In another disaster update (following up on the Daryn Kagan dating Rush Limbaugh story reported yesterday), I was watching the Weather Channel last night and caught a glimpse of Captain Anderson's in Panama City, the site of one of the top five meals I ever ate in my life, which looked to have been directly in the path of Hurricane Ivan, as part of the roof and sign seemed to be somewhere farther down the beach.
The dominoes keep falling.
For those keeping track of my homemade winemaking, I bottled off my Cranberry Shiraz, a rich and fruity summer wine, and started a drier fall Gewürztraminer that hopefully will be ready for Thanksgiving. I hope to publicly debut my Shiraz at a surprise gathering a week from Saturday, details forthcoming.
So this week a Hollywood pro came and spoke at the local college and apparently told everyone not to move to L.A. because it was full of evil and you would just get chewed up and spit back out. One wonders how aforementioned Hollywood pro is making it himself, and why he doesn't move away; but what really made me think is how this is like the microcinema world, where there is always someone telling you a cautionary tale about how you'll never sell your project and nobody will ever see it, and yet this person is currently working on something right that second. Probably these cautionary tales are worthy, and these people are just trying to save others agony, but the painful truth is that once that little spark inside you starts, it is incredibly hard to stamp out. Perhaps a better lesson might be that you do not have to move to LA or NY to make movies, that in fact they can be made anywhere.
For instance, I just watched a funny, full-throttle zombie movie from my pal Scott Phillips called THE STINK OF FLESH that was shot all in New Mexico, and of course there is the very promising SEX MACHINE from Christopher Sharpe of Oklahoma City, and a goofball vampire comedy from my pal Joe Sherlock called BLOODSUCKING REDNECK VAMPIRES in Oregon, and a thoughtful sci-fi movie from New England called GHOSTS OF HAMILTON STREET, and I have to give a shout out to fellow Hoosier Peter O'Keefe and a great little short called LULU TAKES A LOVER. And these are just off of the top of my head, and stuff I've watched recently.
One of the great things about microcinema--you see places, people, things you don't see from Hollywood. And for some people, people like me, that's a powerful magnet.
Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.
1 comment:
I've noticed that certain screenwriters are so insecure that they'll do anything to discourage the competition. That's the main reason why I left the Yahoo screenwriting group - most of the guys would claim they were working, but no one else should try because they'll fail. I'm getting turned off my Creative Screenwriting magazine as well, where they spend most of their articles talking about how tough it is in Hollywood, but love to tell the story of the little guy that made it big.
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