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.

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.

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.

Tuesday's Gone with the Wind

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

Last Friday I had a chance to go to the Indiana University Cinema to hear Jim Jarmusch talk. He as an absolutely formative director from my early years of interest in cinema; STRANGER THAN PARADISE had a lot of influence on me, but MYSTERY TRAIN and NIGHT ON EARTH are two later, great movies, and I would recommend GHOST DOG: WAY OF THE SAMURAI as an entry point to anybody.

He said so many things that hit me right where I live:  that there are as many ways to make movies as there are movie directors, but there is only one way for a director to direct an individual actor, that a movie will tell you what it wants to be.  He talked about how you had to be interested in all different subjects to make your movies interesting.  He had a million stories about moviemaking but one of my favorite things he said was that, no matter the state of the world, his memories of the movies he's seen can't be taken away from him.  I have said forever, to make a good movie you have to come from a place of honest appreciation of movies; if you come from a place of cynicism, you'll get found out by the fans.  I got a tremendous charge from this trip.

Yesterday I was driving back from work meetings in Chicago and passed a Family Video in Frankfort, Indiana.  I thought I would stop and see if they were going to stock my movie THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE, which streets everywhere today.  It hit streaming platforms in October, but I'm old school, and was eager to see it on the shelf somewhere.

They actually had it, but had not shelved it yet, and let me take a picture without asking why, though I eventually told them, and they vowed to promote it.

It was a dizzying and humbling feeling to hold this movie for the first time, in a rural Indiana video store along Highway 28.

About 30 minutes later I passed another Family Video in Elwood, Indiana, and they had it too, and the staff there was very friendly and excited for me.

I think this is everything I hoped would happen; that the movie would appear on the shelf in small towns and all the highways and byways in America.  Because I hope somebody like me will see it, and be inspired to make their own movie.  Even if they see it and think "I can do better than that," as my wise old b-movie friend Mark Polonia says, if someone says they can do better than you, it means they can learn from you. 

And now it exists and is out loose in the world for real and for true.  If you see it anywhere, please send me a picture, or post one and tag it.

It's a long road.  I starting shooting at my own house with a group of friends and a handful of favors in March 2018.  Again, it is a humbling experience to see it exist now.  But if it wasn't feeling humble, all I have to do is remember this picture, from my first day of shooting ever as a director, wearing my sweatshirt inside out.

I have some news coming soon, and I promise my loyal e-newsletter people will get to read it first.  Until then, thanks for being there.

Two of Us Sunday Driving, Not Arriving

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

We had the World Premiere of SCARECROW COUNTY at Film Scream, a dusk-to-dawn horror movie marathon, in Iowa City and it went great.  Henrique Couto's movie HAUNTING INSIDE played after mine, and we both took questions and ran a merch table in between shows.  We were treated like kings by the staff there and very graciously by the patrons.

The new Film Scene theater is one of the top-flight venues I've ever seen, and if I lived five or six hours closer I would probably go see movies there a couple of times a month.  I felt way too low-class when we rolled up to the place but felt at home by the time we left the next day.

Before the screenings we were taken to an excellent vegan restaurant and got to wander around a cool area nearby called the Pedestrian Mall.

My Q&A, as well as questions after, were highly interesting to me, being able to see my "Hoosiersploitation" feature through other people's eyes.  One question:  was that a real one-room library in that town?  Answer:  yes, that was the real Parker City Library.  Another question:  were the streets really that empty or did you keep people off them?  Answer:  sadly they were that empty.  Question:  Is high school basketball really that popular in Indiana?  Answer:  DID NOT DESERVE AN ANSWER.

The question that floored me the most was when someone came up after and asked if I intentionally had the town librarian (played by Chelsi Kern) reading Ursula K. Le Guin's THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS in the library, and I told that person I 100% did, and in fact Chelsi's character read it in THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE as well.  The book was highly influential in writing both movies and I was glad to have a chance to talk about it with someone.  It's a little detail I didn't think anyone would notice.

I think I have mentioned before that I have given my leads a book at the end of principal photography on both movies, and THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS is the one I gave Chelsi.  In fact she is reading the copy I gave her (my own copy is in my former movie).  After THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE I gave Joni Durian another Le Guin, THE LATHE OF HEAVEN, if that gives you any clues about that movie.

Drove all day, slept a couple of hours, drove straight back, but really worth it to be introduced to a new film experience and a new group of film lovers.

Next screening is Farmland Indiana this Friday, at the Community Center where a lot of SCARECROW COUNTY and a bit of THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE was shot.  I expect this to be almost a "friends and family" show with a lot of the cast and crew in attendance.

In the midst of all this, THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE dropped on Amazon a week ago today.  Typical of my glamorous Hollywood lifestyle, I was washing dishes after dinner when my phone started buzzing with texts.  I quickly found out that CRAWLSPACE had dropped on Amazon, Vudu, FandangoNow, and XBox, with more to come.  So I immediately went and fired up the TV and found it on streaming, and had this very strange feeling of sitting on my couch in my living room in the midwest looking at the movie I shot in my living room in the midwest.

Loyal readers, I have one small favor to ask.  If you have seen the movie, please go to Amazon and give it a rating and/or review.  It means a lot to independent filmmakers like me as it will encourage others to give it a try.

Thanks so much for reading, and see you out there.

The Grand Tour

THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE is hitting the film markets with another new poster.  It  is on its way to the MIPCOM broadcasting trade show in Cannes, repped by ITN, and we made it to the front page of the email blast and the fifth page of the catalogue, with this new art.

Never Had To Battle With No Bullet-Proof Vest

I haven't sent a newsletter all summer, and I guess my only excuse is that my summer kind of drifted away.  One morning early this season I woke up vomiting with what felt like a hot knife under my ribs.  Shortly thereafter I was standing in the emergency room and they were handing me a gown.  The next day I was short a balky gallbladder.  Then came a few weeks where I couldn't even walk my dogs or pick up my grandbaby, a terrible way to live.

But all of a sudden I have had to jump back on the train, or it would leave without me.

ITN Distribution has my first movie, THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE, at the Toronto Film Market, and here is the brand-new cover art for it.  I think it really jumps out, and I hope people like it.

That was two days ago, and then yesterday ITN dropped the trailer. I thought their take on it was interesting and again I hope others feel the same.

It looks like I have one more screening of CRAWLSPACE at the end of September, courtesy of the Chicago Horror Society (details forthcoming) and then I'll be full-bore promoting my second film SCARECROW COUNTY.  We are setting a goal of finishing it up by the end of September to be ready for a big convention and spooky fall screenings.  I believe I have a pretty cool screening locked up for the world premiere, and another one back at the Farmland Community Center where we shot two days on SCARECROW COUNTY and one on CRAWLSPACE.  Two or perhaps even three more I can sniff in the wind, so if you live in the midwest you should have every chance you could ever want to see SCARECROW COUNTY out in the wild.

After this, it's always best to have a couple of things brewing, and I do, and you hope and hope and some things fall by the wayside and once in a great while something takes off.  Everybody thinks they are going to retire and write a book or make a  movie or take up painting and it will all be there in front of them, but it's work and it's catching lightning in a bottle to make something happen, and then to do it again and again.

Today is my birthday, and when I turned 50 I took the day off and took myself to the movies, and it was very luxurious, so I have been doing it ever since. I don't know if there is anything in particular I want to see, but I have an interest in eating an Impossible Whopper, so if I can find one, I might do that. There is a screening of READY OR NOT right at high noon and I hear good things about it.

The last couple of years I have walked my dogs past a graveyard down the road, just to keep things in perspective, so I might do that as well.  I'm not sure that it's a coincidence that me and two of my most frequent collaborators--b-movie directors Mark Polonia and Henrique Couto--all live within walking distance of a graveyard.

Since I am taking the day off, when I got to work yesterday I got a super nice surprise and early birthday present from friends and colleagues. This is the framed movie poster THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE undoubtedly stolen off the wall during its screening at Film Scene in Iowa City by my pal Jason. I loved this retro poster they did and am flattered to have this framed copy that several people chipped in on to have done up nicely.   I think they wanted me to hang this in my office, but then I would have to explain it to unsuspecting ordinary people, and I try to keep my higher ed day job and b-movie night life separate as much as I can.

My wife asked me if I were going to make any birthday resolutions and I think all my resolutions take the same shape--watch my diabetes, try to help my children and grandchildren as much as I can, try to be a good partner and friend and colleague, keep working on projects.  I have had versions of these same ones for a long time and they ain't a bad list of things to try and be good at.

The poet (not the actress) Maggie Smith once said, "For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird."  (You can read the whole poem here).  That really struck me as the truth but I think it's important to remember that the world is full of small kindnesses and it's best to try to stand on that side of the line as much as you can.  Another smart person said to me recently "give yourself permission to rest" and that kind of pulled me up short.  So I'm taking today and this long weekend to do so, I hope.  Then I'm going to try and wing my way into Fall with my flock.

Thanks for sticking with me, and more details on both my movies are coming soon.

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

Thirteen Month-Old Baby, Broke the Looking Glass

This post first appeared in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP, which you can subscribe to in the sidebar.
 
I have been remiss in not talking about two things.

First, my brother called BS on me for not including John Cougar Mellencamp's "Scarecrow" on my Secret Soundtrack of songs for SCARECROW COUNTY, and he was totally right--not only the obvious title but Mellencamp's Hoosier roots.

Second, I keep forgetting to talk about watching Orson Welles' formerly long-lost final film THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, which I watched right in the middle of the week between the two big shooting spates on SCARECROW COUNTY.  The caveat here is that it fits right in my groove--that time period when the studio system, staggering and out of touch, imploded on itself and gave rise to independent film, as goaded on by French, Italian, and Japanese filmmakers--that is, until movies like STAR WARS and JAWS and other summer blockbusters pushed it to the margins again.  I liked it so much I immediately stayed up late watching the documentary on its making, THEY'LL LOVE ME WHEN I'M DEAD and am just about done listening to the audiobook ORSON WELLES' LAST MOVIE by Josh Karp.

Orson Welles, whose CITIZEN KANE is so visionary, mostly because there was nobody around to tell him not to do things, and he didn't know any better.  Then decades of crashed projects and unrealized dreams, a few more flawed masterpieces, and then, at the end of his life, tooling around with a skeleton crew of hippies pretending to be a college film crew to avoid permits, and outrunning bills to finish one more crazy movie.  Broke, crashing at Peter Bogdanovich's place, doing commercials for cheap wine to get to the next day.

Welles, an ogre, a charmer, larger than life, petty and small.  But lurking in the background of this story is Gary Graver, a prolific b-movie and adult film director who gave his life over to Welles for six years as DP of this film, hoping it would catapult him into the big leagues alongside the legendary auteur.

It didn't.

Gary Graver crashed his marriages, burned up his life and died young.  Gary Graver, a guy making pornos who boldly called Orson Welles up one day and said he wanted to shoot a movie for him, and, astoundingly, Orson Welles answered "okay."  Despite everything that happened after it doesn't seem like Graver regretted it.

Orson Welles is a legend and a master now and forever, but my heart is with Gary Graver, one of us.

I've quit the b-movie biz before, and have been tempted to again from time to time.  But I once told an actress who was thinking about quitting movies that you can quit but you'll never stop thinking about it.  If you don't do movies, you'll think about plays, podcasts, something.  When I am not thinking about screenwriting I'm thinking about playwriting or drawing comics or writing a pulp paperback of some kind.  I crashed very hard at the end of CRAWLSPACE and very hard again at the end of SCARECROW COUNTY and yet here I am typing and thinking about Gary Graver.

It's a long ways for most of my loyal readers, but the awesome independent movie house Film Scene is screening THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE in April in downtown Iowa City, and how cool is that?

More soon.  Thanks for reading.

Top Reads of 2018, and Reads of the Decade

I read 58 books in my annual quest of reading 50 books a year.  Another good year, on the world landscape, to hunker down and read.  Might have helped if I hadn't read so many dystopian novels.

This year my Top Ten favorite reads were:

Severance by Ling Ma

Bearskin by James A. McLaughlin

The Feral Detective by Jonathan Lethem

All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai

Every Anxious Wave by Mo Daviau

Tangerine by Christine Mangan

November Road by Lou Berney

Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller

The Third Hotel by Laura Van Den Berg

The Italian Party by Christina Lynch


I first undertook this internet challenge with some friends way back in 2008, and since then I have read 598 books, or an average of 54 a year.  I didn't make it in 2013 and 2014, being a span of time when both my kids got married and a grandson was born, and I read an astounding 81 books last year, because obviously it was 2017.

I grabbed the top from every year, and some others I didn't rank as highly but have stayed with me over time; that initial list was 20, and here are the Top Ten.

I'm too close to this year's batch, but I think Severance might be there somewhere in the long haul.

The first two I have recommended to everyone, and in fact when I shot my debut feature film The Girl in the Crawlspace earlier this year, they were two of the books I gave to my lead actors as a thak you for their roles.  The next two were also a heavy influence on my movie, as a character reads them during the action.

I had to include The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as it started my now ten-year love of Scandinavian crime fiction (as well, I suspect, as quite a few other people).

The others I would just say were mindblowers in some way that sent my thinking in different directions. 

Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel

 Night Film by Marisha Pessl

Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin

The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin 

Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller

 The City and The City by China Mieville

 Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle

 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson


Here are the next five that I had to think hard about before excluding:

Lunar Park by Brett Easton Ellis

Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

The Transmigration of Bodies by Yuri Herrera

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt

Embassytown by China Mieville

Maybe this list would be slightly different if I did it again tomorrow, but maybe not.

A couple of times I have picked goals for the year; once I read a year of all women writers and once I did a year of people of color or people in translation.  If I have a goal for this coming year, I think it will be read harder and smarter; we shall see.  I hope you see something here you'd like to read!

Some Came to Keep the Dark Away

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

I was extremely flattered to be invited back to the Farmland Community Center to screen THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE in the very location where we shot the "Outcast Swords" portion of the movie.  A lot of cast and crew from the movie were there, along with their families and friends, making for a very warm and friendly audience.  There were laughs and clapping and an audible gasp at the final reveal--so much so that my mother almost slid off her chair.  After, she told me, "you need to tell these people you had a normal childhood."

My wife and I didn't get too far in watching horror movies this October, but we both really liked HOLD THE DARK, which really wasn't as much a horror movie as it was billed which is okay because the title does not stick in my head well enough to tell people about it.  IT STAINS THE SANDS RED was really clever, and AS ABOVE SO BELOW made my stomach hurt.  THE DEVIL'S CANDY was solid enough.  But what we super binged on which I think counts is THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE which has real and genuine chills from beginning to (almost) the end and comes recommended.

While my wife is out of town at a conference, I have been catching up on all the obscurities I seek out and gather up from all different places.

I watched SHOT, which was an early 70s action film made by some incredibly ambitious University of Illinois students, and by ambitious I mean car crashes and helicopter stunts and gunplay, so much gunplay that these goofballs running around like this today would draw the attention of Homeland Security in about five minutes.  But it was a simpler time, when the fuzz could beat on longhairs who are just out trying to make some bread.

In the extras is an interview with the director, who did this movie and then went out to Hollywood for ten years and couldn't get anything going, except he had a memorable meeting with Orson Welles I wish he had talked more about.

I watched a double feature starring Peter Carpenter, BLOOD MANIA and POINT OF TERROR, shot back to back in 1970 and 1971 respectively, two hyperbolic titles for what are interesting but tame dramas with splashes of horror, leftover hallucinatory imagery from the 60s, and fuzzy rock chords on the soundtrack.  So naturally I loved them both.

Carpenter is an interesting figure who the internet can't find out much about, except he sort of appeared and through force of personality willed these two starring vehicles for himself into life.  And then mysteriously died, or maybe disappeared into obscurity.

I think why I like these kinds of movies is that it reminds me just how hard it is to make a movie, any movie, at any time, at any place.  This time last year I had pretty much just finished writing THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE for myself because I hadn't been hired to do anything for a year.  I have three screenplays turned into films that have yet to come out and a fourth that might not get made.  In this very newsletter I am typing right this second I was about to announce another project that had to be shelved earlier this week, that we were going to start shooting tomorrow.  But it was shelved with good reasons so I can't be too upset.

Everyone says when you are working on a movie you have to be telling people about your next one.  I was so wrung out at the end of shooting CRAWLSPACE that I could not get my head around another one; I thought I would be a one-hit wonder, and some day in the future somebody would find my movie and wonder where I went and how I died too.  But all my filmmaking friends who shared the pitfalls before I started shooting told me of this pitfall, too--that it gets in your blood.  So it may be time and past time to start working on the next one.

Until later, thanks for reading.

Some Velvet Morning

This blog post first appeared in I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP, an e-newsletter you can subscribe to from the sidebar.

Last time, I listed all the books that appeared in or around THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE, and this time I thought I would provide a list of all the movies and TV shows mentioned, many of which were influential in the movie as well.  Many of them appear in the scene I wrote about last time, the one that seems to be a lot of people's favorite (curiously enough) where the D&D group talk about all of their secret crushes.  I remember Erin Ryan telling me she watched all the trailers on YouTube to try to understand it, and Jeff Rapkin telling me he would wake up in the middle of the night, trying to recite his.  Here they are, in order:

DOLEMITE
THE FIVE DEADLY VENOMS
DJANGO THE BASTARD
WONDER WOMAN (TV SHOW)
THE KROFFT SUPERSHOW (TV SHOW)
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE (TV SHOW)
THE AVENGERS (TV SHOW)
WONDER WOMAN (MOVIE)
THE AVENGERS (MOVIE)
THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO
CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON
THE BIRDS
ZORRO'S BLACK WHIP
SUPERMAN II
ROSEMARY'S BABY
THE BIONIC WOMAN
HERCULES UNCHAINED
HERCULES VS MOLOCH
HERCULES AGAINST THE MOON MEN
HERCULES IN THE HAUNTED WORLD
HERCULES AND THE TYRANTS OF BABYLON
HERCULES VS THE HYDRA
MANNAJA: A MAN CALLED BLADE
GOD FORGIVES, I DON'T
SARTANA THE GRAVEDIGGER
KEOMA
RETURN OF RINGO
A SKY FULL OF STARS FOR A ROOF
FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE
THE LAST OF THE RENEGADES
I AM SARTANA YOUR ANGEL OF DEATH
THE GREAT SILENCE
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE--ROGUE NATION

If you ever needed a horror movie to give you a spaghetti western primer, this is it. My love for Italian films in general has only increased by multiple trips to Italy chaperoning my wife's college class trips over the years as well.  But there are a lot of personal references here too.  I caught HERCULES AGAINST THE MOON MEN on Saturday afternoon television one day and was scared badly as a child.  I saw FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE playing in Italian on television in Rome a few years back.  THE FIVE DEADLY VENOMS shocking my sensibilities on Kung Fu Theatre as a teen.  A friend showing me DOLEMITE on VHS at work in the early 90s and having my eyes opened. I hope one or two of these ring out for you.

I am incredibly late to the podcast game, but the radio quit in my 2007 Honda and I just limped along without one for a while, listening to podcasts on my phone.  I would have to recommend the creepy-crawly podcast ALICE ISN'T DEAD, about a long-haul trucker traveling the lonely highways looking for her missing wife.  This is a three-season story from the people who made the breakthrough hit WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE which is over a hundred episodes and going strong, so I wasn't sure where to drop in.  I started listening to another standaloone one they did, WITHIN THE WIRES, but it has creeped me out so badly I am listening to it in very small doses.  The premise is exceedingly clever; the first season is presented as "relaxation tapes" that actually have a hidden message.  The second season is supposedly a recorded museum tour, and the third just underway is based on office dictation into a machine.  Pretty dang clever.

I am trying #inktober again this year to flex my creative muscles, even my flabby cartooning ones, and on the brink of doing more than I have in past attempts.  At the end of the month, I'll post the most popular ones here.

Until then, thanks for reading.

A Shooting Star Has Crossed My Land

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

I have enjoyed seeing people explore what books are shown in TV shows and movies, from MAD MEN to ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK to LUKE CAGE.  I tried in my own small way to signal a few ideas in my directorial debut THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE.

During the role-playing game scenes I tried to fill in with a lot of Easter Eggs for nerd culture fans.  I set up the gamer Dewclaw (Joe Skeen) as being a bit of a collector of outsider art and culture, so I seeded some of my favorite independent comics and such around, most of which unfortunately you can't see in the movie (nor several of his tee shirts, which were designed by some friends).  But you can definitely see my old friend Ray Otus' RPG zine PLUNDERGROUNDS on the table.  Ray also did all of the D&D style art you see in these scenes, which gives those parts some added production value.

You also see Jill (Erin R. Ryan) reading or carrying a TEX comic around in several scenes.  Tex Willer is one of the greatest, most long-running heroes of Italian fumetti, and every time I go to Rome I make a pilgrimage to the Piazza della Repubblica and the great outdoor stalls there full of fumetti, giallo novels, old records, and other remnants of Italian pop culture to pick up a few issues (I own issue 500, and TEX is still going strong).

A question I have been asked a lot is if the dream cowboy Jill sees (played by Joe Kidd) is supposed to be the spaghetti western hero Django--in fact, Jill's D&D character is named Django the Bastard, after one of my favorite spaghettis--but I honestly never thought about that.  I really meant for him to be Tex Willer.  But Tex has such an iconic look that I chickened out and named him Lucky after Russell Hayden, part of a story I have recounted a few times but can be read here. And even more honestly, I knew Joe still had his Wild Bill costume from CALAMITY JANE'S REVENGE, in which, ironically, he also plays a ghost.

I also had the young gamer Skinflayer (Chelsi Kern) with a paperback book nearby in several scenes.  My thought was when the older gamers were going on and on about rules and such she would probably get bored and start reading.  The two books you see her reading are STARS IN MY POCKET LIKE GRAINS OF SAND by Samuel R. Delany and THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS by Ursula K. Le Guin.  Delany's work really changed my whole outlook on science fiction and sent me out on different paths in reading and writing, and Le Guin's novel is just definitive.  Interesting, both have to do with sexuality and gender identity, which plays a tangential (but as it has borne out) memorable part in the movie.

The question I have been asked about more than if Joe was Django is about one of the gaming group scenes.  Many people ask questions about the scene where the gaming group starts to rattle off their lists of attractive people they would rather be gaming with instead of their real-life friends, or tell me it was their favorite scene.  This was interesting to me because it was one of the first scenes I thought of when I decided on including the gaming group in the story.

Basically what happens is the other guys start naming off everyone they fantasize about, from Suzanne Pleshette in THE BIRDS to Linda Stirling in ZORRO'S BLACK WHIP to Lynda Carter in WONDER WOMAN.  Skinflayer counters with Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, and her other female crushes.  Then Tangerine (Clifford Lowe) recalls his list, featuring Italian muscle men from Gordon Scott to Reg Park.  There is a brief pause, and then everyone chimes in with their favorite Hercules actors as well, to Tangerine's great relief.

There's a bit more to the scene, but basically I wanted to convey that everyone already pretty much knew about Tangerine and were fine with it, and he was the last to know that everybody already knew.  The younger Skinflayer is pretty comfortable in her own skin (so to speak), kind of showing some of the generational differences between Skinflayer and the older Tangerine.

But even more so I wanted to show something I have always felt about fandom, be it gaming or comic books or movies, which is that it should be (and most often is) about inclusion.

That's what bothers me so much about controversies like Gamergate or Comicsgate; if you are in fan culture--gaming, comics, movies, what have you--you have probably been labeled an outsider at some point.  If there is any group that should know not to put others on the outside, it's fandom.  We should always reach out to others, not put a wall between us.

Okay, as I said before, I know the movie is about a guy with a canvas sack over his head chasing around poor Erin Ryan, but I wonder if this scene resonates with people because it speaks to those who have been involved in fandom; the easy camaraderie, the support of others' ideas and views, the long friendships that can form, and so on.  People enjoying this scene has been a welcome surprise.  It reminds me, and I hope it reminds everybody, about the best part of fandom.

One more thing I would say about books in my movie actually takes place outside the frame of the film.  On the last full day of shooting, I gave my four leads--Erin Ryan, John Hambrick, Joni Durian, and Tom Cherry--each a book as a thank you for being a part of the project.  All four books are important to me and in some way influenced the movie.  Those books were Marisha Pessl's NIGHT FILM, Emily St. John Mandel's STATION ELEVEN, Ursula Le Guin's THE LATHE OF HEAVEN, and Jim Thompson's THE KILLER INSIDE ME.  If you want a good read, you can't go wrong with any of these.

More next time.

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!

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

Picture locked on THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE.

I Never Minded Standing in the Rain

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

A weekend ago I wrapped for real and for true on THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE.  I wrapped principal in March but had just a handful of pickup shots--a newscaster on a television, a dream sequence cowboy, a therapist on a telephone--that I thought I would pick up in a weekend or two, then it turned into the coldest April in Indiana history (followed by the hottest May in Indiana history) and other projects got in the way and suddenly it was June.

Most of the good moviemaking advice I could give I got from other people before I started--the number once piece of great advice is "feed your people"--but the advice I learned for myself was, schedule every shot and don't think you'll just pick them up later.

A movie where the love of spaghetti westerns plays a huge part has to have a dream sequence cowboy, and nobody fit the bill better than an actor whose real name is Joe Kidd just like the Clint Eastwood movie.  It was also incredibly helpful that he owned this western outfit pictured here, which he wore in another movie I wrote, CALAMITY JANE'S REVENGE, as dream sequence Wild Bill Hickok.  Watching Joe bad-ass around rural Ohio made me want to write another straight western right away (where he could play a living person).

In my movie he plays Lucky, who I really wanted to call Tex after Tex Willer, the famed, long-lived star of Italian comic books.  But I ended up calling him Lucky after Russell Hayden, who was part of one of the greatest lost feats in contemporary b-movie history when he made six westerns in thirty days (I have written an essay about it here).  This feat was definitely my inspiration for writing three movies in six weeks for director Mark Polonia last summer that could all be shot more or less together with more or less the same cast.

THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE is winding through post and I am slowly, slowly noodling on what might be next.  More news soon.

Avoid Stepping On Bela Lugosi

This post first appeared in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP which you can subscribe to in the sidebar if you can't wait for news from me.

While THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE winds its way through post, I am chipping away at some other things.  But the guys at Neon Bloodbath did a nice write up of me, and you can read that here.

I have been a screener for the Indy Shorts International Film Fest, part of the prestigious Heartland Film Festival, which would never, never show any movie I have ever worked on.  I have concentrated on the high school part of the fest, which has clocked in over 75 entries to date.  I love seeing what people come up with, with whatever they have on hand as far as geography and equipment and friendships.  And some of them do astoundingly good work.

I am also joining the Programming Committee for the Blue Whiskey Film Festival, run by some old friends who have done great work in first suburban and now downtown Chicago.  My schedule has not allowed me to get up there as regularly as I might like the last few years, so it permits me to help from afar.  It's been amazing to see the people who have launched out of there over the course of the fest, including Michael Mohan who helmed EVERYTHING SUCKS to Mike Flanagan who recently did GERALD'S GAME and has a million things going to Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who wrote a little movie a few people went to see called A QUIET PLACE.  Nothing makes me happier than to see people go on the arc from their peanut butter days to Making It.

I went to Cinema Wasteland a weekend ago, which is a one of the key conventions for people doing b-movies, though distance (it is near Cleveland) has precluded me from going every year.  But with CRAWLSPACE in production, it seemed a good time to go and chat with people.  I don't know if it was because I was going around as a director instead of a screenwriter (it has always seemed like nobody wants to talk to screenwriters) or because I was walking around with Henrique Couto, who is sort of like the Mayor of Cinema Wasteland, but I touched base with a lot of new folks.  It was worthwhile, and there are a lot of people trying to figure out what to do next, including me.

I would like to write more, but I cut my index finger washing the blade in the food processor last night, and I am making a ton of typos, so I am going to have to quit here.  Talk soon.

You'll Escape in the Final Reel

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

On Palm Sunday we kept our family tradition and watched JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR. This is probably our most re-watched movie as a family, with WHEN HARRY MET SALLY as a couple, and THE WITCHES and WILLOW with the kids.  I love this one so much that at one point when directing THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE I told Tom Cherry, who plays Sheriff Woody, to "run like Carl Anderson does in Jesus Christ Superstar."  So if the movie turns out weird, it's because I gave actors directions like that.

The movie is easing into post.  A winter that won't quit has stalled a few pickup shots, then it is on to editing.  But we are all chatting and hoping to keep moving it along.

Beforehand some of the family sat around talking about our funerals, which I didn't participate in, because I am going to die first, and my urn will sit next to my wife's bedside table at the nunnery, where my dogs will also be sleeping.  My wife suggested she would donate my papers to my alma mater because of my modest success in b-movies, which was seriously very moving for me to hear, even as I pictured them being received, and then promptly dumped into a recycling bin to make room for the papers of Doug Jones, David Letterman, Jim Davis, Cynda Williams, and Joyce DeWitt.

But it reminded me of when I went to see Nicolas Winding Refn at the Indiana University Cinema, and instead of talking about himself he talked all about his preservation efforts for the work of Andy Milligan, who I had not heard of at that point.  I promptly went out and watched THE BODY BENEATH, and then a bunch of others, and really fell in love with his work, even as he has been decried up and down the internet and beyond.  He really was a threadbare auteur, trying to make something out of nothing, and that is something I really appreciate.

Phoef Sutton wrote a horror novel called THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL about a haunted grindhouse movie, a novel I liked, and he and talked quite a bit about Jean Rollin in it, so I watched REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE and THE SHIVER OF THE VAMPIRES and found another filmmaker I think was a no-budget genius who a lot of other people think was a hack.  His movies have an austere, dreamlike quality that is fascinating to me.

If I am honest, what inspired me the most to get started on THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE were the two movies by Frederick Friedel, AXE and KIDNAPPED COED, who made this double feature back to back in the 70s and crashed right out of the industry subsequently.  AXE is especially artistic, and COED is pretty cool, but pointing out that they were made on a shoestring doesn't account for the real price of shoestrings.

In the week between the two weekend shoots for CRAWLSPACE I watched a movie called THE HANG UP by John Hayes, and I thought it was fantastic, and suddenly I was introduced to another fascinating director with an offbeat filmography.

Thankfully there are companies like Vinegar Syndrome and Severin Films and Something Weird trying to preserve these films, and people like Refn and Sutton and my friend film reviewer Jason Coffman to talk about them in some other fashion than the braying ridicule they are sometimes treated to.

I think that's what I want more than anything, because I have come to learn from watching others that fame is a monkey's paw; that somebody find something I did in a dusty dollar bin somewhere, or in some other throwaway place, and watch it, and understand what I was trying to say, in the way I try to understand Milligan and Rollin and Friedel and Hayes.  It's a lot to ask, but as I am sitting at a little kneehole desk in a corner of a house with farm acreage spread out all around me, it's what I hope.