Sunday, December 31, 2006

Shine On, You Crazy Diamond

It's high noon on New Year's Eve and I just sent out my second draft of PRIMAL, the bigfoot movie I am doing a rewrite on. I talked to producer David Sterling, who must have been an early riser out in LA, then did one last look-over and shot it out.

Later today it is dinner and a movie with the family and off to some friends for the New Years party we have gone to for several years.

I looked back through my blog and realized I pretty much have the same resolutions each year--lose weight, work harder and smarter, shepherd my kids safely through the year--so they hardly bear repeating here.

I had a good year with both SEX MACHINE and BLACK MASS/THE DA VINCI CURSE/DEAD KNIGHT screening and getting picked up for distro. I am finishing the year with a lot lined up for 2007; we'll see where that all leads.

Last night my brother and I tried the new Axis and Allies game, Battle of the Bulge. It has a surprisingly different mechanic than the others in the long-standing series of board games but makes sense in the logic of the game. I played the Axis and made a startlingly large land grab as the Allied supply lines got tangled. Axis won, and another alternate universe falls.

Happy New Year, everybody!

Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Stamping the X into XMas

Thank God Christmas is over. Aside from the usual trauma and catastrophes I broke an antique chair at my mother-in-law's house which will probably end up at the center of family disagreements for the next few decades or so, surpassing the Thanksgiving when my dad bit into one of my mother-in-law's brownies and broke out his front tooth.

This year, I hauled in some new clothes and Charles Frazier's new book and a few bottles of wine (including one from Coppola's vineyard), and spent an Amazon gift certificate on Philip K. Dick's Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, the Robin Hobbs Liveship Traders Trilogy, and a couple more of those great, great Hard Case Crime paperbacks.

I am chunking along on Primal for a January 1 delivery date. I saw some location photos of a pretty cool cave that will play a central part in the feature, and am working that in.

I have dozed through a few movies but been wide awake during a couple of really good ones, including Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing and Charm School and Little Miss Sunshine. Marilyn Hotchkiss was so good I immediately put it back in and started listening to the commentary track, because I had a couple of suspicions about why things were done, most of which proved out to be true.

My brother got the Star Trek cartoon series on DVD and I proved that there was a character with his name in it, a sore point in his early childhood, according to our mother. In real life, he was named after Eric Fleming, the trail boss in Rawhide.

I played the new Marvel board game, which is fun but needlessly complicated, though I won in a last-ditch battle, Wolverine vs. Spiral, which catapaulted me in points over my middle-school nephew who was making hay with the Hulk. Then I turned around and stunk up Risk 2210 A.D., which is very fun even when you are down to holding Siberia and one or two other places while your brother rampages over the other continents. But like a true rogue state, I kept lobbing nukes at him, a nice added bonus missing in the earlier Risk games.

I'm ready to chuck 2006 aside and solider on to 2007. In the meantime, give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Sunday, December 24, 2006

World's Finest Christmas



From Justice League of America 100 Page Super Spectacular, only 50 cents in 1973; the first comic I ever remember reading, given to me by my pal Tom Cherry after I wrote about it in this blog. I re-read it last night, and it is still great. Merry Christmas, everybody!

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

News From Around the Globe

Reality show fever gripped my hometown of Muncie, Indiana, when "Armed and Famous," a celebreality show with people like Erik Estrada and Wee Man becoming real cops and patrolling the streets, came to town. First the local paper was front-page breathless about LaToya Jackson failing her physical and the radio station carried on about whether Erik Estrada had a toupee. But soon the bloom was off the rose when people saw them taking multiple takes of certain events and paying people to allow their faces to appear on-camera. The bitter truth is that reality shows aren't real. Just ask all my pals in the Writer's Guild, trying to get credit as writers on reality shows they worked on that allegedly don't use writers.

But my wife saw Jack Osborne at Cheeseburger in Paradise.

In other fictional programming news, I recently took "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" to task for making fun of midwesterners, showing a native of Columbus, Ohio who still used a record player and had never heard of Abbot and Costello. So the show fired back in a recent episode with a running gag about an overtime basketball game featuring "Muncie State." Now it's on. When you make fun of a Hoosier's basketball, it's on.

Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Sunday, December 17, 2006

And Eat It Too

Had to reboot my PRIMAL rewrite, so I have been chugging along on that for an end-of-the-year delivery.

I went to my nephew's birthday party and had one of the best pieces of cake I ever had. It was baked by an eastern European immigrant who is trying to break into business here, so he made this as a friend of my nephew's family to get the word out. It was so good that I have dreamed about that cake since. It is in the top ten pieces of cake I have ever eaten in my life. It made me weep to see crusts of it on disinterested kids' paper plates. All I can do is wish this man with his American Dream well.

I bought my nephew a classic version of Stratego. And all he did was immediately shove everything else aside and have me teach it to him. For my other nephew's birthday, I bought him Risk, and the same thing happened. Take that, Xbox. I still carry the torch for comic books, board games, and snap-tight models as the "bad uncle" I never had myself.

They served Colts Touchdown Sundae ice cream, and I observed that it started off tasting good, but the longer you ate it, the more bitter it became.

Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Friday, December 15, 2006

Party Like It's 1983

When I was a kid, Fangoria was the coolest magazine around. My somewhat steady appearances lately denote an overall decline in quality. Check it out here.

Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

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.

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Zardoz Redux

I think I am about two-thirds through the PRIMAL rewrite for director Michael Su and chugging along. For those tracking my propensity for writing shower scenes, this one pretty much takes place outdoors where there is no plumbing. So we had to settle for a sponge bath, naturally.

I finished listening to Paul Giamatti read A SCANNER DARKLY by Philip K. Dick, and it was a great audio book. I had picked up the paper version some time ago because SEX MACHINE FX person Leah Sharpe got a job working on the movie version down in Austin, and I figured I would check out the movie at some point. But it just got too depressing, so I shelved it. I came back to it a week or so ago on audio book and really enjoyed it. What I like most about what I call "hippie-fi" is how virtually everyone up until William Gibson wrote NEUROMANCER had no concept of what the wireless, internet, cell phone future would actually be. There are always rooms with huge banks of tape-spinning computers and guys (and women) walking around in plastic jumpsuits open to their navels. Drugs and sex always play a big part, a failure to forecast the Reagan Era. Just think Sean Connery in ZARDOZ, John Saxon in EARTH TWO, and Charlton Heston in PLANET OF THE APES to see the kind of future lantern-jawed, blue-chinned, hairy-chested leading men they were forecasting in the 60s and 70s. Were it that we could return to that (future) past.

I would love to write a screenplay that takes the stance that it was written in the 70s and forecasting the 90s (like A SCANNER DARKLY), then raid a Salvation Army and shoot it with all the sideburns and bell bottoms and plastic ray guns and giant computers still intact. There's something deeply appealing about that.

And I know I could do it, too. I remember shooting a Super-8 short in the early 80s that featured a guy talking on a phone in a car, and having to make sure that you could see the cord trailing off to the dash, because of course if the phone didn't have a cord it would look broken. And I was also the guy that thought CDs would never take off because, after all, they were just little records. Nostradamus, indeed.

Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Saturday, November 25, 2006

Bride of Bigfoot

Thanksgiving went well, and by well I mean any Thanksgiving where somebody isn't peeling out of the driveway with their middle finger out the window is a good holiday, our current barometer for measuring such things.

I am always in charge of the post-meal movie, and it is usually hard to find something that appeals to the six to sixty age bracket, but this year I thought it would be easier because circumstances dictated that nobody in attendance was under eighteen. I selected THE ICE HARVEST because it seemed to be a holiday comedy, although the box neglected to mention that this particular John Cusack Christmas movie opened with several extensive scenes in a strip club, for which my wife held me personally responsible. I had to tell her, Just because I have written a few movies that happen to have scenes in strip clubs does not mean I am responsible for every movie with scenes in strip clubs. So we put in RV instead, mild enough for any audience and easy to sleep and digest turkey to.

My hometown of Muncie, Indiana is going to be hosting a reality show called "Armed and Famous" and is about third-tier celebrities getting police training and going out on the mean streets. With guns. Seriously. Check it out here.

Spent a lot of Friday and Saturday morning cooking out PRIMAL for director Michael Su. I noted in working on the rewrite that the monster is referred to as both a yeti and a sasquatch. These are two different things. I knew I was the right person for this job.

Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Thanksgiving Morning

It's a perfect Thanksgiving Day in Indiana; the sun is bright and the air is crisp. We would say that the frost is on the pumpkin.

Downstairs I hear the Macy's Parade on TV. For only the second time in the last 19 years somebody besides us is hosting Thanksgiving, so we are having a more peaceful morning than usual. We are off to my mother-in-law's, where the debate is already raging between football and holiday movies. She makes oyster dressing and liver pate so my mouth is already watering. My wife is finishing deviled eggs and a fondue downstairs.

I baked cookies last night and played "Memoir 44" with my brother. I won two battles and he won two battles.

I saw the trailer for We Are Marshall at the movies the other day and it still brings a tear to my eye.

Winter is closing in. We start thinking again about Scrabble at night and old movies on Sunday mornings.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

John

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Sasquatch Redux

I am doing a rewrite for director Michael Su and producer David Sterling on a bigfoot feature called PRIMAL. It goes into production in L.A. in December.

Yes, I know that there is a danger I will become "the Bigfoot guy," after the success of my earlier Bigfoot movie, AMONG US, currently extremely popular on the Space channel in Canada. And I'm basing this assumption on the fact that when I went to Canada this summer they let me through the gates.

But how many guys get to write two Bigfoot movies in their careers? Not William Goldman, not Michael Tolkin. So there you go.

Updates on PRIMAL soon!

Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Monday, November 20, 2006

Blue Monday

A couple of new projects percolating I hope to add to the ol' sidebar soon. In the meantime, the Colts lost. Once the worst undefeated team in football, now the worst 9-1 team. I missed watching the game as I had promised to take my wife to the movies. It was the first game I missed watching so far this season. As we were leaving the theatre I clicked on the radio and heard the score. And my first thought was: If only I had been watching, they wouldn't have lost.

I can feel winter coming on. We start wanting to play Scrabble and stay inside and watch old movies. You know how most couples have a "free pass?" I mean a fantasy one, not the neighbor. My wife's are George Clooney and Johnny Depp. Meaning that if either of them came down in a spaceship in the cornfield behind my house and wanted to take her away, she could go. Let me give you a piece of marital advice to young newlyweds: if your wife asks you whose yours are, you say you don't have any. Even if she has a whole list. Even if yours might be Bridget Fonda and Gong Li. You have none. And that is how I have stayed married for nineteen years.

But watching old movies made me think of one I can't shake loose. Suzanne Pleshette, in a time machine, back to 1966.

Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Turn the Page

I haven't done a meme in a long while, but this one on pal Chris Hardie's blog struck my fancy, with answers off of the top of my head:


1. One book that changed your life?
Feature Film-making at Used Car Prices by Rick Schmidt.


2. One book you have read more than once?
For a while I used to re-read Joseph Heller's Catch-22 every year.


3. One book you would want on a desert island?
D&D 3rd Edition DM's Guide.


4. One book that made you laugh?
Candide by Voltaire.


5. One book that made you cry?
Streets of Laredo by Larry McMurtry.


6. One book you wish had been written?
One more Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones book from Chester B. Himes.


7. One book you wish had never had been written?
Mein Kampf by Adolph Hitler.


8. One book you are currently reading?
Michael Connelly's Echo Park; I've been hooked on his Harry Bosch mysteries for a while.


9. One book you have been meaning to read?
My Life by Bill Clinton.


Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.


Wednesday, November 15, 2006

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.

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Happy Halloween

And what better day to post that HELLSHOCK/BLACK MASS/THE DA VINCI CURSE is now renamed DEAD KNIGHT, with a slightly different trailer online, though fans of my writing can still see me get machine-gunned in the face.

And now a word from the Midwestern Anti-Defamation League: in last week's episode of STUDIO 60 ON THE SUNSET STRIP, we saw a character getting a visit from his parents, all the way from Columbus, Ohio. Although Columbus is a thriving metropolis with over a million residents, includes Big Ten Ohio State, and is the state capital, this character's parents are portrayed as squinty-eyed rubes--so much so that the dad still has a record player, and has apparently never heard of Abbot and Costello's legendary "Who's On First?" routine. I mean, seriously. Even funnier, the parents can't spend the night with the son in what is probably a pretty nice mansion, but have to "get on the road" back to Ohio after the show's conclusion at what is probably one in the morning. One is to presume that they are anticipating rolling into Columbus by five or six a.m., instead of five or six days later.

Ah, wilderness. Give me a holler at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Monday, October 30, 2006

Bad Eggs Pg. 21

Note Tilda's new hairstyle, after the "ski cap" comment by my daughter. One of my favorite pages, for some reason.

Bad Eggs Pg. 22

Follow The Volunteers in their self-titled spin-off comic, available whenever I get one done.

Bad Eggs Pg. 23

As the hour grew late during my 24 hour run, I strayed to the philosophical.

Bad Eggs Pg. 24

Thanks for reading my 24 Hour Comic "Bad Eggs!" We will now return to regular programming.

Friday, October 27, 2006

Bad Eggs, Pg. 19

Many true baseball fans will enjoy this sentiment.

Bad Eggs Pg. 20

First appearance of Lumberjack and Splinter, later seen in my "Volunteers" comic. Next time: the startling, somewhat anticlimactic denouement!

Tuesday, October 24, 2006