pell-mell attack reminiscent of Doughboys charging over a German trench. Be warned. It’s actually quite fragrant with a cherry fruit garden smell and the taste, like most candies whose main ingredients are dextrose, sugar and corn syrup, is more complex to describe than most mathematical proofs.(3) It’s quite delicious and wipes away the entire taste of the Indian food I had for lunch (as well as years of hard-earned tooth enamel) and leaves my mouth feeling like a dentist has pressure washed my mouth with microscopic sugar crystals. I washed it all down with a glass of milk. Merry Christmas.

1- Santa’s spine would be classified as a holiday vertebral column. It’s red, green and white and evidences years of chimney-induced back injuries.

2- Cinta Sauve y Masticable cubierta con Dulcecitos Agrios y Crujientes NERDS. The packaging is also in Spanish as Wonka is clearly targeting the Latino/Latina demographic.

3- There is a hint of strawberry, watermelon, cherry and the white NERD is what I refer to as a mystery flavor due to the Airheads candy, which produces a white taffy candy called white mystery, a secret flavor with Fort Knox type security. The white mystery Airhead tastes remotely berry-flavored with a hint of lemon, lime, watermelon, (not the flavor of a garden-grown watermelon, but of a laboratory watermelon flavoring, which is different), banana (again, laboratory banana) and green apple (which is actually acidic like a granny smith apple). As a child, I used to think the white mystery Airhead took on the flavor of whatever you were thinking before you opened it and the candy through some inorganic form of ESP discerned your thoughts and embodied that flavor. It generally worked except for the time I wanted it to taste like root beer. You might be wondering what laboratory banana or watermelon tastes like. The flavors are more like fragrances laced on pieces of hardened sugar. Some are astonishingly close to their natural counterparts, like banana, and some are not, like artificial flavorings for grape. A banana flavored NERD, for example, tastes like a banana pumped full of steroids, biologically enhancing the flavor to limits Mother Nature clearly did not intend.

An Open Letter to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

2011-01-10T16:35:00.003-06:00

Dear Mahmoud,

How is Iran? I hope things have settled down for you since the election. I wanted to extend to you a personal invitation to join me at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago, IL, USA on January 22^nd, 2011 for a special exclusive presentation of Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah, the Holocaust documentary from 1985. As a filmmaker and avid moviegoer, I can assure you this is a rare treat to have such a celebrated film presented in 35mm on the big screen. I approach each of these screenings with great care and try to find a companion who might glean the most from the film. Naturally, you came to mind. As one of the most vocal and visible Holocaust deniers (or do you prefer revisionist?), I thought this would be a great way for you to spend a Saturday and get out of Tehran for the weekend. Get away from it all, as we say here in the US.

Do you go to the movies much in Iran? I know you have a vibrant film community there and many films are banned, a designation which here in the US can bestow a little extra cache on the movie, translating into strong word of mouth. I guess we have that in common. I’m also envious that your country exiles filmmakers. Sadly, we don’t do that here though we have many directors who would be excellent candidates. Did you see Transformers?!

You might be apprehensive about Shoah’s length – a whopping ten hours and six minutes. Well, this is where I can be of assistance. If you need to use the bathroom at hour three, go right ahead. I’ll pay extra close attention and bring you up to speed on what the Nazis did to the Jews while you’re in the john (that’s how we say ‘bathroom’ here in the US). If you feel like you’re falling asleep, the café has caffeinated soda and a wonderful coffee bar to keep you awake and alert. They also have wine, but that generally puts me to sleep. How about you?

Shoah, which means ‘annihilation’ in Hebrew, is subtitled in English, which I know you don’t speak very well, but I’m certain the message of the movie will come across even if you can’t understand a single word. So what do you say? What does your calendar look like on January 22^nd? If that’s not good for you, what about January 29^th? Or you could visit Chicago for an entire week and see it over the course of two nights and also take in our great architecture, have a real Chicago hot dog and see some improv comedy?

I’m looking forward to seeing you and I hope you haven’t seen the movie already.

Cinematically yours,

Mike Brune

P.S. The popcorn is on me. I hope you like extra butter.

Me with Carl Dreyer, cat not filmmaker

2011-01-02T17:56:00.000-06:00

Third Odd Job

2010-12-29T12:45:00.000-06:00

This is my third odd job since I moved to Chicago. The first, in total time worked, was about twenty-five minutes and I made $25 which works out to one dollar per minute. I had to wear a Coke Zero shirt and pretend I was sleeping on the ground in the NBC Plaza downtown until we were cued to wake up, show off our shirts and smile for whoever was watching in the comfort of their own homes. It felt awkward and we were miscued once and had to pretend to be asleep and awoken all over again. The second time felt better and if we had had the entire day to rehearse, I feel like we would have nailed it. The second was, to use hyperbole, a dream job. I was hired to work a LEGO Kidsfest. Again, I was provided with a t-shirt. (Oh, we were allowed to keep the Coke Zero t-shirt so, I guess I made close to $40 using today's t-shirt prices.) This t-shirt was bright yellow. Here, I was paid $17/hr to supervise the LEGO racers play area, where children built LEGO race cars and then recklessly rolled them down small two foot ramps. Only one ramp had a an actual start and finish line. It was the steepest. At the bottom of each track a collision wall with a trough in front of it. No matter how well engineered the cars were , they would without fail disintegrate into dozens of pieces after striking the wall. Each crash received cheers and/or silent, jaw-dropped awe. If the crash troughs were too full, we yellow shirts transferred the pieces back to separate troughs at the building stations. Several people I worked with wandered the building stations and ramps and unceasingly picked up whatever pieces were in the troughs and returned them to the building stations. They would not wait for the pieces to pile up. If one car was wrecked and left, they'd go pick it up. They were always on the move, constantly moving, constantly performing this Sisyphean task for hours at a time. It makes me dizzy just thinking about it. I opted to spend my time building race cars with the kids and judging races. If I had kids, I would take them to this event. If I didn't have kids, I would take myself to this event.

This brings me to my third odd job - soliciting donations for the Evans Scholars Foundation, an organization that sends deserving caddies (yes, golf caddies) with a strong record and financial need to college. Try saying that with a straight face to a complete stranger right after Christmas in a moribund economy. I made about thirty dollars, but I visited the University of Chicago for the first time and passed by the Museum of Science and Industry in semi-darkness, marveling at its expansive, impressive footprint on Chicago's south side. It reminded me of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which was closing by the time I arrived years ago, so I only saw its exterior.

Seattle Film Archives

2010-12-26T13:22:00.000-06:00

Vice Magazine 'Dos and Don'ts' clearly categorizes telling people about your dreams as a DON'T.

I've often ignored this vice and think if Stephen King ever followed the rule, we'd be more than a handful of fine books short in this world. Here I go again.

Last night I dreamt I was in the Seattle Film Archive (which doesn't exist). Imagine the dusty smell of a used book store and the antiquity and superfluousness of a baseball card shop. I stalked a clerk at the store asking if they had any 16mm prints of von Stroheim films. I guess in this dream I was rich enough to be able to afford an item as rare as that.

Instead, I left the store with what amounted to a lobby card of Humphrey Bogart from some movie I'd never heard of. It was the size of a baseball card, which was on the brain because earlier in the day when I was Skyping with my parents I learned that my father bought all the boys in my family an old-timey baseball card circa 1920. The one I received, in all it's muted monochromatic glory, was Rogers Hornsby mid-swing. Bogart was dressed similarly though instead of striped socks, he shirt was striped like an escaped convict. The card depicted on the upper torso of his body positioned as he was peering out from around a doorway. A dense fog enveloped everything else in the picture, as if he stowed away on a tug boat headed out to sea. So, he was floating there in mid-air, like in a dream. Eugene O'Neill might have written a screenplay based on this card.

I hope to make another trip back to the Seattle Film Archives.

Frederick Wiseman presents 'Wrigley'

2010-09-07T21:18:00.000-05:00

I now live in Chicago, Illinois. For how long...who knows? Less than a week after my arrival, I had an opportunity to work at Wrigley Field for one day on a entertainment program that will go unnamed. Wrigley Field, aka The Friendly Confines, at first seemed like nothing more than a ballpark, but as the day wore on and I wandered the concourse, ramps and balconies, it began to resemble Doubleday Field in Cooperstown, which I visited this summer with the Brune brothers and Royal (Brune). As the second oldest active park in Major League Baseball and the oldest in the National League (my league), it's as storied and towering as Frank Lloyd Wright or Abraham Lincoln. With all my miscellaneous tasks to perform throughout the day, I managed to witness the slow wind-up of a Cubs night game, start time seven-0-five. Vendors arrive in the early morning to deliver kegs of beer, boxes of produce and dry goods. An old man in an over-sized Cubs jacket and hat, who works a six-thirty am to two-thirty pm shift with no lunch break, oversees Gate J/K logging all those who enter on the back of a scrap piece of white copy paper, jotting down numbers like L2345 in columns that slowly drifted as they ran down the page. No pre-printed charts, names or positions. He was doing it the old-fashioned way. I was able to see, hear and inhale the sights and scents of popcorn being popped, bagged and hung from stands like pennants. I held my own personal interior court in the modest, cramped administrative offices watching a 'Cubbie' hand-deliver a printed memo to all the cubicles. I drooled over a bucket of what appeared to be foul balls. I watched a colleague shake a bobble head and film it with his Iphone in close-up. A well dressed group of musicians in blue cummerbunds and long horns with banners hanging from them as if in some medievel kingdom gathered near the box office, preparing for what had to be the Star-Spangled Banner. Outside, at Clark and Addison, it was an ocean of red, white and blue.

I felt so out of place in khaki, green and white - not a bit of blue in my eyes and the only red on my lips.

It seemed like a document Frederick Wiseman might have captured already. How had he not? Not only is it a physical institution and business, but it lies within a much larger institution - baseball; and beyond that a larger institution still - sport. The closest he seems to have come is Racetrack and his relatively unseen film about Madison Square Garden. At Wrigley Field, I witnessed the everyday occurrences that so often feed Wiseman's poignant and simple tales of American life. I was reminded of a military convoy leaving the base in Missile, the students entering school in High School II, cattle being driven towards the slaughterhouse in Meat, and the supportive classrooms of The Spring in Domestic Violence. Lately, there has been a drought of movie-watching and making in my life. These droughts always seem rekindle my passion for what I feel is the most powerful medium we have - cinema. Wiseman's renderings came to life for me today in a place I never expected them to - Wrigley Field.

I am an old-fashioned kind of man, just like the man running Gate J/K. His home, place of worship and work is Wrigley Field. Mine is the cinema, but is no different. It is a home, a place of worship and a place of business. Each is historic, hallowed, strong, durable and meant for preservation. They were both built a long time ago and people passionately flock to them today just as they did then. To me, baseball and cinema are two past times I will drive to the airport or help move cross country or give my spare key to. Whatever they ask of me...my answer is yes.

I cannot wait for my first game in person. Let's play two!

Curta Cinema!

2008-12-07T18:45:00.001-06:00

So far, The Adventure has garnered six awards from its nearly year-long festival run. Sometimes, these awards are ethereal and must be passed on through oral tradition only, but other times, something tangible is bestowed. I received my first tangible trophy from Curta Cinema 2008: Rio de Janeiro Int'l Short Film Festival. Check it out. I think it's inspired by the viewfinder of a camera or maybe the various aspect ratios of the cinematic tableau. I do like the simplicity of the black and white, which may be connected to some of the films shown at the festival this year.

I've learned to ask each festival to send back a copy of the program/catalogue along with either my tape or print. So far, they've all been happy to comply and it's nice to read about all the films one could have seen. From a more practical perspective, these programs are filled with contact information for many filmmakers and productions companies. The catalogue from Curta Cinema 2008 was especially heartbreaking to peruse because this year, they showed original Lumiere Bros. films on 35mm, including 'Train Arriving at the Station' and 'Workers Leaving a Factory'. In those days, you didn't have a choice. You had to make short films. (Sigh.)

Int'l Short Film Festival Winterthur - Films United

2008-11-11T18:32:00.001-06:00

I felt compelled to share a little about my most recent festival adventure to Switzerland (Swaziland for a select one person). Here we go...

Obama's election swept me from the "red" state of Georgia to the country of Switzerland and more specifically to Zurich's well-dressed neighbor Winterthur. I felt rather proud to carry the Obama torch overseas and I felt like it gave a diplomatic quality to what was purely a cinematic mission. You might say, "Why Winterthur?" I might say, "A couple of reasons. No. 1: It's a short film festival and I have yet to attend a festival devoted only to shorts. No. 2: They have some very generous prizes awarded to the winners of the international competition. No. 3: They are very welcoming and generous to visiting filmmakers and suffice to say, they made it very worth my while to attend. My thanks to Reto, programmer and coordinator, for that. From my talks with other filmmakers at the festival, Winterthur's fest appears with Uppsala and Tampere as the jack, king and queen of the European short film festival deck. The ace, I think, would be Clermont-Ferrand. So I'm told. So I've heard.

On my first trip to Europe I sat next to a Colombian. On my second, I sat next to a
Colombian and he was just as friendly as every other Colombian I've met. Something in the water I guess. His name was Jesus and he works for Homeland Security. We parted ways in Paris and Charles de Gaulle airport. You know those silly cartoon representations of human organs in which dozens of workers toil laboriously maintaining the functions of the heart or brain or eye like it is some construction site or office building. That approximates CDG airport. It's a wonderful, confusing, spinning, crazy paradox. It's the embodiment of a Tati film. Well, my lodgings as provided the festival were located at the Hotel Banana City, heavy on amenities and light on indoor pools (none). This was quite a great place and I've included a short video of one of these amenities.

Our main festival venue was the Casino Theater in the heart of the city and a short walk from the hotel and it consisted on 3 floors of festivities. The first floor contained the main theater w/balcony, festival infodesk, restaurant and box office. The third floor was the smaller theater. The second, which I saved for last, was my favorite. Coat check and water closet facilities were located on this floor, but those are hardly things to holler about. In fact, there was no movie theater on this floor, but only a bar and and lounge, which for the festival, was turned into a teeming discotheque conducted each night by a host of DJs. Every year, the festival chooses a theme for this room and this year it was teddy bears and stuffed animals. It didn't seem to make any sense to me until the last day when people started pulling the animals off the ceiling and throwing them around and then it still didn't make any sense, but somehow it worked.

With a small festival like this, I got to know a number of filmmakers and festival staffers over the few days I was there and that was the true treat of the experience. Two of my favorites were Rodrigo, a Portuguese filmmaker and Tião, a Brazilian filmmaker. Rodrigo had just finished a feature film in HD and Corrente, his short film at the festival, was a trip back to the early days of cinema. He shot on 16mm reversal, developed and edited the film by hand, using only techniques available 70 years ago. I liked it very much. Tião's film, Muro (Wall in Portuguese), was my favorite of the festival. It premiered at Cannes' Director's Fortnight and it's a hard film to describe. The program reads, "Soul in vacuum, desert in expansion." That synopsis makes sense like the teddy bears hanging from the ceiling makes sense. I think maybe the film is about A race, though there are several races in the film. In one race, a group of children stand at the starting line and decide to race with one rule: they may not take a breath. The starter pistol fires...sounds pretty awesome, doesn't it? It is. I wish everyone could see this film.

I met a couple filmmakers from Tel Aviv (Rossi is pictured here next to me.), who were quite charming and funny and another filmmaker from Palestine, who was interrogated by Israeli Police for 4 hours before being allowed to board his plane at the Tel Aviv airport. I met Barbara(also pictured), a visual artist/filmmaker from Muenster in Germany and she was very nice and thoughtful and she had some insightful comments about my film. The list goes on... My other favorite films were Love You More, which I saw in Austin and ranks alongside Death to the Tinman as the best strictly narrative short films I've ever seen, and a film called Puppetboy, which won the grand prize of 12,000 CHF. It has a very Scandinavian sense of humor, probably because it's Scandinavian. If you asked me to describe what that is, I would fail, but if you saw the film, you'd come away thinking that same thought. In retrospect, it reminded me of Lars von Trier's The Boss of it All.

Originally, I had reservations about traveling overseas for a film festival for only a weekend. Now that I've returned, I would happily do it again in a heartbeat. It is astonishing how people can come together in such a small event and it seem as if the entire world and all its machinery present and accounted for. I still feel like such a child; amazed that their can be so many cultures and people driven to cinema to express the inexpressible. In full disclosure, I was interminably moved those 4-5 days. Perhaps to be moved, you must move, if only briefly. The world seemed flat and we all had our individual stories, but in reality, there was only one story. The word is 'universal'. It comes to mind whenever I think of Muro and the race. Film races through a projector. People race in the New York Marathon or to the moon. The earth is moving. We're all moving and racing at the same time. Look at me. I'm getting carried away. Forgive me.

Ann Arbor Film Festival - Day 3 and 4

2008-05-15T01:48:00.000-05:00

My third day was nearly as eventful as the prior two. The patriarch of my lodgings made his debut and he was an inquisitive and kind man with whom I shared a breakfast of omelets and apple pie. At least I think it was omelets. This day marked the last I would see of my dear Google friends whom I would miss terribly. As a substitute for their great company, I turned to the big white screen and a Guy Maddin picture titled Brand Upon the Brain, which I enjoyed despite it's cloudy narrative. His devotion to the aesthetic of the silent film is tantamount to worthy of a statue in a plaza somewhere. After that I wandered around until the Awards Programs began and I skipped in and out of those, rewatching some films for a second time like My Olympic Summer and watching others for the first time.
My return came on an early Monday morning and I joined Transpo Coordinator Rick for the drive to the Detroit airport, for which I was very grateful. En route, we stopped to pick up another filmmaker who was traveling out the same morning named Juan Camillo, who hailed from Colombia. He proved my theory that Colombians are some of the nicest people on this Earth. As we trekked the 45 minutes to greater Detroit where the planes dock, Rick gave us a unadulterated history of the Ann Arbor Film Festival. He is a board member and has been involved with the festival, along with his wife, for many years. He told us, once upon a time, that the Ann Arbor Film Festival would only accept submissions if they were on 16mm. Imagine John Lennon...you could only submit to the festival if your film was on 16mm. That is what I call dedication and it's a lost way of life. He related to us the struggle AAFF recently endured to stay alive despite politicians pulling their funding for reputed 'controversial' programming. Read about the heroics here. His conclusion to this story is as touching as the end of It's a Wonderful Life and it just goes to show that no man, or festival, is a failure who has friends. I didn't hear any bells in the car ride, but damn it I should have. So, Rick and his wife, since they have no children, have willed all of their assets to the Ann Arbor Film Festival. Enough said. With passion and dedication like that, it seems nearly impossible for a festival of this kind to disappear. I was so moved I nearly lost my composure riding in that SUV. Generosity is the currency of our age. Here! Here!

The Big Red

2007-10-26T17:02:00.000-05:00

Over the course of the past year, Blood Car has vacationed us in some fine areas of the continental United States, from red states to blue states and back again. Our most recent trip was to Denison University in Granville, Ohio, a highly selective liberal arts school of about 2400 students and nestled in what was once called 'the frontier of America.' The spirit of generosity and grit that once cradled these uncharted lands still rules, as does the danger of being attacked by vengeful Native Americans whose lands we usurped.* Adam and I were flown up courtesy of student Brian Crush and the Denison Film Society. We met him during our Burroughsian trip to the Jacksonville Film Festival this past May and he contacted Alex shortly afterward wanting to program Blood Car for one of their weekly film screenings. Since Alex was indisposed, we traveled in his stead. I had such great fun, both annoying Adam with bad joke/good joke ratio of 4 to 1 and visiting with our gracious hosts, who you'll meet shortly.

In the Atlanta airport's main atrium on our way to security, we were confronted by some janusian portraits by a photographer whose name I cannot remember. If you can tell me who the photographer is, I'll buy you lunch. These were displayed all across the atrium and were incredibly compelling. You cannot really see it here, but the split between the two faces is purposefully jagged and most of the photos were incredibly dramatic, funereal, beautiful and sorrowful. I chose to shoot one of the few of that had a smiling subject. I was in a good mood. This might make a good Xmas present for someone, but it also might make one sob uncontrollably. If you can't tell, one half of the face is just an older version of the younger half.

Chautauqua Airlines ferried us to St. Louis and then on to Columbus, OH in two very tiny, embracing planes that I could not stand up straight in. We were greeted by our benefactor Brian C. and a fellow film student named Taylor, who was working on a variation of the popular acronym WTF -- WTFuck. Go ahead. Say it...funny, right? I think it has potential. A scenic, thirty minute drive to the university allowed us to interrogate Brian C. and Taylor about their film program at Denison. Surprisingly, students are still mandated to shoot projects on 16mm. It's refreshing to hear that since our alma mater phased out 'film' just after we graduated and is now exclusively digital, at least for the undergrads. I also believe it imparts to students an understanding and appreciation of celluloid that is disappearing, much like the arctic glaciers. Yes, you heard me right, digital is the global warming of movies. HAHA.

On arrival, we assembled with our other gracious hosts, Cassie, Denison Film Society President, and Charlie, another film student, and dined at a bar that only served beer. I had some trouble finding a drink here since I do not drink beer or anything that tastes like beer. So I asked our waitress, "Are there any beers that do not taste like beer?" She either rolled her eyes or humored me and brought back two tasters' glasses, one that tasted like beer and one that tasted like a green apple jolly rancher cider. I had two glasses of the latter. It is a Belgian, unmanly, fruit flavored beer. During dinner, this cinematic quartet regaled us with the storied history of the DFS projection room, where several films have met with untimely fates, including Grindhouse and The Passenger. Taylor showed us one terrifying picture on his cell phone that encapsulated The Passenger debacle. Somehow, the reels became tangled up so intricately in the projector that they had to make over a dozen surgical cuts to free it from the jaws of the machine. The picture was of a student who looked like he dipped his hands in a bin of 35mm and the spools dripped off of him like water. His hands were held up proudly like a surgeon who had just emerged from a patient's chest cavity, bloodied up to his elbows. I covered my eyes. They assured us that they have dozens more stories of films that made it to the final reel, but those aren't very interesting. Ah, the essence of narrative and drama. Only when bad things happen is it worth committing to paper or celluloid or binary code. Can't argue with that.

We screened on DVD in a large lecture hall outfitted as a theater with full 16mm and 35mm projection facilities. A selection of snacks and soda were served for the attendees. Adam and I introduced the film, watched the first few minutes and then walked back into town for a drink while the film played. What also hearkened back to the frontier epoch was the price of the alcohol there; brawny quantities at 1850s prices. When we returned we happily answered questions, gave out a few t-shirts and some posters. In lieu of his presence, Alex drafted a short message to the students that I read before the talkback. It went as follows:

Dear Denison University,

Thanks for coming to the screening. I hope you laughed or were at least offended enough to tell someone about it. I'll take either. Atlanta is getting colder and I am getting some kind of sickness. It sucks. (I added as a joke, "I may not make it to spring.") How's the weather there? Well enough chit chat, let's get down to business. When I was in film school some professors, and especially people working in the film industry, treated doing their own projects as some kind of a pipe dream a younger version of them had. Well I just want to tell you that those people suck and you ca do whatever you want if it is important to you. Make the kind of films that you would like to see and there will be an audience somewhere for them. If you want to be a filmmaker, learn about it by doing. There is information everywhere about all aspects of filmmaking so devour it all. Read everything, volunteer, meet people, write, watch movies, take pictures- learn all you can. Mark Twain said it best- "Don't let schooling interfere with you education." ok, wish I could be there alex

I don't think Denison alums Michael Eisner, Jennifer Garner, Hal Holbrook or Steve Carell could have said it better. Carell might have been funnier. Holbrook would have had a few more Twain quotes up his sleeve. Garner would have been richer. Eisner would have been prettier. Actually, reverse those last two. Someday, these film students will be imparting similar wisdoms to the next generation of filmmakers and filmgoers. (Pictured from left to right; Cassie, Taylor, Charlie, and Brian C.)

For such a short trip, we produced a great deal of memories and inside jokes. From The Denisonian weekly, I learned that microwave popcorn fumes can cause "deadly, irreversible lung disease." I vanquished a couple of complete strangers in pocket billiards. We stayed at the Buxton Inn, which is supposedly haunted by former owners and a ghost cat. Some Denison students use roast beef sandwiches as bookmarks. Okay, just one of them.

*Not true.

Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival - Day 2

2007-09-30T16:16:00.000-05:00

En route to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute for the Athens, GA made Darius Goes West, we saw this sign and sighed. We went back to the hotel, checked out and got about as far as Anniston, AL when we realized the sign just said 'sidewalk' and not Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival. We turned around and made it back in time for the movie.

The venue underestimated the attendance of the film and since it wasn't a traditional movie theater but an exhibition room of sorts, seating was limited. Alex O., Katie R. and I sat on some steps which was a surprisingly not unbearable situation, partly because the film was so heartwarming. It's about Darius, a 15 year-old with muscular dystrophy, DMD to be specific, whose friends take him on a trip across the US, his first ever, in hopes of convincing MTV to pimp his wheelchair. I cried for most of it. You probably will too if you see it. Darius and most of the cast and some crew members were in attendance, all dressed in t-shirts with Darius-isms in stark black and white. A few include "Glosabi," and "That ain't no Cuba." When I saw Darius answering questions from the audience, I forgot that DMD has a %100 fatality rate. I didn't really even think about it until late that night at the after party when I was introduced to him. Then I said to the myself, "Well, humans have a %100 fatality rate." Of course that isn't during the years of your late teens and early twenties, when DMD typically reaches the point of no return. My guess is I didn't think about it because Darius doesn't think about it. He just lives his life day-to-day like everyone else.

We walked by the Carver Theater, our venue for that night, prior to and after DGW and it is also the home of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, whose most notable inductees include Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton, who played the vibraphone. Think xylophone or marimba. Later that night we would walk the same stage as Duke and sing our own brand of music, that of the Q&A. Wiki states the Carver showed pornographic films in its later, moribund years. We hoped to bring back some of that business. It also used to be the African-American theater in town whereas the Alabama was the white theater.

A Darfur documentary and Murder Party made up the second half of my movie schedule Saturday before Blood Car, but even before that Alex O. and Jeremy S. participated in a panel called The Blood and Guts of Comedy about horror-comedies on the festival circuit. Katie R. and I sat in for the first thirty minutes and by the look of it I thought they were going to do a staged reading of some Tennessee Williams. In retrospect I wish they had. Next time I festival, I'll bring a few copies of Streetcar just in case.

We did very little promotion for Blood Car at this festival because we didn't feel like working putting up posters and harassing people to see our film. Our efforts would have been limited anyway having only brought buttons, a few t-shirts, some posters and one signed poster! Our turnout was around 220 I believe. Heartburn, an 8 min. short from a FSU film student screened before our film and the director, Jesse Barksdale, was in attendance and participated in a Q&A. Alongside him were his DP and someone he kept wryly referring to as his 'business manager', who was dressed in all black. Their short was funny, but Jesse B. was even funnier during the talkback. It was their first film festival and their wide-eyed rookie swagger charmed the pants off just about everyone. It was a great precursor for BC. Many of the other filmmakers we had met the day before extended us the kind gesture of conducting themselves to our screening as well.

If I was forced to guess which talkback was better, Alex O.'s or Jesse B.'s, I'd have to think aboutit . I refuse to pick one over the other, and this reluctance you should interpret as an indication of how close the race was, if it was a race. Since most questions reappear at every Q&A, it's a bit like a broken record or a song I play so many times I wear it out. However, Alex O. managed to work in a couple new bits that rolled some heads. Since we had t-shirts and posters to give away, we asked a trivia question to the audience about where the 'oven mitts in bed joke' came from. An audience member actually asked directly about this so we turned it into a trivia opportunity. Sadly, no one could correctly reference the film, Love and Death. We were swarmed for the swag and then left.

I wish we could have stayed for the last day of the festival, but Katie R. had to return to Atlanta for a rehearsal. It was a wonderful festival and I regret I cannot attend more. I know Alex is traveling to Austin for the film festival there and he is blogging now, so we'll be able to walk in his e-shoes while Texas brands him forever. There was moderate concern about our blogs overlapping since this is the first festival we've attended together as bloggers. My knee jerk reaction was that no one would want to read about the same thing twice. Rationality won out because multiple perspectives is the best way to gather an objective impression of the events of any historical occurrence. Alex had been wanting to start a blog for a while, but he wasn't sure he was qualified to to do. I told him it's hard work, but rewarding. He asked me to give him some lessons a few times a week and we've been training pretty hard since Atlanta's last snow melted. He launched a little earlier than I would have in his shoes. I look forward to reading his version of the events of Sidewalk.

Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival - Day 1

2007-09-29T11:00:00.000-05:00

I don't know what we would have done if we had left Atlanta any later and missed the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival's interactive iron pour at Sloss Furnaces. It was a casual itinerary we set for ourselves, but this kind of antique entertainment is rare for a film festival. Imagine if Cinequest had had us build a computer or Sarasota a beach umbrella.

Just a quick drive from downtown, we arrived just after the shuttle buses crammed with filmmakers, festival staffers, jurors, and media personnel. Perfect timing. Our guide was Kyle McKinnon, one of two programmers of Sidewalk. Now a historical landmark, Sloss was once a towering inferno of pig iron, or raw iron production, which is used to make steel. In addition to giving us visitors a glimpse into this once thriving industry, it also gave us a window into the once thriving fears of humanity; by that I mean vampires, spiderwebs, graveyards and the grim reaper. Someone saw this landmark and said, "This would make a great haunted furnace," and so each Halloween it mutates into the Sloss Fright Furnace...group rates available. A few minutes of marveling led Alex to compare this facility to Axis Chemicals, where Jack Napier undergoes his infamous transformation.

Soon we were redirected to the actual location of the pour, just a short walk from this casket and graveyard. About a dozen iron workers wandered around as we were gathered around a small table like a class on a field trip to hear instructions. Each one of us was given a 4"x 4" block of sand and resin in which to carve a mold for the iron. Our paintbrush was a rusty nail. You'll notice that the designs come out backwards post-pour. They told us that going in so that's why Alex wrote blood car in reverse.

Below is a before/after series of our iron creations.

A bunny dreaming of having wings.

The blood car strikes again.

Pacman in trouble.

The pouring...

and then...

One of my favorite things about attending films festivals is how everything from the mundane to the grandiose wears some cinematic significance. First and foremost was Sloss, which resembled the ironworks from Days of Heaven, Cobra and T2 and countless others. Just an hour earlier after dropping our bags at the Redmont hotel, we stopped at Chick-fil-a and I heard a little girl say the word 'mayonnaise' like Louis Gossett, Jr. in An Officer and a Gentlemen. There must be a switch in my brain that turns on this total recall of cinematic information and applies it to each minuscule phrase or act. I don't know if this happens to everyone. I forgot to ask Alex and Katie. As if I weren't submerged enough already in the cinema at a film festival, I have to ascribe cinematic meaning to non-cinematic events. You could compare it to getting into the spirit of Christmas, I suppose.

A couple dear festival friends and phenoms were present at this ironclad Sidewalk tradition, including Gabe and Dan from the Atlanta Film Festival, Joe Swanberg of Hannah Takes the Stairs and Jeremy Saulnier (Son yea; pictured in Black Cat t-shirt) of Murder Party. The latter film could be deemed Blood Car's sister film on the festival circuit, playing similar festivals and taking BC's spot at a few festivals or the other way around. Alex and Jeremy joke about it. I'm not quite sure if it is a myth or not, but I've heard multiple ruminations about it. Certain festivals not dedicated to a specific genre of film might only program, say for example, two horror of sci-fi films when in fact more would certainly be worthy. Balancing a program and creating an identity for a festival obviously factor in to these decisions so I see why such a theory is given merit.

Leaving Sloss, I warmed up to the Axis Chemical's comparison Alex made. I've been holding back a little here out of journalistic objectivity, but this iron pour was rather awesome! I felt like I left with a permanently deformed smile on my face.

That night we dined with filmmakers from Kamp Katrina, The Paper, Jeremy and a few jurors and festival staffers, all delightful people who we corrupted with a game where we re-imagine songs in a scatological manner. I'll get into more detail on this later...or maybe not.

That night, I watched The Ten, directed by David Wain. From the creators/actors/comedians behind The State, it was on the whole a very funny series of sketches united by the theme of the Ten Commandments. The animated story in the film was the biggest miss in my eye and there was an audibly louder applause and hooting for Michael Ian Black's brief appearance as a prison guard. As it was the opening night film, it was held at Birmingham's majestic theater palace, The Alabama. Unfortunately for movie lovers, this theater's bread and butter is everything but movies, suffering the same fate our beloved Fox. You take it where you can get it, they say. That notwithstanding, I was so giddy to be back in the festival milieu taking in films and being around filmmakers and film lovers. So many were in attendance because Sidewalk is nearly top-dog in the hospitality department, flying down filmmakers and lodging them on the festival dime. It's fantastic. We live a quick two hours away and they offered to fly us over.

We ended the evening with a nice little loft party at Rachel Morgan's, the other lead programmer. She had a tiny little projector showing Short Circuit and The Class of 1984, which was released in 1982 for some reason. I guess they were aiming for dystopia. Michael J. Fox looks very young in the film...and tubby. Blood Car screens tomorrow at 945pm.

Goodbye Myrtle Street

2007-08-28T00:21:00.000-05:00

I saw Superbad recently at Atlanta's Atlantic Station, a place that if you look at it, you might say, "This place should be haunted." I stayed for the end credits, which I used to do unilaterally, but I regret to say that tradition buckled under the weight of PJ's Rings' Trilogy of endurance-testing credit scrolls. As I was watching the montage of penis drawings, I felt a sense of pride come over me. That sentence probably hasn't been uttered too often, but there was something special about seeing crude drawings getting laughs in the cinema. The first thought that jumped into my head was, "Hey, we've done that." I don't mean to suggest that Apatow+CO aped anything related to BC, as I'm sure nasty little drawings as comic relief go back to the silent era. No, I saw some dots and I connected them. No revelations, no epiphanies this night - just a couple different movies with nasty, funny drawings.

Ralph Goings drew one of the early sketches for the Lorraine character by the way.

I attended the Atlanta Underground Film Festival a while back for the midnight screening of Blood Car. We lazily promoted a 'Dress As Your Favorite Character' contest in connection with the screening, but I didn't notice anyone dressed up for the film. Our screening coincided with Professor Morte's Silver Scream Spook Show at the Plaza, so many people were dressed up as sexy ghouls and creatures of the night. 1960s B-movie Jason and the Argonauts was on the silver scream downstairs. Unfortunately, BC does not feature any members of the undead community nor any centaurs, three-headed dogs, or skeletons. Had we brought any signed posters or unsigned t-shirts, we would have given them away to those folks who at least dressed up as something. The disappointment continued when I think one person suggested to me that the only thing that was missing was a t-shirt cannon, also known as a bleacher reacher. Our marketing team must be on vacation.

With fall gaining on us, we have a number of premieres forthcoming, including Texas, Canada, New York, South America and Rome, GA, which just happened. Having halted our submission process, it's safe to call this the beginning of the end of our film festival run, but the beginning of the beginning of our theatrical run. It begins in the evergreen state in the city of Olympia of all places on Oct. 6 at 9pm and where it will end we may never know. According the Olympia, WA Visitor's Bureau website, the ghost of a janitor killed in an explosion at the Capitol Theater may still haunt the aisles. It also states that the Capitol Theater denies this.

So, let's take one last look at our festival batting average. We may hear from another festival or two in which case I'll adjust, but until then, as Marketplace's Kai Ryssdal would insist, "Let's do the numbers." 64 submission. 36 rejections. 28 acceptances*. No, the asterisk does not allege that Alex may have juiced while using withoutabox.com. It refers to the Denver Film Festival, which we were accepted to, but because our DVD release precedes our screening date there, it violates a policy they have against showing films that have been released on DVD. Since we were accepted, I've kept it in that column. We've ended the season with an astonishing .438. Ted Williams eat your heart out. Wow!

Even bigger news, I suppose, is that BC will soon become a palindromic acronym. It's an ending so many films meet and so many do not, something so commonplace but so coveted at the same time. TLA, our distributor, is the home for films such as Meatball Machine (great title!), The Girls of Tattoo U, and Naked Boys Singing! The Movie. They've been generous enough to give us great freedom in designing the cover for the DVD and with the extra features, which are special endowments for film lovers like ourselves. I eagerly anticipate seeing the 60 minute behind the scenes video Alex has been editing together. eDVD retailers have begun to post adverts for the film on their websites and we hope good reviews proceed the actual street date, which is November 6th. On that day we will also celebrate Mike Nichols' birthday and the anniversary of the Sex Pistols' first concert.

You can do a few things to help us promote the DVD release of Blood Car. They may seem insignificant, but I assure you they are not. ONE: RATE THE FILM ON IMDB.COM. 76 people have done so thusfar. On myspace, we have over 12,000 friends. Such a 'rich get richer-poor get poorer' brand of disparity probably shocks you, so register with imdb.com and rate our film. TWO: RATE THE FILM'S TRAILER ON YOUTUBE AND MYSPACE. THREE: MAKE BLOOD CAR ONE OF YOUR TOP FRIENDS. FOUR: RATE OUR FILM ON FLIXSTER .

If you're short on BC press related infotainment, please scroll down to the comments section of the BC myspace page and watch the Rule Hollywood episode covering BC. It features Adam P. looking like he's the Che Guevara of Agnes Scott College talking about the making of the film.

In a few weeks, I'll be moving out of the apartment that has been my home since 2003. I have many wonderful memories of this brick and white-shuttered nest in midtown Atlanta. Hugh and Alex shared number 3 while Adam and I shared number 4. Here, we gave birth to the golden age of Fake Wood Wallpaper's Beardman series. We celebrated Xmas together. No history class will ever survey the events of this puny, cloistered building, but that will not mitigate it's gravity. It was here that I really came to know the men and women who would shape my life, tastes, and views during those formative years, unexpected as that may sound to them. Our dueling apartments came to serve as the braintrust not only for FWW, but for Blood Car. Number 3 became our production office and the set of Archie's apartment. The current residents have a large dog and a cat that resembles Alex's former feline, Lupus, whose whereabouts remain unaccounted for. To be grandiose, it was our little Factory.

I learned something from a book of film criticism about Michelangelo Antonioni years ago. It seems like I learned everything I know about the cinema from him. Anyway. The locations depicted in his films often serve as metaphors or reflections of the characters' lives or emotional states. When I walk away from here the last time, I hope that whenever I smile, one will still be able to see this drab ten unit apartment complex on my 27 year old (and counting) face. Goodbye Myrtle Street. Goodbye.

Clean Up

2007-06-18T23:23:00.000-05:00

As I was cleaning up my bedroom a few weeks ago, I found a Blood Car souvenir underneath an unread autobiography of filmmaker Sam Fuller: the blood towel. Prior to the production of BC, this towel was created to cleanse me of the gallons of blood in which I was to be submerged. They made the mistake of giving me this towel and I thought it was so neat that I decided to keep it at my apartment. So, the towel has never been used. Thinking back, no one ever asked me for the towel. I guess no one knew about it except whoever made it (Gretchen or Stephanie) and I. Thinking it would make a great tapestry...

We recorded a commentary track last week for the Blood Car. That sounds pretty exciting, and it was, but we approached it knowing that we would record several and collect the best pieces from each for the final track. The commentators consisted of Alex O., Adam P., Katie R. and myself. We watched the film on DVD and recorded our comments with two microphones (one of which was Bob Barker style) onto the ubiquitous P2 cards of a Panasonicam. Adam and Alex did most of the talking with Katie and I contributing the occasional anecdotes and sidebars. I think it's probably better when there are fewer people, so they have to talk more. Some topics we covered included Hawmi, characters/subplots in the script but not in the film, Lorraine's and Archie's t-shirts, the classroom blackboard, who wrote what scenes and lines, the weather, cinematic influences, the screwing couple found on Craig's list, the history of Archie's bike and we hope many other answers and clarifications to all the BC curiosities. Undoubtedly, some of these topics and stories will end up on the commentary track cutting room floor. I'd like to have a go at the commentary by myself. I think we all should.

In other news, Blood Car is still on the market. Compared to some of our festival myspace peers like Great World of Sound, Silver Jew, Hannah Takes the Stairs, Monster Camp and Murder Party, we currently hold the greatest number of myspace friends, totaling 10,195 at the time of this writing. No one really comes close here. Nice job, Mr. Orr. One of these friends deserves mention here. Off and on, I surf through the comments on the BC myspace page, sifting through the shameless self-promoting adds for real comments about the film. I found one from Nicky B., a 17 year old guitar player from the island of Guernsey off the coast of Normandy in the English channel. He trekked into Paris for the European Independent Film Festival back in March and ended up at a screening of Blood Car. From what I can gather from his comment, it seems like he made the 234 mile trip for the festival intending to see the film. Victor Hugo wrote Les Miserables living on the island of Guernsey. It is also home to some megalithic art, large upright stones of the Stonehenge variety thought at various times to have been used by Druids for human sacrifice, for calenders, as territorial markers or as some sort of ideological marker. If you want to get into a hot debate about European prehistory, read up and start making reckless comments and you're sure to piss some people off. Guernsey is also proud of their cows.

We have a few film festivals coming up in August that I am planning on attending, at least the one in the smallest state in the union. With the information I have, our current festival BA is .366, which is a slight increase over last time. Margin of error: +/- .20

A new credit sequence for the film is supposedly in the works. Georgia State University, our "nourishing mother", contacted us recently about doing an article about us for the alumni magazine. We happily obliged them with a photo shoot on a blue screen studio at the university. We wore suits and held bags of potato chips in the photo. Katie R. wore a wonderful pant suit that I wish I had photographed. Unfortunately, we may not see it because it showed just a little bit of skin; hardly any, if you ask me, but the photographer seemed to think GSU wouldn't go for anything risque. They have obviously not seen Blood Car.

The City of San Francisco Has a New Hero.

2007-06-03T23:47:00.000-05:00

And what kind of pie, you ask? Well...cherry...of course.

A Tale from Interzone

2007-05-21T16:51:00.000-05:00

I spent exactly 24 hours in Jacksonville, FL this past weekend for the film festival down there, now in its fifth year. Adam P. and I drove down hoping to catch a glimpse of the wildfires that have been ravaging south Georgia, but instead we became engulfed in one of our own. The trip reminded me of Naked Lunch, a book I've read twice; not out of pleasure, but out of a deep need to comprehend and distill its freewheeling prose and structure. I keep replaying the events of Jacksonville in my head over and over, expecting to see bodily fluids selling newspapers to communists and insects selling their thoraxes on the NYSE. Even though I never saw those things, I did see what they represent - the abstract, the allegorical. The trip will forever remain that for me - abstract, like a Jackson Pollack painting or a paragraph of Burroughs. Something splattered on a wall or a page.

That is not to say I cannot recollect the day in concrete terms. Adam and I hit the road early and made the trip in five hours flat, violating posted speed limits and leaving a scar of interstate in our wake. Jacksonville welcomed us with the grand Saint Johns River, conquered by bridges, but flowing in the cardinal direction North like Egypt's legendary Nile. River nerds might clamor at this and say rivers do not flow north or up, but only down.

At the JFF, each filmmaker is designated a 'host', an ambassador for the film festival who kindly drives you to venues and handles any and all personal needs. Jacksonville Mike was Alex's host and we attached ourselves to him. I don't know if Alex filled out some questionnaire about what kind of host he would like to have at this festival, but we couldn't have been any luckier unless it was Wong Kar-wai. Let me revise a famous Taxi Driver tag line: On every street in every city, is a somebody who loves movies who dreams of meeting someone else who loves movies. If we had a list, we could check off the city of Jacksonville.

Alex had arrived a few days earlier for the festival's opening. He said only five or six filmmakers were in attendance. I don't know if Jon Waters was included in that stat, but rest assured, he was there, too. Fate reared its beautiful head and reunited us with Cullen H. of Cinequest/Monster Camp fame and M. Tully of Sarasota/Silver Jew fame. A silver Jew is a Jewish person with blond hair, real blond hair. I met him briefly in Sarasota, but it was a pleasure to chat with a real NYC cinephile.

Blood Car was written up in the local entertainment magazine, eu, and given a complimentary, if occasionally backhanded, recommendation. It twice deemed the movie hilarious, but called the acting "ridiculously obnoxious". You can read it in its entirety here by clicking on the JFF Guide.

Like every film festival, JFF had parties. Grey Goose sponsored an extravagant party in a gutted library right downtown. We went to a party before that where we played the pitch game, in which we tried to pitch movie ideas to complete strangers. A winner is typically determined by a few factors, but mainly completion of the pitch. This entertained us for a while. After that, the rest of the night was a bit of a mess. I arrived at the screening of BC late because I couldn't find a ride to the theater(far away) and had to call a taxi. Somehow I left my cell phone in the cab and had to spend the entire screening and Q&A tracking it down. This is a photo right after I realized where I had left my phone. Alex is trying to comfort me by flashing the ATL sign and saying, "At least you didn't leave it in A-town." What you don't see is the audience through the wall on the left laughing their heads off at BC. We placed second in the audience award for the festival with only one screening of our film. Many other films had two screenings.

I've gone on to sum up this trip with this statement, which embarrasses me: "While I was there, the only time I stepped into a movie theater was to use the bathroom." True story.

In other news, the blood car used in the film was impounded last week. Alex parked it on my street, Archie's street, because parking is limited at his apartment complex. Several days later it was gone, probably due to expired tags. Now, the city of Atlanta has the Blood Car in an impound lot. They don't even realize what they're sitting on - the power, the knowledge, the invention. It's like the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. I can only hope that one day, when gas prices really are $40/gallon and nobody drives anymore and impound lots become car graveyards, that a couple of randy teenagers pry open that rundown Honda and screw to their heart's content in the backseat. I hope...I hope.

Atlanta to Maryland: The Last Colony to the 6th

2007-05-03T16:13:00.000-05:00

Our 2nd screening at the Atlanta Film Festival arrived much quicker than expected. Less than 18 hours after Thursday's platinum sellout, it drew an eclectic mix of young, old and middle-aged moviegoers to its sunny 515pm start time. Two wild ladies showed up who had attended the night before, invoking the spirit of Rocky Horror without playing dress-up. Apparently, such devoted mimicry needs time to develop.

The actual Blood Car, now more an embodiment of independent filmmaking than of disturbed sociopathic violence, sat cooking under the southern sun all afternoon. The poster we tacked up in the windshield nearly peeled off. Wrinkles seemed to develop in the hood and chassis almost overnight. 'Twas dreary to behold. Fairly soon, we'll have to organize a not for profit campaign to save the car that brought us to the Atlanta Film Festival and beyond. As if flattering the car's dilapidated state, the projection at our Friday screening left much to be desired. The film had to be restarted after an incorrect aspect ratio issue and poor picture sharpness. But worst of all was the color balancing of the projection system, which egregiously rendered the red blood of the title card "Blood Car" a Barney the dinosaur purple.

Alex was furious and we were disappointed. Following several attempts on Alex O.'s part to address the problem with the help of AFF volunteers, the decision was made to let the film continue. We let off steam upstairs in the filmmaker's lounge shooting pool and having drinks, but thanks to Hugh B., who stayed to watch the film, we received text message updates that reassured us, "Crowd laughing." We returned to the theater to conduct the Q&A. We were quite warmed up for this one because of an extended interview with up and coming film mag Short End Magazine prior to the screening. No photographers or sellout crowds this time, though we did have a strong showing for a challenging slot. It nevertheless was a marked difference from the previous night. Poor 515pm. It can never grow up. It will never be 9pm or 10pm. The Peter Pan of screening times.

Nothing too wild followed. In fact, we acted much more sedated at AFF than our previous two festivals, which I believe is directly correlated to the 'out of town' factor. We didn't cut loose nearly as much, at least I didn't. Cinequest and Sarasota imbued us with the confidence of master criminals, but in Atlanta everyone knew us already so if we tried to break the law, we'd be apprehended much more easily. But what I continue to notice from festival to festival is the recurrence of various films and how it resembles a club, one I wish existed in high school. I was in the French club but never attended one meeting. It's a film festival club upon which we unknowingly stumbled, but will now desperately seek out. The great indie films travel the circuit. At first glance, this repetition might seem slack, but it feels quite the opposite. It brings these filmmakers and their films together. I missed many films in Sarasota because I knew I could catch them in my hometown. I regret missing a number of AFF's programming triumphs; Protagonist, for instance.

But Atlanta's closing brought what felt like the first leg of our festival run to a close. The culmination was the unforgettable Thursday night. You can only find that kind of support at home. We've been on the circuit since March. Only two months have passed. Winter was the pupa stage and now spring ushers in adulthood. A greater question might be how many legs there are to a festival run? Alex leaves for the Maryland Film Festival tomorrow morning, and had I known how good the program was up there I might have made an effort to attend. It's his first solo festival trip, but it won't be his last as the perks of being a film's director include free flights and hotel rooms. Anna C. will be traveling down from NYC to meet him so he won't be all on his own which should assuage your fears. Southern boys in the big city occasionally meet a Joe Buck fate, but Alex is a bit more street smart than Voight's gigolo hayseed incarnate.

.342 - Believe it or not. I don't remember what our festival BA was last time, but this is assuredly an increase over it.

Two dynamite slide shows of photos of BC at AFF can be found at CinemATL.com and cforty7.com. Kudos to the photographers. And there's a special gem on CinemATL's website for anyone who missed the Thursday night BC screening. Click here and you'll find video footage with memorable snippets of our screening in Atlanta and of me announcing my candidacy for President of the United States of America in 2008.

Atlanta Film Festival - Lines Movies Make

2007-04-27T14:37:00.000-05:00

The AFF blimp, a beacon of independent film, was restored to its rightful owner yesterday - the Atlanta skyline.

Though tonight was our Atlanta premiere, the day began rather quietly in contrast to the bustle that would follow that night. It rained. I saw last year's Palme d'Or winner, The Wind That Shakes the Barley. I updated the FWW site with our screening information.

Our day-of-screening promotional approach for AFF differed a bit from the past two fests. We didn't stand outside the theater right before showtime like carnival barkers trying to pull in the cinematically undecided. Our weapon of choice for Atlanta was email and myspace, targeted at family, friends, acquaintances, and friends of friends. It seemed to work because when we arrived around 8pm for our 10pm screening, there were only about 50 seats left out of 300(not 350 as originally reported).

Alex drove THE blood car used in the film to the theater and parked it right in front. Blake M., our FX man from the film, came out and reinstalled the blade that chops up human beings so they can be readily converted into a combustible fuel. We left the trunk open so passersby could see the trunk where so many promising souls met their makers in the film. Typically, you might think this would be the beginning of a rather wild publicity act to promote the film, e.g., we dress in old tuxedos and coax you into undergoing a questionnaire and some minor tests and we determine what your personal mpg would be if you were fed to the blood car. World's Fair/EXPO material if you asked me, which the US has not hosted since NOLA in 1984.

We all hung out at the Independent, which moonlights as the Filmmaker's Lounge during the day(providing free Stella to badgeholders) and is located above the theater, as the line formed for the premiere. That night, it should have been renamed Cheers. Familiar faces all around plus many new ones. Friends dragged their friends. The sky went dark. The moon went red. The line lengthened. I'm quite glad the rain subsided because then the experience of seeing a roller-coaster sized line for BC would not have happened. I felt nothing but overwhelming joy at the sight of this. I wish I could amputate pieces of each film festival we've hitherto attended and combine them into a Blood Car frankenstein's monster. The fact that we enjoyed a bird's eye view of the line form only magnified how impressive it was. My small digicam's flash doesn't have much throw, but even a panoramic camera couldn't have contained the line. It reminds me of a 360 degree picture I once saw from the top of Mt. Everest, which to Nepalese natives is known as 'the forehead of the world'. Humans are lucky to have binocular vision because that necessitates moving around to see everything. I couldn't see the entire line from one place. It was that long.

During the pre-screening gathering, Alex O. was in the theater with the festival and projection staff to ensure the film received the best possible exhibition, which this time around was off digibeta instead of HD. Alex considered renting an HD deck himself for the screening, but for some reason, that was not permitted. He was quite concerned about it because there had been several problems with the projection and audio at films throughout the festival. Great World of Sound, which Alex worked on, ironically, had some stinging audio problems during its first screening. Satisfied, he joined us in the lobby and people were ushered into their seats and the final 50 tickets were bought and sold. As in San Jose, it was a complete sellout! Festival volunteers toted in benches to accommodate more patrons. I recognized so many faces. Friends we hadn't seen in ages turned up with new jobs, new watches and even wives to see the film. Not one protestor.

I wanted to watch the film with the hometown audience and I did. We all did and we all enjoyed it like it was new. Hugh B. and Adam P. usually watch it. Katie and Tony and I watch it often, but perhaps not as frequently. Alex usually does not watch it, but he did tonight...most of it anyway. We also decided to resurrect my presidential speech from Cinequest for this screening because of the hometown crowd and the whole blimp business.

Alex saw one woman walk out of the film and look a little troubled. He approached her and thanked her for attending, stating that, "I know the film isn't for everyone." He said she seemed really bothered by the film and said the film needed a disclaimer about the content and that she didn't know the film contained pornography/pornographic material.

Most people stuck around for the Q&A. We were able to recognize a number of the crew members who worked on the film for their efforts, which was gratifying. The tone of the Q&A continues to be a balance of behind the scenes stories and stand-up jokes. Robert P., production designer, whose mother was in the audience, joined us on stage during the Q&A. I don't think the mic was ever passed his way, but several design/FX questions were asked. We threw out a few t-shirts and wrapped it up. Afterwards, down under the screen, we were mobbed and tried to carry on as many conversations at the same time as possible. It's difficult because you want to talk to everyone, but you basically have to conduct McConversations.

I was so proud to see such support for the film. Thank you to everyone who attended and expressed their kinds words about the film. I apologize to everyone who I did not have a chance to speak with and thank personally for spending your Thursday night with us. I promise you all that you will spend another Thursday night with us sometime soon, in a movie theater, with a big screen, watching a Fake Wood Wallpaper film.

Atlanta Film Festival - The Sith Philosophy

2007-04-24T22:20:00.000-05:00

Transitioning from the Sarasota Film Festival to the 31st Atlanta Film Festival equates to a car decelerating. Overall, AFF is much smaller than SFF, but it promised to be much bigger for Blood Car. It's like being Harry Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life and Atlanta is our Bedford Falls. Friends and family, colleagues and enemies are slated to arrive in great numbers, enthused and raving for the Atlanta Premiere of Blood Car. True, we've showed the film here before, but that was an exclusive cast and crew screening. I am proud that we are part of this festival.

Arriving home from one festival during the spring of another also brought home certain realities about the film festival circuit. Initially, I marked my calender with a couple of films every day, but I quickly had to drop that to 1/day. I was festival-ed out and I was forced to act like an adult and balance responsibilities with movies, the north and south poles of a magnet. I picked up my pass on Sunday afternoon, April 22. No swag at this festival, but the pass was the flash kind - you flash it to a volunteer and they admit you to the theater.

At the registration table, Linda B. commented, "Did you hear about the blimp?" I said, "Blimp? No." She proceeded to describe to me one of the more expensive of AFF's promotional materials which was a sleek, blue, inflatable, helium-filled mini-blimp(not a zeppelin, which is a rigid airship) with the festival's name and dates on it. I inquired about it and she said it was stolen off the top of a nearby business(pictured here) in protest of the AFF's screening of Blood Car. Obviously, I was in some state of disbelief about this, given it was our first encounter with any sort of protest against the film based on politics. These anti-Blood Car protesters also taped their theft and posted it on youtube. Originally, these former enduring freedomers planned on organizing a protest in which they would "keep people out of the theater by force if necessary." Apparently, he thought more drastic actions were necessary. The orchestrator of the entire operation is a man named Ron, who writes a blog entitled, 'Are you the enemy?'. His motto is a variation on a well-known one, going back as far as the New Testament which reads "Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters." Ron's reads, "Either you're with us or...you're the enemy." Now President Bush has said this a few times, but I think the most famous use of this phrase is in the George Lucas film Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. Anakin Skywalker, later adopting the Sith name Darth Vader, utters the line to Obi-Wan, to which he cleverly responds, "Only a Sith deals in absolutes." What is my point? Is George W. Bush a Sith lord? Is the man who stole the blimp a Sith lord? I'll post this evidence on a Star Wars message board and let them be the ultimate arbiters of this case. The event really galvanized members of the AFF and the Atlanta Film community and many other anonymous-ers. It's actually an interesting discussion to read. As I wrote this, I read that the blimp has been returned. I'm a little disappointed he caved in to good sense.

I've kept up my 1 film a day pledge and lucked out so far with winners. They are: Killer of Sheep, Hannah Takes the Stairs, Great World of Sound, and Zoo. I've also been riding Archie's bike to the theater almost every day. It's on the left. Alex's work postering the town has paid off as people comment again and again about seeing posters at a mishmash of businesses. One particular business down the street from me flaunts a poster at a busy intersection and it must have closed down right after the poster went up. I hope the poster manifests itself for months to come, even as the building is demolished.

Yesterday, Alex, Adam, Katie and I were invited for an interview on Emory University's internet radio station, WMRE. Clever, huh. Our host DJs were Rueben M.(left) and Ed. M(right), two young students filled with verve. We gave Rueben and Ed t-shirts and posters, a caller two free tickets to Thursday's screening, and anybody who was listening an earful of vitriolic, off color jokes. Since very few people seemed to be listening and it was their last broadcast before the semester's conclusion, the floodgates blew open and the rest was like a bad dream. I had a wonderful time and laughed quite a bit. When we told our hosts about the teen who fainted during the film in Sarasota, Rueben commented that the last film to do that was The Passion of the Christ. Another club BC can add below its photo in the 2007 yearbook.

There are approximately 700 seats available for seeing Blood Car at the AFF. Tomorrow, Thursday, you have less than 350 opportunities to see the film. Friday, you also have less than 350 opportunities to see the film. Come out and support our film, independent film, the Atlanta Film Festival and most of all...cinema. I hope to see you with one of these in your hands tomorrow. (Note: Hey Coca-Cola. This isn't They Live. Give it a rest.)

Sarasota Film Festival - In closing

2007-04-23T23:01:00.000-05:00

Looking back, I regret that I wasn't able to blog from 'the emerald city' of Sarasota each and every day as I did in San Jose. As a result, I don't think I was able to fully come to terms with the experiences of that trip and concomitant film festival. There's a void, Jerry, a void. A deep yawning chasm. Pictures are worth thousands of words and I've selected a few to sum up the trip.

No1. The SFF doled out merchandise vouchers to all attending filmmakers, which could be redeemed for a variety of items. They mistakenly gave me two, so I went home with one t-shirt and these sandals. I am rarely afforded the opportunity to spend a week without wearing shoes. Thank you Sarasota.

No2. I snapped this photo not in honor of Wachovia, but in honor of Jacques Tati's Playtime, which screened at SFF as part of the Architecture series in glorious 35mm. His film may not change your life, but it will change the way you see; and not just the way you see buildings. Until this film is as well known as Jaws, I'll consider it lost. I saw two other classic films during my Sarasota trip, of which only The Flowers of St. Francis is worth spending time watching.

Nos3-4. The next two deal tangentially with Blood Car. I snapped this photo of a UPS truck just on a whim, but today I read in Time magazine that UPS is nearly complete in its mission to phase out all left turns by its drivers to reduce carbon emissions which accumulate quite rapidly while idling at traffic lights. Astonishing. How do I know this driver is making a left turn? If he was making a right turn, the picture would be a brown blur...because the truck would be moving, not idling. Next we have a traffic update from Sarasota. I hope someone forgot to change the 'Year to date" numbers. If not, Sarasota on pace for record breaking fatality statistics.

In closing...here's a word association of things I didn't blog about: gelato, Archie's children, Noah, little hamburgers, Ellen Barkin, celebrity near-misses, Paris, Je t'aime, Ray Tintori and Death to the Tinman, Alex Ott, Swedish Weekend, time crisis, ms. pac man, talkative old people who ruin afternoon movies, film festival Bob, Of Montreal, autographs, trolleys, blondie, Jackie Treehorn's doppelganger house.

No5. Dear Sarasota, we hope to be back next year.

Sarasota - Day 3 - The Faint

2007-04-18T23:46:00.000-05:00

Sunday. The night before I had pledged to hit the streets early and really put the fire of Blood Car into the populous of Sarasota. Unfortunately, I had a rather turbulent, late night, and despite it being restful, I didn't arrive at the Hollywood 20 until after 3pm. Alex, Katie and I decided to shirk our street promoting duties in favor of seeing a film. Luckily, Hugh picked up our slack and carried the torch like a true Olympian. The film we saw was called The Prisoner. Alex and Katie walked out after 15 minutes. I don't really relish walking out on films so I stayed for the entire thing, even though the film didn't improve. Having endured some tough ones in my lifetime (Chushingura and twentynine palms are near the top of the list.), I try to give most films a chance to redeem themselves. To the film's credit, the main character does find some degree of redemption and understanding at the end.

For lunch, we ate at a juice bar/smoothie /sandwich shop that had not received its fruit shipment for the day so they could only make chicken Caesar and grilled cheese sandwiches. We saw this sign at the cash register. Wikipedia stipulates that 1 oz. of wheatgrass juice equals 2.20 lbs of GREEN vegetables and not the cornucopia you see here. I would have pulled an Archie and tried a shot, but it seems like the same truck that delivers fruit also delivers veggies.

I wanted to see Lars von Trier's film The Boss of it All while in Sarasota so Adam and I vouched some tickets for that film. I enjoyed it. That basically brought us to the screening. As with Cinequest, our second screening in Sarasota was much better attended. It wasn't a sellout but close enough. BC tends to work backwards opening with smaller crowds then increasing thanks to word of mouth. Alex introduced the film. A short film, 'Songbird', which played Sundance this year, played before our film. It had a unique style but was a bit too disgusting for my tastes. I wish BC could travel with the short from Cinequest.

I didn't watch the film at either screening this festival. In retrospect, I missed it a little bit. I think I'll watch in Atlanta. We proudly made a little history during this screening. A 16 year-old in the crowd (Take that MPAA!) left the theater at the point in the film where Archie cuts himself with a razor and drains some of his own blood. En route to the lobby, he fainted and hit the carpet! Festival volunteers sprang to his aid and aside from a small rug burn on his noggin, he was physically unharmed though his ego might be bruised. I spoke with some of the other volunteers who were schoolmates of the teen and they said he's not prone to blackouts. Toby Sells, who created the realistic looking effect, deserves much of the credit here though I'm certain fainting moviegoers is old hat for him. Our fainter, who goes by Dr. Coolness, posted a comment on the Blood Car myspace page. It's worth reading.

Though Alex posted on the BC site that we triumphed in the Sarasota v. Atlanta Karaoke battle, I'd like to delve into that rivalry a little and how it began because it left an awful lot of innocent people in ruin. At some point during the party on Saturday night, we heard SFF programmer Tom H. boasting of his town's karaoke abilities. The scene was straight out of a movie. He was maybe twenty feet away from us and our ears pricked like a bloodhound's. We yelled out, "Hey, Tom H.!" At that point, the crowd went silent and parted in a fashion reminiscent of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The live band literally stopped playing, nasty reverb adding to the tension. Tom Hall took a sip of his Heineken. Though my Casio read just before 130am, it might as well have been high noon. Somebody from our side yelled out, "Atlanta versus Sarasota. Karaoke." Tom laughed, "As you wish. Sunday, the holiest day at the holiest bar in Sarasota." We accepted.

It was a close match at the outset, but we soon pulled away with Cypress Hill's 'Insane in the Membrane', Luda's 'Welcome to Atlanta' and Tony closed out the night with 'Piano Man.' Things spiraled out of control so bad at one point that the police pulled up alongside the patio and shined their spotlight into the bar. Hugh and Adam, in the middle of '99 Problems', were phased momentarily, but soon resumed rapping.

Sarasota - Day 2 - Deja Vu and Dedications

2007-04-17T00:07:00.000-05:00

Our first of two screenings at this festival was Saturday at 815pm. We knew we'd have some stiff competition from other films and an Edward Norton event so we hit the streets out in front of SFF HQ to fill the seats. Armed with our usual array of t-shirts, cards, keys and buttons, we stopped anyone and everyone. We started late because we were all very sleepy from the drive+party the previous day. But the sun was out and the patrons were teeming.

I confess the swag at this festival was better than at Cinequest. On check-in, a handful of us received a wonderfully convenient tote bag complete with emblazoned SFF logo, a plastic cup similarly emblazoned, a voucher for a free t-shirt and vouchers for comp tickets to the films. Unlike Cinequest, where your badge entitles you to just walk into whatever screening you want, in Sarasota you must trade in your voucher for the desired screening. Having carried around an overloaded backpack for the entire Cinequest festival, this compact tote was a blessing.

To add to the list of what I love about BC at film festivals is how we look as a group wearing our BC t-shirts. They look fabulous together. In the moon doc last night, the astronauts interviewed spoke of the unity of nature and man and all life when describing the feeling of being on the moon and looking at planet Earth from a great distance. Well, in the microcosm of BC, I feel that unity, that fraternity and solidarity, at film festivals. To make that connection might seem harebrained, but I've noticed in my travels with Blood Car up to this point that irony and coincidence and fate are prevailing winds that rustle our hair and clothes when we least expect it. Disseminating BC, on an atomic level, is an act of universality, of congregation.

During the day, I felt like our film might get lost at this festival. It's big and there are many important films and filmmakers here. Well known celebrities attend. I think we also felt like the demographic for the festival might not be right for a film as niche-driven as ours. Sarasota is not a young people town and our film, though its appeal certainly spans ages and races, is certainly more oriented toward a younger, cultier audience. We screened in one of the Hollywood 20's smaller screens with 110 seats. I put that out of my mind as I passed out postcards and buttons all day long. It's one of my favorite activities at film festivals. I love it. I particularly tried to approach some of the older folks to see what their reaction might be. Most were very nice. One woman I handed a postcard to took one look at that blood spurting gas pump and said, "Ew!" She made a face like I handed her a picture of raunchy zoosexuality.

Our number one job at festivals is to make sure each and every festival volunteer wears a Blood Car button on their shirt or lanyard. We stop them and affix them ourselves. At Cinequest, we had other filmmakers out on the street promoting their films. Not here. We were the only ones. In this picture, Emmi is sticking some young Russkie's backpack with a BC button. Make note of her awesome earrings.

We met two groups of folks who drove from Tampa to see the film, which is about an hour's drive. The first group was a trio of fans of the genre. The second was my Aunt and Uncle. I see them only a once or twice a year and I was happy that they were able to see the film on the big screen, where all films are meant to be seen. As 8:15pm approached, we tried to pull in people who were going to see multiplex movies. I was almost able to convince a triad of teenyboppers to ditch the abomination Disturbia and see our film, but I failed. Oh well. I went back to the inn where Hugh and Emmi were staying and changed into my suit. Suggested attire for Saturday night's party was 'chic-casual'. I wore my presidential suit hoping to deliver my speech to the BC crowd, but given the small size of the theater, Alex and I thought maybe it wouldn't fly. At this point, we really weren't sure how the film would be received. Attendance came in around 65-70, which was a little disappointing, but our grassroots work on the streets really paid off. We recognized over half of the audience as people we spoke to that day. We talked the film up to this guy and look what he bought. Squint and you'll see the words Blood Car. He doesn't look happy because I told him to look hip-hop and flash those tickets at me.

Before the film began, Alex was invited up to introduce the film and he dedicated it to his mother and...believe it or not, Mary Wick, the cab driver who drove us home that same morning. She was in the audience with her daughter. Holly Herrick, the festival's other great programmer, at the sight and sound of the cab driver dedication, said, "You got your cab driver to come?! That's awesome."

After the screening and Q&A, we were transported via Mercdedes to the local ABC affiliate, where Alex was to be interviewed on the local news. Though they couldn't show a good clip because a good BC clip doesn't exist that isn't offensive or disgusting, the interview went well and you will be able to see it on our website very soon. Seeing Alex with that brassy BC t-shirt on live local tv news was quite a treat. I watched it from the green room with our Mercedes driver, who, in his early days did theater with David Strathairn. After the interview, he drove us to the after party. Unfortunately, Alex and I missed the Edward Norton auction in which some woman paid $7500 for a two hour lunch with the man. Katie was there and she witnessed it. They one-upped the extravagance tonight by holding the party in conjunction with a tour of homes in Sarasota, which are currently on the market. So we walked around in homes we'll never be able to afford with free drinks and jumbo shrimp in our mouths. Plus, SFF hired girls dressed as mermaids for festival goers to take advantage of with photo-ops. I happily obliged them.

On a final note, the dive bars here have the creepiest, most ominous names, e.g. Memories and The Witness Cafe.

Sarasota - Day 1 - Road Trip

2007-04-16T11:13:00.000-05:00

In a red Volvo station wagon, Hugh, Emmi, Katie, Adam and I departed Atlanta just after 5am for the resort city of Sarasota. Having spent a few great years of my youth riding in my parents station wagon(a woodie) with its long bench seats and commodious trunk space, I couldn't help but compare that wagon with its modern day Swedish counterpart. Our ride was like a pair of tight fitting CKs whereas my parents ride was like a pair of sweatpants. Here is a picture from the road.

We played a car game called "Numbers." In this game, you basically have to count as a group as fast as you can. It sounds simplistic, maybe even Neanderthalic, but it's actually quite fun. While we laughed and drove by the stinky chicken farms, Alex was in the air. The festival paid for his plane ticket and he wanted to arrive early to poster the town with BC. The drive took 7 hours after subtracting a one hour Cracker Barrel stop.

Sarasota is the town that the Ringling family built so gaudy statues of clowns line the streets. Jerry Springer, Stephen King and Brian Johnson of AD/DC all have homes here, in addition to the thousands of snowbirds who migrate here during the north's frigid winter months. The Sarasosta Film Festival is one of highest attended and well financed festivals in the United States and some say the world. Mercedes is a sponsor and provides a fleet of 14 cars to the festival for its transportation needs. You just call up the transportation coordinator and tell them where you are and they'll send one of these luxury vehicles to pick you up and take you wherever you need to go.

When we first arrived in San Jose for Cinequest, I described it as a Blood Car kind of town. I didn't expect to say the same thing about Sarasota until I saw the front page of the Sarasota Herald Tribune. Alex corroborated this because while we were on the road, he put up a BC poster in nearly every shop on Main St.

They also have recommended attire for the parties that are held every evening after the films. For the Opening Night Gala last night, upscale evening wear was suggested. Before we left Atlanta, Alex, Hugh and I went shopping for suits in Little Five Points and at Ragorama I found a stunning 3 piece cream polyester suit. Alex couldn't find a suit so he went to Macy's and bought a $200 Hugo Boss suit he plans on returning after the festival.

We dolled up for the Opening Night Film and Gala and made our way to the Van Wezel Performing Arts Center, which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright's studio and conceived based on a shell his wife found. We arrived early and met Geraldine, a member of the PR staff for the festival. In her enchanting voice, she invited us to walk down the red carpet before the film began. It was the beginning of a series of bizarre experiences at the Sarasota Film Festival. Flashbulbs went off all around us, microphones were shoved in our faces. Even though the red carpet was only fifteen feet long, it was a frenzy.

In the Shadow of the Moon was the opening night film and I was the only person of BC who seemed to really like the film. I'm a great lover of the moon so the mounds of archival footage was quite a treat. NASA turned Buzz and Neil into filmmakers, strapping cameras to the their chests for their first steps on the moon. And those cameras were not little. They poked out nearly a foot from the outside of their spacesuits and would probably give you a bloody nose if you jumped around. A Q&A followed with the film's director and the sixth man on the moon, Edgar Mitchell, moderated by one of the festival's great programmers, Tom Hall.

Our next stop was bizarre experience number 2, the party. I guess parties in Hollywood are like this all the time. The only things that seemed to be missing were hard drugs and I attribute that to the older, respectable demographic of Sarasota. Words like 'extravagant' were invented for events like this. It was held at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, a palatial, sprawling museum once owned and lived in by the circus king of America. In the center in the very back of this picture is a replica of Michaelangelo's David. Live band. Free champagne. Open bar...at least six of them. And this bar wasn't just open, it was gaping. Free food and if you think I'm talking about cocktail weenies and cheeseball(which I love) then you're wrong. Think sushi, hundreds of jumbo shrimp, raw oysters, maduros, Cuban sandwiches, a gigantic veggie table and more. For dessert, servers seemed to float around like angels handing out mini-cups of Dippin' dots. I am not lying. Dippin' dots. Stephen King couldn't make this up. I thought the moon was a far away place, but this event made me feel like I was in a different cosmos. It was wonderful. Katie and Adam chatted for a while with Elias Koteas, who has a film in the festival. They kept referring to him as Casey Jones, who he embodied in the live action TMNT years ago. We also met a really cool individual named Ryan O'Neal who looks like Jack White and the lead singer of My Chemical Romance had a baby. His girl, Rachel, works for the festival and has championed our film.

After the party wound down, we moved to chez Ryan and Rachel and stayed up until five am talking about BC and many other topics which I cannot recall. They have two of the largest and loudest cats I've ever met. When they woke us up at a quarter to eight in the morning, we decided to cab it back to our hotel and sleep. While we were in the cab, Alex invited our driver to our first screening that night, as it was now Saturday. He said to her, "If you show up, I'll dedicate the film to you." She had heard about the film and said she would. We'll see if she shows.

I made a few resolutions for this festival based on my Cinequest experience. One: Eat three square meals a day.(Broken on the first day) Two: Not stay up partying until dawn.(Broken on the first day) Three: Do not injure myself. (Depending on how you look at it, I've either kept this one or broken it. For my own moral support, I'll say I've kept it.

This is what Adam looked like driving home after staying up all night.

Sarasota Diffusion

2007-04-11T22:40:00.000-05:00

If you're a baseball fan, you know how easy it is for a batting average to plummet; by contrast, you also know the difficulty of raising that same average even just a few thousandths. Last time we talked, our festival BA was .250 and sinking. Today, I proudly declare we're at .333. It took a little research because a number of festivals seemed to have completely forgotten to notify us(Brussels and Gen Art, I'm talking about you). Not bad. The balance swings in our favor.

There is palpable excitement about the deadCenter Film Festival in Oklahoma City. America's breadbasket awaits. And I must personally thank the rookie French fest Festival de la Peur for inspiring the title of this post. It was he who wishes to 'diffuse' our film in the south of France. The actual geographic center of the lower 48 states of the USA is Lebanon, Kansas in the middle of a hog farm. For all fifty, it's just outside Castle Rock, South Dakota.

The latest addition to our promotional materials family is the press kit. Now, I had this item completely wrong. I thought it was a colorfully decorated folder you opened like a flower to reveal glossy production photos, rich filmmaker bios printed on 45lb paper and a polished DVD screener of your film. Nope. It's just a common word document. But within that simple file extension is your film in prose, like a Hemingway short story. Alex worked tirelessly on it. I gladly contributed some of my recollections of how the film came about and how I came to play Archie and so on. Our current screener, which is sent to media outlets and any eager distributors, is also rather comprehensive. It contains the film, a press kit with stills on CD and a small note with our festival laurels and laudatory bullet points from the various reviews we've received.

My brother Greg, a relentless promoter of the film, recently handed me an article about some technological breakthroughs at his Alma mater, Georgia Tech, that are somewhat related to BC. The headline reads, "'Nanogenerator employs human body as battery'". The first line of the article reads, "Someday, you may be able to charge up your iPod or cellphone just by taking a walk or even plugging in to your own bloodstream." Read the rest here. The scientist behind all this is Zhong Lin Wang, whose specialty is nanoscience, which is the science of very, very small things, i.e. objects measured in nanometers like atoms and molecules. For a primer, read here. To those who aren't big science fans, it might kickstart your ADD, but be patient and read the whole page. Fascinating. And if you really have a lot of time on your hands, you can read the article on Georgia Tech's website and compare it to the AJC article. Georgia Tech's article has better pictures like this one.

Chris, another avid promoter of BC and brother of mine, recently put up a poster for the film in his classroom. He teaches 10th grade English at a public school just outside Atlanta. The heading for the bulletin board where the poster sits reads "Man's Inhumanity To Man." Hidden meaning? No. Just coincidence.

In less than four hours, Alex, Katie, Adam, Hugh, Emmi(Hugh's wife), and I will depart for Sarasota, FL for the film festival there. Alex is flying, but the rest of us have opted for the classic road trip via station wagon, which leaves at 5am. I don't know how anything can live up to Cinequest, which was like seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time. Nevertheless, the program at Sarasota is stellar with new films from cinematic giants like Lars von Trier and Aki Kaurismaki, and classics from Norman Jewison, Francisco Rosi and the inimitable Jacques Tati(I speak of Playtime, screening in 35mm). Honestly, looking at the program, I'm not sure exactly how our film snuck its way into this one. We're in exclusive company. On Saturday, we screen opposite Lars von Trier's new film, The Boss of it All. Head to head with Denmark's finest. Personally, I'm thrilled about the films showing. Alex and I plan on staying for a week and renting scooters and maybe retiring.

Closing note. I donated blood yesterday. My blood type is O+. It's also CMV-(cytomegalovirus, which is a type of Herpes virus found in nearly 60% of the world population aged 6 and over). So this means my donation usually goes to patients who are immunocompromised (chemo patients and babies). If you have the time, you should donate, too.

Cinequest - Day 12 - The Un and the Fathomable

2007-03-12T17:03:00.000-05:00

Last night at the closing ceremonies for Cinequest Film Festival 17, Blood Car won its category. BLOOD CAR WON AN AWARD! THE NEW VISIONS AWARD!

Before I get into all the gory details, I must go back and start at the beginning like in Double Indemnity. The Blood Car team has a collective gunshot wound in its belly and I'll do my best to recount to you the story behind this momentous, wonderful day. I hate to compare the winning of an award to a gunshot wound, but it was that unbelievable, that shocking, that triumphant. Just imagine the greatest, feel-good bullet wound you could ever receive and that's what it was like.

Now you're probably saying Alex and Katie were supposed to fly back to Atlanta on Saturday night. Well, for some reason, they decided to stay an extra night and complete the Cinequest 17 cycle. Let's call it guilt. They'd been there the entire festival. What's one more night? A no brainer. Adam and I were in San Francisco on Saturday night when Alex texted us and said he was going to stay for the last day of the festival and the closing night ceremonies and parties. He said we should come back down. Another no brainer.
This brings me to Sunday. Adam and I awoke in San Francisco and walked to a breakfast place to get a bite to eat before heading back down to San Jose, which everyone calls San Jo. I snapped the first two pictures in this blog during the four or five blocks it took to arrive at this breakfast nook. The first has a key cinematic parallel to our trip which for my mother's sake I won't delineate. The second picture, of the phrase carved into the sidewalk, was taken on a whim. I didn't realize I had captured a prophecy for that night's revelation.

Tova, our SF friend and Blood Car crew member, drove down with us to San Jose, which took about a hour and was very calm. It made me sympathize with people who move to Atlanta and complain about the drivers there. There was a palpable sense of safety on the road. Maybe it's because everyone rides bikes in SF and you generally have to be more cautious. I also think they drive slower to indulge SF's scenic vistas and fashionable citizenry.

Now we hadn't expected to win anything at this festival. We hadn't expected Blood Car to win anything ever. Period. Around day 4 or 5, we talked about the possibility of winning an audience award but once we saw some of the other films and the audience reactions to them, we pretty much wrote that off. After each film you receive a ballot and a pencil and rate the film you saw as either poor, fair, good, or excellent. Cinequest then determines the audience award based on an average of all the ballots received. I've heard our film really offends some viewers and I suspect they gave the film a poor rating. Even though I shouldn't be surprised the film offends people, I still am. I don't want to ruin anything for any virgin eyes, but Blood Car is first and foremost a comedy and one way to make people laugh to is offend them and follow the mantra, "Nothing is sacred."

6pm - We lined up at the California. I should have tilted the camera down just a tad to catch Alex's shoes. He bought a pair of cool looking Vans that today. Inside we sat with all of the other filmmakers from the festival. There was one other Blood Car t-shirt in attendance, worn by one of Cinequest's greatest ambassadors, Chris G. He was dressed very similar to Adam as a matter of fact with a green jacket, BC shirt, and jeans. If you put a long, light brown Gandalf beard on Adam and took away his glasses you probably have a pretty accurate picture of Chris G. Picture it...right now.

Before the awards I became terrified and nervous. I know many people have liked our film and supported us. Cinequest has been very good to us. Still, I didn't know if we had a chance. But what if? What if? Things were flashing before my eyes and I began to think I needed therapy.

They brought all of the filmmakers in attendance on stage for the awards presentation. Adam was positioned behind the speaker at the podium and the award plaques were sitting inside it, face up. You could only see the very top plaque.

Reader, he peaked!

It was for Blood Car. We had won. I smiled, but remained nervous. They announced a few other winners before ours, one of which was for Best Maverick Documentary. This was probably one of the happiest moments of the entire festival. Just thinking about it right now nearly makes me cry. Monster Camp - Winner! Cullen Hoback - Winner! You should have seen the look on his face. I'll never forget it. Emotion strengthens memory. He was a good friend of ours at the festival. We would see him nearly every single hour of every day we were there. We promoted our films together, drank together, talked about movies together.
When they announced Blood Car, I covered my mouth with my hand. It's something my friend John Dixon used to do when he would laugh really hard. I'm not sure why. I guess he didn't want people to see into his mouth when he laughed. I picked it up involuntarily over the years. But I wasn't laughing on the other side of that hand. My mouth was wide open in shock. I wanted to scream or swear or invent a new sound, but I didn't. Alex said he tried to think of a joke to say if he won an award, but if he did, he never said it. He humbly accepted the award to applause. He was gracious and kind and dressed like a 70s lounge singer. It was a shell shocking experience. Our friends from Indestructible also won an award, which was very gratifying.

We stepped backstage for a few photos. Stephen Baldwin was there. He co-starred in a film that won an award. They started the closing night film while we were back there, so we missed the beginning and decided to leave and go to a bar. Before we left, I took this picture of Katie. It's like the last shot in an Antonioni film.

At the bar, Adam and Katie were pretty relaxed and cool about the win, while Alex and myself were a bit more introverted, quiet. It means so much. It means we have something to give to the cinema. We always knew we had something to give, but to have someone take it was another story. What followed that night included dancing, free booze, open bar tabs, laughing, theft, threats, injuries, congratulations, gaiety, flashing the A-town hand signal, and two mysterious lewd pictures. For more details, you'll have to ask me in person. I must protect myself.

Today was the last Cinequest blog. The daily blogging will cease, but you'll hear from me again whenever there's relevant Blood Car news. It's a busy time for Blood Car so I imagine the gaps won't be too long, but I do need a break. Check www.bloodcar.com for updates.

Many thanks to Cinequest for hosting us and putting on a fabulous film festival. I hope to be back.

Thank you so much for reading and supporting Blood Car and Fake Wood Wallpaper Films. And thank you for supporting the cinema.

Yours sincerely,
Archie

Cinequest - Day 11 - Final Engagment?

2007-03-11T17:38:00.000-05:00

There's a gift book published every year that's called 365 things to be thankful for. Here are a few excerpts: No. 13 long warm baths, No. 49 birthdays, No. 171 long weekends to catch up with your family, No. 210 fridays. I'd like to propose something for next year's book. No. 366 Checking out of the Clarion Hotel in San Jose, CA.

130pm. Camera 12 Cinema. Our final engagement here at Cinequest. Alex and Katie leave tonight. Tony and Julie left before the screening. Adam and I leave for San Francisco today for the final leg of our trip. To be grandiose a temporary Blood Car diaspora. How cruel. I'm sorry to see it come to an end. I'll miss the San Jose sun and the harmless light rail system, the Pita Pit and congregating filmmakers and film lovers. Tall palm trees, new places, new people, new transit, overcrowding cabs at 2am, free drinks, free internet, putting up posters, trying to convince complete strangers to see our film. Cinequest is a planet. Every film festival is. Where no one does anything except eat, drink, sleep, watch movies, talk about movies, how they're made, how they're painful, how they're fun, how you have to fight for them, die for them, love them and kiss them, and sleep with them and give birth to them. The cinema is an ecosystem, a civilization. There should be a board game called Cinema, that's equal parts Life and equal parts Risk. Milton Bradley, are you listening?

We passed out postcards before our 130pm screening, trying to fill the seats but worrying we got too late a start beginning at 1pm. Well, we hoped for the best and saw people lining up at the box office. The lines were long and we overheard, "One for blood car", "Two for Blood Car", "Three for Blood Car, two adults and one child."

Simply put, SOLD OUT! SOLD OUT! PEOPLE TURNED AWAY! SITTING IN THE AISLES AND ON THE FLOOR! SOLD OUT!

It was a gratifying end to our premiere festival engagement. So wonderful. So fantastic. Katie watched the movie with her sister Rachel, but Alex and Adam left to play bocce ball at the Hotel Montgomery. I went to St. Joseph's Cathedral Basilica to try and light a candle for the great filmmakers who are no longer with us, but they're weren't any candles there. So I sat down and admired the beauty of this place. I sat and sat...

Alex triumphed in bocce ball over Adam and we returned to watch the end of the movie and participate in the Q&A. A few things amazed us about this screening. There were about a dozen people there who had already seen the movie once. They came to see it again. Again. Twice in one week. And there was a child in the movie theater with his parents. Age range 9-11. What kind of child are these parents raising? A sociopath? Perhaps. But remember, Quentin Tarantino saw Deliverance with his mom at age 8. Sociopathic? Well, close. Someone asked what my next project was. I told them and I'll tell you I'm in talks to play a seventeen year old mentally challenged boy whose medication is a time machine. Most people wait a while in their careers for this kind of role, but I'm going for broke with this project. Wes Craven is set to direct.

Since our show was a matinee, our after party was calm and contented with just a small group of us. Here's Alex. Everyone had sunglasses except Adam. Here's Adam. After this, we parted ways, Alex and Katie to the hotel to wait and hang out before having to drive to SF for the airport and Adam, Tova and I to SF to hang out and see the sights. We hugged and said, "See you in Atlanta."

Once in San Francisco, Adam and I were showed our humble quarters. The view from the kitchen took our breath away. This is a real city, like something from a storybook. As the sun set over the Mission District, where we were to stay, we went to a place called the Sky Terrace, which is a rooftop patio with Mediterranean fare and a gorgeous view of SF. Unbelievable.

But greater than the view was a restaurant next door called Foreign Cinema. Yes, a restaurant called Foreign Cinema. It didn't seem real at first. It just looked like a wall with movie graffitti from Breathless, Lady from Shanghai and Rear Window, but through the door was a hole in the wall restaurant. Well, the rear of the restaurant is an open air patio at street level. At the very back is a white wall where they project movies while you eat. And this was no small wall. Think drive-in. Tonight's movie: Breakfast at Tiffany's. I am not lying. Again, like something out of a storybook. I credit Adam for this discovery. I was at the bar waiting to buy a glass of overpriced wine when Adam came up to me and said, "Can you come over here for minute? I need to show you something." The latter sentence is probably one of my favorites sentences. It's so loaded and romantic and suspenseful. We watched a little of George Peppard and Audrey from our rooftop patio next door. It was unforgettable.

The night's most comical moment came just as we were about to leave the Sky Terrace. The busboy approached our table and was clearing our glasses. He was wearing a black t-shirt with the metal band Dragonforce's name emblazoned across it. I yelled and pointed to it, "Dragonforce!" (The song that plays on the BC trailer is by Dragonforce.) There's a little piece about them a few blogs back. Apparently, Dragonforce fans are few and far between because he seemed surprised we knew who they were and were so excited about them. But as he walked away, Adam said he heard the busboy say, "You guys made my night." He must think we're big fans, though if Adam and I ever showed up at metal show looking the way we usually do, we'd probably be murdered.

Cinequest - Days 9 & 10 - The Cinequest Movie Experiment

2007-03-10T16:11:00.000-06:00

Thursday, Day 9 - I woke up screaming this morning. I had this dream where I was in my apartment and there was a strange cat hiding behind the couch. I crept up behind it and smacked it on the butt and it started attacking me, clawing my arms and locking its jaws on my wrists. When I saw the cat leap for my face, I shrieked and woke up myself and Katie. Alex slept through it. The cat in my dream wasn't this color, but the expression matches. That's not my caption by the way. Though the last time I was in Brooklyn, a dog jumped on me, which I misinterpreted as an attack.

Rachel, Katie's sister, flew into town to take her into San Francisco for a few days. We lunched with her at IHOP. Tony and Julie drove out to the coast to see the sights. They probably saw something like this during their trip, minus the Adam Pinney who looks like he's about to walk out into the ocean and not return.

We coasted into town in the early afternoon and saw the Animated Shorts program. Tova, our production coordinator on Blood Car, met us at the theater. She lives in San Francisco now. All the varieties of animation were represented, from Pixar style to claymation to hand drawn stuff. One in particular stood out called One Rat Short, which reminded me of the Secret of Nimh, not in animation but in story because the film is set in a laboratory full of mice. It's had a pretty impressive run on the festival circuit. There were a few more good ones and some bad ones and only one that I slept through.

Right after those shorts ended we hopped over to the California to see a film that had a palpable buzz about it, Outsourced. The theater was packed to the gills. That experience was akin to being in an episode of the Twilight Zone. It was a comedy and the crowd absolutely loved it to death, guffawing at each and every joke in the film. Adam and I seemed to be the only ones NOT laughing. It wasn't our kind of film, but I once had a similar though converse experience with The Big Lebowski years ago when I saw that in the theater. My two friends and I seemed to be the only ones laughing during that entire film, and boy did we laugh. I guess suburban Alpharetta wasn't the prime market for that movie.

Our final film of the night was Military Intelligence and You, an army training film parody with touches of Dr. Strangelove. Alex, Adam and I had each just done two movies back to back and weren't sure if we wanted to make a it third, but we thought we'd give it a chance. I enjoyed the movie quite a bit, but what grabbed us even more was a short film before it entitled Der Ostwind, which was a student production at BYU. Incredible. The best thing I've seen at Cinequest. Check out the website and watch the trailer. It played Sundance this year. www.derostwind.com

Day 10 - Friday - Not day of the locust, but day of the writer. Forums on the art of screenwriting were held most the day. The first was an admittedly abbreviated but in-depth look at Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange and its themes, structures and storytelling techniques. It was really fascinating and the speaker happened to be a fan of Blood Car because of a couple of narrative similarities to Kubrick's film. Namely, there is a similar arc to Alex's character and Archie's character, where both men start outside a fascistic system of government rebelling against it and end up becoming part of it.

The middle forum wasn't bad but it gave credence to the often cited idea that most screenplays' weakest points are their Act IIs. The third was absolutely fabulous. Christopher McQuarrie, who wrote The Usual Suspects, was interviewed by Lew Hunter, a published author on screenwriting. Lew didn't really need to be there because McQuarrie is an amazing storyteller and basically talked for 90 minutes straight about writing and making The Usual Suspects and his many other personal writing experiences. It wasn't so much about the craft of screenwriting as about the craft of being a screenwriter with all the boring parts excised. He talked about some of his future projects and other story ideas he's come across during his career. He's actually working on writing a movie called The Stanford Prison Experiment, which could be incredible in the right hands. I remember hearing a friend of mine talk about wanting to do a film about that, but it looks like McQuarrie will beat him to the punch. One of the most memorable events of the festival.

After the forums, I went for a nap to prepare myself for a screening of the silent film Pandora's Box. History tells me that it is usually not a good idea to watch a silent film going on five hours sleep. Alex tried to nap as well, but couldn't, but when I woke up I snapped this picture of him. It's my second in a series of pictures of Alex by himself in movie theaters. Notice the American flag outside the window. America is outside, the movies are inside. Hmm...
We wanted to pass out some postcards for Blood Car on the eve of our final engagement at Cinequest, but we were just a little too exhausted and we wanted to go see Pandora's Box. (On a side note, I think Blood Car has ruined the word 'box' for me.) From now on, I'll refer to it as Pandora's Parcel. If we had promoted outside the theater, we would have had some stiff competition from Monster Camp, Long Pigs, Indestructible and some movie involving burlesque. Cullen H., director of Monster Camp, told us that the 2nd weekend of Cinequest is usually brings in greater audiences, so we hedged our bets.
In line at Pandora's Parcel, we handed out a few postcards but soon realized that the silent movie crowd is not the same as the Blood Car crowd. I had seen the film once before in college but didn't quite remember much about it. Gorgeous film, both in lighting and in Louise Brooks, who is probably the most beautiful woman I've ever seen on screen. Sit down Stanwyck, Monroe, Hayworth, Loren. Ingrid, Audrey sit do-...okay, you ladies can remain standing. I loved the film. It's great. And there was a live accompaniment.

That night at the bar fate or coincidence reunited us with an old classmate and filmmaker, Evan McNary, who is a Bernardo Bertolucci fan from back in my GSU film school days. He lives in LA now and has a short playing at the festival. He showed up at the festival with no place to stay, but a pillow in his car. We hosted him at our hovel, The Clarion, where he slept on the floor.

Cinequest - Day 8 - Treaty of Nepenthe

2007-03-08T18:07:00.000-06:00

Versailles. Potsdam. Camp David. The geography of truce knows no boundaries when leaders join together for peace. The West Coast Brunes and I, the East Coast Brunes's ambassador, along with our moderator, Adam P.(pictured at left with a gift from Dan and Christy) visited coastal California in hopes of carving out a common ground on the divisive issues which have plagued our family since it crossed the Atlantic so many years ago. Our first stop on the peace trip was the bohemian city of Santa Cruz, home to the film The Lost Boys and the banana slug. We kissed the mollusk's image on the t-shirt in keeping with the Northern California legend that it brings good luck. We broke bread together before venturing off down the coast, first stopping at the home of the West Coast Brunes.

There were several family heirlooms in their home and also the gun that fired the shot that the Brunes heard 'round the world. I guess it's time to explain how the rift started. When the Brunes first immigrated to this country, they brought with them the family dog. It was to be the first in a long line of domesticated animals to serve as anchors to the sanity of the Brune family. This beloved dog was nearly as cherished as the children of our family, an avatar of loyalty, duty, quickness, luck, good nature and iconoclasm. One fateful day in the gently waving grasses of our Kansas plantation, my great-great grandfather was shooting recklessly at a swarm of locusts whilst my great-great uncle was playing nearby with the children and the dog, whose name is either Terrific or Abraham depending on which side of the family you ask. Well, as you can imagine, an errant shot felled the esteemed canine and all tranquility vanished from the Great Plains that day. Words were spoken that cannot be taken back. My side of the Brunes soon ended up on the East Coast, swearing on the good book never to own another pet again. That's the feud's origin and there were many wars and skirmishes in between then and now, but I don't wish to reopen old wounds.

From their home, we drove down the coast of Monterey Bay, watching the waves lap against the rocks. We came upon a peaceful sanctuary with friendly animals that came right up to us. They would have shaken our hands if they knew the custom. Dan was like St. Francis of Assisi with squirrels crawling up his legs. Of course he was feeding them, which the posted signs warned against, but beneath his lawlessness was a plea for conciliation and it was working. Our next stop was the famous 16 or 17 mile drive which spans a good part of Monterey Bay and covers the Pebble Peach area and the city once mayored by the great Clint Eastwood, Carmel. It was also the filming for the movie A Summer Place which I have not seen. We drove around Carmel looking for Clint Eastwood, the man and the memorabilia. We found neither. Apparently, he does not license his image in that fashion. We find locate one memento to the man on the menu of a restaurant he owns or used to own.

It's a little pricey for a meal named after a cop like Dirty Harry. I seem to remember him eating hot dogs all the time. We set off to the beach of Carmel, the sand of which couldn't have been finer. Dan said it reminded him of the sand you find in cigarette butt cans. Just sitting on the beach watching the Pacific, I kept thinking we should put this familial schism behind us. Talks would have been accelerated if Adam, our moderator, wasn't on the phone the entire day. Every time I tried to snap a picture of him with the marvelous coastal vistas behind him, he'd have his Motorola to his ear. Maybe he thought he could hear the ocean if he listened hard enough.

Our final stop was a restaurant 800 feet above sea level on the cliffs of the coast called Nepenthe. It used to be the summer home of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth. It was a tough place to photograph, but we watched the sunset over the Pacific as we dined outside in the calm, cool air. It was incredibly memorable and over bread, lamb, wine and french fries, we made peace overlooking the Pacific. The Brunes are united again!

Back in San Jose that night, we read the most recent article in the Metro venerating Blood Car. It was a wonderful article and I have no doubt it will help pack out our final engagement on Saturday afternoon. Please check the Blood Car site or FWW site to find a link to that article. The Metro has been so good to us.

But with every piece of good news comes some bad news. We've heard from a few more festivals and our current average has dropped to .250. It's hard to reconcile all the positive press and encouraging personal feedback from audiences we've received here with some of this news. I have a feeling some of these people will come around.

We didn't see any movies on Wednesday(I'm a day behind in the blog.), but our journey was given a cinematic name, mostly due to the exploits at the after parties. It was called Fear and Loathing in San Jose, but please don't let your imaginations get carried away. We didn't have any wide angle lenses on that night.

Cinequest - Day 7 - A car that runs on...animation?

2007-03-07T01:17:00.000-06:00

So, it's been a week here in San Jose. Adam and I have about a week remaining while Tony, Alex, Julie and Katie are all planning on departing on Saturday after the final engagement of Blood Car at Cinequest. The festival has slowed down a little, but it continues to pull in respectable crowds. Monday's crowd for the doc, The Third Monday in October, with the filmmakers and subjects in attendance, was excellent.

At the rental car place at the airport, we spotted a red Blood Car. I wonder who drives this thing, and if they know what their engine can really do if they let a vegan tinker under the hood for a few hours.

Today was our trip to Pixar Studios in Emeryville, CA. There was restricted access because they're working on a new film, but Ken Huey, our host, showed us a wonderful time and was quite knowledgeable about all things Pixar. There were beautiful pastels of concept art from past films on the walls. Everything for their films is done in house, from storyboards to striking prints of their films to sound recording. Everything. "It's a movie studio," Alex said, "with no cameras." Pretty extraordinary. Robert Bresson would blow his top. There was a wall next to one of the sound recording studios where actors signed their names. We saw Lindsay Lohan's signature, Owen Wilson's, John Ratzenberger's, Rob Schneider's. Jeremy Piven wrote, "Poll Position Bitch" and signed his name. We ate lunch in the cafeteria, which was delicious. Outside, the grounds smelled of cinnamon. Some say there is a bakery nearby, but we nodded knowingly at each other. They must have some secret, cinnamon fragrance pump that constantly scents the air. As we were leaving, there was some sort of broad sword training session being conducted in the outdoor amphitheater. What an amazing place and an amazing company. If you have any doubt, check out this restroom sign.

Next, since we had rented a minivan for the day, we drove up to San Francisco and headed straight(no pun intended) for Lombard St. We walked around Fisherman's Wharf for a little while, chasing seagulls and playing in The Musee Mecanique, the antiquity of which reminded me of my current favorite book, The Invention of Hugo Cabaret. It's a great big warehouse with arcade machines and games that only cost a quarter. Some work, some don't. Some appeal to the prurient interests and some are just bizarro. You can also play Ms. Pac Man and REAL Skee Ball, not that Ice Ball b******t or whatever they call it now.

Driving around SF, I reenacted some of my favorite scenes from Don Siegel's Dirty Harry. I've been lucky enough to read Mr. Siegel's autobiography and Alex reminds me of him: sarcastic, passionate, objective, knows the business very well and doesn't give or take much bs. Cinequest is a great place for people like that, like us. It's a filmmaker's festival. There are enough industry panels and networking opportunities to sate your appetite, but not overwhelm the purpose of the festival's existence - movies.

We left SF and proceeded into the great green north, crossing the Golden Gate Bridge (a little foggy), snaking through the coastal hills and crags until we reached Muir Woods National Monument. "Here I was born, and here I died." Madeleine Elster/Judy Barton said this to Det. Scottie Ferguson in Vertigo in Muir Woods looking at a cross section of a great redwood. Reading about John Muir, the park's namesake, I think he probably said the same thing sometime in his life. Muir was a die-hard preservationist and Theodore Roosevelt visited him in Yosemite during his presidency in 1903 and asked John to show him the 'real Yosemite.' They split off from the presidential entourage and camped out in the open air for days, talking about nature and enjoying its beauty. The President of the United States of America did this. He slept outside in Yosemite only to be covered by snow when he woke the next morning. When I was walking around the Muir Woods, smelling the aromatic air, I kept wishing to have some revelation about myself and my life. It seemed like the perfect place for epiphanies, but usually mine just come while I'm at home lying in bed or brushing my teeth in my bathroom or something, not in these prehistoric nature preserves. I have so many questions. I just pine for an equal number of epiphanies. Now that I've had time to think, perhaps they will come.

We left Muir Woods regrettably after only a brief stay and paused for a moment of reflection on the road overlooking this beautiful area. We filmed Adam yelling, "Beardman!" into the rolling valley. Alex forgot the beard otherwise we would have shot more Beardman stock footage. We had to get back on the road to make the final showing of our friend Francois's film All the Days Before Tomorrow at Cinequest. On the way back, I tried to nap, but instead we just talked and laughed a lot, which seems to happen quite a bit when a nap tugs at my heels.

Back in San Jose, we walked to our respective theaters to see our respective movies. Adam went to see Zodiac and I went to see The Pacific and Eddy. One of my other favorite things about being here is that when people see us, they don't address us individually with "Hey Alex" or "Hey Adam"; instead, they say, "Hey Blood Car." It's our collective name.

We marked off another piece of our intinerary last night as well: Write graffitti on a bathroom stall. Here is the evidence. The panty hose is supposed to be panty Jose.

Most people are on the world, not in it... - John Muir.

Cinequest - Day 6 - Games hotels play.

2007-03-06T01:27:00.000-06:00

Monday. A day of rest for us. We slept in, missing continental breakfast at the Clarion Hotel. In life, there is a can-do attitude in the service industry which we all know brings smiles to the faces of children and adults alike. On the other side is the can-don't attitude, which is the Clarion Hotel incarnate. It's like a hotel in a horror movie with a pleasant facade but a seething evil permeating its walls, employees, and amenities. If you ever come to Silicon Valley, do not stay here. Alex said he'd rather stay in a whorehouse. Having never stayed in one of those, I'm not sure I'd want to, but I'd certainly consider it if it was like the whorehouse on the pier in the Marquez book Love in the Time of Cholera where Florentino Ariza loses his virginity. Not that it sounds particularly cozy, but it is romanticized.

Downtown, we discovered the glory that is the Cinequest Hospitality Suite. Furnished with free Red Bull, snacks, hot coffee, and a bank of laptops with high speed internet, it became our HQ for the day. We saw a really interesting film called Slumming which featured a portrayal of drunkard homelessness unlike anything I've ever seen. I was a little worn out watching it so I think I missed a little of its power, but it was nonetheless a fascinating and stimulating piece of work.

We didn't completely shirk our promoting duties. We put a poster in the window of this Vegan Cafe. The owner said he's heard of our film and is going to try to make our 'Final Engagement' on Saturday. He was cool, and by cool I mean he cursed enthusiastically. It definitely seemed like a place Archie would frequent. San Jose is actually an Archie kind of town. Lots of casual bike riders.

We had a interview with one of the editors(or THE editor) of the Metro here in San Jose. He saw our WP on Friday and loved the film. As we were waiting for him in the Paragon bar, a server informed us that some people wanted to buy Katie, Alex, and I a drink. Pinney and Tony were also there, but the server made a point of saying it was just the three of us that were to be treated. The journalist arrived right then and we had to go somewhere quieter to conduct the interview so we didn't really have a chance to take advantage of those drinks, which I feel bad about. I hope those folks don't think we were rude. Back in the Cinequest Hospitality Suite, we sat around for about an hour talking about the film. He has a weekly column in which he writes about whatever he wants, usually a cult movie topic. It felt very comfortable and friendly, like he was a fan of the movie first and a journalist second. I usually feel like I choke during press events, but I think I'm improving based on my experience with this one. I look forward to reading his piece. I learn things about Archie just talking about scenes in the film and talking about the character more and more. I love relating stories of the production to the press. I feel like Blood Car is a fairy tale story in the middle of its writing.

Regretfully, I have to tell you that Alex and Katie seem to do nothing but fight these days. Just the other day on the light rail platform, I snapped these incriminating photos. Alex's temper is boiling over and he's destroying everything in sight from the ground up. I think Adam is next and then maybe me. Look at him smiling. He thinks it's all fun and games and he should be proud of violence. He's a basket case. (JOKE)

A little game for you blog readers below. We reenacted some famous paintings. You can make your guesses in the comments section. Difficulty level: 2.

Cinequest - Day 5 - A Grand Slam

2007-03-05T14:48:00.000-06:00

Our 2nd World Premiere approached quickly so we took to the streets early with our best Blood Car sales pitches. Some samples:
-Blood Car: More sex than Caligula!
-Save gas. Drive the HILARIOUS Blood Car.
-Double Fist the Double Feature: Monster Camp and Blood Car.
-75 minutes of funny-funny fun fun.
-If the state of the state gets you down, BC will get you up.
-Blood and laughs - BLAUGHS!
Our screening was across the street in a different theater this time, the Camera Cinema 12, which seats about 300 people. We stood in front of the theater from 1pm until 830pm handing out postcards, chasing down wandering San Joseans, convincing complete strangers to step up to the box office and buy tickets to our film. We were committed to packing out our theater. Our great Metro review was like a revolver we used to squash any vestiges of uncertainty. "Favorite film of the fest" - Can't argue with that. Though it was exhausting, I had a blast pitching our film to anyone and everyone. Many people we accosted already said they were going. Some, in broad daylight, whipped out their tickets with, "Leave me alone. I'm already going." Some people ignore you, but most are pretty receptive. We handed out Blood Car keys and postcards and buttons all day long. Day turned to night and Alex pulled people into the theater up until show time, stealing customers who were standing in line to buy tickets for Hollywood films like Zodiac and Breach. David Fincher, we're not sorry.

8-830pm was a nerve wracking thirty minutes until I walked into the theater...to a FULL HOUSE. People could not find seats. A few folks sat in the aisle. 300 seats. FULL HOUSE.

It was what Friday night should have been. Again, the short film If I See Randy, warmed up the crowd with laughs. Our film started with no sound, so we scrambled to find tech people and Cinequest volunteers. We nearly had a collective heart attack. Only about a minute or two went by before they shut the film off and fixed the problem and restarted the film. From then on, we just waited for the laughs, which came in droves at all the right moments. People loved the film. Katie, Adam, Tony, Julie, and I watched the film from the hallway while Alex whiled away on his text messenger like a GI radio operator sending out word to our friends and family back home in Atlanta.

About half the crowd stuck around for the Q&A, and after that many people approached us to say wonderful things about the film. The most common question seems to be "How did you come up with the idea?" A couple of audience members commented on the Woody Allen reference in the film, so I'm sure that made Alex very happy. I was little surprised he couldn't remember what film it originated in, but the audience members knew(Love and Death). I think he was just nervous. When asked about Alex's influences for Blood Car, the only director mentioned who received a cheer was Takashi Miike. It was a group of three friends, but our common bond to that Japanese filmmaker is the cult aspect and the envelope pushing. We passed out some posters and autographed them and were interviewed by the Cinequest spokeswoman, who in official videos wears a shirt that looks like a film slate. We also did another interview that was recorded directly onto an ipod mini. I don't remember her name but she asked some good questions.

During the film I found myself very impatient. I just wanted to hear the laughter of the crowd so I kept waiting for the jokes or the killings, which in some cases are synonymous.

When Alex arrived home to his computer after a southern breakfast at the 24 hour Denny's, he found a litter of lionizing emails from people who saw the film that night. To all those who attended the screening, thank you very much. If you liked it, tell your friends. If you didn't, tell your enemies.

Cinequest - Day 4 - Triple Feature

2007-03-04T14:06:00.000-06:00

I went to three movies yesterday, so I didn't take a lot of pictures, so in the interest of glasnost, you'll be seeing this picture from Day 1. I saw Shoot Down, All the Days Before Tomorrow, and Monster Camp. I enjoyed all three of them. If you're at Cinequest, they're worth seeing. What I loved the most about these films were the Q&As with the filmmakers following the screenings. I was quite impressed with each of the directors and producers. They were well spoken, polite people, all passionately driven to make each of their films. I know Shoot Down and Monster Camp were self-financed by the creators and their detailed stories and thoughts about each film's production, story and message reaffirmed my belief in independent filmmakers spread across the world wanting to tell personal stories through the cinema. Cinequest is spoiling me with all of these Q&As. When I go to see Playtime in April in Atlanta, I'm going to close my eyes tightly and wish for Jacques Tati to step out in front of us and tell us about the uphill battle of that picture. But, alas, he's dead.

We hit the pavement yesterday with swag promoting our Sunday Night Screening, which is in the smaller theater. We're hoping to really pack it out. The three films I saw yesterday at the Camera 12 Cinema were all well attended with numbers like 150 on the low end and 250 on the high end.

It was really wonderful to spring break it with the FWW/Blood Car crew. I wish everyone didn't have to leave on Sunday. It's been so memorable, but I know the smell in the hotel room of Chris A., Chris C., Hugh B., and Adam P. can be measured on a Geiger counter by now. I'll miss them and Anna C. and my brothers, too. They're in the air or at the airport as I write this.

Check out Blood Car on imdb.com. Seventeen people have rated the film. Our arithmetic mean is 8.8. Both women who rated it gave it a 10.0. I haven't thought about the film's portrayal of women too much, but the two main female characters are quite strong. Lorraine and Denise are both young entrepreneurs and small business owners. Unfortunately, they mistakenly become mixed up with Archie, a young inventor, and it leads to their demises. What's the message here? You mix yourself up with a man and you are murdered in cold blood? Perhaps. Denise falls in love with material things and that is her undoing. Lorraine is the good hearted person who loves Archie for who he is, but cannot quite see that he is really unavailable and uncertain about his own desires. Are things doomed from the start? Is it a tragedy? Perhaps.

Archie doesn't really know what he wants. He needs someone to tell him what he wants. He's a green flunky who is sucked into America's bloodthirsty government machine. There seem to be a few parallels here to Bertolucci's The Conformist. Marcello Clerici and Archie Andrews should have a chat sometime in a busy kitchen with a swinging lightbulb. See picture at right, which is copyrighted and I do not own or claim to own. I typed in swinging light bulb in google image search and this is what I found. I hope I meet Jean-Louis Trintignant before he dies.

Art imitates life, though Oscar Wilde said the reverse was more prevalent. I'm sure he's right.

Time to hit the pavement and promote Blood Car. Save gas, drive Blood Car.

Cinequest - Day 3 - The World Premiere

2007-03-03T15:29:00.000-06:00

Day 3 was history. Une histoire, en francais. A story. It began at cinema's birth over 100 years ago and gained its independence on March 2, 2007 in the USA's Silicon Valley. I took this photo to commemorate the forefathers of filmmaking. No need to run screaming from this blog. It will not hurt you.

Chris C., our co-dp and a producer on the film, arrived at our hotel in wee hours of the morning after spending all night on a plane and all morning in the SF airport trying to catch a ride to San Jose. My brothers arrived. Chris B. tasted the Pacific for the first time and had this to say, "It tastes just like the Atlantic, only colder." Chris A. wrote a poem today entitled "Horse Cop" which I will print in the next day or so. Anna Chlumsky arrived from NYC, which brought our grand total to 14. 14 members of Blood Car in San Jose.

Yesterday reminded me of a song, mostly joyful but with some disappointment. Looking back at the photos it seemed to have a soundtrack. It was sunny and cool and it's starting to feel like we're in the right place for once. We were dressed to the nines in the geography. There were short movies and long ones, quiet talks and grand speeches, anxiety and anticipation, gains and losses, fans and lines, questions and empty seats and even a couple autographs.

Most of us attended a couple of the panel forums on distribution topics in the morning and early afternoon. The one I attended was staffed by a handful of journalists and media personnel from various magazines batting around ideas and suggestions on how to promote your film to journalists, fans and the media in general. They pointed out a number of great ideas that I, amongst many others, had not considered and will certainly come in handy for the next festival. There is definitely a learning curve to climb for the distribution side of this industry. At this forum, we marked off a very important item on our itinerary, which I have yet to really touch on yet. This itinerary I made, based on the ideas of Brad K. and Damian D. in Atlanta, GA, includes a list of all the attendees, their San Jose names (My brother Greg's San Jose name is Senator Toughasnails.), and a list of activities. It's a bit hard to explain concisely, but the item we checked off today was "Steal another filmmaker's film idea." Now, I don't know if this person was a filmmaker, but he wrote about film, so that's pretty close. Here it is:

A woman, someone's Aunt, crashes in the Yukon and is trapped for 40 days, struggling for survival. Lord of the Flies meets Castaway meets General Motors. The twist, it's the Chevy Yukon. That's right, a woman trapped in an SUV for 40 days. Will she survive? Check your odometers this summer!

After the forum, we walked around downtown San Jose passing out postcards, keys, and sticking up posters in every storefront that would allow it. We trekked around the San Jose State campus putting up posters and basking in its coastal glow.

I was surprised at how generous a few of these stores were, especially this antique store to the left. From there, we returned to our hotel to rest up before the World Premiere. Today marked our first encounter with San Jose law enforcement as well, courtesy of Chris C. On the light rail system here, the honor system is king. No one takes tickets, you just buy one and hop aboard. However, law enforcement officials periodically check the tickets of people at random and if you haven't purchased one, you are fined $100 or something. Well, Chris C. thought he could outsmart these men and you know what...he did. This officer approached him, asked Chris C. for his ticket, which he did not have. He issued him a ticket, but as the officer was writing it out, Chris C. said, "I'm with Blood Car." He handed the officer a postcard, which seemed to delight the officer, explained that the film was having its World Premiere tonight, illustrating his entire predicament in a charming fashion. Not only did the officer degrade the ticket to a warning, but he issued Chris C. a free day pass for the light rail system.

Back at the hotel, more swag was awaiting us in the form of little buttons, which we all sported on our snappy sport coats, dresses, ties and lanyards. I spent some time resting in my bed trying to sleep as the tv broadcast an endless loop of The Bourne Identity/Supremacy. I become pretty loopy when I'm tired. I had wanted to see Buster Keaton's The General that night before the BC WP, but it would just be cutting it too close, so I became quite irascible and said some things to Katie and Alex about one of the hotel's maintenance men that I probably shouldn't have. I'm not going to apologize, but I am remorseful. All dressed up, we made our way to the lobby to wait for a couple cabs to take us to dinner before the WP. Check us out.

We had a wonderful dinner together and made our way to the World Premiere. Going in to the screening, there was a gaff in the festival's program about our WP screening. In the daily quick schedule, our film was not listed at all as playing on Friday at 1030pm! However, in the alphabetized list of films with synopses in the program, all the information was correct. I also didn't like the fact that you couldn't buy tickets to our film at the San Jose Rep's box office. One had to buy tickets at the main Cinequest box office, at a theater across the street. Those things aside, as we approached the theater, we saw the line. A line of people outside the theater waiting to see our film, our first feature film. From afar it looked like 300 people. Our imaginations and hopes were running away with us. I wish they had taken us on a marathon instead of just a jog around the park. To be frank, I think we were all disappointed with the turnout. Given the generally positive write-ups we received and 'buzz', we expected to sell out the SJREP. We did not. A little over 100 people showed up for the 1030pm show. The theater seats 584, including the balcony. In our favor, Cinequest did move our screening from the Cinema 12 to the SJ Rep because they expected a bigger turnout. We would certainly have packed out the Cinema 12, which is much smaller. Nevertheless, I'm happy our film screened there. I watched it from the balcony by myself, waiting for the turbulent nervousness to fade away, which it does when that first big laugh hits. After audiences see that pornographic pencil drawing of a bj, we pretty much win them over. Thereafter, I sat back and enjoyed the film much more than I did at the cast and crew screening in Dec. I commend the technical staff at the San Jose Rep as well, because the projection and sound were technically flawless. BC never looked better. Thank you. And nice work to Cinequest for our lead-in short film about a lumberjack who doesn't know his face has been sliced off. A funny short.

Even though the quantity of the crowd did not meet our expectations, the quality of the response certainly did. The empirical evidence was overwhelming. People laughed a lot. Alex spotted a journalist laughing during the film, so maybe that will bring us additional spoils. I learned a great deal about Blood Car from this WP by talking to people who loved the film. We have a cult film in the making. Our Q&A was short because they wanted to close up the theater, but we did announce my candidacy for President of the USA in 2008. And that's not a joke. We videotaped it. Hopefully you'll see it soon. I'd like to thank each and every person who attended our WP. Hope to see you on Sunday night at 830p for our 2nd World Premiere.

Cinequest - Day 2 - Pulling a Bogdanovich

2007-03-02T12:29:00.000-06:00

I woke up to a phone call this Friday morning from Dan Brune, my father's first cousin, who lives 'over the hill' near Santa Cruz with his wife Christy. There has long been a war between the East Coast Brunes and the West Coast Brunes, much like the oft-cited rivalry between hip-hop/rap artists from the opposing geographic coasts. What our feud has lacked in attention from the mainstream media outlets, it has made up for in violence. Dan and I have brokered a cease-fire and we will be setting up two-party talks after the BLOOD CAR WORLD PREMIERE TONIGHT AT 1030PM. The West Coast and the East Coast will hopefully reunite. I am looking forward to the talks.

Day 2 - Our first stop today was a filmmaker's luncheon treated by the festival director, Mike, and a group of other filmmakers with films in the festival. There were more people in our posse than other filmmakers combined, but I chalk that up to the other filmmakers not having arrived yet or excessive partying. We dined on raw oysters, shrimp, cheese bread, bruschetta, and those were just appetizers. And Cinequest treated. Now I doubt this will be a regular thing, but it was quite flattering be wined and dined...really just dined. Just imagine if you were someone like Martin Scorsese. I bet he hasn't paid for a meal in twenty years.

The second Blood Car wave arrived today, including Adam P., Hugh B., Jon and Amanda S., Chris A. Apparently, Chris Campbell arrived sometime late that night, but I have yet to see him in person. I know he didn't make it to the hot tub party later that night. The person wearing pants in the hot tub in the foreground is Chris A. the film's gaffer and co-producer.

But hours before clothes started coming off and the jacuzzi jets fired up, a group of us traveled up to San Francisco for an appearance on a pirate radio station called Pirate Cat Radio, 87.9. In the studio were Alex O., Jon S., Adam P., Katie R. and myself, mediated by none other than DJ Blurt, who looked a little ruddy from a recent sunburn, except for pale sunglasses-shaped area around his eyes. The radio station was above a warehouse in a two story non-descript building with one door and no name to speak of. The picture sort of embodies the clandestine feel of the place. This woman asked us for a password and we had agreed on the drive up if the question were ever posed, to say, "Submarine." The real password was 'nuclear submarine', but she cut us a break.

We walked right upstairs and met the host and sat down in the studio and started chatting before we went on air, when she asked us about our record. A chorus of 'uhs' followed and we were promptly ushered out of the radio station because we were not a New Orleans brass/guitar band dressed like a Commedia dell'Arte troupe.

Next door at a taqueria we waited for our guy. We had arrived a little too early. We ate some super tacos that could only be consumed with silverware. Call me old-fashioned, but I like tacos you can hold and, more importantly, control. DJ Blurt arrived and we went back upstairs to the radio station. They welcomed us in true flower child fashion. You can hear the podcast here. It's about an hour or so and pretty entertaining. I speak in a British accent for the first twenty minutes or so of the interview so don't be alarmed. Well, you can be alarmed about how bad the accent sounds. It didn't sound so bad at the time. Thanks to Tova, who set the interview up, and to DJ Blurt and his cohorts for giving us airtime.

Back in San Jose that evening, we split off into promotion teams armed with postcards, posters, and Blood Car keys. We spray painted a bunch of keys yellow and then splattered them with fake blood and tied key rings to them with our screening times. We tell people that one of the keys opens the Blood Car, which is languishing in inertness back in Atlanta, and if they come to the Atlanta Film Festival and bring their key and it opens the car, they win the Blood Car.

Adam and I went to see a film called Swedish Auto starring Lukas Haas and January Jones. It's about a Swedish car mechanic and his voyeuristic love of music. The director was present and answered questions after the film. There was a good My Morning Jacket song over the end credits and I liked Lukas Haas and the scenes with the violin player.

While we sat in the movie theater, Alex O. met Jerry Rice of the San Francisco 49ers and Peter Bogdanovich of the garage that Orson Welles lived in for a few years. Unfortunately, Alex did not have a video camera or we would have taped Peter B. saying "Hello, I'm Peter Bogdanovich and I might have gone to see Blood Car if I wasn't leaving town tomorrow."

The after party was strangely a deja-vu of the one the night before, with a couple of notable exceptions: Free drink tickets, and about six of us sporting Blood Car t-shirts. People continue to tell us that they've heard of the film and that there is buzz about it. Tonight is the big night. Let's wait and see.

'Pulling a Bogdanovich' -- a film phrase in which a filmmaker who is riding a wave of critical and commercial success splits with his wife, (in the Bogdanovich case, Polly Platt, who went on to produce Bottle Rocket), and takes up with another woman (in his case, Cybill Shepherd). His career soon after takes a nose dive while the wife's conversely takes off.

Cinequest - Day 1 - The First Picture Show

2007-03-01T03:42:00.000-06:00

If every day in San Jose is like yesterday, I think I'll arrive home in a body bag. We landed in San Francisco and then hopped on a train for San Jose, which is about an hour's drive south. During the ride, Katie showed me a stack of pages that looked like schoolwork, but turned out to the be Blood Car translated into French. We're required to subtitle the film for the European Independent Film Festival. The grandmother of an old boyfriend of Katie's is French and did 95% of the translation, including some of the obscenities. As with any translation, some phrases don't work in another language, e.g. Denise's line "I'm all the f**k out."
I know a little French and my accent hasn't suffered too much since my last French class, with Mon. Eric Le Calvez. I practiced a Watkin's monologue and one of Archie's freakouts in French. We videotaped it, so hopefully you'll see it soon.

Believe it or not, the wireless in our hotel, IN SILICON VALLEY, is sub-par. It's also a little bit of hike to the venues, but we'll make do. Alex and I checked in at the Cinequest HQ at the Montgomery Hotel and received our Filmmaker Passes, which entitled us to all-access privileges to screenings, parties, forums, etc. They fine folks at Cinequest also gave us a goodie bag. Check out the schwag. And yes, in the top right corner are two small wheels of brie with a knife and crackers thoughtfully included.

OUR WORLD PREMIERE WILL BE AT THIS THEATER! OUR WORLD PREMIERE WILL BE AT THIS THEATER! OUR WORLD PREMIERE WILL BE AT THIS THEATER! We snuck in to take a look at the place. That's Mr. Orr on stage doing his impression of a director of an indy film that has just premiered at Cinequest 17. Looking at this picture on the right, I can almost here the applause. And I'm not being vain. There is a little buzz about Blood Car in San Jose. Our capsule review from the Metro(a creative loafing style rag)is in print with a STAR next to it. If there's any doubt about this being the right place for our film, take a look at this advertisement on the side of the light rail car.

But there is something darkly ironic about this town that I must address. As Alex and I walked around, we noticed two or three old movie houses, complete with marquees and old timey box offices that no longer showed the films we hold so dear. Instead, they play the bump and grind music we hold so dear and have names like glo as opposed to The California, the only old time movie house that still seems to show movies. It's like our Fox Theater only smaller. But it has an organist. It saddened me a bit.

But once we strolled into The California that night for the opening night of Cinequest 17, that all faded away. TV crews were everywhere. Sold out show. Beautiful theater. Unfortunately, the opening night film, The Namesake, had some rather serious sound issues during projection which marred an otherwise magical experience. We don't know if it was something with the print or the sound system, but it riled up the crowd a few times. However, at the after party, no one seemed to dwell on it too much, but instead looked ahead to the unveiling of so many eclectic films. If I were to pick a favorite part of the day I would have to say it was the following. As we waited for the opening night film to begin, Cinequest organizers showed a couple of trailers for sponsors and the festival itself. In the latter trailer, which featured the festival director talking about the Cinequest mission, clips from no more than four or five films were shown. One of those films was Blood Car. Sold out house, captive audience, clips of Blood Car. Tony, Julie, Alex, Katie and myself could hardly contain ourselves. Katie said I was blushing. Maybe, but it could have been the lighting.

'Twas the night before Cinequest...

2007-02-27T22:16:00.000-06:00

...and all through the studio, not a creature was stirring, not even Hal Ashby.
The lenses were all packed up with care, with hopes that a filmmaker would soon be there.
The film was all nestled all snug in their cans, while visions of an f/16 danced in their heads.
And I in my kerchief and my Uniball in its cap, had just settled down for a long writer's nap.
When out in the parking lot, there arose such a clatter, I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like the Flash, tore open the shutters and threw up the sash
The moon on the breast of the new fallen fake snow, gave the luster of a shooting day to the objects below.
When what to my voyeuristic eyes should aflicker, but a miniature grip truck and eight tiny filmmakers.
With a smart looking driver, so lively and trustworthy, I knew in a moment it must be Halfdan Hussey.
More rapid than a shutter, his coursers they came, and he whistled and shouted and called them by name.
Now Dreyer! ,now Bergman! ,now Chaplin and Godard!
On Truffaut! On Siegel! On Kurosawa and Fellini!
TO BE CONTINUED...

--We leave for Cinequest in the morning. I'll be blogging every night, or morning, depending on how late the nights become. Look for videos, pics and blog entries from all the FWW Films gang on www.bloodcar.com and www.fakewoodwallpaper.com. I promise a picture each day as well, as they really spice up the blog.

A little festival update: The Mendoza Line approaches. .278. Put us back on top Cleveland and NY Underground.

The Mendoza Line?

2007-02-13T16:32:00.000-06:00

As you may or may not know, Blood Car was recently accepted to the Atlanta Film Festival. As stated on our website, it's our third non-consecutive appearance at the film festival but our first with a feature film. This one is special because Atlanta is the home of Blood Car. It's where the film lives, no matter where it shows. Had we not been invited, it would have been like being turned away at your own party. I'm looking forward to that parade this April.

But as the road to Atlanta was once paved with bodies and destruction, BC's road to Atlanta is no different. We've left a lot of film festival bodies in our wake, or conversely, they've left us in their wake. Our list of rejections is a who's who in the film festival yearbook. Berlin, Rotterdam, Sundance, Slamdance, SXSW, and more.

On the up side, our current average is .307, which in baseball is fabulous. Our goal is to remain above the Mendoza line(.200), the legacy of shortstop Mario Mendoza of the Pittsburgh Pirates, amongst other teams. Therein lies the boundary between extremely poor and merely below average. Mendoza's career batting average is .215, his nadir coming in his last year in the majors with Texas when he hit .118. However, his personal worst must unarguably be the 1979 season with Seattle when he played over 140 games and still hit .198. Strangely enough, in his 1977 season with the Pirates, he actually pitched for two innings. Judging from the stats, he walked the first two batters he faced and the third homered. I can only assume his hanging breaking ball cost the Pirates the game. Career ERA: 13.50

This being FWW's rookie season in the festival circuit, we hope to remain above .300 like so many great MLB rookies of yesteryear. Boggs, DiMaggio, Williams, etc. I'll update you as necessary.

We're waiting to hear back from quite a few festivals with March dates including Florida, Ann Arbor, Cleveland, New York Underground and more. Procrastinators.

As I was spellchecking this post, we heard from Florida. New average: .286. Well, Pete Rose and Mantle didn't hit over .300 their inaugural seasons.

Stop Making Sense!

2007-02-04T22:45:00.000-06:00

The Blood Car World Premiere at Cinequest 17 draws ever closer. We've booked our plane tickets. All told, 12 of us will be heading westward for the opening weekend of the festival, with a handful of us hanging around for the duration of the 12 day movie extravaganza. Special guests Anna C. and my brothers, Greg and Chris, will be joining us as well.

Recently, I was able to spend some quality time with Blood Car at Lab 601 in Atlanta, GA, where we were outputting our film from a RAID(sic) drive to HDCAM tape. This tape will be used to make all the screening dubs which will screen at the various festivals we've been accepted to thus far. Here is Alex with the computer and the drive which housed 4 terabytes of uncompressed HD video.

Now, Lab 601 is primarily an AVID facility and since we cut BC on Final Cut, we encountered a few hiccups during the outputting process. The reason I was there was quality control, which I trained in when I used to work in a soap factory in Daytona Beach. I had to watch BC during the output to ensure that it went to tape according to the filmmaker's vision. No problem. Being a post house, they're pretty hip and a woman baked chocolate chip cookies while I was there. I drank Mr. Pibb from some strange, 80s era fountain machine. Walking up stairs to the machine room, they had all sorts of action figures and toys along the walls, but some fine soul slipped amongst those childish diversions an old edition of recent MacArthur Genius Grant winner George Saunders's book Civilwarland in Bad Decline, a book of short stories.

In other news, one of cinema's household names watched Blood Car and enjoyed it. He furnished us with a quote, which you can find on www.bloodcar.com. His name is Jonathan Demme and Alex, Katie and I had the privilege of working alongside him on a recent doc. He's a kind man and as far as filmmakers go, he's the real thing.

I know I mentioned this in my last post, but our BC cast and crew screening was shown in the exact same theater where Hugh B. and I saw Stop Making Sense! on 35mm.

I'm also concocting a rather detailed travel itinerary for us for the festival. Details later.

Cast and Crew Unite and Take Over

2006-12-14T21:31:00.001-06:00

Well, this past Monday we held our cast and crew screening here at the Plaza Theater on Ponce de Leon Ave. Notice The Fountain is playing here. In the sitcom Seinfeld, George Costanza cried when he saw Ponce de Leon, a fictitious film that chronicled the hopeless tragedy of the title character's search for eternal life.

Adam P. used evite.com to send out invitations for this private screening. Our final evite tally reads: Yes-78, Maybe-7, No-6, Not Yet replied-23.

It was an uplifting showing with plenty of laughs and applause at the end. I hugged a lot of people. I only had to ask two people who I had met before for their names. Everyone looked good, some better than they had a year ago when I last saw them, some the same(I certainly did anyway.). I wasn't nervous before the screening because I had two poorly mixed rum n' cokes, but as soon as the credits rolled, the caterpillars in my stomach became butterflies and they didn't settle down until the after-party at Manuel's Tavern on North Ave. I'm serious. My stomach is a habitat for caterpillars. I'm serious.

I stood up in the back for the entire movie, and I only had to shift my weight twice, once from my left leg to my right and then from my right leg back to my left. I have a couple vivid memories that really stood out that night. The first is visual; the second, aural. Before the screening started, I went up into the projection booth where Jon S. and Alex O. were calibrating the digital projector. The movie was frozen on the title card, which is superimposed over a shot of a manhole cover(I think.). I peered through the little windows of the projection booth and saw the red letters of Blood Car on a movie screen for the first time. A movie screen. The same exact movie screen where I saw Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense years earlier and watched the dozen or so people in the theater stand up and start dancing like it was a Talking Heads concert. Unforgettable. Hugh B. was there. The exact same movie house and movie screen.

The next memory was the sound of laughing of a few certain people who will remain nameless, but whose laughs I could pick out of a lineup, detective. Their laughs make me laugh, though there was one laugh that was not present that I believe all the makers of Blood Car know was sorely missed. That laugh was in a different state.

I received two gifts at the Blood Car screening. Here is one. This is my family. There are no superlatives bright enough to describe them.

Chris B., second from right, is wearing a shirt that references this very blog, though the first letter is not quite discernible. It reads 'blutauto'.

The second was a CD of photos taken by Blake M., one of Blood Car's FX leaders and Capt. of the Blood Team. There was one particular photo that stood out.

It looks like it was taken in the mid-80s from an old 16mm camera with film that was just sitting in a box in someone's attic.

On a side note, I have not shaved since the morning of the screening.

Absorbed and Honored!

2006-12-14T20:37:00.000-06:00

< Thank you very much for your submission of BLOOD CAR for the 2007 Cinequest Film Festival. We were absolutely absorbed by the film and know it would make a great addition to the festival?s exciting Maverick program of films. We are honored to invite BLOOD CAR to participate in the 17^th Annual Cinequest Film Festival, as part of the New Visions section, where the film will be eligible for the New Vision Award in filmmaking. Cinequest will occur February 28 ? March 11, 2007 in San Jose, California?the heart of Silicon Valley. >>

Acceptance. Mr. Orr received this email approximately one day after the double-rejection from the Park City dances. He called me to tell me the good news. Adam P. called me a few hours later to make sure I'd heard. I rarely receive "Did you hear the news?" calls, but boy how sweet they are when the news is triumphant. I think one of my new year's resolutions will be to make more of those kinds of calls. Imagine receiving a call from me proclaiming, "Did you hear the news?" "No, what?" "Diamonds can be manufactured in a factory that are virtually identical to the real thing." I just learned this.

I think the last time I contacted someone with a 'dyhtn' call was when I heard that filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville never won an award for anything, nor was he ever nominated for anything(at least according to IMDB). And it wasn't a call, but an email, though in retrospect, I wish I had called everyone of my friends about it. I think I wanted to call everyone, but I just wasn't that kind of person then. At any rate, WHAT A CRIME!

Well, Cinequest, if you read this, know that we will all be venturing out your way the 28th of February, 2007 or perhaps before. We wouldn't miss it for the world. The Blood Car World Premiere. I myself can't wait to be arm-in-arm with Silicon Valley and a stone's throw from the Salinas Valley and perhaps rehabilitate my currently infirm convenent with God in St. Joseph's Cathedral Basilica. It looks to be a suitable place.

Blood for the Holidays

2006-12-04T23:52:00.000-06:00

Our cast and crew screening for Blood Car will be this Monday, December 11th. I'm quite excited. If you were on the cast and/or crew, you should have received an Evite with details. If not, feel free to comment on this blog and we'll draw up an invitation for you.

Lamentationdance

2006-12-04T23:28:00.000-06:00

Recent News.

Blood Car was not accepted to either the Sundance Film Festival or the Slamdance Film Festival, so will we officially not be going to Park City, Utah this January. Well, I submitted a short film of mine to Slamdance and I have yet to be notified about its fate. But the big news is...two festivals-two rejections. 0-2.

I didn't expect acceptance to Sundance. Based on what I know about Sundance and the synopses I read for this year's festival, it's not really a Blood Car type of festival in that genre/grindhouse/comedy-horror films aren't really Sundance material. I have said to many a person that if we didn't get into Slamdance, it would be a serious blow to the hopes of a strong festival year. I still believe that, but not being admitted to Sundance prepared me for the rejection. Odd as it may sound, not getting into a festival I didn't think we had much of a shot at created a rejection callus for a festival I thought we had a shot at. It numbed my nerves a little.

Alex called Slamdance today and asked about our film's status, and from what Adam P. told me, the woman on the line in Park City said, "I'm sorry. It was very close." Something to that effect, at least.

Having a conversation with producer/co-writer/DP(a superlative mix to be sure) Adam P. brought me down to Earth. It's our first film and we made it so we could sell it, probably straight to DVD if we were to be frank and earnest with ourselves. Nevertheless, we hoped, or at least I did, that the film would rise above itself and take the festival circuit by storm.

I don't mean to sound fatalistic or hopeless because, hey, what are two festivals in the scheme of over 40 that Blood Car has been submitted to thusfar? The possibilities remain bountiful for 2007. I'm confidant we'll play some great festivals. Perhaps we won't kick off the year with Park City, but I know for a fact a film festival in Glasgow wants to play our film and all they've seen is the trailer. Our niche will rise to the top.

We put down a rather sizeable deposit on a weekly rental for a small condo in Park City in hopes we'd be attending the festival. Condo parties will have to be postponed, but the deposit money we will now get back couldn't come at a more opportune season.