Time to Play B-Sides

With family scattered and a volatile winter at hand, this holiday season has seemed a bit fragmented. But I have had a nice Christmas; I got a cool GPS for my car (still deciding on a name), a stash of Justice League DVDs from my brother, some dress clothes, and with some mad money went out today and bought that new Dog Whisperer book and the board game Diplomacy which I have always wanted to try. I am right now contendedly reading comics and watching Doctor Who. A small happiness is enough sometimes.

Now that you can catch me on Facebook and on Twitter I get more mail from all kinds of sources. Perhaps it's time on this winter's eve to open the ol' mailbag and check out some fresh correspondence.

New reader Kevin writes, Hey John. I came across your blog from CommonFilm's website. I was intrigued by your short bio, and I was wondering if you had any of those old mixtapes you used to make in your basement available, or any of your other works? Also, I personally prefer nerd. DIY hipster is no fun.

I have been asked for a few odds and ends, but never any old mix tapes or copies of my classic punk recordings from the early 80s with The Johnnies; especially my stirring cover of "Blitzkrieg Bop" by The Ramones, which stunned audiences into silence at Muncie Northside High School during those halcyon days of Punk and New Wave. Sadly, all of this material, as well as a number of my old homemade comics and Super-8 movies, are lost to the dustbins of history. Though, perhaps, not as many as should be lost. Thanks for asking, though!

Along those same lines, my old friend and neighbor Ivan found my blog and wrote, Sounds like you've definitely found what you enjoy doing. I remember those 8mm movies as well and all the comics you used to do. It's great to see your creative streak is still alive.

Obviously you don't remember those movies and comics that well! But I do have you to thank for my dream of getting into Fangoria Magazine, which I first read at your house!

B-movie fan Kipp wrote, Finally sat down and watched Monster Movie and saw you on the extras very touching addition my eyes did water up.

Thanks, Kipp, I was honored to be asked to be part of the John Polonia tribute on the "Monster Movie" DVD; but I'm not sure I'll watch it again. The movie itself is a lot of fun, though. Check out the trailer for "Halloween Night," based on one of John's scripts, here.

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

Santa's Magical Cornhole Shop Pt. 2

The set of cornhole boards I did for my father-in-law, still drying on Christmas morning. Early in the season, when the Colts were doing terribly, I thought my father-in-law, a die-hard fan, would be dead of a heart attack by now. Thankfully Peyton recovered, and so did my wife's dad.

Peace on Earth

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Santa's Magical Cornhole Shop (Pt. 1)

Santa found out Friday that his brother-in-law was going to visit before Christmas instead of after, so this set of cornhole boards--supposed to be the last off of the assembly line--became the first, with a flurry of late-night sanding and painting. It was nine degrees this morning when Santa went out to the garage to touch up the paint. A last look before they went on the sleigh and over to the in-laws.

St. Nick and Me

Me kickin' it old school with Mr. Claus on our live "Talk to Santa" phone in show at the day job last night. We also had a few live guests in the studio, only half of which cried and ran away.

Book Beat

Longtime readers know that I write a column called "Book Beat" for Pomp and Circumstantial Evidence, the magazine for the Magna Cum Murder Mystery Conference. If you don't receive that august publication, or check out my reading blog, enjoy this column for the first time.

The Wandering Ghost by Martin Limon
Two military policemen in 1970s Korea search for a missing female MP, and uncover her ties to a string of murders at the wintry edge of the DMZ, in Martin Limon's military mystery The Wandering Ghost.
Limon's two protagonists, Sueno and Bascomb, follow their own sometimes offbeat code of honor more than strict military protocols as they move through the Red Light districts and the army's corridors of power with equal ease. Sueno, the narrator, remains more reflective, while Bascomb is somewhat more prone to give in to both carnal and violent desires. They bring to mind two of my favorite characters in mystery fiction, Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones, the Harlem policemen who run rampant through Chester B. Himes' memorable detective novels.
Limon also has a real knack for a time and place, reminding me again of some of my favorite authors, Walter Mosely, Michael Connelly, and Ross Macdonald. Limon's stint as an MP in Korea during the time period is obviously what gives the mystery this weight. I will seek out more in this series.

The Turnaround by George Pelecanos
A racial incident between teens that leads to murder in 70s Washington, D.C. reverberates in the lives of the adult survivors in George Pelecanos' compelling The Turnaround.Although Pelecanos is often billed as a crime fiction writer, I have found his work a bit more philosophical, with few easy answers and fewer pat conclusions. I enjoyed his previous two novels, Drama City and The Night Gardener, and find here a lot of similar themes, including parallel storytelling with events in the past and using Washington D.C. as almost a character onto itself. Pelecanos has a clipped style, but a knack for dialogue and interesting characterizations.Pelecanos is a worthwhile read, and I will be on the lookout for his next novel.

Priest by Ken Bruen
Relentlessly downbeat noir from Irish writer Ken Bruen picks up where he left off with highly tarnished detective Jack Taylor at the end of The Dramatist; coming back from a nervous breakdown after accidentally contributing to the death of a child in his care.
Things don't get much rosier from there, as Jack starts to look into the beheading of a pedophile priest and tries to help a friend with a stalker, all the while struggling against alcoholism.
Fairly rough pavement, as one might suspect, but Bruen writes in a dark-humored vein favorably reminiscent of Roddy Doyle, if the author of The Snapper and The Commitments were to turn to hard-boiled detective fiction. But I enjoy Bruen's style and plotting, right up to another punch-in-the-gut finale.

It's Cold Here In The City, It Always Seems That Way

Reading fresh notes on my nondisclosure sci-fi script this morning while fresh snow falls over the Heartland of America.

Microcinema Scene, the website I helped launch five years ago with Boston filmmaker Jason Santo and Chicago filmmaker Gary Lumpp, more recently under the steerage of Austin filmmaker Christopher Sharpe, will be relaunched in the not-too-distant future under new management, more squarely set in the new media world (with some of the ideas I have chatted about here on this humble blog over the last few months). I have had a sneak peek and think it is positioning itself to be part of the next-gen filmmaking movement. I hope I can help out with it where I can. In the meantime, keep your eyes peeled for the relaunch.

One of the great things about working on Microcinema Scene and the Microcinema Fest film festival was meeting some super-talented people. One of those has been Amir Motlagh, who we screened at the Fest and reviewed on the site, and I found to be one of the strong emerging filmmakers coming out of microcinema. You can check out Amir's latest short, just released for free on the web, right here.

A project I worked on earlier this year, Mental Scars, has released a teaser trailer, and generally updated their website, right here.

Until later, catch me at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

I Was Bigfoot's Shemp, Revisited

Five years ago I helped launch the website Microcinema Scene; now it looks like it will get folded into a new (yet unlaunched) site, and it goes with my good wishes. One of my favorite articles that I wrote for the site was about my adventures working with the legendary B-movie auteurs Mark and John Polonia. It was actually an expansion of an article I wrote for a very good site still in operation called B-independent.com. Until this article finds a new home, here it is, reprinted for your reading pleasure.

SUNDAY MAY 22, 2005: THE TRAPDOOR OPENS
I decided to get off the interstate and cut cross-country towards Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, a baseball game murmuring on the radio and the rolling hills easing past my windshield. Soon I arrived in the hometown of those unholy twins of b-moviedom, the Polonia Brothers. I thought the shooting would be done for the day, but learned from Mark Polonia's wife that they have been held up. But soon the cast and crew burst in, chatting excitedly. A planned "guerilla" filmmaking shoot in some local basement locations with permissions of the "don't ask, don't tell" variety went a tad sour when the sprinkler system went off, with flooding ensuing. I asked how things went otherwise, and learned that it had gone well, with one person being cut in half, and another beheaded by an evil priest. And just like that I was down the rabbit hole and back in the world of b-movie filmmaking.

SUMMER, 2001: A JOURNEY OF A MILLION MILES
A co-worker brought me a movie he said I “had to watch.” It was the Polonia Brothers’ space epic BLOOD RED PLANET. I was mesmerized. Past the motorcycle helmet space masks and the water bottle oxygen tanks and the gravel pit moonscape and the hand-puppet monsters I saw a great sense of energy and fun and love for the genre. I looked up Polonia Brothers Entertainment on the Internet, and quickly delved into their world. Probably best known for FEEDERS, one of the first shot-on-video features accepted at Blockbuster, the Polonia Brothers have made a name for themselves as b-movie horror mavens, embraced by some and shunned by others. I quickly found Mark Polonia’s email address, and thought I would drop him a line. At that point it never occurred to me that I might end up sleeping on his couch.

DECEMBER, 2002: FROM THE POLONIA MIND TO MY HAND
Mark Polonia and I had been writing back and forth and talking on the phone for some time, discussing projects and trying to get a few off the ground. Mark asked me if I would be interested in writing a Bigfoot movie based on an outline he and his brother John had worked up. I told him I wasn’t sure what I could do with a Bigfoot movie but that I would think about it. After I hung up with Mark the phone rang again a short time later. It was Polonia Brothers actor, director, and general co-conspirator Jon McBride. McBride is probably best known for helming the cult classic CANNIBAL CAMPOUT, as well as a happy-go-lucky little feature called WOODCHIPPER MASSACRE. He asked, “You’re not going to write that Bigfoot movie, are you?”

SPRING, 2003: “AND SO IT BEGINS”
Casting, FX by Brett Piper (PSYCLOPS, DRAINIAC), and some second unit and b-roll shots are done throughout the spring, in LA and Pennsylvania, with the changing seasons and locations hopefully giving the project an expansive feel. The bulk of the shooting was locked down for the end of May in Pennsylvania, and I agreed to come out and be on the set and try to pitch in. Little did I know then that “pitching in” would include everything from gathering wood to cooking food to putting on an ape suit to feeding my own script into a campfire. I was blissfully unaware of what was to come.

WEDNESDAY MAY 28, 2003: DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
I touched down in beautiful Elmira, New York at 11 p.m., and was quickly whisked off to Wellsboro, Pennsylvania by the Polonia Brothers and Jon McBride. They had been shooting all day all over Wellsboro with Bob Dennis and Hunter Austin, playing the leads Billy D’Amato and Jennifer Dempsey. Early in the morning we were going to leave for the cabin that is the centerpiece for the latter third of the movie and spend several days and nights living and shooting there, so everyone was ready to call it a night. But I did get a quick tour through Wellsboro, recognizing tons of locations from PBE films like FEEDERS, NIGHT THIRST, and others. At midnight we pulled up to the house that I last saw in THE HOUSE THAT SCREAMED 2. I had the surreal feeling that the whole town was a giant Polonia Brothers backlot, and I briefly wondered why the humble people of Wellsboro had not risen up with pitchforks and torches and driven these diabolical twins into the river. A short time later I was lying on Mark’s couch and asleep.

THURSDAY MAY 29, 2003: “SURVIVOR: WELLSBORO”
For the first time I heard words that I wrote coming out of an actor’s mouth, and it’s a weird feeling...from my laptop in the cornfields of rural Indiana to an L.A. actresses’ mouth in a van bumping down a road in Pennsylvania. It is basically a funny little scene where Billy D’Amato is driving to the cabin and talking about the differences between shooting documentaries and shooting porno movies. Unfortunately the first scene I would hear of mine mouthed by a professional actor had the word “cornhole” in it. At the end Mark Polonia turns to me as I’m crouching out of the camera line in the back seat and says, “Well, you’ve seen your first scene comes to life!” and John Polonia cheerfully chimes in with, “We haven’t even started raping the script yet!”
Before long we arrive at the location, a cabin miles down a dirt road deep inside “the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania,” with a raging river at the front and cliffs at our backs. The whole cast and crew piles out, soon to be joined by rats, snakes, centipedes, and whatever chewed on the legs of the outdoor chairs. Mark Polonia intoned, “They’re more afraid of you than you are of them,” a line that would be repeated often throughout the day and deep into the night. However, I also learned from his wife that he once chased a bear away from the trash with nothing to defend himself but his “tighty whities,” so there you go.
John Polonia gleefully told me that what is politely called “production assistant” in credits is more aptly named “prison b***h” on the set. But it was fun to be involved during the shoot, doing a little of everything from setting up lights to taping “behind the scenes” footage with my Digital 8 camera to shooting promotional stills to grilling hot dogs for lunch and washing up afterwards. At one point I was carrying the heavy tripod and camera across a rickety footbridge that would be considered too unbelievable to use in an “Indiana Jones” movie, with John Polonia right behind goading me forward, and I thought two things…one, at least if someone is rolling tape they’ll have something to sell to FACES OF DEATH; and second, I wonder what the WGA would think about all of this?
Later in the evening we set up for a major scene where the principals are sitting around a campfire and start revealing little bits of their backstories about what motivates them to find evidence of Bigfoot. Unfortunately, wet wood and five inept males could not get the fire started. Finally Bob Dennis took me aside and said apologetically, “If this offends you we don’t have to do it, but I brought an extra copy of the script…” I looked around at the fading “magic hour” and said, “light it up.” A moment later I was watching Bob feed the script into the fire and thinking, “Well, I know writers say actors send their scripts down in flames, but I bet William Goldman has never seen this.”
When we got going on the campfire scene, my heart started racing. With the night falling, the cabin lit in the background, the flickering light from the fire illuminating the actors, I looked through the viewfinder and realized for the first time that the movie was going to look fantastic. Then the next scene shot was a little away from the fire, the heart-to-heart between Billy and Jennifer, where some of their unexpressed feelings bubble back to the surface. I got a chill when it suddenly dawned on me that the acting was great too. At the end of the scene, Hunter had tears in her eyes, and the crew spontaneously clapped. John Polonia observed, “It was the first time someone cried making a Polonia Brothers movie, instead of just watching one.”
(Flash forward to a few days later, when I told Mark Polonia that I could remember the exact moment when I thought the movie would be great. He looked on, sleepy but sage, and said, “Be prepared for bad reviews anyway.”)
Fourteen hours after we loaded in gear at Mark Polonia’s house we were ready to wrap for the day. Bob Dennis, the Polonias, and I retired to an upstairs bedroom to look at dailies. When Hunter Austin joined us, she let out a blood-curdling scream. Although we assumed she was looking at the screen, she was actually watching a snake slither out of the rafters and dangle ominously over Bob’s head. More girly screaming ensued as two more snakes made an appearance, perhaps coaxed out by the warm movie lights we had used earlier. The sad part is that the girly screaming was evenly distributed among the participants, only one of which was a girl. It was loud enough that it actually woke up Jon McBride, who throughout the shoot showed the ability to drop onto any flat surface at a moment’s notice and instantly fall asleep . The fastest set breakdown in cinematic history had us bouncing back up the road to Mark Polonia’s house just a few minutes later. Quoth Mark Polonia, “I was there the day the courage of men failed.”
There is an ironically prophetic line in the script where Jennifer queries “counselor’s cabin at Crystal Lake or Leatherface’s living room?” Suffice to say, it did not take long for the Polonia Brothers to abandon their idea of the location as the center of a series called “Hell Camp.” John Polonia’s replacement idea: “Hell Yacht.”

FRIDAY MAY 30, 2003: “I WAS BIGFOOT’S SHEMP”
The whole cast and crew returned to the cabin in the light of morning, shaken but determined to go on. The entire day would be spent shooting the last few minutes of the movie where the Bigfoot creatures lay siege to the cabin. It never occurred to me to ask that with Hunter, Bob, Jon, and John Polonia in the film, and with Mark behind the camera, who might be called upon to put on the Bigfoot suit.
First there would be many intense scenes of screaming, running, smashing things, swinging meat cleavers and hot dog forks and rolling pins, running up and down the stairs, and so on. Basically, everyone drew on their real-life experiences of the night before. And the real, palpable fear on everyone’s faces when shooting the scenes where the cast barricades themselves in the bedroom (aka “the snake room”) only gave the sequence some extra spice.
Late in the afternoon we returned to Mark Polonia’s house, and were treated to a great home-cooked meal put together by the Polonia Brothers’ wives, giving a much-needed second wind. Then it was off to the home of the Polonia parents, a friendly couple whose easygoing manner made it hard to believe that they spawned the twins who made SPLATTER FARM, to shoot vehicle interiors for a climactic attack on Billy’s van. Although Jon McBride had “shemped” Bigfoot in the publicity stills shot earlier in the day and John Polonia shemped Bigfoot in the b-roll, it fell upon my shoulders to put on the heavy, hairy suit and throw myself repeatedly against the windows and doors of the van while screams and shouts issued forth. It didn’t take long to realize that there were no airholes around the nose and mouth, but I tried to bravely soldier forth, ripping off the mask in between takes to gasp blissful gulps of air and wipe the sweat from my brow. My head spun only once.
I peeled off the suit, leaving it uninhabitable for other mortals, and stepped away from it smelling like the inside of a flat tire. Then I looked around and realized that principal photography was over. Like the film’s antagonist, the shoot was hairy, noisy, smelly, and left a swath of destruction in its wake. But as the cast and crew congratulated each other and said their good-byes, it was a good feeling.

SATURDAY MAY 31, 2003: THE AFTERGLOW
With two of the main actors, Bob and Hunter, making their way home, the Polonia Brothers, Jon McBride, and I began to watch all of the footage, seeing the scenes we had shot over the last few days unfold before our eyes. Everything was there (a blessing, as John Polonia had an alarming tendency to leave the lens cap on), and not only that, it looked great. Over several hours I began to see in my mind how the film would piece together, and I thought, even if it gets panned from coast to coast and in every dusty corner of the Internet, I am still proud of what we did.
That evening I was treated to a great dinner at a nice restaurant with the extended Polonia family. There I saw a poster for the local “Rattlesnake Festival,” where denizens swarm the hills to capture and bring back rattlers to the baseball diamond in the center of town. Prizes are awarded for the biggest capture, and anti-venom and pork fritters are easily on hand. For myself, I would then apply a well-swung axe; but the fun-loving Pennsylvanians turn the snakes loose again. For the first time I thought I understood what in their formative years made the Polonia Brothers what they are today.

SUNDAY JUNE 1, 2003: PARTING IS SUCH SWEET SORROW
My last day in Wellsboro was full of odds and ends. I got to see John Polonia’s massive VHS and DVD collection, chockablock full of everything from rare Italian giallo to undistributed backyard slasher flicks to films I’ve never heard of from Russia and England to Mexico and Japan, a wall of horror titles that would make a fanboy weep and a Blockbuster rep quake in fear. I got to peruse the basement lair of Mark Polonia, where boxes of grisly props, alien hands and buggle-eyed masks and scorched spaceship models and gore-spattered swords, are packed in next to an AV nerd’s dream-stash of edit controllers and cameras and film equipment. I saw the row of PBE master tapes, NIGHTCRAWLER and FEEDERS 2 and SAURIANS and others, nestled in orderly rows in a basement, but already having a life of their own, in video stores and department stores and homes all around the world. I looked at them and wondered, would one day AMONG US be picked off a shelf in a store in a town in a country on this great spinning earth?
Later both Polonias and Jon McBride accompanied me to the airport. As I was checking my bags in the quiet terminal, the attendant inclined his head and said, “Your family can come up here and talk to you while we’re doing this if you want.” I began to muse on the idea…was this group of people more Partridge Family or Manson Family? Or was it something else, a family of artists and dreamers and technicians and of course filmmakers but above all movie lovers, who rose up from rich Middle American earth and followed their vision despite what those who cluttered the coasts might tell them was possible, embracing fans and ignoring foes while striding ever forward?
I was still thinking about it when the plane rose up into the sky.

2004: DAYS OF WINE AND PIRAHNAS
The Polonias had caught me in an unguarded moment when I carried that heavy tripod across the rickety bridge near “The Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania,” and I agreed to help them with rewrites over their next two features, a couple of relative quickies about a piranha attack and one about a killer rabbit. The killer rabbit script came to me a mixture of handwritten pages and typed inserts from an old script called PSYCHO CLOWN, bolted together with brass screws. The piranha script turned out to be a bit of a mishmash after production problems and long delays, but a little Polonia Brothers magic smoothed them out into enjoyable little packages, and both were on the shelf and ready for consumption.
But everyone involved were ready to gird their loins and launch another epic project. Some unwise historical collectors, unaware of how much mud and (fake) blood splashed around at a b-movie shoot, had offered access to period uniforms and weapons from World War II. This sparked the Polonia Brothers on to a burst of ideas, and somehow, once more, I was sucked into their vortex, on a supernatural war movie tentatively titled HELLSHOCK.

MONDAY MAY 23, 2005: BACK TO THE FRONT
Today we hauled equipment under two barbed-wire fences to state land behind the Polonia Brothers ancestral home in Ansonia, Pennsylvania. Mark Polonia insisted it was okay but seemed to be keeping his eyes peeled for rangers anyway. This was my first glimpse of D.P. Matt Smith and his low-riding purple van laden with dolly tracks, a jib, and every kind of light setup imaginable, including the low-budget filmmaker's friend the Chinese lantern. People who might scornfully say that the Polonia's movies were all shot with handheld camcorders would come to a reckoning on this day. The authentic costumes and weapons add much, though everyone's shoulders are hunched against the eventual FBI raid, or the appearance of nervous hunters. John Polonia voices his fears that he might have gotten on some unwanted lists by buying Nazi armbands and costumes from casually-perused websites.Lots of tramping in the woods, with a fog machine providing some spookiness. Mark gave the actors a faceful of leafblower to simulate a "cloud of souls" passing over the troops, and it was amusing to watch people's skin flapping back against their skulls. I came to realize that World War II filmmaking is a lot like the various descriptions of actual battle--long periods of boredom and inactivity spiked with sudden bursts of madness and desperation.Later we retired to a gravel pit, where I stood down at the bottom and allowed Brian Berry and Bob Dennis to lob mock grenades down on me, and I retrieved them take after take. Angling for that "Grenade Wrangler" credit.Even later we went to John Polonia's basement for some underground stuff, a location seen in more features than any Hollywood backlot. Mark and John decided to scrub a scene where the soldiers accidentally shoot a cat who jumps out in one of those patented scares oft seen in such films. John voiced his concern for showing cruelty to animals. Meanwhile, behind him, Jon McBride is pointing out to curious castmembers where he was standing where he was whipped with hooked chains in HOUSE THAT SCREAMED 2, and where Ken VanSant took the machete to the skull in PETER ROTTENTAIL. Our ragged band returned home late, after about a 14 hour day.

TUESDAY MAY 24, 2005: OUR FIRST DEADLY SIN
Today was the first day of shooting at the historic church in little Germania, Pennsylvania. What man of the cloth allowed the demonic twins to have unlimited access to this sacred spot remains a mystery. Though I remembered the ban on cussing at the church from earlier in the pre-production phase, when I had to rewrite the script to take out the bad words. If the Polonia Brothers and I were going to hell, it wasn't going to be for cussing in a church.
I continued to be amazed that the good people of the small towns of Pennsylvania--Wellsboro, Ansonia, Germania, and so on--don't rise up with pitchforks and torches and drive the Polonia Brothers across state lines into the wilds of upstate New York. As a for instance, we couldn't get cell service, so Ken VanSant (Lt. Bonham) walked down to a pay phone in front of a mom and pop store. This was unfortunately after the scene where he gets wounded and thus had some bloody bandages on. Apparently this caused a bit of a stir in downtown Germania, a stalwart hunting and fishing community where such injuries are perhaps not uncommon but certainly not welcome. Though later Dave Fife (as a German prisoner) walked into the local honkytonk with a leaking neck wound and a Nazi uniform and apparently didn't cause a stir. But this is what happens when Hollywood comes to town.

WEDNESDAY MAY 25, 2005: REALITY SEEPS BACK IN
A journalist, with a photog in tow, show up at the set from Harrisburg, the state capitol. They had been nosing around the night before, but stayed through until morning to see the cherry picker shots for the open and close of the feature. But the cherry picker never arrived, and everyone seemed disappointed except the unflappable Mark Polonia, (who has seen more b-movie disasters than Irwin Allen) who simply said, "We'll move on." I had been keeping my eye on the photog, hoping he would get a picture of me in full William Goldman mode, nodding in approval at the Polonias from a discreet location, instead of a shot of me going to pick up the pizzas or picking up all the trash in the church. I really didn't expect to be interviewed, so I was surprised when the journalist climbed into my van as I headed down the road to our lodgings to boil some hot dogs for the cast and crew's lunch.I was chatting along, trying not to talk out of my butt too much, when the reporter asked me if I was interested in going to Hollywood. It seemed like a dizzying anomaly for a moment. I was in our rented rooms above the local general store, boiling hot dogs. That morning, while I was drinking coffee with the locals downstairs, I learned a group of them had chased a mother bear and her three cubs down the main street of town the day before. It was not the William Goldman moment I had hoped for.
But I was reminded of a shelf of free paperbacks in the store below, alongside the video rentals and the Polaroids of hunting adventures and the fresh coffee. I had found a Philip K. Dick book I wanted, a welcome find, and left a paperback I had brought. This brought me more happiness than almost anything else all week. I remembered an interview I had given a while back where I recalled that as a child I had never thought about writing the New York Times bestseller but instead thought about my Great American Novel being on a dusty shelf in some out-of-the-way place, and a kid finding it and reading it and thinking: I could do better. I think about my movie experiences the same way. I have always been drawn to the underground, the unheard voices, the photocopied 'zines, the local bands with their homemade cassettes, and so on. Let my movies exist, not under the searchlights of Hollywood, but on a shelf in Germania, Pennsylvania, and let some disenfranchised youth from our great Flyover Country between the two coasts find it for rent, and be inspired to go on the same long, crazy trip I have taken.
That great, beautiful country sang by my windows as I took my leave of this latest cinematic adventure and pointed my car towards home.

I Used to Roll the Dice, Feel the Fear in My Enemy's Eyes

It's been a long journey since my sword-fellows came down, bloodied and victorious, from White Plume Mountain, back in the heady go-go D&D days of the late 70s. The Keep on the Borderlands was but a humble ale stand in those bygone days. Many of that lost Fellowship of the Flayed Goblin--among them my brother Eric and Hal, and some newer war brothers (10-15 years of campaigning), Barticus and my son Daniel, always a loyal Ranger. Only the Mighty Caveman was truly missed from this noble ensemble as we tackled D&D 4th Edition for the first time and its kickoff module, H1: The Keep on the Shadowfell.

For D&D purists, I have alarming news: the Mighty Empire has finally come under the sway of the online gaming world. Though I shed a tear, let's be honest: it probably had to happen.

For online gamers, I have even more alarming news: you were actually playing D&D all of these years anyway. You laughed at the nerds at the lunch table in high school, but they were all smarter than you and went out and wrote computer games based on their favorite pasttime, D&D, and then you started playing them--EverQuest, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, and more. Truly, it must be like finding out that the hot chick you were dating was actually a dude living in his mother's basement in disguise.

So D&D 4E is a super-pimped-up version of our former beloved game, where you can easily take on powers and skills that you used to only dream of attaining in some faraway level. Even our self-proclaimed "chaos gamer" Barticus, who never met a dark elf assassin with quadruple backstab skills using an enchanted double-damage dagger that he didn't like, expressed surprise at the torqued-up characters. You also take "healing surges" an online gaming conceit that make you less killable than ever before.

But guess what, the bad guys are juiced also. We merrily waded into a kobold ambush expecting to bat them aside like a swarm of scaly flies only to find my own dwarf fighter Bridgit Brokefoot (of the glass armor) going down three times in a row and needing the noble healing power of my Dragonborn paladin Leonid (who speaks in a Russian accent, continuing the annoying trend I began with the Jamacian accent of my old-school fighter/magic user/thief Pollux).

I could write more about a lot of the nuances (and probably have written too much already), like missing races and alignments and classes that we used to favor, replaced by things we don't understand and can't pronounce, but your mileage can and will vary.

Suffice to say we played twice over Thanksgiving and the new Fellowship of the Flayed Goblin--Bridgit and Leonid, Frax and Don, and two people whose names I can't pronounce so I called them Jan and Lawndart (two Rangers, two Fighters, a Paladin and a Warlock; I know, not a super-balanced party) liked it well enough and will soldier on and try to solve the secrets of the Shadowfell, over Christmas break. More adventures later.

Until then, give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Onward, Fighting Cardinals

Mutual Appreciation Society, Ball State Chapter:

So Doug Jones came to talk to my wife's class; the guy also known as the Silver Surfer, Abe Sapien, the two main dudes in Pan's Labyrinth, and Hocus Pocus, the part I saw him in, over and over, when my daughter was young. He was invited back to his alma mater as one of its more well-known alums, along with people like David Letterman, Joyce DeWitt, Cynda Williams, Papa John, the dude that draws Garfield, and--several thousand people down the list--your humble blogger.

Doug and I actually have a lot in common. Once upon a time, Doug was Ball State's mascot, Charlie Cardinal; and I watched him be that mascot.

We actually share one other tenuous thread. Doug's good friend Hunter Austin played one of the leads in Among Us, a Bigfoot movie I scripted several years ago that has had rather sturdy legs; if you are a Canadian, you can catch it some lazy, snowy afternoons on SPACE-TV, and if you live in the States you can find it in a lot of dollar bins of DVDs.

I will be a Hunter Austin fan as long as I live, because she was the first actress I ever heard speaking one of my lines; unfortunately, as longtime readers have heard before, that line had the word "cornhole" in it. And not the good kind.

Anyway, my wife mentioned this connection to Doug Jones, who astounded her by saying he had watched the movie. I truly believe that up until that point in time, my wife did not believe that anyone had ever watched a single one of the movies I had ever worked on. Like a sports team that is more popular on the road than at home, I really don't have any street cred at my own alma mater; so I have to thank the Silver Surfer for giving me some.

Until later, I am at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Ain't Nothing Like The Sky To Dose A Potion

Some British people selected the top 50 horror films of all time and then some other dudes decided to make a blog meme out of it, showing in bold the ones you HAVEN'T seen. Let's see how much I'm keepin' it real, shall we?

1.The Exorcist. William Friedkin (1973) 2.The Shining. Stanley Kubrick (1980) 3.Alien. Ridley Scott (1979) 4.The Silence of the Lambs. Jonathan Demme (1991) 5.Saw. James Wan (2004)6.Halloween. John Carpenter (1978) 7.A Nightmare on Elm Street. Wes Craven (1984) 8.Ring (Ringu). Hideo Nakata (1998) 9.The Wicker Man. Robin Hardy (1973) 10.The Omen. Richard Donner (1976) 11.The Birds. Alfred Hitchcock (1963) 12.The Thing. John Carpenter (1982)13.Lost Boys. Joel Schumacher (1987) 14.Dawn of the Dead. George A Romero (1978) 15.The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Tobe Hooper (1974) 16.Jaws. Steven Spielberg (1975) 17.The Blair Witch Project. Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sanchez (1999) 18.An American Werewolf in London. John Landis (1981) 19.Se7en. David Fincher (1995) 20.Poltergeist. Tobe Hooper (1982) 21.The Amityville Horror. Stuart Rosenberg (1979) 22.Candyman. Bernard Rose (1992) 23.Scream. Wes Craven (1996) 24.Carrie. Brian De Palma (1976) 25.Friday the 13th. Sean S Cunningham (1980) 26.Final Destination. James Wong (2000) 27.The Evil Dead. Sam Raimi (1981) 28.Hellraiser. Clive Barker (1987) 29.Hostel. Eli Roth (2005) 30.Salem’s Lot. Mikael Salomon (2004) 31.The Descent. Neil Marshall (2005) 32.The Hills Have Eyes. Wes Craven (1977) 33.Wolf Creek. Greg McLean (2005) 34.Misery. Rob Reiner (1991)35.Rosemary’s Baby. Roman Polanski (1968) 36.Child’s Play. Tom Holland (1989) 37.The Orphanage. Juan Antonio Bayona (2008) 38.The Entity. Sidney J Furie (1981)39.Nosferatu. FW Murnau (1922) 40.Night of the Living Dead. George A. Romero (1968)41.House on Haunted Hill. William Malone (2000) 42.The Haunting. Robert Wise (1963) 43.It. Tommy Lee Wallace (1990) 44.Audition. Takashi Miike (1999) 45.The Changeling. Peter Medak (1980) 46.The Mist. Frank Darabont (2008) 47.Suspiria. Dario Argento (1977)48.The Vanishing. George Sluizer (1993) 49.Shutter. Masayuki Ochiai (2008) 50.Planet Terror. Robert Rodriguez (2007)

Like any list, I don't totally agree with this--it leans a bit heavily on newer films, and makes only token nods to some great foreign genres--but I did better than I thought. No doubt there is some flat-out scary stuff in the first dozen or so. And respect for including Hoosier director Robert Wise!

Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Further Day Job Adventures

Live election returns until 2 a.m. Tuesday (What's up, Blue Indiana!), then five live basketball and volleyball games Friday and Saturday surrounding IU East's Homecoming (What's up, Red Wolves!), then fifteen pages of the new (nondisclosure) sci-fi script on Sunday, makes a long week; and yes, I woke up feeling old and creaky Monday morning.

Live from Blue Indiana

Kind of punchy after a sixteen-hour shift at the day job doing local election returns on community television.


I rolled out at 6 a.m., jetted downtown to our little town's only polling place and stood in a two-block line for 45 minutes to vote. Except for the surly guy saying that Obama was at the center of a terrorist plot, outlining an intricate storyline that wouldn't make a believable James Bond movie, it was a fairly jolly group. A mix of old and young and people with their kids. Somebody said they had never seen half of the people there before. I stood there and started reading Jim Butcher's first Dresden Files book as the sun rose on a pleasant fall morning.


My daughter joined me, home from college, and I talked to my son via cell phone in Indianapolis and tried to help him figure out where his polling place was. Driving to work, I passed another long line in a neighboring town.


That night we signed off at almost one in the morning and were too tired to think about what an exciting, memorable day it was. I hope everyone voted. In the great Heartland of America, what it means to be a citizen of this nation seems close at hand, but it is good to be reminded from time to time.

And now, back to killing a spaceship full of people via my keyboard and my new project. Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

The Calliope Crashed to the Ground

I thought about trying NaNoWriMo again this year but am instead doing its equivalency as I just signed to do my 20th script project, a sci-fi/horror hybrid which unfortunately (for my blog) I am writing under a nondisclosure, with a first draft due just after Thanksgiving. For some reason everybody wants to do nondisclosures these days, which makes the blogitude a little thinner. If everyone just went back to wearing tinfoil hats so people couldn't steal their ideas we would all be better off.

A lot of rocky pavement lately but we had a nice Halloween Open House Friday night which I guess we may have forgotten to tell the astronaut, Zorro, Gene Stratton Porter and (I think) an Afghani princess wasn't a costume party, though the other thirty or so people thought otherwise. Yes, I know it sounds like a lame sitcom plot from the 80s, but it's true.

I took a twelve-year-old Jason, AKA my Little Brother Harold, trick-or-treating for probably his last time, and had my little Westie puppy Bonnie along for her first time. She only barked at one other dog, and one baby dressed like a dog.

Hitting the keyboard today, after taking my daughter to see (gulp) SAW V; catch me later at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

On Location with the Red Wolves

Me, influencing the youth of today, teaching video production at Indiana University East. This is a field set-up at the Graf Recreation Center for the "Red Wolves Roundup" TV show.

An Overfed, Long-Haired, Leaping Gnome

This week I celebrated my 21st wedding anniversary, happily married for half of my sweet short life. If you want to check out how I kicked it old school 1987 style, peep here.

Trying to finish some script coverage this weekend on a project for a guy I worked with before. I have become notoriously bad this year about giving coverage and viewing screeners that people send me but I am vowing to mend my errant ways in 2009. Meanwhile, how can you not enjoy a script that has these two scene headings back to back:

EXT. SPACE

EXT. HELL

B-movies are fun.

My wife gave me a Books A Million gift certificate and I bought Naomi Novik's THRONE OF JADE, Steve Fisher's NO HOUSE LIMIT, that Hard Case Crime Double of two Robert Bloch novels, and the first Jim Butcher Dresden Files book (as recommended by my pal The Caveman). Winter reading ahead.

Astoundingly, my pal Dr. Squid is vowing to post every day in October to celebrate Halloween. Check him out here.

Kind of thinking about this again, although much of my career has been conducted in this fashion.

Speaking of scary stuff, we emptied out our bedroom to have new carpet put down this week and I found a file tucked under my bed of some items I thought long-lost, including the 2000 issue of HOLLYWOOD REPORTER that listed my first screenplay sale, PLAYER IN THE GAME, and the 2003 issue of that same august magazine that listed AMONG US; some old SUPER 8 FILMMAKER magazines; some old D&D characters; and some hand-written original drafts of Polonia Brothers movies I worked on, some that saw the light of day and some that didn't, including PETER ROTTENTAIL, GIZZARD GUTS, and FRONTIER EXECUTIONER.

I also found the journal I kept of books I had read as part of my vow to read 1,000 books between 1987 and 2012; astoundingly, I kept this list until June 1998 and had read 380 books by then, from Raymond Chandler's FAREWELL MY LOVELY to Karl Edward Wagner's CONAN: THE ROAD OF KINGS. For my young readers, nerds did exist before the internet, we just didn't know about each other as much then.

I got the idea from pre-scandal columnist Bob Greene and, even though I don't think I will make it at this point, there are plenty of interesting things to peruse there. If you want to see how I'm doing in the internet age, I vowed to read 50 books in 2008 and am blogging about it here.

Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Two Pumpkinheads

We squeezed in one more weekend of camping before the crazy run to the end of 08; lots of day job stuff for me and my wife and daughter's second half of the semester. A last battery recharge before the push to clang shut the lid on another year. Pretty and relaxing but, as they say, the frost was on the pumpkin and we used double sleeping bags at night. Too cold for 24 Hour Comics Day, but there's always a next year.

Close the Window, Calm the Light

When I wasn't paying attention 24 Hour Comics Day got moved to the fall, and through poking around on the interwebs home on a half-day from work when I should be doing something contructive I learned that it starts Saturday. I have survived this Nerd Extreme Sports challenge twice, once on my 35th birthday and once at Readers Copies Comics in Anderson, Indiana, with my brother, my pal Tom, and some other more talented people. I am going to see if I can get it rockin' this weekend, but if I don't, you can see THE LIBERATOR, my poorly-rendered take on the public-domain Nedor heroes starting here, and my first sketchy 24 Hour Comic, BAD EGGS, starting here.

In other geekly news, several of the old gang are trying to get together and try out this newfangled D&D 4E in the next few weeks. Though my brother wants to reboot a few of his old characters I think I shall retire the dwarven bard Farrah Brokefoot and start a new character; I'm contemplating a sardonic human rogue called Broken-Necked Jack, which came to me in a dream. Naturally, updates will be provided here.

Though I've only a third through it, I highly recommend HIS MAJESTY'S DRAGON by Naomi Novik to my blog pals. Until later, catch me at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Fall Straycationing

I kind of wondered if the dog thought we had fallen on hard times. Bonnie checking out her little tent, and our big ones, at Versailles State Park this weekend.

Camping Chow

Checking out the very nice night shot function on my new camera. Seeing how nice this camera is, my wife finally forgave me dropping our last one on the concrete at the company picnic this summer. I never thought I would put my dog in one of these little shirt things, and yet here she is enjoying dinner. I also never thought I would wipe her butt or brush her teeth, but there you go.

Three Eyes on the Grub

Meanwhile, here I am checking out an incredible meal of rare New York strips, butternut squash, fried apples, mulled wine, and some other stuff that makes my mouth water to think about. Yes that is a headlight on my head. We ate like kings all weekend, the best part of camping.

Around The Fire

Wife, dog, campfire. Songs have been written about such nights.

Morning Has Broken

Waking up first in the tent after a restful night at Versailles State Park. Feeling a good tired tonight while typing this.

One Tin Soldier Rides Away

Naturally, I was felled with illness after writing that last hopeful post.

But not all was bad. I didn't get to Mid Ohio Con, but I was able to get a several-page treatment fired off to a producer in a timely fashion. I did enjoy a pancake breakfast and some good chili at a local cook-off. I saw a musical, "Violet," performed at Ball State University that I had never seen or heard of and found pretty pleasant. My Colts escaped certain death at the hands of the lowly Texans.

Last year the Polonia Brothers Fan Club president Tim Shrum made an AMONG US birthday cake to celebrate the b-auteur's shared birthday. This year Tim took on SPLATTER BEACH, a newer movie the Polonia Brothers made with some girls in bikinis and without their favorite scribe. That's okay, it probably saved my marriage. I'm sure the cake still tastes sweet, Tim!

My SEX MACHINE pal Christopher Sharpe is smarter than me.

Hungry for some new zines from these folks.

Enjoying this read.

Much respect to my friend Joe Sherlock for posting this picture.

Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Jenny Was Sweet

I was just thinking, if I end up doing this new project I am talking to a producer about, it will be my third mockbuster, after THE DA VINCI CURSE and NEW JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH. Take that, William Goldman! Though I'm wondering, if you do a knock-off of a movie that doesn't do that well (re: Brendan Frasier's JOURNEY ETC.) is that mock office poison?

Today was a good day, as I took a half-day and going out the door found a $1 a bag book sale and picked up several dozen collections of Greek lit and plays for my wife, as well as an old David Lindsey thriller for myself. I caught the Ramones documentary END OF THE CENTURY while doing chores around the house and thought back to my high school days, and my own punk band The Johnnies, whose version of "Blitzkrieg Bop" was unjustly kept out of the line-up of the Muncie Northside High School Variety Show of 1984.

I finished the last chapter of a very good read, Martin Limon's THE WANDERING GHOST, and I'm wondering if I can finish Joe Hill's HEART SHAPED BOX before it gets too dark and I become too scared to keep reading.

Tomorrow is a pancake breakfast and chili cook-off in my small midwestern town and the weather should be good. I am smiling and tucking in my napkin yet tonight.

It is fall, and the world is still ripe with promise.

Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.