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!

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.