Time, Time, Time, See What's Become of Me

Portions of this post first appeared in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP.  You can subscribe to the right.

Even though it was below zero, and the snow was coming down in the way it only does when it is coming off of Lake Michigan, I had a great time in Chicago with the Horror Society screening SEX MACHINE.  We had a small crowd, but all engaged and interested, and the Q&A ranged far and wide.  I hope to one day be back screening another movie--we talked about JURASSIC PREY, which is lunatic enough for this crowd.

With Christmas money, I am renewing subscriptions to The New Yorker and The Alantic and plan to renew my Showtime streaming subscription to binge on THE AFFAIR, SHAMELESS, and MASTERS OF SEX over the holidays.

In the meantime, I just wrapped up a pretty good thriller series called SPOTLESS and am cooking along through THE GIRLFRIENDS' GUIDE TO DIVORCE since I made my wife watch SPOTLESS.  Even though SPOTLESS is about French crime scene guys living in England, DIVORCE, with its California culture and lifestyle, seems farther away to me, somehow.  THE CROWN is quite good, unbelievably soapy and yet by and large true, and THE DETECTORISTS is pretty good but so mild that I sort of can't remember what any of it is about.  JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR. NORRELL is good for those with Harry Potter withdrawal and I liked EASY because it was shot in Chicago and I saw a few familiar faces from that community in it, and knew some of the people hanging out behind the scenes.

Obviously it is winter, and the Netflix binge is underway under a cold and dark sky.

Happy New Year, everybody.

With My Head Made of Rock

This blog entry first appeared, in a slightly different form, in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP which you can learn more about by subscribing in my sidebar.


As I hoped, SEX MACHINE was confirmed as the top of the double bill during Horror Society's Trash Movie Night I will be hosting in Chicago on December 14. Myself and the organizer, Matt Storc, both hit on the Italian horror movie LADY FRANKENSTEIN as the bottom half of the bill.  This has more in common with a Hammer horror film than a traditional Italian horror film but I think people will find it cool--and maybe I will not only get to talk about the movie I co-wrote with Christopher Sharpe some years ago now, but my love for Italian cinema as well.

Even more agreeably, Matt liked my idea of supporting Chicago's Open Books Project as part of the night. I am trying to do what I can to tend my part of the garden.

I will be giving away an autographed copy of SEX MACHINE that night.  If you are there, and think the movie sux, at least you have a white elephant for the gift exchange at work.  Just don't give it to the HR person.

I'll see what I can do to provide another surprise or two.

For the first time, on the night before Thanksgiving, I went with my daughter and her husband to Feed My Sheep, which prepared meals for those in need in my hometown of Muncie, Indiana.  An entire Canadian family was alongside me washing dishes, having stopped on their way to Arkansas for a family Thanksgiving the next day.  They just wanted to help, and when I asked for more information, they said, "It's complicated."  Yeah, it is.

My Thanksgiving passed peacefully, and I hope yours did too.

November only has one day left, so my book club pick is WHITE TIGER by Aravind Adiga.  It is about a lowly driver in India who composes a series of letters to the premier of China about entrepreneuriship, which actually reveals a long line of treacheries, deceit, and murder.  Can be read as an intellectual thriller or as a treatise on the class system in India, and works pretty well as both.

Hang in there, all.

Between Dada and D'Amato

I must be real, I'm in a book called "Fervid Filmmaking!"  I am mentioned in the article about Sex Machine, a movie I co-wrote with Christopher Sharpe, reviewed in this tome featuring "cult pictures of vision, verve, and no self-restraint" (and I can attest that I have at least one of those).  This book does state that I am a novelist, so I wonder if they got me confused with the actual author John Dalton?

This is conspicuously sitting on my coffee table, in case you come by.  Until later I am at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

I Dreamed That Jimmy Page Would Come From Santa Monica And Teach Me To Play

I owe three peeps some coverage of their scripts. I am getting bad about that. I need to do some reading. One is horror, one I think is romance, the other I am a little afraid to read.

Me and my Little Brother Harold would snooping around for HeroClix commons at a local gaming store and came across the new D&D, which I think is version 4. Maybe I'm old school (okay--I was hanging around at the Keep on the Borderlands when it was just a lemonade stand) but my droogs had long debates about whether to go from Classic D&D to AD&D back in the day, and then in fairly rapid succession we have 3 and 4 (remember, there were many, many experience levels gained between when 1 and 2 came out) and I hardly have gotten to play 3 and now I have to throw it away and buy 4. Perhaps my last adventure has been written in that tome of legendary deeds.

Thinking about scoping out this.

If you have Netflix (and by the way, the queue only holds 500, as I found out) you can now check out SEX MACHINE with the "Instant Play" option right off the site, which is pretty cool. Thanks to Peter Bruno for the heads up.

AMONG US has been available on "Instant Play" for a while.

PETER ROTTENTAIL and RAZORTEETH you still have to get off of Netflix the old fashioned way.

If you don’t have Netflix, you can still find them at discriminating video rental outlets, late-night cable, Amazon, ebay, dollar bins, etc.

Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Bound For A Star With Fiery Oceans

Christopher Sharpe has posted a behind the scenes look at SEX MACHINE online here. I wish I had gotten to meet some of those hipsters.

Tomorrow night I will be at the Phantoscope Film Festival, which I helped judge, so if you are in east central Indiana give me a shout. Really solid lineup this year from emerging high school filmmakers.

This guy will get you to thinking. (Link courtesy the always provocative Bill Cunningham).

Give me a yell at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Calling Doctor Love

Loyal reader Dave writes:

Hey, you have a link to the trailer for Sex Machine? I've been looking for one all day to show a co-worker of mine, but I am a bit leary of just going to Google and typing in Sex Machine.

As well you should be. I have heard that some people are trying to put porn up on the internet. Try this site for all of your more or less work-safe "Sex Machine" needs: http://www.sexmachinemovie.com/.

My daughter seems to have a new boyfriend, who introduced himself to me by saying that he knew a lot about my movies. Knowing the kinds of movies I have been involved in, this is not a good sign.

I had finally broken off with ER but found myself watching a "special episode" last night. It still needs euthanasia. I don't remember if I wrote this here before, but I remember when ER was about a lot of really good doctors trying to fight a corrupt system at a bare-bones hospital. Now it's about about a lot of young hipsters hooking up. And, what's funny when you really watch carefully, many of them are just not very good doctors.

Got a couple of projects in the hopper to hopefully shout about soon. Until then, give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Takin' It To The Streets

On days that movies I worked on street I like to drive around and try to find them. It gets harder and harder as I continue to move to smaller places, but it is still fun and gives you a sense of perspective. A lot of people have expressed to me how easy it would be to go out and make any old b-movie, if only they would degrade themselves enough to bother to do it. But the truth is that it is incredibly hard. Not only just the writing, which is where it starts, but finding someone to actually make it, and then find someone to actually put it out there in some form. I have been hired to work on more than fifteen scripts in the last handful of years and close to half of those you can actually find anywhere--and I would consider that a good percentage.

It's funny, but when a DVD streets the writer is usually long out of the picture, and it's time for the techs and the actors to shine. I'm not sure, but I think I've written about a half-dozen projects since SEX MACHINE. Longtime readers know that I took about a year off from freelancing because of a career change and some personal stuff, but since I put my name back out there in December I know I have completed four projects. I started a rewrite this weekend for somebody I have wanted to work with for a long time, and I have a project lined up after that, basically filling up my freelance schedule until the 4th of July. If half of these street I will be happy, and if the percentage is higher I will be ecstatic.

Keep an eye on Christopher Sharpe's and Bill Cunningham's websites over the next few days as they start releasing extras and additional materials to support the DVD release of SEX MACHINE.

And, in the meantime, if you see SEX MACHINE anywhere, give me a holler!

Cisco Kid Was a Friend of Mine

Nothing eases my mind more than a book sale at a library. I got a pretty good bag of stuff that included T.C. Boyle's THE TORTILLA CURTAIN, Wiliam Faulkner's THE UNVANQUISHED, Neil Gaiman's AMERICAN GODS, Alexander Solzhenitsyn's STORIES AND PROSE POEMS, Philip K. Dick's VALIS, Philip Pullman's THE TIN PRINCESS, Norman Spinrad's THE IRON DREAM, and Jeff Lindsay's highly recommended DARKLY DREAMING DEXTER which I got for the bargain price of 50 cents, and it looks freshly minted. I think my summer reading list is shaping up nicely.

I found SEX MACHINE, streeting Tuesday, on Netflix today. Queue it up here.

Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Hot Off the Press!

The new ish of Fangoria hit the stands today, and right there on page 14 is a nice write-up of "Sex Machine," coming to a DVD shelf near you in just a few short sweet days.

One Piece at a Time

Last night I had a dream that I went to a screening of Christopher Sharpe's next movie, called DEATH MACHINE. It was debuting in Austin in a place that looked a lot like the place where Don Johnson goes to the movies in A BOY AND HIS DOG. I woke up at 6 a.m. thinking that the plot of the movie was pretty interesting and that I should write it down. But I just drifted there listening to the clock radio and in a few minutes I had forgotten the thread of it. I should start keeping a journal by the bed, instead of a stack of comics.

My Pacers are out of the playoffs for the first time in about ten years. In basketball-crazed Indiana, there is hardly a more unkind cut.

In other sporting news, there is nothing I like writing to better than a drowsy baseball game. Catching the Reds and the White Sox and the Indians on AM radio on my drive home from work always gets my gears turning.

In other writing news, I got good news about both NEW JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH from Mark Polonia yesterday as well as some good news on the progress of MENTAL SCARS for producer Richard Myles. Hopefully I'll have production stories to relate before long.

I was thinking last night that once upon a time I was too cool for Johnny Cash. Now I'm not cool enough for Johnny Cash. It's a short trip from too cool for everything to not cool enough for anything. Losing your ironic detachment helps.

Give me a yell at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Pimpin' Machine

Here's another picture from the relaunched Microcinema Fest site, featuring me during the Q&A for "Sex Machine." Posted as an excuse, natch, to mention that "Sex Machine" streets May 1.

The Sleeve

Courtesy my pal Bill Cunningham, the DVD sleeve for SEX MACHINE, streeting May 1.

Sex Machine Gets 'Tubed

People jonesing for mo' SEX MACHINE before its DVD debut this spring can check out this on YouTube: A little package done for an Austin, Texas, cable TV show about the movie's screening there. Has some nice footage and a funny Q&A. NSFW! But you probably already knew that.

Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Back in the New York Groove

With PRIMAL tucked away and percolating along in California, I tip my keyboard towards the great state of North Carolina and a new project, a rewrite of a horror script featuring a junkyard killer titled MENTAL SCARS, for producer Richard Myles. More soon.

Today I recorded my audio commentary track for the DVD release of Christopher Sharpe's SEX MACHINE, and hope I didn't talk out of my ass too much. Try talking for 90 or so minutes straight without talking out of your ass. It's not easy. But I hope people enjoy it, and it is winging its way to Texas soon.

It was fun to watch SEX MACHINE again. I think people will enjoy it when it gets out there to a video store near you, in Spring 2007.

You know, Al Gore may have something. It's the middle of January, and it has been a modest 40-50 degrees in temperature, with nary a flake of snow anywhere. Not that I'm complaining.

My Colts keep breaking my heart, but pulled off a shocker over the bruising Ravens and earned a trip to the AFC Championship against their old Achilles heel, the Patriots. We'll see what happens. Do I dare to eat a peach?

Also have to love the Saints. In the late 80s I worked at WXOW-TV in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, where the Saints had their training camp, and got to mix with Saints luminaries such as Bobby Herbert, Dalton Hilliard, "Ironhead" Heyward, and others, and have followed their largely hapless adventures since. I usually like to jump off bandwagons when others jump on, but I will stick with the Saints.

I was going to write a bit about how I like the ends of things, when great comic book runs dry up and flame out and the foster kid joins the wheezing sitcom and so on, but hate watching final episodes, and the fact that I won't watch the final episode of THE PRISONER has stuck in my brother's craw for years, but downstairs I hear my wife singing along to The Carpenters, and that is a siren's call I cannot ignore.

So, until later, give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Sex Machine Revs Up March 2007

Sex Machine Leaves Mark on Anthem Pictures
Scary Actioner – part Frankenstein, part pulp – Acquired for Worldwide Distribution
Agoura Hills, CA – Anthem Pictures President & CEO Chuck Adelman announced today it had acquired all rights to Austin, TX filmmaker Christopher Sharpe’s debut feature film, Sex Machine for worldwide distribution. The scary action-thriller is scheduled for a DVD Premiere in the United States in March 2007.

Sex Machine, which takes its name from a mysterious tattoo on the hero’s arm is the gripping story of a man who wakes up in the middle of a gangland hit to discover that his limbs are not his own. Frank is a tough-talking patchwork assassin, stitched together from the body parts of other failed assassins. When Frank learns that his ex-girlfriend is the next test subject, he opens both barrels on his “creators” and unleashes a gory bloodbath of revenge.

“When we first screened the movie we knew we had a winner – not only with the audience who love movies like Reservoir Dogs or The Killer, but with the folks who like their gore, “said Adelman. “Sex Machine really delivers the goods. This is a pulpy hybrid of horror and hitmen that really goes for the throat.”

Sex Machine, winner of the 2006 MicroCinema and DeadCenter Film Festivals was shot in and around Austin, TX and Oklahoma City, OK and comes from the demented minds of Director Christopher Sharpe and screenwriter John Oak Dalton. Shot for over several months as cast and crew were available, Sharpe and Director of Photography Shogo have infused with the movie with what critics have called, “killer visual style” from the opening credits onward. Hundreds of sketches, conceptual photos and makeup tests were completed so that the filmmakers could keep a consistent and interesting look on their meager budget. The planning paid off.

The movie was brought to Anthem by writer-producer Bill Cunningham (Scarecrow, .Com For Murder and the upcoming Gore Gore Gore-met ) when the director sent him a copy for his advice. “I watched the movie from beginning to end without having to fast forward, which is a testament to the story’s punch. I called Christopher right away and asked if the film had distribution and if he was represented by anyone. I wanted to be that guy. From there I took it around to my colleagues in the industry and Chuck really responded to what I did – the film’s pulpiness.”

Plans for the March 2007 DVD include: the feature, trailers, a DVD commentary track with the filmmakers, a behind-the-scenes feature and a gallery of stills and artwork.
# # #


Yeah, I better get that commentary track cranked out.

Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Sundown, Yellow Moon

Has it really been two weeks since I posted here? I have been busy reading scripts for a couple of possible rewrite jobs, as well as girding up to record a commentary track for SEX MACHINE, which now has a DVD release date of March 2007. It's been so long since I actually did the rewrite I'm going to have to sit down and figure out what the hell I was thinking back then; a common enough pasttime, I'm afraid.

More news soon; in the interim, give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

From the Leaves

Longtime reader DG writes:

John, God bless your blog. It is some really funny shit. I have it as an RSS feed (brilliant invention for blogs) so I always see your new posts. Without the RSS I don't think I'd catch it anywhere near as often.-DG.

The bad thing is, usually I'm trying to be serious!

The people at Scar Magazine scare the living shit out of me, but they liked SEX MACHINE. Check out their site here. NSFW, natch.

Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Sex Machine in the Windy City

SEX MACHINE is scheduled to close out--before it closes down--Microcinema Fest 2006 in Palatine, Illinois. See the full story here--and join me in the Windy City for the showing!

Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

I Am Not Alan Wyoming

I used to think Starlog and Fangoria were pretty cool; then I found Film Threat. Now they are even more cool because they reviewed SEX MACHINE right here.

I guess I pretty much missed the 14 Day Screenwriting Challenge while I was sick, but that's okay, as I've done the 21 Day Screenwriting Challenge a few times--it's called my career.

I noted I was misidentified as the writer of a couple of Polonia Brothers movies in some online commentary. Though I am always willing to take the blame and/or the credit where it is due I have a vow not to use a psuedonym (except during my porn star career). And I have stood by that vow so far. My only other screenwriting advice: don't do anything you're not proud of when it leaves your keyboard.

Give me a shout at johoakdalton@hotmail.com.

The Dawg Pound

THE DA VINCI CURSE at Cannes? Strange but true!

The Horror Channel shows no love for THE DA VINCI CURSE, though they haven't seen it yet.

More playa hatas at the Fishcom Collective (?) review RAZORTEETH.

Now here's a brotha knows what's up: Cult of the Video Monkey at Chaotic Chronicles dishes on THE DA VINCI CURSE and even manages a shout-out to AMONG US. But where did this dude get his bootleg BLACK MASS from?

SEX MACHINE on the IMDB! You know what they say, you're not real until you're on IMDB.

Holla back at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.