My first two French productions...

One of these days I'll write a blog or post a video detailing my experiences in France and how the whole thing all came about. In the meantime I like keeping an aura of confusion. Enjoy!

Paying My Respects

I know I'm late jumping on this particular bandwagon, and there's not much I can say that hasn't been said. This is really the blogging equivalent of pissing for the sake of leaving a mark.

Nevertheless.

Those of you familiar with my YouTube output are probably aware that I've dabbled in mime, so it should come as no surprise that I was a great admirer of the man. His physical abilities were unmatched.

He was a born entertainer, put on stage almost from the moment he could walk, with a genius that was partly forged out of abuse. During his solo years he spent a good decade on top of his game and produced some extraordinary work. This is what I'll remember him for, and not the unfortunate business that followed.

So it's with great sadness that I bid farewell to this gifted performer, and extend my best wishes to all his surviving relatives.

Whoever they are.

Thanks for everything.

Thanks for the laughs especially.

















So long, Buster Keaton.

Again, I know. Late. He'd been dead almost 20 years before I was born.

Still, it had to be said.

I've never understood having pride in ones country. It's really all about taking pride in accomplishments you had nothing to do with and couldn't possibly have influenced. Why limit yourself to the country you reside in? Maybe I just lack discipline. If I leave my house and happen to notice something extraordinary being accomplished, I might feel a sharp twinge of pride over the fact that such a thing could occur in my own neighborhood on a busy sidewalk at four in the afternoon. If, however, word reached me that the same thing had been accomplished in Csömör Hungary that very afternoon, nothing would stop me from expanding my pride to the appropriate benefactors overseas. My pride is indiscriminate, which makes it very hard to be a sports fan. I'm just constantly delighted by whoever wins. In battle I'd be the soldier that congratulates the enemy for each man they kill. My pride is a beast that cannot be contained.

If I could limit the scope of my pride, it probably wouldn't leave my apartment. I'd have pride in myself, my furniture, my various collectables, and the ants that appear whenever I drop something. If I was feeling charitable I might have pride in the family that owns the apartment, but only because they're just upstairs. I'd have pride in anyone who came to visit as long as they were here, but as soon as they left my pride in them would cease, regardless of who they are or what they've accomplished.

But to consciously limit ones pride to their country? That's just nuts.

Depression Era Comedy

I'm about to embark on a rather ambitious screenplay for a feature film. One of the reasons I've started blogging is to get myself in the habit of writing and unloading some of the junk in my head. I imagine there will be a great many posts about how insufferable writing is and how I wish I were dead. If not, it'll mean something went terribly wrong.

I now realize that the story I want to write would benefit enormously by being set in the Depression era, and by "Depression era" I mean 2009. So really, the present. Realistically, an independent film project like this could take several years, depending on just how far I want to go with it. Who knows how long this economic depression will last? Okay, I'm not exactly praying for it to go another ten years (I mean, not really). But I don't want to put all that work into something and have it become irrelevant. See my dilemma? It'd be like if I decided to post a "Five Facts About Me" video on YouTube a full year after it ravaged the website like a norovirus on a cruise ship. I'd look silly. Well, sillier.

Another possibility would be to set it during the Great Depression, which is always relevant, and I could draw really obvious parallels between then and now. But then I'd have to do a lot of yucky research. Perhaps even gain some insight. Where's the fun in that? Not to mention that doing a period piece on small budget would be something of a nightmare.

So I think I'll proceed by setting the film during the Depression of 2009. If Obama comes in and fucks my shit up by making everything wonderful, it'll give the film an added quirk of being set in the not-too-distant past when things were still awful. Sort of like The Big Lebowski.

I remember watching that in 1998 and thinking "Ha! President Bush. Gulf War. How quaint."

So long to a friend

This is the computer that saved me.

I bought my iBook in November of 2005 with the vague notion that I’d be using it for video production. I wasn’t a savvy buyer, and it didn’t occur to me that I’d need more then 512MB of memory. Looking back on it, I’m amazed I managed to produce what I did. If a video ran over a minute and had lots of cuts (and let’s be honest, a fair amount of them do) it was a pain in the ass to edit.



Why has it been almost a year since I posted part one of Bernard K Smith: My Part in His Downfall and have yet to produce part two? Why did I disappear for three months after posting the seven-minute marathon that was Fascist Sandwich? Why is there an unedited Bernard video from way back in September sitting on my hard-drive? In short, editing on that little machine burnt me out. I was pushing it further than it wanted to go, and towards the end it was pushing back.

That’s about to change. I finally got a new, faster machine. Once I’ve figured out how to use it, I promise I’ll be posting new stuff.

In the meantime, I bid a fond farewell to the little iBook that got me further than I ever imagined.

Return to old Brazil

I was sixteen when I first saw Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. I knew the story behind the release of the film and I was already a fan of Time Bandits and Baron Munchausen, so my expectations were perhaps impossibly high. It wasn’t quite the masterpiece I hoped it would be. Some of the gags seemed a bit corny, like the employees watching old movies behind their employers back, and the narrative seemed a bit messy, lagging in a few significant places. Eh, what did I know?

I’ve watched it many times since, once on the big screen, and saw it again last night with a friend. It definitely gets better each time. The director’s cut (which is essentially the European cut) is a major improvement over the first version I saw, and though I’ve had the DVD for years I’m always surprised when the new scenes come up. The interrogation following Sam’s arrest is one of the most effective scenes in the film and I can’t believe it’s missing in the American cut.

The gags don’t bother me anymore, and I think my problems with the “narrative” can now be traced back to the casting of Kim Greist as Jill Layton, whose wooden performance sucks the juice out of the plot involving Lowry’s obsession with her. It had the makings of a screwball Vertigo with a nightmarish backdrop and an even bleaker ending (maybe I'm the only one who thinks that's a good idea). Apart from that, the director’s cut does fill in some plot details that we’re better off having, paying off scenes or setting them up, and leaving ambiguities in places where it should be, like the whole terrorist threat.

One of the things that still bugs me is Michael Kamen’s score. It has some nice variations of the “Aquarela do Brasil” song, but I hate the tacky saxophone music that comes in every so often to remind us we’re in an 80’s revision of a 40’s noir universe. Apart from that, the film has aged incredibly well.

I don't give star ratings. Just see the thing if you haven't.

I, Roger

In 1989 I was getting tired of waiting for Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg to produce a sequel to my favorite movie at the time, Who Framed Roger Rabbit. If it had been YouTube I’d have left comments on their page like "mak more moovis like rojer rabit plez" or “whens ur next muvy bich?!” Sadly no such means of persuasion were available at the time, so a sequel never emerged. I took it upon myself to produce the damn thing in what became the first of many sequels I attempted throughout my childhood.

It was to be called Roger Rabbit in the Big City. I’d become aware of the developing trend in sequels where a main character is placed in a bustling metropolis (Short Circuit 2 being a notable example) and I thought it would be interesting to see how Roger’s idiosyncrasies played out in a more urban environment, completely ignoring the fact that the original movie takes place in Los Angeles. Also, the “Big City” I had in mind was Paris, Maine, which was neither big nor a city, but it’s where I lived so it was my only option. It would’ve been more accurate to call it Roger Rabbit Stranded in Butt-Fuck Maine, but I stubbornly clung to the original title like in Monty Python where they attempt to film Scott of the Antarctic in the Sahara desert.

It was a hopeless endeavor. There was simply no way of combining live action with animation in a homemade movie, and plus I was nine. But my brother had taught me a thing or two about how cartoons were made, and we owned a copy of Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life, so I managed to produce a few painted cells, one of which has survived.



More then movie itself, I’d been inspired by a documentary on the making of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and how they’d essentially shot an “invisible man” movie and added the cartoons later. I suppose my attitude was that I’d shoot mine the same way and worry about the animation afterward. In the end I shot more of the “making of” documentary for my project then any of the principle photography. Somewhere in my archives I have footage of my nine-year-old self being interviewed by my dad, discussing the Roger Rabbit project. If I happen to find it (and I’m not terribly mortified) I might post it here. In a sense I was prepping myself for YouTube, where 90% of the videos are documenting ambitions that never take shape. Okay, I’m being generous.

What truly amazes me (not to mention annoys and disgusts me) is that nowadays it’s actually conceivable that a nine-year-old could produce their own Roger Rabbit sequel (with a parent’s help, obviously). The end result might be absolute shit, but the technology is readily available. I can’t tell you how seethingly, bitterly jealous I am of younger generations (I’m mainly talking about the early to late teens, who comprise most of the ChurchOfBlow audience at present) who probably don’t know just how spoiled they are. Hell, I suppose I don’t know how spoiled I am. My brother (who’s ten years older then me) went to film school before they had digital editors, and had to physically cut and splice real film. Digital editing became the standard just a few short years after he graduated, and now anybody can do it on their laptop.

So, fine. We’re all spoiled. I guess I’ll shut up and go make something.

Or just vlog about it.