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.

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.