I'm Going Where the Water Tastes Like Wine

This post first appeared at my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP which you can subscribe to in the sidebar.

I know it sounds kind of funny, but it wasn't until I was driving to Kokomo to the premiere of THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE at the Hoosierdance Film Festival that it dawned on me that strangers were going to watch it for the first time, and I would get my first unadulterated feedback.  That's when the nerves set in.

Hoosierdance is held along Geek Street in downtown Kokomo, a cool area with a comic book shop, gaming store, toy store, plus coffee shops and bars and a minor league baseball stadium at the far end.  Basically my kind of place.  Films screen at various venues there, and my movie was screening at American Dream Hi Fi, a funky record store with a horror movie vibe. It was a long room with a stage at one end for bands and movies, a good screen and a great sound system.

The venue holds about 25 seats, but when I got there about ten were out.  I asked if they could put out a few more, as I knew about 15 people had RSVPd on the Facebook event.  They agreed, even though they said ticket sales had been low the first day of the fest. 

Then my wife and I went across the street to a nice Irish pub for dinner.  I told her I was sure we would have six people--I had seen actor John Hambrick and a friend, and crew member Kyle Garner and a friend, out on the street.  I was completely happy with that because it would look about half full.

When we finished dinner, with about ten minutes left until the screening, we came out and saw one of the festival heads walking down the sidewalk.  He told me he was going to the coffee shop to borrow some chairs because it was standing room only.  I was like WHAT and went to help him.

There were about fifty people crammed into the venue, standing clear to the back.  It was a very responsive crowd for the screening, and my 15 minute Q&A stretched into about 30 minutes, and then I hung around and talked to people about another 45 minutes.  The best part for me was that several cast and crew members were there (and I invited them up for the Q&A) and several colleagues from work came as well.
I think one of the biggest things driven home for me was that you write a movie in a vacuum, but when you direct a movie it belongs to the world, and has the thoughts and ideas of everybody that worked on it, and everybody that watches it.  The responsibility of that was greater than I thought, both an awesome feeling and a frightening one.

Thanks for reading, more to come.

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.

Fair Warning

Loyal readers may remember that the Mooreland Fair parade leaves out of the large side yard of my house.  We can walk along the route--just a shade over a half mile--all the way to the fairgrounds, still a high point for many people's year.  Candy thrown on the route, elephant ears when you get to the end, as well as pork chops and lemon shake-ups.  A great tradition.

We Can't Rewind, We've Gone Too Far

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I just got back from the set of ISO (In Search Of), the Bigfoot movie I have been referencing for a while; the distributor posted the title on Facebook, so it's Facebook Official, which is the only kind that seems to count these days.  And of all the title iterations I think it's my favorite, because it plays off of both ISO as a film speed and also the old quasi-documentary TV show.

And that's where ISO lives, as a gang of Super-8-loving teens get tangled up in a mystery involving Bigfoot sightings, sinister hunters, and missing parents.  I think I was a good fit to write this one because I was a teenager in the late 70s-early 80s shooting Super-8 movies of my own, and I hope that if the movie doesn't explicitly give off that vibe I hope it implicitly does, with no cell phones and internet but with muscle cars and high fives.

In the late 70s I was drawing a comic book featuring me and all of my friends fighting a war against the Russians in the far-off 90s when a friend decided to do a couple of film adaptations.  I agreed because at that time I was admiring from afar a group of older kids making Super-8 James Bond homages and elaborate sci-fi films (and at least two of these guys went on to work in the industry, one being pretty successful).  Being natural-born Hoosiers, one of our films featured a basketball game between the Russians and Americans to decide the fate of a small town.  The other was I think something about diffusing a bomb and featured a soundtrack you could play on a cassette tape right alongside the silent film.

Christmas 1980 found Santa bringing me my own Super-8 set-up and me and my brother went on to make a ton of short films together, Star Wars and Ghostbusters and Batman parodies as well as G-men movies and vigilante pizza deliverers.

I tried to put nerdy, motor-mouthed me in the film, or maybe a cooler version, with all the things we talked and thought about with movies.  I also tried to thread in what it's like to figure out friendships and families and relationships.  But of course it's a Bigfoot movie, but it's not the most unbelievable thing in the movie because the lead guys both have girlfriends by the end, whereas I had barely talked to any girls at that time.

I just spend a few paragraphs telling you what I tried to put into it, but I would bet any of my loyal readers 20 bucks there will be at least one Amazon review that reads, simply, "It sucks."  If you can't deal with people thinking you suck, don't make a movie.

The other reason I really wanted to write this screenplay was because I would get to hang with two people I have worked with the most over the years, Mark Polonia and Henrique Couto.  Mark is a legendary b-movie director, hidden in the wilds of Pennsylvania, who cut his teeth as a young dude in the direct-to-video explosion in the 80s and has directed over 50 movies.  Henrique also busted out as a teenager and has been hot in multiple genres with close to 20 movies under his belt.  The first screenplay that ever got produced of mine was for Mark (also a Bigfoot movie!) and I have done seven movies for him all told.  I have done four movies for Henrique, who acted as Director of Photography for this one.  I was the first person either of them had hired to write a screenplay, having written all of their prior ones themselves.

My mind was kind of blown to think we were going to work on a movie together--my lucky 13th screenplay turned into a movie--that I referred to it as The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in a previous e-newsletter, and loyal readers helpfully supplied me with a few GIFs. But the b-movie world liked it as well, with over a hundred likes on Facebook and Instagram of a photo of me, Mark, and Henrique, with comments ranging from "B-movie Expendables" to referencing the forming of Marvel Comics The Defenders.   I've always said horror fans are the most loyal, and it remains true.

Somebody smarter than me once said that working on a movie set is like being in a war--long periods of boredom with sudden bursts of frenzied activity.  I think that's true.  I spent a lot of time holding a boom mic or using giant foil-lined bounce cards to reflect the sun onto actors' faces.  But it's probably less boring to me because I got to see the movie come to life.  Meeting the actors who look exactly like you thought and the ones that are bringing something new to it.  What the director thinks you meant by certain scenes.  Everybody puts in a little part and makes it something that isn't just me typing at my little corner desk in rural Indiana but is a blend of everybody's thinking.

Being around means you get to answer questions too, like the young actors asking me what the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir was, who Boo Radley was, what Lord of the Flies was about, leaving me to wonder about the state of education for the youth of today.  Thankfully I was not there for the film club scene at the school, or I might have died a little inside if I had to explain some of my old movie references.

ISO is like nothing I've ever worked on.  It's PG, and features a largely teen cast.  It is ostensibly about what Super-8 films meant in my formative years, and what that was like.  Today they are finishing shooting in rural Pennsylvania, and I'm back home again in Indiana. I'm eager to see what happens next with this project.

Funky Tornado

My swag from Days of the Dead in Indianapolis, showing off my love for the offbeat and the DIY world.

Red Wolf Nation

Finished the first IU East women's basketball season in the brand-new Student Events Center.  I was PA Announcer for a team that ran the table and went undefeated in the new facility, capping it with winning the River States Conference championship on the home floor.  A great group of people to work with.  Go Red Wolves!

Postcards from Seattle

My wife went to Seattle for work and had to be busy, which gave me plenty of time to loaf around, drink lots of coffee, and visit some excellent bookstores and comic book stores; a blessing, as the cold and wet is even worse than you see in the movies.  Also saw Todd Rundgren at the airport; the college kids my wife was leading around had no idea who he was, but an "old guy."  So it goes.

The Soft Parade

So earlier this summer I sold one house, closed on a second house, moved, and then flew to Italy, all in a single week.  It is still not long enough ago to be funny, but one cool thing that has happened as a result is the legendary Mooreland Fair is just a short distance down the road--and the Saturday parade leaves out of my side yard.

Later that day and night, the Fair.  I've been going for almost 30 years, and these guys are always standing out here singing "Elvira."

A summer tradition, now within walking distance.

Live from the Heart of the Nerd-Quake

I'm slowly becoming one of those guys that reads more news about, and talks more about, comics and gaming than I actually read comics or play games, so my GenCon experience each year is becoming more about connecting with old friends. There is a lot of crossover between nerd-spheres so I should never be surprised when I see movie people at GenCon, like Matthew Meyers from Hoosierdance, FX guru Rob Merickel, and my Chicago people Jay Neander and Jon Solita.

But I make new friends, too.

I can't help but think about the food trucks when I'm there, and there was a time I would rather game than eat.

But sometimes I see something I can't resist, as displayed below.

Now to find time to play these beasts, and read that Doctor Who book I bought (not pictured).