#Inktober

In 2014 I tried the #Inktober challenge, posting an Instagram picture of a drawing every day of the month of October (more or less), along with people of actual talent and skill.  Nonetheless the mind is drawn towards trying it again, so for your relative pleasure, here are the Top Ten most liked images (in order) from that run (adding Facebook and Instagram together).

From the Brim to the Dregs

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

My day life is keeping my night life at bay, so I have not had much to report from the screenwriting world.  A movie I wrote, ALONE IN THE GHOST HOUSE, is now loose in the world and available on various platforms.  It is a "found footage" movie I sometimes forget I worked on because it came together so quickly, and because I wrote more of a long outline for it than a full-formed script.  I think it will surprise people because the spine is tighter than a lot of found footage films and when the dominoes start falling it hangs together pretty nicely.  But watch it and let me know what you think.

I had my 50th birthday two weeks ago, which I took off from work this year to contemplate my mortality.  I went to see SUICIDE SQUAD in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon and was the youngest person at the multiplex and the only one at the screening, a weird feeling.  As a guy who owned a signed copy of John Ostrander's SUICIDE SQUAD #1 (that he signed for me at a Muncie Indiana comic book shop in the 80s) I didn't hate the movie like a lot of hardcore fans but didn't like it much either, with my invisible keyboard in my head righting all of the mistakes.

Regrets at 50?  One is that I sold that signed SUICIDE SQUAD #1 when I was broke.  Otherwise, a lot to think about but more good than bad.  Only about two years ago neither of my kids were married, I had no grandkids, I did not live on five acres in the country, and I did not know I had Type II Diabetes and thus was 65 pounds heavier.  Adding and subtracting everything, the sum total was all good.

For many years I have used my birthday to think about whether I want to keep screenwriting another year.  My brother thinks this is a foolish exercise but I think it is as good a time as any to measure the barometer of my work.  A lot of good has happened this year in meeting people and making connections--including a possible appearance at the Chicago Horror Society later this year, after dropping in on Henrique Couto's BABYSITTER MASSACRE screening a month ago--but a lot of projects have bottomed out.  I have turned down some work lately, including the sequel to a movie I wrote some years ago, but several other projects I thought were sure things haven't taken off.  I got booted off a project not that long ago, which has rarely ever happened (one memorable time I found out when my name disappeared off the IMDB listing) and since then I have had to do a lot more rewrites than I am used to.

I don't think it's about regaining my mojo, it's more about finding the projects that need the mojo I have.  I'm about 15 years down the road from my first screenplay sale, have a dozen movies out and have sold more than 30 screenplays (I need to actually stop and count this more carefully) which is a good track record by any standard in the industry.  So I can be selective about what I want to do next and in what form that might take.

In the meantime, my August pick for my book club is NINEFOX GAMBIT by Yoon Ha Lee.  Basically this is about a soldier tasked with the suicidal mission of re-taking an impenetrable fortress overrrun by heretics--all while psychically linked to the ghost of a genocidal general--but the world-building is so dense and baroque it took me at least thirty or forty pages before I understood a sentence of what was going on.  But when I got into its strange rhythms I found it to be a really good military-flavored sci fi novel.

I've fallen into a bit of a show hole for television, but did enjoy FORTITUDE until it kind of unraveled at the end; by and large, about a murder that Stanley Tucci investigates at a very remote Arctic town.  Waiting for new seasons to start, IRL and on TV.

Talk again soon.

Bookends

I always ask for books for my birthday, and also got an Amazon gift card, so I am stocked up for the first winter in my new house.  Turning 50 was slightly philosophical but I felt buoyed by these two discoveries in a book I was given and one I bought--a mention of a movie I worked on in Brian Albright's REGIONAL HORROR FILMS 1958-1990 and reviews of two movies I wrote in Jason Coffman's THE UNREPENTANT CINEPHILE.  Makes half a century go down easier.

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).

Scenes from Blue Whiskey

Stayed downtown when I was a judge at the Blue Whiskey Film Festival at the end of July, and really got to feel like a South Loop guy for a week.

In the middle of the week I had a night off from judging the Fest, conveniently when my pal Henrique Couto was screening his film BABYSITTER MASSACRE for an appreciative crowd at the Chicago Horror Society.  The Chicago crowds are tough--cheering loudly every time somebody got murdered--but I was among my people nonetheless.  I hope to attend another screening there soon.

Here I am doing a Q&A with Dax Phelan, director of JASMINE, one of my faves at the Fest.

Kinda looks like the Rat Pack with all that swag going on, but this is the Judges Panel.

Last but not least I try to grab a picture with Festival Director Michael P. Noens at the end of every Fest.  We should take it at the beginning, when we are less tired.

Looking forward to next year!

Live from Blue Whiskey 2016

This post first appeared, in a slightly different form, at my newsletter I Was Bigfoot's Shemp.  You can subscribe here.

I spent last week gorging on movies at the Blue Whiskey Independent Film Festival in suburban Chicago.  I have been involved with these folks since this festival's inception and have watched as it has grown and matured over the years.

One way the film fest has differentiated itself is by focusing on having cast and crew on hand to be interviewed live or via Skype, but an even greater differentiation point is having the judges screen the films live with an audience, counter to most festivals I have worked on (where you watch the entries by yourself and all the votes are tabulated).  In what is sometimes long and frequently lively discussions, our deliberations at the end can often sway each other one way or the next.  Watching 30 or so movies in a week, and then debating them, takes both physical and mental fortitude in the kind of "Nerd Extreme Sports" I like.

My personal favorite of the fest this year was Dax Phelan's cerebral Hong Kong thriller JASMINE.  It was a cool noir with the kind of unreliable narrator that I enjoy.  But the Chicago-centric romantic comedy OPEN TABLES by director Jack C. Newell was hard to beat, with nice performances, a domino-tipping plot, and good cinematography to make a pleasing blend (that won Best of Fest).

On the shorts front, I was utterly charmed by director Becca Roth's LUCKY PENNY, about a lonely barista who tries to seed the world with good luck in the form of pennies from her tip jar.  My sensibilities were much in line with director Megan St. John's rural crime caper BROILED (which won Best of Illinois) but director Benjamin Cappelletti with his apocalyptic dark comedy SKAL introduced me to another guy who is probably going to push me out of the way some day.

Those are my top five, but there were cool things and good performances all up and down the festival lineup.  Plus I got to eat Chicago pizza multiple times, and who can complain about that?  You can go to bwiff.com to learn more about the film festival.

Live from Hoosierdance

This  post originally appeared, in a slightly different form, in my newsletter I Was Bigfoot's Shemp, which you can subscribe to here.
 
Last weekend I had the opportunity to attend the Hoosierdance International Film Festival in Kokomo, Indiana, where I was a festival judge for the screenplay competition. We selected a tidy little screenplay called DIRTY WINDS about the American Revolution and its impact on a group of people.  But look how sweet I got treated at the festival:

First I went to the Indiana short films bock, where I got to meet some like-minded people.  To me, this is the best part of any fest, especially a grassroots one.  I always say you can't push anyone's career ahead of yours, but if you catch the rocket, you can pull other people in your wake.  And that's what this is about, proving you are a normal person who seems able to meet deadlines and keep promises.

I saw a lot of good things, and I know I missed some things that played well, but from what I saw there were some standouts.

UNEXCEPTIONAL by Scott Carelli was a funny little alien invasion movie that played like the opening salvo to a full-length work.  RANDOM by Cindy Maples was a very tight genre short that I can't say much about without giving away the game.  But probably my favorite was MISREAD by Ryan McCurdy, about a schlub hired to drive a woman around who reads lips for a living.  The production was a little uneven, but I like stories I haven't heard before.

Next I went to the student films block, where I saw all the people that will push me out of the way one day.  They had a large, warm crowd for a mix of narrative and documentary shorts. David Stallard did an interesting doc called THE BLUE FLASH about an old guy who built two roller coasters in his backyard in rural Indiana.  THE NETWORK by Adam Nelson was a very polished-looking post-apocalyptic riff.  But what knocked me out was THE UNKNOWN COUNTRY by Alex Cook, about two orphaned brothers hanging on in a bleak rural setting. Very good acting and directing signaled that this guy has a tremendous upside.

Part of why I missed a few screenings was that I really ended up enjoying downtown Kokomo.  You can see when you visit that they are making an effort to revitalize the area with little shops and cool places to eat and have coffee.  They even have a self-proclaimed Geek Street, with a comic book shop, gaming store, toy store, with an Irish pub, coffee shop, and hipster record store all within shouting distance.  For me, a street of dreams, indeed.

I Snapchatted all day from there to test the app out for a work project.  You can find me on Snapchat at John Oak Dalton, to catch me next time.

I enjoyed being a part of Hoosierdance in just its second year, and I hope they have more to come.  At the end of the month I will be at the Blue Whiskey Film Festival in Chicago, and will have much to report from there.

China 9, Liberty 37

This  post originally appeared in a slightly different form in my newsletter I Was Bigfoot's Shemp, which you can subscribe to here.

In a single week I sold my house, closed on another, moved, and then jetted off to Italy.  One day, those seven days will seem funny.
As usual, I made my annual pilgrimage to the grave of fellow A/V nerd Guglielmo Marconi, and stocked up on fumetti.

But five trips to Italy later I finally fulfilled my dream of visiting Cinecitta, the legendary Italian film studio.

I had always wanted to go, but it is more than a dozen stops from Roma Termini, the central train station, so I have never been able to find the time.  Even though it is a giant studio space, there isn't a ton available to the public, but I still found it interesting.

As you might suspect, Fellini gets a lot of space here.  Apparently he used to crash out and sleep at the studio a lot back in the day.

In the museum, there is a lot of time spent on Italian Neorealism, one of my favorite genres even before I visited Italy, but also a fair chunk on Spaghetti Westerns and Sword and Sandal movies (or Peplum as they are called there).  I thought there might be a section on Poliziotesschi films (Italian cop movies) but I guess that genre hasn't reached critical nostalgia mass yet.

Since this is Italy, they also have an area dedicated to Italian starlets of the 60s and 70s like Sophia Loren, Claudia Cardinale, and the like.  There was a section about Cinecitta during World War II, and the destruction that led to Neorealism. 

I thought one of the more unusual displays was a room full of drawers that were objects that inspired various directors that have worked there.  The photo above was for Martin Scorsese's, and includes a pair of glasses he apparently left lying around.  Tarantino was the only other American director represented, but the great Sergio Leone left some junk there, as well as Roberto Benigni and Lina Wertmuller.

A pretty cool day, and I'm glad I went there.

When My Eyes Beheld An Eerie Sight

A version of this post first appeared on my email newsletter, I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP, which you can subscribe to here.


ALONE IN THE GHOST HOUSE, a found footage movie I wrote and keep forgetting I ever worked on, is streeting this summer.  Some news about that, including a trailer, is here.

This is a big-assed posted for the movie, parked at Cinema Wasteland last weekend:

Look how big my name is!

I have always wanted to go to Wasteland, one of the big shows in our world, but little things keep getting in the way, like I have to pack up my entire life and move in the next 30 days or so.  But shows like Wasteland is how I got started in the b-movie world; going out and meeting people and showing them I was a relatively normal, functioning person that could be reasoned with, and playing the long, long game on building relationships and trust.  Surrounding yourself with people you can trust is how it works in this world and plenty of others.  And everyone hopes that when somebody catches the rocket, they will pull everyone else along for the ride.

It has been fun seeing on the interwebs that people bought ALONE IN THE GHOST HOUSE and have been watching it.  If you have it, I hope you enjoy it.

Jane, You're Playing A Game

A new poster for CALAMITY JANE'S REVENGE, looking pretty swanky.  A new trailer from the distributor is here.  I'm glad I lived long enough for westerns to come back into style.

Wandering Man, I Call Thee Sand

 This post first appeared, in a slightly different form, in my e-newsletter I Was Bigfoot's Shemp, which you can subscribe to here.


I talked recently about how I like to write characters who reflect the interests of the people who are probably watching my movies. I also like to salt in Easter Eggs that give hints about the backgrounds of the movies.

For instance, when I wrote JURASSIC PREY director Mark Polonia suggested I watched BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE as a primer for what he was looking for.  Fair enough, as the movie was reworked from NAKED PARADISE and later reworked again as CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA.  That's why I named a minor character Hellman after director Monte Hellman and another character Wain after screenwriter Robert Towne's pseudonym, and so on.  It gives knowing viewers a little nod and a wink (although I'm not sure how many people were in on the joke).

CALAMITY JANE'S REVENGE was a little trickier as they were by and large real people.  Even though some people who have seen the movie didn't know Calamity Jane was a real person, much less Con Stapleton, Charlie Utter, and "Crooked Nose" Jack McCall.  But the story is peopled with all kinds of owlhoots and scalywags, so I leaned upon a classic actor from the spaghetti western era, Klaus Kinski, for inspiration.

Klaus Kinski was one of the great scenery-chewing lunatics of the spaghetti western era, and is in more movies than even a devoted fan like myself can keep track of.  Even more so, most of the time he acted like he DGAF about what was going on around him.

My favorite performance is as a character with the unlikely name "Hot Dead" in I AM SARTANA YOUR ANGEL OF DEATH (he also DGAF in another Sartana movie, IF YOU MEET SARTANA PRAY FOR YOUR DEATH, as a different character).  In a German-helmed Eurowestern called THE LAST OF THE RENEGADES he parades around in a crazy hat and just DGAF.  In one of the great late spaghetti westerns, THE GREAT SILENCE, he is called, appropriately, Loco, and he struts like he DGAF even as the bad guys win (belated spoiler from 1968).  There are just so many spaghetti westerns where he DGAF, but the one he probably should have and DGAF was Sergio Leone's classic FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE.  But he plays a character called Juan Wild, so he can hardly be blamed.  And he gets that iconic scene where Lee Van Cleef strikes a match off his face.

So there you have it, five times where Klaus Kinski DGAF and maybe should have, and I paid tribute to him in CALAMITY JANE'S REVENGE.  And yet, even though I based the name of the lead villain, King Garrett, off of Klaus Kinski I told actor Adam Clevenger that he was really based on one of my favorite actors of the spaghetti western era, William Berger.  He was inspired by Berger's role in the classic KEOMA, but I also liked him in IF YOU MEET SARTANA PRAY FOR YOUR DEATH, and HANGING FOR DJANGO even though he is more or less a good guy in that.

Despite this, actor Adam Clevenger played him like Gene Hackman in UNFORGIVEN, and I was fine with that.

In Dreams I Walk With You

This post first appeared in my new newsletter I Was Bigfoot's Shemp, which you can subscribe to right here.

 I think this was a work anxiety dream; that I was hired to write a DC comic book series, but at the last minute also had to draw it.  What I remember was a splash page where Doctor Fate arrives, with the skull of Red Tornado, to present to the Invisible Kid.

This was the second Invisible Kid, Jacques Foccart, added after a long run of having only white heroes in the Legion of Super-Heroes (if you don't count green and blue characters).  Later in DC Comics continuity Invisible Kid gets elected President of Earth, with Tyroc (actually one of the first African-American superheroes introduced in DC, ever) named as Vice President.  Naturally, the Earth subsequently blows up, putting Invisible Kid, Tyroc, and some other survivors on a New Earth, floating through space.

Mercifully, DC Comics has forgotten this ever happened.

In my dream, New Earth is stranded, melancholy, at the end of time, guarded by Doctor Fate's Tower of Fate.  This image struck me so much that I tried to draw it, to purge myself of the memory.  Here is the splash page from that imaginary comic:

---

When I got back into reading comics in the 1980s one of the first comics I fell for was Jon Ostrander's SUICIDE SQUAD.  I wish I still had my signed copy of SUICIDE SQUAD #1, one of the few possessions I don't have any longer I would like to wish back.  So that's why COPRA is so awesome to me; an unapologetic riff on that 80s SUICIDE SQUAD comic by a guy named Michel Fiffe who must have read it as religiously as me.  Although that may be a small audience, what I think has resonated with people--and made this a cult sensation--is that the guy writes and draws it himself, and sells it on Etsy.  It's a model a lot of people are interested in, and he is succeeding at it.

I am also reading BITCH PLANET, which is getting a lot of attention, written by Kelly Sue DeConnick as sort of THE HANDMAID'S TALE meets ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK.  In a near future, "non-compliant" women are sent to a remote prison planet, and the action revolves around the subculture there as well as Earth's reaction to it.  It's the kind of comic book you suggest to people who don't read comics at all.  Interesting for its social and political commentary but also a fun comic.

And lastly I am working my way through THE SANDMAN: OVERTURE, a long-awaited addition to THE SANDMAN comic book series, really a milestone work in comics by author Neil Gaiman.  It relies somewhat heavily on being in love with the original run almost twenty years ago (and remembering it clearly), but the comics are so beautiful to look at it's worth it just for that.  The artist is JH Williams III, whose run on BATWOMAN blew a lot of people's minds.  I am reading this in trade paperback from the local public library, and it has plenty of extras packed in it to make it, I am guessing, the way to read this one if you are so inclined.

Everything Is Closed, It's Like A Ruin

I was 100 percent convinced direct to DVD was over, and I was waiting for streaming to materialize/monetize for people like me; but I was mistaken.  DVD is still around, and even more crazily, just when I thought I was born too late, I wrote a western for the direct to DVD market last year.

Slowly, strangely, everything old is new again.  For one, CDs and podcasts.  Really that's two, I guess.  But one thing I am hooked on is reading a lot of e-newsletters.  Somehow, it's so throwback, it's cool again.  Just google, and find people like Warren Ellis and Lena Dunham writing them, if you don't believe it's true.

So I'm going to give it a go.  Frankly more than anything I want a change to talk about some of my projects in a way that I can't post publicly on my blog or on Facebook.  Also I'll include some capsule reviews of things I'm watching and reading and include some content you can't find on any of my public platforms.  If you are interested, you can subscribe at https://tinyletter.com/johnoakdalton.  It is titled "I Was Bigfoot's Shemp."

I'm going to start by writing one a week and see how long it takes for that to dwindle down.  But it's the dead of winter, and a time to try things to keep the machine running, so we shall see.

2015 Reading Challenge

After doing the 50 books a year reading challenge for a number of years now, I thought I would change it up this time and read only books by women authors.  This challenge initially came from my wife, who felt--rightfully so--that I wasn't reading enough women.

This turned out to be a great thing, as not only did it energize my reading--I exceeded 50 books this year, which I had not been able to do for a while--but it also forced me to find authors I might have passed over before, several of whom I enjoyed immensely and will look for more from.

I think it made me a better reader, and I hope a better writer.  It was such a good thing that in 2016 I am going to take on another challenge a friend put before me, which was to read only authors of color for one year.  I think I will expand this challenge a bit and also include authors in translation.  I'm curious to see what I will find in 2016.

But before that, here is a look back to 2015, and my favorite reads.  Instead of doing a Top Ten, as this was a special challenge I decided to make it an even dozen.  Curiously, there are three dystopian novels and three Eastern European stories.  I would consider five science fiction, two thrillers, and one lone western.  An interesting mix:

1.  Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel

2.  Zoo City by Lauren Beukes

3.  The Ghost Network by Catie Disabato

4.  The Only Ones by Carola Dibbell

5.  Epitaph by Mary Doria Russell

6.  Innocence by Heda Margolius Kovaly

7.  Girl at War by Sara Novic

8.  When the Doves Disappeared by Sofi Oksanen

9.  Find Me by Laura Van Den Berg

10.  White Crocodile by KT Medina

11.  Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

12.  The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

Happy Reading!

Everything I Tell You Has Been Spoken

Like a lot of people on the magical interwebs I decided to try the "31 Days of Horror" horror movie challenge and watch 31 horror movies in October.  I knew I probably wasn't going to make it, because 1. I had to finish writing my own (secret) horror movie by October 30 and 2. I accidentally got addicted to Fargo and binged on the whole first season.

But I ended up watching 15, 14 of them that I had never seen (and I'm only counting Hocus Pocus once even though we watched it at the work Halloween party and I had it running at home on Halloween night), and that ain't bad.  I won't list them all, but my top five are:

1.  THE BABADOOK.  One of only a few movies to ever give me a nightmare the night after watching it.  It is especially unsettling if you are a parent, with an interestingly enigmatic ending.

2.  BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO.  Weird shocker about a sound technician working on an Italian horror movie, and maybe going crazy at the same time.  Best for fans of Italian horror of the 70s, but you probably already saw it.

3.  PONTYPOOL.  A burnt-out morning DJ at a remote Canadian radio station begins to realize that something terrible is happening in a snowstorm outside.  A claustrophobic, slow-burn mind game.

4.  HOUSE OF THE DEVIL:  Throwback-style horror about a young woman hired to babysit an unseen client at the start of an eclipse, and what could go wrong with that?

5.  GRABBERS:  Brisk horror-comedy is sort of a remake of "The War of the Worlds," only the aliens turn out to be allergic to alcohol, prompting the residents of an Irish village to get hammered and fight back.

Special Honorable Mention to HAUSU (HOUSE), a 70s Japanese horror movie that is not to be entered into lightly; a group of schoolgirls visit a reclusive aunt in a creepy old house, which makes it sounds like a normal movie, but is really only for those fans seeking the truly odd and unsettling.

Enjoy!