Friday, May 31, 2013

Good Morning, Mister Sunshine

As I have posted before, I have been in self-imposed exile from screenwriting for a few years.  But people kept throwing ropes down the well so I finally climbed back up.

I have slowly but surely found myself in this odd place where all the stuff I worked on and all the people I worked with and knew in b-movies and microcinema have faded enough into the past to be nostalgic to new people.  Strangely I have found tons of Facebook groups and the like springing up collecting VHS tapes and a sudden resurgence in shooting on SVHS which we only did because we were poor and desperate and at the fringes of society.

Then I got a shout-out in this book about "cult pictures of vision, verve, and no self-restraint" and I started to wonder, if I was never cool before, can I ever become cool in retrospect?

Yesterday I found out that a movie I worked on some years back, Peter Rottentail, is coming out on one of those megapack DVDs called "Movies That Made My Mom Puke."  I don't know if it's false advertising or not but my mom might get a little pop-eyed at it, but I don't think she'd puke.

I was recently asked to be interviewed for a proposed project on the go-go microcinema world that was here and gone and called my old pal Mark Polonia to make sure the interviewer was above board with everything (you can read the results in the header of my blog from the last time I was interviewed).  Mark gave the interviewer the thumbs up and before we knew it Mark and I were talking about old times.

Mark is working on a retro line of movies right now and the next thing I knew we were collaborating on MEAT EATERS, a cautionary tale about the perils of using dynamite indiscriminately near where some dinosaurs may be frozen.  I would officially call it a "dino-noir" and, after amazingly flying off of my rusty fingertips in just three weeks, it will be going before the lens--stop-motion monster and all--at the end of June in the wilds of rural Pennsylvania.

And just this week, another project with somebody I wanted to collaborate with came out of the shadows.  Stay tuned.

Until then I am at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Saturday, May 25, 2013

For A Few Euros More

Back in Italy for the third time, and this thing hasn't chopped my hand off yet.

Fistful of Fanta

Snack truck in the Borghese Gardens, Rome.  Orange drink goes down easier when endorsed by the Pope.

Viva Django

You can drink from any public fountain without fear.  The brain, oxtail, and rabbit is good too.

Death Rides A Horse

My favorite street art that I saw this year.  My all-time fave is either the Godzilla with the Pope hat or the monkey Jim Morrison. 

One Damned Day at Dawn

My favorite fumetti stand, in the Piazza della Repubblica.  As a teenager, I dreamed of a world where you could have pizza for lunch and dinner, buy comic books off the street, and watch spaghetti westerns all night.  As an adult, I found it.