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.

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.

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.

Another Year Over, A New One Just Begun

2019 was quite a year of ups and downs, like I am sure it was for most everyone.  I sold both my movies intro distribution after shooting one in 2018 and a second in 2019.  But I also had a couple of health scares, the first since I was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes in 2014 and set out to go down four pants sizes.  I had emergency gallbladder surgery and then had a chronic bladder infection I couldn't shake.  But all ends well.

I think it was the author Sherman Alexie who said if you can take the good and subtract the bad and still smile you are doing okay, and I agree with that.

My public resolutions for 2020 are to keep an eye on my health, shepherd my kids and grandkids as best I can, continue to work on my creativity, plus one or two private ones.

2009-2019 is a large chunk of real estate to get my mind around.  In 2009 I made a big mid-career change and left IT/television and went into marketing and communications at a midwestern regional college.  I have had a tremendous ride during that time with a lot of successes.

I decided to use that as an excuse to walk away from screenwriting, but it never left my mind, and a few years later was back writing a handful of movies for directors Mark Polonia and Henrique Couto.  In late 2017 I decided to make a leap and direct my first feature, which we shot in March 2018.  It is dropping next month on DVD but can currently be streamed on a number of platforms, which exceeds my expectations for a movie I shot at my house.

Both my kids got college degrees, and my wife got her MFA in creative writing and a professorship.  Both my kids got married and I have three grandkids, with promises made to each that I will try to live a while longer.

I bought what I hope is my last home, on five acres in a rural area, and built a chicken coop there, and living this way keeps me grounded, I hope.

This may have been the decade with the most changes in my adult life, but I have a feeling the next one may be even more so, both good and bad.

I wish the best for my loyal readers in 2020 and beyond.

I Live in a House that Looks Out Over the Ocean

This post first appeared, in a slightly different form, in I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP, my e-mail newsletter you can subscribe to in the sidebar on the right.

I wrote one word:  Poem.  The worst part was it wasn't part of the script, it was just a placeholder for a poem I was going to steal from my wife's writing.  The pages were just coming slow, the way they sometimes do.

I had promised myself I wouldn't start on any new secret projects until THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE was in the can, because I haven't felt like I had the headspace, but I have been slowly, covertly working on something else for this fall/winter as CRAWLSPACE inched towards completion.  And it may burst into the world in the coming weeks.

THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE has been inching, inching along in fits and starts, but tonight it debuts at the Hoosierdance Film Festival in Kokomo, Indiana.  And I am super flattered by this because they selected it sight unseen, and thus don't know what they are getting into.

Here's the very first review, a very nice one, with mayhaps a thousand one-star Amazon reviews to follow.

More seriously, others I have screeners out to have been generous with their time and thoughts, and it has been appreciated.

My brother's actual review:  "Cool movie, bro."

I remember reading Groucho Marx's autobiography a long time ago, and one thing I remember him writing in there was that he was not going to write about what he saw dancing in the shadows when he woke up in the middle of the night, and that has sort of stuck with me, and I have to admit that this newsletter and the rest of my social media presence is not really me, but sort of the product of me.  And I don't write about bad things that happen, but there has been a lot of chaos this summer, both good and bad.  And I think it was the author Sherman Alexie who basically said if you can take all the good things that happen, and subtract all the bad, and still be smiling, you're in good shape.

And any year where I get a new grandbaby and a new movie at the same time, it's a pretty good year.
I would happily share the Top 100 photos I have of him on my phone right this moment, but here are just a few, from the day he was born:

As Dave Loggins once said, this drifter's world goes round and round, and I doubt that it's ever gonna stop.  Thanks to everyone who reads this and has cheered on my first movie.  Talk soon.

Performers and Portrayers

My old friend Tom Cherry, who plays Marshal Woody in THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE, wanted to borrow his uniform for his role in the play GREATER TUNA, which I think has almost the same plot.  Good luck treading the boards, Tom!

I Walk Away Like a Movie Star, Who Gets Burned in a Three Way Script

Raced to Dayton after work, and flattered to sign my name 100 times on the Special Edition Blu-Ray/DVD Combo of ALONE IN THE GHOST HOUSE, a found footage movie I wrote a few years ago getting a second life.  You can order it right here.  I promise more interesting people than me also signed it.

Used to Daydream in that Small Town

Mooreland Fair Parade, 2018.

We've Got Our Recruits, and Our Green Mohair Suits

Picture locked on THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE.

From my Laboratory in the Castle East

This post first appeared in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP, which you can subscribe to in the sidebar and have delivered right to your inbox.

About a week ago I finished the first draft of THE GIRL WITH THE GRINDHOUSE HEART and boomed it out to a couple of b-movie friends to see what they think.  Usually I only have to please a director and, if the deal is set up, the distributor, but since I wrote this one for myself I thought I would send it to a close circle of honest b-movie friends to see where I'm at.  Either way I like to leave a script sit for a few days so I forget what I was thinking when I did it and then look at it with fresh eyes.  Sometimes I have time for it and sometimes I don't.  This time I do.  We'll see how it looks when I open the file again.

I was flattered to be interviewed for a midwestern movie site recently, and I don't want to give away the whole game until it comes out, but I wanted to share this part:

What advice would you give an aspiring screenwriter living in the Midwest?
There is good work being done everywhere. You don't have to live on a coast to do it. I live on several acres with chickens and dogs and so on and I have done pretty well for myself. When I was starting, I went to a lot of conventions to meet people and prove I was a normal person. There are so many people just dreaming about movies, that you have to be able to tell who is trying to make their dreams more real by making you believe their stories and who can actually do something. On the writing part, remember a lot more is craft than art. Talent is an empty bucket you have to fill with kept promises and met deadlines and finished pages. You have to work on it, by watching a lot of movies including those outside of your comfort zone and reading, reading, reading everything. You have to sit and type even when the football game's on.

I have wanted to watch only horror movies this October but the actual world seems pretty horrific at times so it's been hard to do that.  I did watch CHILDREN OF THE CORN, as I somehow missed it in 1984, and now live surrounded by cornfields, but it was pretty benign to me and mostly churned up 80s nostalgia. On a whim I bought the entire seven movie series for I think seven bucks and maybe can coax my wife into watching more of them.

So I have stuck with milder stuff, except I have picked up Inktober again this year.  It's where you try to draw and post a picture every day, and speaking of 80s nostalgia, my cartooning style frozen in 1978 is in full effect.  I'm sticking with stories I wished existed, characters I wish somebody would bring back, things that seem fun to draw.  At the end of the month, I'll post the most popular ones here.  If you can't wait, look for me on Facebook and Instagram, if you haven't done that already.

I found out the movie I wrote codenamed THE HORRIBLE ASP has already started shooting, so I hope to have more about that, and some more interesting projects, soon.  Thanks for hanging around.

And You May Find Yourself Living in a Shotgun Shack

Not that long ago the high school daughter of a colleague wanted to interview me for an English class.  She came to the office, and she and I talked a long time, and later she wrote something called "The Life and Mind of a Murderer" which began like this:

 

They walk down the street with you. They are your neighbors. You buy groceries at the same store. From a young age they have always had different fascinations than other kids. As adults they seemed a little too interested in other adults. They seem to be going through their life just like anyone else, but they are different. These people are movie writers.

 

Just now another hopeful, a young potential screenwriter in Illinois, asked to do an email interview with me for a high school class.  Always eager to help those who may one day put me out on an ice floe, here is what I wrote back.  Maybe something here can help you, loyal reader, as well.

1.  How long have you been in the industry? I sold my first screenplay in 1999.  It was an action movie called PLAYER IN THE GAME that never got made, but it opened the door to sell more after that.

2. How is Success in your position measured and rewarded?  I think the industry in general rewards on box office, sales through physical media and digital platforms, and reviews; but for me, seeing a project get made, and then get distribution, is a good measure of success.

3. What made you interested in the job in the first place?  I have always been interested in storytelling; I drew my own comics until I realized I wasn’t good enough to draw professionally, wrote plays until I sort of hit a wall in getting those out there, and switched to screenwriting because of a lifelong interest in filmmaking, but realizing that living in rural Indiana it would be hard to be involved in other aspects of it besides the writing.  I think that last part has changed somewhat with easier access to technology and distribution platforms than once existed.

4. How could I start getting into the film industry?  Watch and learn from watching movies and reading screenplays, join an AV club in your school, or if there isn’t one join some Facebook groups and other online groups that feature people with your same interests.  Study film, telecommunications, or even communications or English in college.  Go to film festivals and movie conventions to meet people that want to do the same thing you do.  When you can, beg, buy, borrow some equipment so you can learn editing and shooting and begin to learn the language of filmmaking.

5. Explain to me what the job involves day-to-day?  Being committed to working when there are other things pulling you away, like watching TV, hanging out, whatever.  Being able to develop and nurture the brand that is yourself through fostering relationships with people in the industry, online and elsewhere.  Really working on craft, because most of it is craft and only a small part of it is waiting for the muse to happen.

6. How would you describe the ideal person for this job?  You have to love movies and understand and appreciate the history of movies.  Loving reading to learn more about the world and loving writing in general.

7. How long are the hours daily for this profession?  I have a day job, so the hours are whatever I can squeeze in; getting up early, working on my laptop during lunch, getting some writing time in after dinner, giving up weekends when deadlines are close.

8. What are the troubles and issues you face in the job?  If I wanted to be bigger than I am, geography would be an issue; however I have been pretty successful staying in rural Indiana, selling close to I think 40 screenplays over the years, so I really don’t want to move.  You have to work with legitimate people to make sure you get paid and get proper credit for your work.

9. Are you grateful for getting into the industry?  Yes, it’s neat to go to a video store and see your movie, or to be in a theater when people watch it.  Many, many people try over a long period of time and don’t get that satisfaction.

10. What are some equipment and tools I need to start my first movie?  On the writing side, I recommend the free screenwriting software CeltX or Trelby.  On the movie-making side, whatever you can get your hands on to learn how everything is supposed to work.