Lower the Curtain Down on Memphis

 This post first appeared, in a slightly different form, in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP.

My new film SMART HOUSE has hit streaming platforms; I will suggest catching it right here on Tubi, since you can see all three of my films there for free (including one in a Spanish dub).  And finally, my wife's colleague's teenaged kid likes one of my movies, even if it was made by an old person.  Won over one of my harshest critics.

I am thankful to director Joe Swanberg's microcinema in Chicago; "Late Shift at the Grindhouse" at Film Scene in Iowa City, Iowa; and the Englewood Theater in Englewood, Ohio for providing screenings of my movie before its street date.

I talked my wife into watching ALL THE HAUNTS BE OURS, a box set of folk horror, during October, and we had a lot of fun with it.  Start with the Eastern European ones that lean into the folk more than the horror to see some unique and offbeat films.

My reading is finally picking up again and if you like my newsletter you'll probably like THE MILITIA HOUSE by John Milas.  It's about a couple of soldiers at a base in Afghanistan who get bored and decide to visit a spooky abandoned house they can see just outside the wire, a bad idea.  It absolutely scared the fire out of me, and I don't get scared very easily.  I'm about halfway through SILVER NITRATE by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and I can tell it'll be recommended by me as well.  It's all about the occult and old Mexican horror movies so you know I'm going to be down for that.

The last time I sent a newsletter I had knuckled down and bought a Mac Mini tricked out with Final Cut to re-learn editing, but it's all still in the box.  The truth is I've been struggling with depression and have had to enter an outpatient program that involves medication, therapy, and coursework.  Having untreated depression has derailed a lot of my day job and b-movie night life, as well as everything else, so if you are reading this and in the same boat as me, I encourage you to seek help before you hit the guard rail and spin out like I did.

Hoping to re-enter the b-movie world again with new projects before long, but until then, thanks for reading.

Sixteen Going On Seventeen

 June's been a wild ride, and it's only half over.

Me and my SMART HOUSE producer Henrique Couto went to Chicago to screen the movie for the first time, in director Joe Swanberg's secret VHS store/screening venue.

Strange but true!  Swanberg (HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS, DRINKING BUDDIES, DIGGING FOR FIRE) opened a video store in Chicago, made up of his own VHS collection, and firmly and defiantly lodged in 1998.  So no social media, no email, no cell phones allowed.  As well as being able to rent VHS tapes two at a time, every month Joe snail mails a flier to card-carrying members (their photos taken with what looks like an old license branch camera) with everything going on there.  

Henrique and I were directed to a pizza place down the street from the venue, where we were met by our Chicago film programming friend Jason.  After a good Chicago cracker crust pie he escorted us to the location, which really is a blank door in the side of an unassuming building.

The front room is pretty small, with a lot of VHS categorized on shelves, then you enter a larger room with even more tapes and areas for old magazines and current zines, old books on a table and vintage clothes on a rack, all for sale.

The back room is larger yet and the only nod to the modern world, with a nice projector and sound system, but the decor is somewhere between speakeasy and all the basements I hung out in in middle school.  Joe spins records and audience members BYOB until the movie starts.

We had about 25 people there, a receptive crowd, and I was extremely flattered when Joe asked me up to do a Q&A afterwards.  Unlike what you'd imagine Hollywood people to be, he was extremely gracious and generous with his time and attention.  I think more people wanted to hear Joe Swanberg ask questions than wanted to hear my answers, but it was an attentive group and then after Joe said people could hang out for a while.

Which probably half the people did, until about one in the morning, and I found out it was pretty much a gaggle of film students, other filmmakers, and film-adjacent people, a good group to listen to records with and talk about movies to.

A memorable night indeed, and left with an offer to come back for something else one day, a good reason to keep making movies.

Just a few weeks before Chicago, I got a surprise email from the people who have been getting a ton of buzz for WINNIE THE POOH: BLOOD AND HONEY, a horror movie made when this sharp-eyed British production company saw Pooh falling into the public domain.  Like all overnight sensations in the movie biz, they've been grinding for a number of years with all kinds of other franchises to see what sticks, like the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, Medusa, Humpty Dumpty, and one called simply THE BAD NUN.

Now the bell tolls on BAD NUN 3, and they asked if I could write a script for them quickly--really, really quickly, faster than I ever have written, but of course I said yes because suddenly these folks are on a rocket, and it never hurts to be standing around when one takes off.

Friday was the first day of shooting, and it's been crazy watching it unfold five hours in the future in England,  just a few weeks from my keyboard.  Eager to see what happens with that.

On Wednesday Henrique Couto and I are heading back to another fantastic film venue, this time Film Scene in Iowa City.  This is a really, really nice theater with very articulate film fans, and it's a cool town to boot. 

Can't wait to fill you in on this, and the set of BAD NUN 3, very soon.

Suds and Soda

This post first appeared in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP.

 Heading to Dayton Saturday to put the final touches on SMART HOUSE, which needs to be done because we already have a screening, and it's back at the great venue Film Scene in Iowa City, Iowa.  We will be at "Late Shift at the Grindhouse" Wednesday June 21 at 10 p.m., and me and hopefully producer Henrique Couto will be on hand to answer questions after.  This is always a great, literate film crowd and the people who run the screenings are top-notch.

We have another screening in the offing, and it is a genuine surprise I think, so as soon as it is locked in I will have the info right here first.

A new Belgian website must not understand the U.S. film world too well, because they actually asked me to contribute to a series called "The Five Hidden Movie Gems of..."  It was flattering to be asked, and I thought you might want to read what I sent before the Belgians.  These are The Five Hidden Movie Gems of John Oak Dalton.
 

DEAD MOUNTAINEER'S HOTEL. I am curiously partial to Soviet-era science fiction but find many haven't seen Estonian director Grigori Kromanov's genre-bender, based on the book by the Strugatsky Brothers.

TATTOOED LIFE. I'm a huge fan of Japanese auteur Seijun Suzuki and although this isn't my favorite, it's one I've felt like I would like to remake, and is a good entry point for viewers new to his style.

THE RED CIRCLE. Again a huge fan of French director Jean-Pierre Melville and also sorely wish I could remake this one day. Fantastic noir.

ALPHAVILLE. The perfect film for my sensibilities, an insouciant genre movie through a New Wave filter with unapologetic DIY sensibilities, directed by Jean-Luc Godard to boot.

RED COCKROACHES. Cuban filmmaker Miguel Coyula's entirely original philosophical science-fiction film is a masterpiece of DIY filmmaking, looking like a 20 million dollar film but made for $2K, with ideas enough for a hundred movies.

My biggest regret in leaving the television and video world behind for marketing is that I have lost track of my editing sensibilities.  I feel like I was a pretty good editor back in the day, and in fact that was my entry point into the industry--assistant editing on Ivan Roger's priest-turned-hitman movie FORGIVE ME FATHER, editing all the action scenes such that I didn't see any scenes with anyone alive until I went to the premiere.

So I knuckled down and bought a Mac Mini installed with Final Cut X a few weeks ago.  I'm hoping it's like riding a bike, but I have to get it out of the box first and set it up.  I have a little low-level anxiety about it because my last true job in the video business was 2005, but I guess I can get on YouTube like everybody else and figure out how to do it again.  And I hope I still have a little magic left.  Tips from Final Cut X editors welcome.

Thanks for reading and I will have updates on SMART HOUSE again soon.

Like Dylan in the Movies

 

Slowly chugging through post on SMART HOUSE for a end-of-March deadline.  Got a picture lock in and sent to the composer, with the color timing, sound mix, and some effects to put in.  Really happy with this one.

Some sweet merch from SMART HOUSE, print run of two, came out from Ashlee Britt, who did script supervision on the film and also designed the Mothman tee shirt you see in the movie.  It memorializes the image she drew on the slate, and one of her favorite lines.  I got one and co-writer Richard Pierce got the other.

I just use a whiteboard for a slate.  I don't need to use a fancy clapboard with my name written on it, and the DP, and whoever else.  We know who worked on it.  It seems like people like to have clapboards with their names written on it so maybe this is sacrilege.

Production on my new grandbaby wrapped up a few weeks ago as well.  Her name is Amelia Rose and she is keeping everyone pretty busy.  She cries whenever her Boompa looks at her so she may end up being pretty smart.  Her great-grandma worked in the costume department on this project, as seen here.

Just got back from England, where I went on a field study with my wife and a group of students to learn more about Jane Austen.  I read PERSUASION to prepare, which is about a dried-up spinster of 27 who tries to find love again.  It actually would make a pretty good contemporary Lifetime movie.  It would be fun to do a modern adaptation.  I'm going to read NORTHANGER ABBEY next, which apparently is more of a Gothic and might also have trappings to do a b-movie version, you never know.  I'd like to go more highbrow, at some point.

Best of all my week-long search to find my favorite comic 2000 A.D. ended at the airport, with a good story from Judge Dredd in it.

I've got another recommendation for those who follow this e-newsletter, and it's THE SORCERER OF PYONGYANG by Marcel Theroux.  It's about a kid in North Korea who finds a D&D Dungeon Master's Guide a delegation from the West accidentally leaves behind, and everything that happens to him as a result of it.  Someday I'd like to write a D&D adventure based on what's going on in the novel.

As far as my own writing, I'd like to pitch a new movie to shoot in the spring after we wrap SMART HOUSE for well and for good.  I've got two things cooking and maybe will pitch both and see what happens.

Thanks for sticking around; a lot coming down the pike soon.

Welcome to 2023

This post first appeared in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP.

 I hope all of my readers enjoyed their holidays.  My holiday filmmaking season ended strong, landing legendary b-movie actress Brinke Stevens to voice the sinister A.I. "Cassandra" in my new movie SMART HOUSE.  Probably the first thing I ever saw her in was this, and she has worked steadily in the decades since.  I was extremely flattered that first she read the script, and second that she liked it and wanted to participate.  It should add a lot of value to the film.

And you can catch an exclusive secret teaser trailer featuring Brinke and lead Iabou Windimere right here.

I didn't quite make my goal of reading 50 books in 2022, what with my beloved dog dying, a health scare, my son's wedding, shooting this movie, and a new granddaughter (I think in that order), but a handful I did read that I can recommend to anybody include THE EMPLOYEES by Olga Ravn, SLEEPWALK by Dan Chaon, THE HEAP by Sean Adams, and PATRICIA WANTS TO CUDDLE by Samantha Allen.

I'm almost done reading something right now I think will be on my 2023 list for sure, and it's AN HONEST LIVING by Dwyer Murphy.  So that gives you a top five to choose from.

My resolutions for 2023 are pretty much my usual ones; take care of my health, help shepherd my kids and grandkids through the world, be creative.  Hoping you all can meet your goals for 2023 as well.  Take care.

My Head is Stuck on Something Precious

This post first appeared, in a slightly different form, in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP.

Had a brisk 42-page three-day weekend to wrap SMART HOUSE, including a 27-page shooting day.  It helps that we were mostly shooting a single person in one location.  I had much of the crew from the first weekend plus a few old friends, which also helps.

We didn't write it as a Christmas movie, but as the fates would have it we were shooting at various homes at Christmastime, so I thought we might as well lean into it.  The DP, Henrique Couto, has a snow machine, and when Iabou Windimere is outside at the denouement after REDACTED, we decided it should start snowing.  We both recognized it also snows when Jimmy Stewart comes back to the real world at the end of IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, so if we accidentally made a Christmas movie, at least those have legs.

There were a number of difficult shots, but I left a close-up for the very last one, in film production called "the martini shot."  Simple enough, Iabou gets startled and drops a plate.  I thought I was set by going to Dollar Tree and buying two matching 99-cent plates; we could drop one on a pillow in a wider shot and the other we could drop on the floor in close-up. 

But damned if that 99-cent ceramic plate didn't bounce three times in a row, clanging like a frying pan.  So Henrique ended up banging on it with a hammer for while, then roughly super-gluing the pieces back together until it was loosely assembled and somewhat dry.  Then it broke in one more take, and we were done with SMART HOUSE and even finished a little early.

It doesn't seem like a huge accomplishment right now because there is so much more work to do, and I'll update you on that as we go along.  Thank you for following this adventure.  Here are a few fresh screen caps to wrap this one up.

A Hole in the Sock Of

This post first appeared, in a slightly different form, in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP.

 I was a little worried about jumping back into the director's chair after over two years out, especially when the air sort of went out of me after COVID put the brakes on my last project, literally the night before principal photography.  But it turns out it's like riding a bike--a large, multi-gear bike that is speeding on a downhill road faster and faster, with that rock from RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK closing behind, and people along that road shouting out questions that need answered as you go past.

Since me and the writing team of Richard Pierce and Luka Nikolic first put pen to paper in September, with a December production date looming quickly, I knew I would have to load up cast and crew with people I've gone to war with before, like director of photography Henrique Couto, actors Tom Cherry and Iabou Windimere (and her husband Joe), make-up artist Chelsea Swinford, and utility players like Eric Widing, Erin Hoodlebrink, Andy Britt, and Ashlee Brown, who can all do a little of everything.

I was happy with how the first weekend went.  I purposefully loaded the schedule with easier things up front; one location and two actors and not too many set-ups.  I thought we had a rather breezy 16 page day and 17 page day, ending early both times. 

Mentioning this on social brought a small ripple of shock from people who wondered how we were shooting so quickly.  I remembered that when I was girding up to shoot THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE a friend who was making his first movie at the same time told me he was worn out from shooting ten-page days, and I had a sinking feeling realizing I had scheduled a couple of 20-page days.  But that one worked out, and the next one, and half (or maybe 40%) of this one so far.

New crew member Jake Baker told me he had worked on two 14-day sets this past summer in a variety of roles, and I had to tell him this was my third film, but only my eleventh day of directing.

I think it certainly helps that I started volunteering at the local PBS TV station in Muncie, Indiana (the home of Bob Ross) in I think 1981, and got my first part-time paid production job around 1985, going full-time in 1988 and working in various video and IT jobs clear through to 2009. 

It definitely helps that I have worked a lot with Henrique Couto as a DP and he pretty much knows what I like--which is rooted in the 70s auteur style that I drone on about--and I have a shorthand with several crew people who have been on sets with me before, as well as cast people who always come prepared.

I think I'm still a good live TV director, and I feel like I used to be a really good linear editor, but the tech goes by in dog years so I don't know anything anymore really; though I think I still have that feeling for it, which helps you shoot if you know how it needs to cut together.

But it really starts with writing a super-tight script with minimal actors and locations, just knowing what can be done easily and what is difficult, what has to be real and what can be shemped, what is expensive and what is cheap, overall thinking about what resources you have on hand.  And I have written A LOT of screenplays like that.

Today I am headed to Dayton to shoot the other 43 pages over three days, and there is a lot of running around and spooks and jump scares and such so we will really have to knuckle down and grind this one out.  Watch along on social to see how we are doing, and thanks for following along so far. 

Here are a couple of EXCLUSIVE screen caps from the first weekend that you won't see on social media, including that split diopter shot I always try to figure out where to drop in.

Tora, Tora, Taxi

This post appeared, in a slightly different form, first in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP. 

Although principal photography on my new feature SMART HOUSE really starts on Saturday, I feel like I pre-gamed a bit this past weekend.  I drove to the Farmland Community Center, where I shot scenes for both THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE and SCARECROW COUNTY, to record some voice over with Katy Wolfe. I got to see that the Cake Walk, which my late beloved dog once won a cake for me on, is still there; that this exists confounded many of my Ohio cast and crew, who could not understand our ways.

It was neat to be back in that space where I had several long days but good memories.  Katy and several people from the cast of both of those previous movies perform in plays and recreate old time radio shows there, and I arrived on a performance day and got to catch up with some familiar faces.

You only hear Katy on the phone, but she has a big role.  A lot of SMART HOUSE is about people trapped in various circumstances, physical and psychological, but even though Katy's character Alicia is blind and seems housebound she in fact galvanizes the other characters into action.  Naturally, she is named after Alicia Masters, the blind sculptor in the FANTASTIC FOUR comics.

Then I raced over to Dayton for a last-minute production meeting with producer/director of photography Henrique Couto to go over gear and crunch the production schedule, even though the main thing is that I wanted to eat at Marion's, the legendary Dayton pizzeria.

I've been getting up early, working through lunch, and working every night (while my wife is working out some Hank Williams Jr. on the guitar) so we can go straight to post and deliver this film sooner than I have my previous two.  The main reason is we have been fortunate to already secure streaming and physical media distribution for the film, based on the strength of our previous films under the Midwest Film Venture banner, so not only are you loyal readers hopefully eager to see this movie, but some people who are giving us money are, too.

I updated the production schedule Sunday, based on notes from that glorious pizza meeting, wrote out a prop list Monday, figured out the food for the weekend last night, and still have a ton of things to do. 

Tonight I want to spray paint a coffee can to hide the logo and then find a bunch of old thumb drives to put in it (IT MAKES SENSE IN THE MOVIE--maybe).  Then tomorrow I'll go hunting two cheap, identical plates, one I can smash on the floor, for another scene.  I've got dinner with writer/producer Richard Pierce on Friday, all the way from Vegas with his family, and some of the crew is coming in to sleep in my grandsons' room.  We will have a lot to talk about, for sure.

Speaking of props, I like including art from people I know in my movies.  In CRAWLSPACE, all of the "Outcast Swords" RPG art was from my friends Ray Otus and Dyson Logos as well as actor Tom Cherry.  There was a tee shirt from Tim Shrum (who did the killer's mask) and one from Steven Paul Judd.  They are all blink or you miss it things, but I was glad to have friends represented in there.  Same with SCARECROW COUNTY, with cartooning from actors Tom Cherry and Rachael Redolfi as well as director Joe Sherlock and screenwriter Dan Wilder.

For this one I decided to use a shirt designed by Ashlee Britt, who worked on the crew of SCARECROW.  It just sort of caught my eye, and I am going to have Tom Cherry wear it throughout.  If you think it is cool also you can get it on sale right here.

Speaking if shirts, if you want to look hip in front of all of your friends this holiday season you can also grab this boss Midwest Film Venture tee now.

If you don't already follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, go hunt me down at @johnoakdalton to ride along with all of our adventures, big and small, this first weekend of shooting.  And I will check back in with more secret content, on the other side.  Thanks for reading.

In the Middle of the Street

This blog post first appeared in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP. 

We just fit in one more (snowy) camping weekend this season before girding up for shooting my next movie, a thriller called SMART HOUSE.  Hopefully the weather can stay relatively mild through then.

Pre-production means there are a million little things to do.  Bought an ankle monitor security bracelet cover for a character to wear (a used real monitor is too expensive on eBay, so I'll just put a block of wood in the holder).  Found a used copy of The Great Gatsby at a book sale to use as a prop.  Talked to an actor back and forth about whether he could wear a pink bathrobe in the whole movie.  Told another I hoped she could dress like Grace Kelly in REAR WINDOW.  Compiled my "Secret Soundtrack," all of the songs that inspired me when I was writing the movie with Richard Pierce and Luka Nikolic, but could never afford to put in the movie:


Peter Schilling, Major Tom

The Fifth Dimension, (Last Night) I Didn't Get To Sleep At All 

The Vogues, Turn Around, Look At Me

The Police, Every Breath You Take

Blondie, One Way or Another

Death Cab for Cutie, I Will Possess Your Heart

Duran Duran, Planet Earth

Rainbow, Stone Cold

Flock of Seagulls, Space Age Love Song

The Rolling Stones, Gimme Shelter

I asked my old friend, legendary b-movie director Mark Polonia, if he would do a voice cameo, and like a true pro he recorded and uploaded it within 48 hours.

I have been getting up early, working at lunch, and trying to grab an hour at night, breaking down the script and hunting out PAs and combing through sound effects and all that I can to be ready for December 3 for the first of five days of shooting.  Join me here for more exclusive updates in the coming weeks.

Until then thanks for riding along.

Monster Mash

This blog post first appeared in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP. 

It's Halloween season, but I've fallen behind on all the spooky movies and spent a couple of pretty fall weekends camping instead, a fair enough trade.  But if you are behind yourself, and want to catch up, you still have time to watch at least one of the ten movies I've written for other directors that are currently free on Tubi:

REEL MONSTERS
 

NOAH'S SHARK

SAND WORLD

ALONE IN THE GHOST HOUSE

JURASSIC PREY

AMITYVILLE ISLAND

SHARK ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND

AMITYVILLE DEATH HOUSE

RAZORTEETH

PETER ROTTENTAIL
 
Or to make it a true devil's dozen, here are both of my directorial efforts as well.

This one isn't out yet, but the trailer for JESSE JAMES UNCHAINED dropped, a film I wrote and helped produce during COVID.

I finally caught up to BROADCAST SIGNAL INTERRUPTED which I liked a lot, and you will too if you get kind of spooked thinking about that weird Max Headroom thing that happened in Chicago way back when.  Also caught NOPE and BARBARIAN, both of which I enjoyed for originality even if I thought they unraveled a bit at the end.  That's light for me but not bad overall.

I have a really excellent book recommendation for my readers, one I have told everyone I know IRL to read and sent to a friend for his birthday:  THE EMPLOYEES by Olga Ravn.  It's like if the Strugatsky Brothers were showrunners for THE OFFICE and that's all I will say about it.

Longtime readers know that both me and this guy Tom Cruise and a couple other people had movies grind to a halt during COVID.  It's been hard to get the machine running to get back to it.  But slowly, and then quickly, I'm working on a new movie to shoot in December.

Way back in October 2013, a young writer named Richard Pierce, eager to break into the b-movie world, wrote me an email.  Fortunately for him he didn't follow my advice too closely and is now living the sweet life in Vegas writing Lifetime movies like KILLER PROFILE and STUDENT SEDUCTION.  But fortunately for me he can't shake his love for really cheap b-movies, so when Lifetime rejected his pitch for a movie called SMART HOUSE he asked if I was interested in working on it with him.

It's about an influencer trapped in a smart house seemingly gone crazy, and I have to say it really kindled my interest, and we kicked ideas back and forth and started writing the first of five drafts on September 14th, and now Richard is flying out here the first weekend in December and we are starting production December 3rd with my great movie partner Henrique Couto.  Richard had all the good ideas, and I wrote all the eccentric characters and took out everything that costs actual money.  We may end up a dangerous combo.

Hopefully the weather holds, and I can assemble the cast and crew I put it together for.  For various reasons this is kind of a secret project, so the only place you can get real updates is right here.

Although I am still working through a cocktail of various pills for hypertension, we have had a beautiful fall in Indiana.  Wishing the best wherever you are--and Happy Halloween!

I'll Never See Your Smilin' Face or Touch Your Hand

This blog post first appeared in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP.

This week was my birthday.  I took it off, which is a luxury when I can do it.  Since I turned 50 I have always taken a leisurely, ironic stroll past the neighboring graveyard on my birthday (is it a surprise that I live next to a graveyard?) but that seemed a little close to the bone this year.  I've been struggling with my blood sugar and especially my blood pressure lately.  My glucose monitor has several choices to pick from after you prick your finger and I always hit "I feel fine" because there isn't one that reads I FEEL LIKE HELL QUIT ASKING.  But I will lasso this in.

The beast of it for me is that when my daughter was married in 2014 I was diagnosed with Type II diabetes (after having an incident of disorientation I thought was because of all the stress). I went down four pants sizes and lost around 50 pounds and have stayed off insulin. My doctor said I was 1 in 100 patients but it could still catch up to me one day. Which is funny because until a month or two ago I felt better in my 50s than my 30s.  But i guess I can't outrace the devil forever.

So now my son is getting married, and I am doing the ceremony, on September 10 (not a Satanic Mass).  The reception is at my house.  And I mentioned last time my dog died.

I loved my dog like a person. She was our empty nest baby when my daughter went to college. She was a princess. It happened very quickly, over 72 hours. I think she had a massive stroke at 14. Her face was notably slack and she was stumbling around, whimpering and pacing all night. She was a West Highland White Terrier and that's about all they have in the tank as well. It was a hard decision to make but I respected her too much to let her suffer very long.

So maybe hitting the stress button hard and getting on some meds.  It would be awkward for everyone if I died right before the wedding.

I'm wanting to get started on a new project, so I decided to push the reset switch and just sit on the couch on my birthday and watch movies.  I burned my free seven-day SHUDDER preview I've held onto forever and watched GLORIOUS and ONE CUT OF THE DEAD, the first because an Indiana guy wrote it and the second because so many people have talked about it.  GLORIOUS is funny and original, about a Cthulhu-type monster trapped in a rest stop bathroom, and I'll leave it right there as to why it is called GLORIOUS.  ONE CUT OF THE DEAD is an incredibly meta zombie movie about some people making a zombie movie, and the storyline keeps nesting like Russian dolls.  This is a great, wild movie I'd recommend to anyone for an October watch.

I was going to watch BROADCAST SIGNAL INTRUSION and make it a triple play but I took a nap, these new blood pressure meds take some getting used to.

Been trying to feed my head in other ways too; I finally decided to tackle Grant Morrison's run on DOOM PATROL, mostly because I saw all three volumes in TPB at the public library.  It never struck me as a younger comic book reader but I have wanted to tackle this head trip as an older guy.  It's not like anything else, which is the kind of thing I need to put my eyes on sometimes.

I read a book I could recommend to my subscribers called SLEEPWALK by Dan Chaon.  It's about a mercenary and his loyal dog in a dystopian near-future (struggling to keep up with our real one) who starts to question his life when he finds out he has a daughter.  Our tarnished protagonist rattles through various genres on a number of broken highways, and it's a pretty original read.

I got a Carhartt hoodie for my birthday which finally made me articulate how I'm ready to put this busted-ass summer behind me.  Wishing all of you the best.

Just Like the One in Our Backyard

This post first appeared in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP.

 A long time ago I took a handwritten script from John Polonia called PSYCHO CLOWN and over a three day weekend typed it up/rewrote it into a screenwriting software program and turned it into PETER ROTTENTAIL, without realizing that almost twenty years later I would still be getting on social media around Easter time and finding all the people who watch it as part of their holiday tradition.

I'm beginning to feel that way about another film I wrote, NOAH'S SHARK.  There has been A LOT of commentary on social media about it. 

There seems to be a general consensus that I was either crazy or on drugs, when I was rather quietly tapping away on my laptop drinking Coke Zero and listening to soft rock of the 70s on SiriusXM.

More fun are the people trying to read real Biblical storytelling into the movie, which I actually enjoy because I DID try to cleverly weave in real things and sort of get frustrated when people think I made up stuff like "The Witch of Endor", a real Biblical character.  It DOES scare me a little when people who have really studied the Bible are like "Noah is portrayed blah blah when in real life he was blah blah" when I didn't even bother to watch the Noah movie with Russell Crowe.  It's a rock and a hard place, but I had fun writing it, and that's how I pick my for hire scripts now--if I would have fun writing it.

At one point I was trying to figure an angle on DUNE WORLD and always thought it was interesting that Philip K. Dick used the I Ching to help with his storytelling, so I too used the I Ching for some of the dialogue.  Naturally, everybody thinks I was writing "gobbledygook" and "nonsense" but for those who know, they know, and that's who I wrote it for anyway.

Anyway, head over to social media (especially Twitter) and type in "Noah's Shark" or "Noah's Shark review" and see it unfold!  Some of the podcasts dissecting the movie are longer than the movie!

I've really flexed my muscles by writing some short stories for the Weekly Spooky podcast that couldn't be made on the budgets of most of the films I've worked on.  The site has been re-designed recently, and now you can search for mine, if podcasts are your kind of thing:  

https://www.weeklyspooky.com/search/?q=john+oak+dalton

It seems like more things in the world suck than not right now, including the death this week of my dog Bonnie, 14 years old and our empty nest baby.  But if the worst thing I ever have to do is dig a grave for a dog I loved like a person, I'll count myself lucky.

But the astounding thing was almost 200 comments on Facebook (and more than 500 interactions) about her, which makes me think we might just make it as a society, after all, if that many people care about dogs.

I've finished two screenplays lately and chunking on a third, so anything can happen.  Wishing all of you well.

The Bats Have Left the Bell Tower

This post first appeared in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP.

It's funny when my day job and my side hustle overlap. I get asked to be on a lot of searches because I have a good eye for talent, even if I am bad at other things.  One thing I do on searches is google the names of finalists to see if anybody has said or done something bad that's been left lying around on the internet (and I have found a surprise or two, from time to time). 

But suddenly I'm finding out a lot of people have been in b-movies.  Here's the trailer for one you can rent on Amazon Prime right now but this one seems lost to the ages. 

I think a lot of people like to be around the excitement of the movie business, It can be an absolute grind, though, which is why I think it's funny that viewers think filmmakers set out to make "intentionally bad" movies. I tell anyone who asks, don't start a movie you don't want to live with for at least a year.  It's so hard, so ridiculously hard, to make any movie, I can't see any reason why somebody would want to make a bad one.

I was on a podcast last Friday where I talk a ton about filmmaking, and a surprising number of people have already watched it; you can check it out here if you missed it.

Kind of puttering around on writing, but I am proud of a two-part story I did for the Weekly Spooky podcast, Calamity Jane vs Dracula.  After writing Calamity Jane's Revenge (now free on Tubi), I had a dream I wrote this and was in a movie lobby waiting for it to start.  I've thought a lot about that dream over the years and felt it was time to bring it to crazy reality.  

A few things percolating and I hope I can report back soon.  Thanks for sticking around.

I'm On A Wavelength Far From Home

This post first appeared in my newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP.

Easter has come and gone, always a busy season for me.  It's when I get on social media and interact with all of the people watching PETER ROTTENTAIL.  For something I wrote back in the early 2000s, it has just hung around and hung around.  It's fun to see.

It doesn't hurt that now you can watch it for free on Tubi.

If you want to add more spirituality to your Easter viewing next year, another movie I wrote, NOAH'S SHARK, is free on Tubi now too.

Man, Tubi, I tell you what.  Not that long ago I didn't know what it was, and now almost my entire career is on there (including what I thought was a lost movie I didn't get a credit for writing!).  A lot of people are saying it's now the go-to place to see independent movies and it's hard to argue the point.  What I like to do is type a word into the search engine, like "Amityville" or "Zombie" or "Ninja" or "Scarecrow" or "Massacre" and just click through a bunch of stuff and get the ebb and flow of it.  It's a fun exercise to sort of get the juices flowing.

We are all trying to figure out how to get the machine running again in the movie world, even way out in the hinterland where I am.  I am still quietly writing away, and maybe yet this year some of the fruits of that b-flavored labor will be out in the world.

I'm even falling behind on my annual goal of reading 50 books a year, but one I've read this season-- THE HEAP by Sean Adams--is a book I can recommend to people who like my stuff.

Hopefully will have some news to report soon, but until then, best to you all and thanks for sticking with me.

Top Ten Reads of 2021

In another bad year, I had a good reading year, with a lot of great choices below.  Here are my Top Ten books, in a year where I passed by goal of 50 and hit 64.   Enjoy!

RAZORBLADE TEARS by SA Cosby

STILL LIVES by Maria Hummel

ZERO ZONE by Scott O'Connor

UNDER THE HARROW by Flynn Berry

THE RESISTERS by Gish Jen

HARLEM SHUFFLE by Colson Whitehead

THE KILLING HILLS by Chris Offutt

THE GUIDE by Peter Heller

THE BODY SCOUT by Lincoln Michel

THE MISSING AMERICAN by Kwei Quartey

To Get A Jolt From My Electrodes

Happy Halloween, all. If you haven't picked a movie for tonight, you can find several I have worked on, on various platforms, for free.

THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE (writer/director): https://tubitv.com/movies/512259/the-girl-in-the-crawlspace?start=true

SCARECROW COUNTY (writer/director): https://www.amazon.com/Scarecrow-County-Iabou-Windimere/dp/B096VR4G62/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=scarecrow+county&qid=1633130749&sr=8-2

AMITYVILLE ISLAND (writer): https://tubitv.com/movies/566011/amityville-island?start=true

SHARK ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (writer): https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B08HMVS445/ref=atv_sr_def_c_unkc__24_1_4?sr=1-24&pageTypeIdSource=ASIN&pageTypeId=B08HMX1KGV&qid=1633130933

JURASSIC PREY (writer): https://tubitv.com/movies/525848/jurassic-prey?start=true

RAZORTEETH (writer): https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B08W8DHVHX/ref=atv_sr_def_c_unkc__8_1_8?sr=1-8&pageTypeIdSource=ASIN&pageTypeId=B08W8Q94W6&qid=1633130872

PETER ROTTENTAIL (writer): https://tubitv.com/movies/581566/peter-rottentail?start=true

Bonus movie I wrote if you don't like scary movies, CALAMITY JANE'S REVENGE: https://tubitv.com/movies/455264/calamity-jane-s-revenge?start=true

Enjoy!

For my own viewing, I didn't get to see a lot of new ones, but I did finally face my childhood fears and watch PHANTASM.  When I was a teenager, my friend Eric Mayse (who would later, famously, be sculpted as this action figure), described the plot to be in such a way that I was too terrified to watch it.  And that was a terrible oversight, as it is a crazy, dream-like film that would have appealed to my teenage sensibilities back in the 80s.

Along those lines I also watched CENSOR, which is about a British censor in the early 80s watching "video nasties" and recommending cuts, even as her personal life starts to unravel.  

And even more along those lines, my old b-movie pal thought I would like BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW, and he was right, a movie set in the 80s about a young psychic being held prisoner in a weird institute.

So if you like my movies, any of these three are worth a look.

A movie I wrote, NOAH'S SHARK, is supposed to street next week, so I will report back when I see it, though I assume it is crazy.  My good friends at Film Scene screened it a few weeks ago, but I unfortunately had car trouble on that very day and couldn't make it.  I would have liked to have known how it played.

Have a good Halloween!

Talking in Our Bed for a Week

This post first appeared in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP.

I was as surprised as anyone when my new film SCARECROW COUNTY hung on for four straight weeks in the Amazon Hot New Releases in Horror.  Thanks to everyone who picked up a copy or has seen it on some other platform.

And I was extremely flattered by this interview and review of a film I wrote, SHARK ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, by the British website The Schlock Pit.  I am appreciative that the people there give thoughtful attention to the b-movie world, and are good writers to boot.

They used just a few snippets of an interview about the writing of SHARK ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, so I thought I'd share the whole of what I wrote back when they asked a few questions via email, probably more than they wanted to know.

Mark had asked me to write all the scripts for a three-movie deal with Wild Eye that all already came with titles and basic descriptions; the caveat being is that he needed all three in six weeks. I'm to the point in my career where if I write something for somebody, there has to be a reason; and I have always been interested in director Thomas Carr, who once shot 6 b-westerns in 30 days (I wrote about it here), which I think not enough has been made of. So I thought this might be a neat challenge.

I had NEVER written this fast in my life; typically I can write a full script in three weeks, if I'm pushing it. I think I worked on these an average of 10 days each. They were written at a fever pitch and honestly I didn't remember a lot of detail until I saw the final product, and even then wasn't sure what I thought up and what Mark added.

Rewind to when I wrote my first movie for Mark, AMONG US, and he had a three-picture deal afterwards and asked me to write all three in a year, and I wasn't sure I could write three movies in one year! In that case I rewrote two and then wrote a third from scratch.

The first was PSYCHO CLOWN, which was turned into PETER ROTTENTAIL. I took John Polonia's handwritten script and rewrote it as I was typing it into a screenwriting program. Next I did a rewrite of RAZORTEETH, then my original script was DEMONS ON A DEAD END STREET which remains one of my favorite scripts but didn't get made.

PETER ROTTENTAIL has been rated one of the worst horror films of all time by Nerdly, and Fangoria did a whole podcast dedicated to it; as well as all the people who watch it on Easter every year. RAZORTEETH disappeared almost without notice; and frankly, which is worse? To me, at least, it's the latter.

So for this new trilogy of scripts: AMITYVILLE ISLAND was the easiest of the three for Wild Eye; I had written a movie for Mark a few years before called DOCTOR ZOMBIE that had not been made, but I noticed had a lot of similar beats as the Amityville premise. It was heavily influenced by Mark's love for ZOMBI 2 and TOMB OF THE BLIND DEAD with my own interest in LUST FOR FREEDOM thrown in. So I knocked that together quickly and it has been noted by reviewers that it has a little of everything, and all of it crazy, as I intended. I wrote another one whose title I will hold back as it hasn't come out yet, but it was full of time travel and dinosaurs and alternate timelines and I had a blast with it. My favorite script of the three. I hope it streets yet this year.

ALIENS VS SHARKS (the original title) was the hardest to get my mind around for some reason so I saved this to write last. But once I got going it started cooking, and again I don't exactly remember writing it. In fact I went back and read the outline before responding to this email. It came with a four-page outline with a lot of the beats, mostly the effects that were going to be made or on hand, and a little bit of story. I made the Jenni Russo character a therapist when she was a photographer in the original, because I wanted to include an alien abduction storyline; I think the other characters were pretty much as presented in the outline. I thought the treasure hunters were a neat touch in the original. I thought the movie was very ambitious, but especially the third act, which I thought was going to be too much to get on screen in a workable way, so I toned it down quite a bit. My ending, which featured a group of teens on the beach Frankie Avalon-style inadvertently re-starting the whole mess, was not used, and I think the whole part with Dave Fife was created so that Mark could work with Dave before he moved. I think I had somebody quoting a lot of Shakespeare which was cut out, understandably enough. Otherwise, by and large what I wrote is up there, for better or worse.

It's funny now, but I can see the seeds of my own later movie, THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE, in this script, including the therapist and the character obsessed with westerns. I always try to hang my stories on things I was interested in, and one in this case is a lawman who is basically on his last day on the job and isn't going to be a lawman any more, and what that means. Honestly, I had also buried a family cat in my back pasture and thought it might be a good set piece for a movie, and that's in there, too. Just all the flotsam and jetsam you pick up through life, interest in culture, interest in other people. Whether people see it or not, I try to put in elements that might resonate with someone besides aliens shooting rayguns or whatever. I think Jennie Russo and Titus Himmelberger are both enjoyable in this. I thought Titus gave his lines an especially eccentric read and it turned out like I hoped. Jeff Kirkendall is good as always. I try to write for the people I know Mark is going to use, but sometimes he changes it up or introduces somebody new, so it's always a nice surprise.

I think when you have a movie titled ALIENS VS SHARKS you are either in or out when you hear the title, and the rest doesn't matter. You are going in it to have a good time. So for this kind of movie, or all three of these movies, I like to try to make them funny, with a lot of nods to horror fandom, lots of energy and outlandish situations and characters. I'm not sure every viewer is in on the joke, but that's what I hope. I think the biggest thing to note is that I have never been involved with a movie that comes from cynicism; these kinds of movies are made by people that love the genre for people that love the genre. Horror fans, by and large, are the most loyal and devoted and will follow you where you want to go, whether you have the money to make the trip or not.

I badly want to see THE SUICIDE SQUAD for my upcoming birthday but I think I'm not going back to the movies quite yet.  I will, however, watch the Mooreland Fair Parade, which leaves tomorrow from my large side yard (as agreed to when we bought this place) and shoots straight down the road a mile to the fairgrounds.  It's always fun to tailgate with the grandkids and check out the fire trucks, floats, and horses from up close.

It seems like we took one step forward and two steps back; hope all is well with you and yours, and thanks for reading.

Blackbird in the Barn

This post first appeared in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP.

My second film SCARECROW COUNTY hit DVD on Tuesday, and as I have always done when something I wrote or directed comes out, drove around looking for it.  I am still working from home in a pretty rural area, so I didn't have any luck at local stores, but pictures from all around of my movie in WalMart started showing up, which was flattering to see. 

 And thank you to everyone who has purchased it from Amazon.  It has cracked the Top 50 New Releases in Horror, which is great since some Godzilla movie and some movie about being quiet are perched at the very top.

My movie's producer Henrique Couto has a fun podcast called WEEKLY SPOOKY, and he hit me up last week to write about that long-ago ancient world before air conditioning called the 1980s, during which time I was alive and a teenager, so I knocked out a quick one in that grand old style of a bunch of counselors under siege by a nutcase at a ramshackle old summer camp.  You can listen to it here.

I'm going to leave you with this curiosity; a custom action figure by MCWF Customs based on a movie I wrote called SHARK ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, which had the more introspective title SHARKS VS ALIENS when I wrote it.  If you missed the trailer, check it out here.

Until next time, thanks for following along and let me know if you see my movie SCARECROW COUNTY in the wild. 

Four Walls

 This post first appeared in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP.

Timehop showed me this image just the other day; that brief, shining moment when I had four movies I'd written in Family Video at the same time; especially memorable to me in that writing HAUNTED HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW and JURASSIC PREY is what coaxed me back out of self-imposed exile, because I really wanted to write a movie called HAUNTED HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW and I really wanted to write a stop-animation rubber dinosaur movie.  Working with friends Henrique Couto and Mark Polonia was also a bonus.

My latest for Mark is DUNE WORLD, which I wrote in quarantine and is already out.  One of my favorite things is when I write a script that gets turned into a movie that gets turned into a tee shirt, and it's happened more often than one might think.  

It is obviously a mockbuster, but it's more Philip K. Dick and Samuel R. Delany than Frank Herbert, with a coda from the Strugatsky Brothers.  I finally had a chance to see it, and was happy to see director Mark Polonia really leaned into the psychedelic sci-fi elements.  Who knows what the world will think of this one.  The trailer is here.

It is leaking out there that I wrote a movie for Henrique Couto called JESSE JAMES UNCHAINED and after a few COVID-related fits and starts over the last year or so it finally wrapped in Ohio.  I worked as a Production Assistant two days on set--one very cold, one very hot--and it was neat seeing it come to life.  I got to be there to see scenes with John Hambrick and Rachael Redolfi, who appeared in both of my films, and work with some people who crewed mine as well, Eric Widing and Buck Marinara.  I had forgotten it is more boring to PA than to direct but it was fun to hang around anyway.
There's more coming.  I believe three more I have written over the last few years are in post or completed.  One is going to be announced pretty quickly, I think, and is for an established b-movie director I had not written for prior and always wanted to.  Could be a big year for releases.

As the doors slowly open up again everywhere, I was happy to see my old friends at Film Scene back at it. I hope to return to Iowa City one day with another film but until then will happily rep this shirt they sent me.

The Midnight Hour live horror podcast invited me to be interviewed on their show which I only agreed to when I learned it started at 10 p.m. and not midnight because I'm in bed by then.  They said they have a lot of questions for me, which actually worries me a bit.  You can check it out here July 25.

After a year of driving the highways and byways hunting Little Free Libraries to stave off the isolation, somebody went and put one in my town, just a half mile away.  Check it out if you are ever around.

Our summers on the Back Five are full of projects and weekend trips.  Hope you are enjoying yours, and thanks for sticking with me.  More soon.

Somebody Holds the Key

 Timehop and Facebook Memories are showing me production photos of both THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE and SCARECROW COUNTY, which I shot in the same week one year apart in 2018 and 2019 (which happened to be spring break from school).  It's like looking at vacation photos, you remember all the fun parts and forget the parts where your feet hurt and you were hungry or tired or you were crabby with someone.

But tonight at 11 p.m. EST I am really going to have to pry out some more memories, as I was asked to join Film Scene's Late Shift at the Grindhouse for a virtual screening of SCARECROW COUNTY with running commentary from me, right here on Facebook Live.  SCARECROW COUNTY debuted at Film Scene in Iowa City in 2019, so I am so glad to be asked to be a part of their programming in some fashion.

I did live commentary with them for THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE about a year ago, back when I thought I was going to be working from home for a few weeks, now coming up on a year March 13th.  I thought it was a fun idea to patch us over to when we could be there in person again, and here we are doing another one.  But my number came up in the vaccine lottery in Indiana, so it won't be long now before the mind turns to new things.

Just grabbed some new pullets Monday to add to the flock, so spring is in the air, and hopefully more good things.  I hope all of you are well and thanks for reading.

Crossroads Seem to Come and Go

This blog post originally appeared, in a slightly different form, in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP.  

It was a year ago today that my debut feature THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE hit WalMart and Family Video nationwide.  It was such a memorable day that has obviously been eclipsed by the smoldering dumpster fire that was just on the horizon.

Just the day before that, I had been driving back from Chicago for my day job and had decided to visit Family Videos along the way to introduce myself and ask if they were carrying the movie.  The people there were to a person very kind and excited for me.  I'm sorry to see Family Video go.  Even at the time, it seemed as if they were closing faster than they could stock my movie.  But it was always fun to find movies I wrote there--I once had four I had written in Family Video all at once--and it was especially a thrill to see one I directed there.

Since THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE had already hit streaming, I didn't think it popping up at WalMart would be that big a deal, but my social media went crazy that day with people from all over the country sharing photos that they had purchased it somewhere.  I'll never forget that.

It didn't hurt that my friend Henrique Couto, who DPd my movie, had his own effort OUIJA ROOM street the very same day at WalMart, with some of the same people in both.  Check it out, if you haven't.

And if you didn't catch mine yet, people are now sending me pictures of it at Dollar Tree, or if a dollar is too steep, you can see it for free on Amazon Prime and Tubi.  I'm glad it's still out there and still getting seen and reviewed--no less than Film Threat, a magazine I have read for many years, gave it a look recently.

I think I used to recommend a book every month in my newsletter, and I don't know if I am exactly starting back up again, but I've got one for January I just read:  it's Zero Zone by Scott O'Connor, which is the kind of book I like; it takes place in 70s LA, and is all about art and movies and sort of a doomsday cult.

I've been reading and also giving books away, after seeing an article about Little Free Libraries.  I found a map of them online, and now on weekends my wife and I have been driving all around Indiana and parts of Ohio seeking them out and leaving books.  

I've lost track, but I'm guessing we've visited more than 50; we had one long day we hit 15 and then the last time we went driving we hit 16.  It's something to go out and do safely that might help somebody else, and helps fight cabin fever--we were both sent home from work for a couple of weeks almost a year ago, and are still hanging in from home.  

Hope you all are safe and well, and thanks for reading along.  Talk soon.

Best Reads of 2020

 Passed my goal of reading 50 books in 2020 and topped out at 66 in a strange year.  Here are my favorites, if you are looking for a new read.

The Black Jersey by Jorge Zepeda Patterson

These Women by Ivy Pochoda

Blacktop Wasteland by SA Cosby

The Last Weynfeldt by Martin Suter

The Fragility of Bodies by Sergio Olguin

Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha

The Glass Hotel by Emily St John Mandel

Winter Counts by David Heska Wambli Weiden

Red Dust by Yoss

The 6:41 to Paris by Jean-Philippe Blondel

Enjoy!

But Instead It Just Kept On Raining

This post first appeared in my eNewsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP.

I hope my e-newsletter finds you all well.  It's been a long while, but that goes without saying.  I don't have anything to add to the discourse, as I don't know how to make a dumpster fire into a risen phoenix.

It seems quaint now, but when I sent my last newsletter in March, I had just canceled the first weekend of shooting for HIS WIFE MY KILLER at the last second, and I mean the last second, as I had already bought the lunch meat for the first day's sandwiches.  I thought, as it turned out correctly, that I could have gotten the first weekend of shooting in, but would have been under restrictions for the second.  And I would have been sitting here today with half a movie, which I honestly think is worse than no movie at all.

It seems a long-ass time ago, but around then my first movie, THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE, had just dropped in Walmart and Family Video and a ton of other stores nationwide, and I had been tooling around finding it places.  Back then Family Video stores seemed to be closing faster than they could stock my movie, but I talked to a lot of store managers around my neck of the woods about it, which was fun.

If you haven't seen it yet, it is still free on Amazon Prime, and also free on Tubi.

Speaking of Tubi, my second movie SCARECROW COUNTY also landed there ahead of the physical media release, so dare I say 2020 wasn't all bad, as both my movies came out this year.

Strange but true, but two movies I wrote, AMITYVILLE ISLAND and SHARK ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, also came out this year.  Both are available streaming, although only the former is free.

I wrote these in a white heat some while ago, when I actually penned three movies in six weeks, and I can't recall much about writing either one of them.  As many reviewers have already noted, they are both deliriously crazy, and I can't argue the point.

My freelance output hasn't been much during this time.  I was sent to work from home for three weeks, nine months ago, from my day job in marketing and communications for a regional college campus.  Since then we have been the main window into the campus, though press releases, social media, live Facebook and Zoom events, and more; unlike a lot of people, I have been fortunate to actually be busier during this time than if I was back at the office.

So I haven't been able to make the sourdough starter and other things cooped up people have done.  I have cartooned a little, and started building Gundam models after a friend gifted me one.  We bought a camper in case we need to stave off of the Apocalypse and have enjoyed that, including an outdoor (cold but fun) camping Thanksgiving.  My wife has been teaching from home, at a different university, and it's been nice to have lunch together every day, after working at campuses 50 miles apart for the last 15 years.

I wrote two scripts; one a science fiction adventure and one a western.  The western had started shooting under the direction of my old friend Henrique Couto, but like everyone else in our industry the production had to take a time out when they struggled with COVID restrictions (and weather).  I'm not sure about the fate of the other.  But that's the nature of the beast right now, perhaps even more so.

I haven't been able to get the machine running for myself writing-wise, and I'm not sure when it will be safe to ramp up HIS WIFE MY KILLER again.  We shall see.

It is extremely weird to write this, as when I lay it all out and read it I think I had my best year as a screenwriter and filmmaker.  And yet. 

When we talk about the first thing we will do when it's all over, if it is truly over, I always say I am going to make my (regionally) famous beef brisket for my extended family, who I have seen only in small doses in exterior settings (so much so that my two-year-old grandson calls our camper 'Nana's House').  If I could George Bailey this noise, and have all my movie stuff never exist and instead be making that beef brisket today, I would take that deal.

But as I said when I got my emergency root canal and crown a month or so ago to end 2020 in style, it's not the crown I wanted, but it's the crown I was given.

I promise I won't be too long before I write again, because I always like to share my favorite reads of the year, and I have read some good ones, including one I'm half through now. 

Until then, thank you for reading and sticking with me and I truly wish you all well in this time.

Well When This Train Ends I'll Try Again

This post first appeared in my eNewsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP.

It seems quaint now, but a week ago I was really debating about canceling the first weekend of shooting for my new movie HIS WIFE MY KILLER.  I was having a number of cast and crew people from Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, and Dayton reaching out, including someone whose family member was currently being tested for Coronavirus at an area hospital.  I went ahead and pushed the button on canceling and felt pretty low about it.  But so much closing in rapid succession afterwards really overshadowed that, obviously.  I really thought we could get the first weekend in, but that things would change so rapidly we wouldn't be able to get in the second, and I was right.

I don't talk much about my day job in my newsletter, only my side hustle, but I work at a regional university in communications and marketing, with about five percent of my job in emergency management.  Suffice to say that changed to 95 percent emergency management overnight and I am finishing my first week of working from home for the near future and being on Zoom and Skype calls five or six hours a day.  There's a lot to talk about and think about but I don't know if I have anything to add that hasn't been said, but would just say be safe and be careful, all.

When you make a b-movie you go to war with a group of people and can really bond with them, and I have seen very little like it, except when I have been in a play, or worked in live television.  But maybe working with my day job team on this has been close, though not by choice.  I hope you can rally your own squad, personal or professional, whoever they are.

On the other side we will reschedule the shoot, and you'll be the first to know.  Best wishes you to all.

Half My Life is in Books' Written Pages

 This post first appeared in my secret eNewsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP.

The last time I sent a newsletter was the morning my movie THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE streeted on DVD.  I genuinely thought it would pass without notice; I felt when it hit streaming, especially Amazon Prime and a few other platforms, that was where the most interest would be.  But I was wrong.  

All day long that day, and in the days that followed, I was getting pictures and texts and DMs and emails from all over the country where people found copies of THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE in WalMart.  If I had known how much I would need to respond to that first day I would have taken the day off, as my phone literally chattered all day with hundreds of notifications and messages.  It was a very heady day in what has been a wild experience, with the movie getting a much wider release than I anticipated in streaming and physical media.

I think one thing that helped is that Henrique Couto's OUIJA ROOM streeted on the exact same day, and Henrique was offering a deal at his webstore for people who bought his movie at WalMart and took a picture with the receipt.  A lot of people picked up my movie too, and I think some that went looking for mine got his also.  His movie was shot first, features a lot of the same cast, and Henrique DPd and produced mine as well, so there was a lot of synergy in promoting these two in one swoop.

Thank you to everyone who picked one up that day and in subsequent days, whether you sent me a photo or not.  

When you have something going, everybody asks you what you have going next.  And I do have something, an exclusive for newsletter subscribers.  Starting next weekend, and throughout the month of March, we are girding up for a new thriller, HIS WIFE MY KILLER, the third film under the Midwest Film Venture banner.

This feature will once again feature my friend Henrique Couto as producer and director of photography, and will have some new faces and some familiar ones from previous films.  Here's a synopsis:

Trond is a film composer who is unlucky at love, so he tries a website featuring Eastern European women looking for marriage.  But when Oja arrives at his door, mayhem ensues.  Trond's first wife, their college-aged daughter, and his best friend all get caught up in the maelstrom.  

We are doing a little pre-shoot next Saturday, then shooting solid the next two weekends, then doing a pickup day on the last Saturday of the month.  It's going to be full blast, and you can follow along on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,and if I'm not too tired Snapchat.  I'm @johnoakdalton all of those places.  

My main thing I promised myself was no more cold weather shoots, and it looks like it will be in the 50s at least part of the way, which means it looks like I will be sort of keeping my promise to myself.
 

And lastly, longtime newsletter readers know that I like to keep a "secret soundtrack" of songs that inspire me when I'm writing a movie, any one of which the rights to would cost more than the movie.

So here is the first look at the "secret soundtrack" for HIS WIFE MY KILLER to give you some ideas about what I was thinking:

Fox on the Run, The Regrettes 

Imaginary Lover, Atlanta Rhythm Section 

For the Love of Money, The O’Jays 

Where is the Love, Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway 

Ain’t No Sunshine, Bill Withers 

Can’t You See, The Marshall Tucker Band 

Cinderella, Firefall 

Tuesday’s Gone, Lynyrd Skynyrd 

He Stopped Loving Her Today, George Jones 

Dream On, Postmodern Jukebox 

Keep your eyes peeled for a lot more updates this month, and thanks for following along.