21 December 2009

"Yield this, Senator Paine."

When Mr. Smith Goes to Washington appears on television programs about Great Inspirational Movies, people tend to focus on its starry-eyed idealism, its commitment to classic American values, its belief in the idea that, no matter the odds, one man can truly make a difference. They don't usually mention how absolutely fucking bananas the movie is. And I don't mean that in a cynical, The-System-Keeps-Us-Dumb! way. I mean that in a Holy-Shit,-This-Movie-Forgot-to-Take-Its-Medication way.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is about Jefferson Smith, er...going to Washington. He's an unexpected appointee to a recently vacated Senate seat, and though he's a political neophyte, he believes in this grand nation so much that he's going to do the best darn job a freshman Senator has ever done. The other Senator from his unnamed state, Paine, is in league with a machine boss to push an unnecessary dam project through Congress, and they're hoping Smith remains clueless so they can cash in on the graft. To make a long story short and spoil an ending you already know, Smith finds out about it because the dam will destroy the grounds on which he hopes to organize an annual boys' camp (he's got a thing about boys...I'll get to that later). When he tries to speak out, Paine and his cronies attempt to have him expelled from the Senate on phony charges, so Smith initiates a filibuster as a last ditch effort to save his ass.

The movie is a marriage between screwball comedy and "Gee, ain't this country swell?" that works together like peanut butter and chocolate and beer. Smith's idealism is reflected in a Welcome to Washington montage that has him admiring all the pretty monuments, but most especially the Lincoln Memorial, which he returns to repeatedly when he's in need of inspiration or solace. Rippling through this is the jadedness of every other character, most especially his secretary and love interest, Saunders, and her alcoholic reporter friend, Diz, and they get in some pretty great lines, at least one of which I feel the need to incorporate into my daily sayings: "I gotta go out and drink this over."

It's Classic Hollywood done by the best. Yes, there are certain aspects that haven't aged well, most notably Smith's awkward predilection for boys. He leads a pseudo-Boy Scouts ("Boy Rangers") as well as a newspaper geared toward the little lads. The Governor, upon arriving at Smith's house to deliver the news of his appointment, is startled by the presence of a boy band, and enters to find the whole place littered with boys. When the "Youth Leader" gets to Washington, he seems quite interested in the Congressional page boys, giving each one a Boy Ranger button they proudly wear. And, as mentioned above, his biggest dream is to organize an annual boys camp so he can initiate the nation's children into manhood. It's all innocent, of course, but in this suspicious day and age (never even mind the Mark Foley scandal), one that makes us...wonder...a bit about Mr. Smith and his lack of a wife.

But then there are those "Whuzzuh?" moments, where we start to get the idea that Capra and his writers are just fucking with us. The first one comes along when the newspapers portray Smith in a demeaning fashion. That gets him good and steamed, so he goes around punching people in the face. Granted, it's not a sudden outbreak of mass face-punching; he targets those reading the articles about him and laughing. And also the reporters. His madness is finally brought to an end when he chases a reporter into the National Press Club (a bar, natch) and they manage to bring him down. Controversy raised over Mr. Smith's rampage: None. It's all in good fun, folks!

"I'm gonna light you up like the mooovie hooouuuse!"

Some other light-hearted violence comes along during Smith's filibuster. The machine boss shuts down all opposition newspapers, so the citizens in the state only receive a spun, "Smith is a Disgrace!" message from the media. To combat it, Smith's mother and the boy reporters at his paper put out their own pro-Smith articles. When the boss hears about it, he orders his men to take drastic measures. This results in a montage of thugs stealing children's newspapers, storming into their offices and slapping them around, and running over their wagons with roaring trucks. The coup de grace comes when a carload of boys taunts the drivers of a truck loaded with anti-Smith newspapers, so the truck drivers do what comes naturally and run them off the road. The high-pitched screams of the children are horrifically and hilariously cut off by the transition to the next scene.

Let us also not discount Smith's ability to inspire his fellow man, a catalyst that acts quicker than Popeye's spinach. First he puts his Smithiness into Saunders during a late night bill-writing session. She wants to get the job done and go home because she knows the bill is doomed by the dam anyway. But he talks about the beauty of nature in his home state, and his words have quite the effect on the big city gal. As she listens, the film shoots her in Smith-o-Vision, soft lighting close ups where her eyes water with hope and optimism. Those types of shots were common enough back then (I think of them as Old Hollywood's money shots), but their combination with Smith's stirring speech breezes past cheesy and places them firmly in the absurdly cornball category. I can picture Capra saying around the tongue in his cheek, "Yeah, choke on all that glorious America, you fuckers." She falls in love with Smith, of course, and they go on to finish the bill with her perversely never mentioning the dam.

I was even more weirded out by a similar turn at the end. During his epic filibuster, Smith addresses Senator Paine about lost causes. Paine knew his father, you see, and Smith appeals to the veteran politico's dead sense of hope and idealism. Up until this point, Paine has been doing all he can to put Smith out to pasture while privately ruing his actions, and now Smith's words clearly touch him. Smith faints, and Paine quietly leaves the Senate chamber. He's a calm person, cool-as-a-cucumber (and played by the dashing - and English - Claude Rains), so presumably he's leaving for a bit of soul searching before revealing the truth. But that assumption turns out to be wrong when he tries to shoot himself in the head. Two men pull away his gun before he can do the job, then he runs back in ranting and raving at the top of his voice, confessing his guilt. The crowd cheers.

Another scene that struck me: Smith is nervous speaking with Paine's beautiful daughter, and as they talk we only see Smith's hands fiddling with and dropping his hat in a continuous shot. It's a daring choice, even today, one I very much enjoyed. Other small touches feel like screwball's influence trumping the starry-eyed view: the Governor is beset at work by two different groups telling him who appoint to the new office, then arrives home to find his kids doing the same thing (they want Smith). He flips a coin to decide, and when it lands on its side, he goes for Smith. Later on, when he prepares for his filibuster, Smith pulls a comically large thermos out of his suit coat. It reminded me of another movie...

If you have not seen this movie, you have not lived...

Capra's movies usually get classified as schmaltz, but quite often they showcased a zany attitude firmly beside the can-doism. And that, I think, is why they remain so heralded and influential. The civics lessons are what get brought up, but they wouldn't go down so easy without the ballsy bonkersness and the genuinely stinging one-liners.

15 December 2009

Masterpiece in Miniature: The Opening Credits of Les Bronzes

A friend of mine once suggested that in the future, historians and critics will study Tyler Perry's movies the same way they now study Oscar Micheaux's, as they both cater to audiences that are typically neglected by the big studios. I said we should then perhaps reconsider how we evaluate Tyler Perry, or maybe Oscar Micheaux. Nevertheless, it's one of those stunningly obvious conclusions I don't typically think of until someone points it out to me: Dismissed Art + Time = Something Wonderful.

A film shrugged off back in the day will, given its survival into the future, emerge as a time capsule of an era. The older it is, the more likely it is to be studied and analyzed for clues about its makers, its audience, its stars. Think of all that old timey footage of city streets that crops up in history shows. Once the novelty of film wore off, I'm sure people then weren't too impressed with the shots. They could merely step outside and see the real thing. But now we're amazed by the preservation of a few scant moments of long-buried streets and citizens.

This is what I tell myself when I feel somewhat abashed by my surprise love for the opening credits of the 1978 French farce Les Bronzés, released in the English-speaking world with the regrettable title French Fried Vacation. I discovered it entirely by accident; while reading about Club Med on one of those random tumbles through the Wikiverse, I saw that the vacation resorts had been parodied in a film of this title. A few days later, I was watching movies on Hulu and saw they had the entirety of Les Bronzés. I clicked on it in curiosity. The opening credits entranced me, though I could only sit through about five minutes of the rest of the film. I might go back to it one day, as it wasn't aggressively terrible or anything. But comedy, especially the crowd-pleasing mediocre variety, rarely translates well, and outside of an amusing bit of awkwardness that could have come from a Ricky Gervais show, nothing was all that inspired.

If I were a random French person in the late '70s, I could imagine myself hating this film with all the ferocity I reserve for today's crap. "How can people like this rubbish?" I'd ask as I light up a cigarette at the local cafe. "It just caters to their basest instincts. It speaks not to the mind. Oh, if only Godard would release something new. Now where are my cheese and wine?" Today, given the distance of time and culture, it's safe for me to love it for those exact same reasons - it captures the mood of a nation at one particular moment. Imagine a Romanian person watching Wild Hogs in thirty years: "My God, it's like an entire era wrapped up in a movie! God bless America! Now where are my mămăligă and ţuică?"

That, essentially, is the sole reason why I love the film's opening credits. Lionsgate, which presumably owns its American rights, has put it online at YouTube and Hulu. Here's a link to the YouTube version, which has fewer advertisements if you're interested in watching the whole thing. At the least, please watch the approximately one minute long credits for further reading.

Done? They're stupidly simple, aren't they? Also incredibly cheap, with a rushed quality and produced with little to no imagination. It's just a slow zoom out from a still photograph of a beach and a few huts on a jungle-filled stretch of land while garishly orange credits flash in the corner. Really, were it not for a talent as famous (in France) as Serge Gainsbourg leering on the soundtrack, the credits might be mistaken for a porno's. It's as if the filmmakers are saying upfront "We made this movie fast and cheap, and if you don't like it, it's too late to get a refund."

But in that same sense, they seem to be the epitome of the '70's style, or at least what we think of now as "Hey! Remember the '70s?!" Back then, according to popular culture and VH1, everyone was snorting blow, sexing it up at Studio 54, and leaving their pubic areas dangerously ungroomed. And that's what this movie promises: hot babes singing "Sea, sex, and sun" over a beach panorama means we're about to watch some light-hearted yet scintillating shenanigans replete with thick mustaches and plaid swimwear. Even the palm tree in the logo is a sexual metaphor. I feel like I've caught the greatest VD of my life just by watching those credits.

The poster seen in dorm rooms across the nation

For all I know, there's nary a shot of full frontal nudity in the entire film. But even if it could be rated PG, it's still a sex farce featuring characters played by actors who look like real people and not models fresh from the silicone factory. Yes, that's right, back in the '70s actors could appear in stupid sex comedies (aimed at adults, not adolescents) and not have to unduly worry about the effect on their persona or career. We don't have those anymore today, unless they're staffed by 30-year-olds playing 18-year-olds desperate to end their virginity, or get with the hottest chick in school, or infiltrate the School of Hard Knockers. The closest we come (heh) are the works of Judd Apatow, but they don't have quite the same spirit. Really, when was the last true mainstream adult sex comedy? Exit to Eden with Dan Aykroyd and Rosie O'Donnell?


Alright, so maybe we do need some standards as to who appears in our liberated adult sex romps. But still, it'd be nice to have a little bit of the spirit of the '70s with us today, the spirit that worried less and wasn't all up into other people's businesses. What it comes down to, I think, is that we were less likely to judge others back then - at least, that was how it was for a very narrow slice of humanity as remembered and mythicized by pop culture - and that resulted in a bit more freedom.

Freedom and AIDS. Still, I would hope that we never entirely lose the joy of an era capable of making Ennio Morricone create this song.

09 December 2009

I Watched It So You Don't Have To: The Caine Mutiny

Buried somewhere within The Caine Mutiny is a tight, effective drama about men's egos clashing during wartime. While much of that manages to shine through in the finished film, it's bogged down by a hopelessly boring main character who remains a blank sheet unmarked by a rote back story no one asked for or cares about. The film is based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Herman Wouk which I have not read. I did read two of Wouk's later works back in high school, The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, and consider it telling that, despite a combined length of nearly 2000 pages, I only recall two particular characters and scenes.

The film opens with the graduation of Ensign Keith from naval school during World War II. Ensign Keith, unfortunately, serves as our entry character, a fresh-faced young'un who has a lot to learn about this man's navy. Before he does, we find out that he is seeing a beautiful songstress he won't introduce to his mother, who is apparently a smothering figure. This subplot about Ensign Keith and his lady folk takes up perhaps thirty minutes of the final film, and those minutes fucking DRRRRRAAAAAAGGG.

Why does he allow his mother to have such an influence on who he sees and engagement cockteases? We don't know and Keith doesn't explain. We only see his mother a few times, briefly, and she seems like a perfectly nice woman. Perhaps her high-society nature would dislike the idea of her son marrying a common entertainer. Then why doesn't Keith just man up and tell her to shove it? Again, the movie doesn't get into it, so we're stuck with a melodrama of "Marry me!" "Oh, jeez, I don't know, Mother wouldn't approve" when we'd much rather be elsewhere.

The director, Edward Dmytryk, was aware of these problems and wished the film could have been longer than the two-hour cut dictated by the studio, which would have given him time to more fully flesh out the characters. I shudder at the thought, because I imagine much of that time would be devoted to mama-boy Keith's bland emoting. Unless the answer for the terror he suffers under his mother is "She killed my father and stole my pee-pee Freud-style" or something equally grisly or bizarre, I say take the opposite tack.

After the introduction, Ensign Keith makes it onto the U.S.S. Caine to see service in the Pacific, and we finally get to meet the characters we'd prefer to spend the movie with. As each one appears, you think, "Hey! It's Lee Marvin as minor, colorful character! Fred MacMurray as a smartass! Van Johnson as a no-nonsense, scarred XO! Why didn't we just start off with these guys?" We then meet the lovable captain, an easy-going sort who overlooks the tiny rules to run an efficient ship with a happy crew. A by-the-book stick-in-the-mud, Keith does not approve of the captain, and we want to tell him to shove it up his ass, but alas, he cannot hear our entreaties.

Eventually, the cool captain is replaced by Queeg, a nervous paranoid played by Humphrey Bogart. Here the real drama starts, as Queeg turns out to be so obsessed with the details, and so wracked with post-traumatic stress disorder from combat in the Atlantic, that he is a monumentally shitty captain. At first Keith thinks Queeg's the commander of his dreams, but soon realizes that the man in charge is off his rocker, and teams up with the other officers to shun and, eventually, oust the old bastard.

Here is where the film is at its best: the conflict between Van Johnson's XO, Fred MacMurray's communications officer, and Queeg. When they take center stage and Keith is a mute or otherwise minimized witness, the great acting by all three (and later José Ferrer's jag-off JAG) trumps Dmytryk's pedestrian direction (the ur-Brett Ratner?) to provide a pretty entertaining drama well worth watching by any old time movie fan. Bogie's monologue at the end of the movie is a piece of real beauty, the highlight of one of his greatest performances. And Ferrer has a speech that provides a final twist; he pulls it off so well it makes me want to write a similar scene where a person enters a crowded room and proceeds to eloquently tear everyone a new asshole.

It's just too bad we have to keep putting up with that Keith guy. I don't know if Robert Francis would have developed into a good actor (he died in an airplane accident the year after The Caine Mutiny was released), or if he was hemmed in by stodgy writing and direction, but he does not do anything with the part. He just comes off as a Hollywood pretty-boy making his bones and biding his time. At one point, the Caine returns to port and the officers get a brief leave. We spend all of it with Ensign Keith and his dame touring Yosemite, and I wanted to scream "NO! Any other fucking character, please! I like all the rest! But not him! Not him!" But once again, the characters could not hear my cries.

Even the horses look bored.
If anyone out there wants to attempt a Phantom Menace-style fan edit on this thing, we might be looking at a real classic instead of a disappointment.

03 December 2009


This fine evening, I find myself in a mood of gradually increasing irritation. The holiday season tends to do that to me. The forced jollity, the insipid specials, the ridiculous Christ-in-Christmas made-up controversy, the endless airings of the same five songs over and over, the labeling of "Scrooge" to anyone who wants to avoid the now-meaningless rituals held year in and year out. Frankly, I'm ready to put the "mas" back in "Christmas," as in "mas booze," "mas candy," and "mas selfish gift purchases."

Which means I'm in the perfect mood to examine a subject I've been meaning to write about for quite a while. It's one that any screenwriter, and really, any filmmaker will probably already be familiar with, given its inescapable nature to anyone even casually involved in the industry. I speak, of course, about screenwriting contests, lectures, and similar enterprises designed to pry the hard earned dollars out of your wallet.

Everyday, my e-mail box is lambasted with notices about competition deadlines, festivals I must enter, conferences where I will learn the closely guarded secrets to writing that perfect screenplay. They come from organizations I never recall signing up with, but I'm hesitant to yank myself from their mailing lists - "Maybe one day something worthwhile will show up," I think as I delete the oncoming waves of junk. Today it was an invitation to a FREE teleconference where I will hear the Top 10 Insights Learned from 437 Hollywood Producer Interviews, which are the KEYS TO YOUR SUCCESS as a writer.

Only 437? If it was 438, I might be inclined to participate...

I'm not going to say that these are scams set up as mere profit generating machines (not all of them, anyway). And I'm not going to say that you won't learn anything worthwhile from them. Hell, if you had the time and the money, then it certainly couldn't hurt to attend with an open (yet always keen) mind willing to test out the latest suggestions and insights. Different things work for different people, and it's up to you to explore what fits your style and personality.

But I, for one, don't have the money to fly to L.A., book a room, and spend cash money to go to week long events where I'll get to pitch my ideas to LIVE! NUDE! PRODUCERS! Nor do I want to look at a credit card statement littered with dozens of entry fees for competitions that only give me a polite but firm "No, we did not choose to honor your screenplay" (and that's if they're extra nice).

Years ago, in the before time, I was more inclined to enter competitions. I figured it was an opportunity to get my work read by fresh eyes, make connections, and maybe even win some recognition and acclaim. What's thirty to fifty bucks every now and again if it leads to something bigger? Well, I'm just going to say it: It's not going to lead to something bigger. It's not going to lead to anything but you losing thirty to fifty bucks.

"But what about the winners?" you may be asking. "Surely they win something, and if I'm a good enough writer, I could be one of them." Yes, the competitions have winners, but so does the lottery, and in both cases the crowning of the winners depends just as much on luck as on skill.

See, the people who judge these things tend to get inundated with entries and so, naturally enough, they need to find a way to parse through the load and make the job faster and easier. Major typos and improper formatting are obvious things they can use as guidelines - "They dropped the 'O' out of that character's name. Into the garbage it goes!" - as are common and tired tropes that beginning and/or lazy writers tend to over rely on (I hope to never read or see another asshole boyfriend character as long as I live). This might lead to an accidental toss-out of a masterpiece, but hey, some wheat always ends up with the chaff. The process gets a bit harder when the writer has cannily taken care to avoid such errors. And so the judges rely on the ol' classic rules of screenwriting - Does the script follow the mathematically derived formulas for screenplay success?

In the end, these competitions tend not to reward ingenuity or insight, but safety and blandness. How often do you read about a competition winning screenplay being produced? It happens every once in a while, yes, but if the scripts being churned out of these things had any life or vitality, there would be many more announcements of their getting optioned and delivered to theaters. As it is, the best a writer can hope for is a contact with an agent or producer and a couple of dollars to pay the electric bill.

"But there are more factors at play than whether a script is good or not!" I'm already protesting for you. "There's marketing, and budget, and casting, and etc. etc. etc. Really, these competitions are about finding unique and original talent!" Yes, yes, yes, all true. But also threatening to derail the thread of my original point: Participating in these contests is still stupid. And not because they don't offer a chance of getting somewhere (slim though it is), but because your efforts at getting discovered could be put to better use elsewhere. Again, you could win the lottery, too, or you could save that dollar a day and use it to buy sweet, sweet bourbon.

It's the same thing with the forums and the conferences - they'll give you the REAL way to make your script attractive to REAL producers (call now! only $1.99 for the first minute!) - but a lot of this is stuff you can easily find examined and debated online and in books at the library. The only reason to participate in any of it is to meet other people who can help you in your career (and vice versa), which is something you can do in other places where you don't have to spend two hours listening to an unproduced hack drone on about the three types of stories and how to make them work for you.

I say the hell with all that. I say just keep writing and reading, watch movies, do your own research, talk about it endlessly with fellow scribes and anyone who will tolerate you, and - that's right - start producing your own stuff. Because as everyone has begun pointing out more and more these days, the industry is changing, paradigms are evolving, and while it's scary that you may no longer be able to sell your comedy screenplay about a man who becomes trapped in the fictional world of a children's program to a major studio for seven figures, take heart in knowing that more opportunities and more venues are opening for people with the guts to say "Ah, fuck it, I'll do it myself." The wallet may suffer, but the life of the mind is about to undergo a revolution.

For now, though, we're stuck in the doldrums. Everyone, not just Hollywood, is falling back on the same tired formulas. This is the first holiday movie season I can recall where I don't give a rat fuck about seeing any of the new movies coming out. They all feel like I've watched them already. Last year I wasn't particularly rooting for anyone in the Oscar race, but I still followed it closely. This is the first year where I've felt utterly indifferent. Up in the Air? Precious? Middling Piece of Shit? Who cares? With all this mediocrity, something has to eventually give way. Some batshit genius will come out of left field and release a completely new movie, or at least repackage the same crap in a new suit, and movies may finally be good again.

It seems like those of us attempting to carve a life out for ourselves in this business have a choice. You can be one of the many followers who enter competition after competition, taking the advice of any broke motherfucker with a formula to peddle, and continue to try to be one of the fewer and fewer go-to writers for Hollywood studios and producers. Or you can be a goddamn maverick and start producing your own scripts, and take on writing assignments outside of movies in an attempt to seek new inspiration and creativity for this thing we call a screenplay, and do whatever you can to create and distribute the art you love wherever you happen to be, whether it's Southern California or Nuuk, Greenland.

But then, I'm just a bitter asshole who hates Christmas. What do I know about anything?

18 November 2009

"Jim Kelly, don't make me fight you!"

The Robotard 8000, the comedy writing machine known for the middle finger-shaped screenplay Balls Out, just released its latest masterpiece, an animated television pilot script called "Asshole Ninja." That's the type of perfect title that allows you to know, instantly, whether it's something you would enjoy or not (though my mind keeps transposing the words into "Ninja Asshole," which might just be the script working on a metatextual level to convey the ninja's utter assholity). While it doesn't approach Balls Out - few things do - it's a fun, brisk read with a couple of knockout set pieces that had me suffocating from laughter. Download it here and give yourself a much needed rest from the crap you normally consume.

Beware: Unrelated Meandering Thoughts Section

The other night, Jake Adelstein appeared on "The Daily Show" to promote his new book about the Yakuza, Tokyo Vice. It certainly had me hooked: anything with Tokyo + a lurid noun will grab my attention. I disturbed myself, though, when I felt genuine excitement at a grisly tidbit he related during the interview. Adelstein mentioned that, due to stricter gun control laws, the Yakuza are turning more often to the samurai blades of old as an offensive weapon in power struggles. As an example, he spoke about a young gangster who had recently gotten his jaw cut off in the typically bubble gum Tokyo neighborhood of Shibuya.

My first reaction was "Awesome! It's just like a Kinji Fukasaku movie!" Then I had to remind myself that someone out there was actually feeling the physical pain and effects of having their jaw removed, and that's really not appropriate for another person to take pleasure in, no matter the criminal status of the victim. Then I promptly forgot about that and started thinking about how I would stage and shoot such a moment for maximum Fukasaku-tude. This is what too much exposure to the Battles Without Honor and Humanity series will do to you.

But really, it's the same reaction everyone has to driving by a car accident - the slowing down to see more, the dual reaction of "That's awful. I wonder if I can get closer." We're drawn to conflict provided it's not happening to us or anyone we care about. Whether we view it as practice for when the shit does go down in our own lives, or whether we're just an exquisitely fucked up species, we desperately want to poke at the horrible things that exist in this world without getting dirty ourselves.

Being a writer and filmmaker adds an extra dimension to it. When I hear a great true life story or an intriguing fact about murder and mayham, my creative side raises an eyebrow. I could be shaking my head at news of the latest terrorist attack somewhere in the world, bemoaning the pitiful state of humanity, all while my hands are busy taking notes on the details. "Christ, that's awful. There's no way I can make it play."

Moments of unsettling self-realization aside, I've generally made my peace with this darker aspect of human nature. If we didn't have it, all of our stories would be shallow and boring: "Tim goes to the bank to withdraw money, but it turns out he has less than he thought. After consulting with a financial advisor, he resolves to save more by cutting back on expenditures." We live that shit, we don't need to see it in our entertainment. And yet, I still think that no matter how fantastical your plot may be, it still needs realistic moments that can connect with people and their own experiences - the relationship between two characters, for example, or an ambitious plan coming to a more mundane, believable conclusion. It's a balancing act, as is everything in this life.

11 November 2009

Why I Love Paul Kinsey

Like most fans of quality television, I am an avid watcher of "Mad Men," which just ended its third season with a solid finale that saw its cast finally shake off the ennui and kick ass. It did, however, leave me feeling trepidatious about the potential future of one of my favorite minor characters on the show, Paul Kinsey, wonderfully played by Michael Gladis.
By all rights, I shouldn't give a twopenny fuck for Mr. Kinsey. He received very little screen time over the last season and for good reason - he's a pompous ass who condescends to those he perceives to be less educated or intelligent, a wannabe bohemian who still tries to hide his presumably poor New Jersey upbringing. Most of the time he does little work, preferring to goof off and play pranks while bemoaning the fate of an artist stuck in the soulless advertising industry. And yet when it's time to let people go, he clings to his job and momentarily forgets his creative aspirations. He's the type of person who manages to be very smart while simultaneously being very dumb.
But I identify more with him than any other character. Season Four could open with Betty Draper's plane nosediving into the Nevada desert and I'd still impatiently demand to move on to Kinsey. (I think January Jones is great in the part, but the show could dump ol' Betts and I wouldn't lose any sleep.) I think this attachment comes from equal parts recognition and alarm: Paul is the person all us writers fear we really are. To put it into Bugs Bunny/Daffy Duck terms, if Don Draper is who we want to be, then Paul is who we see in the mirror everyday.
From the glimpses we have of his working existence, Paul appears to be the copywriter who fills in the words at the very bottom of the medicine ads. While more talented people get the grand ideas, he is left to perfect the minor details no one cares about. He is probably extremely knowledgeable about grammar, spelling, vocabulary, and "proper" English usage, but he cannot write anything that moves an audience, not even in "Death is My Client" and other extracurricular creations. Worse yet, he realizes this, and can do nothing but hope and pray the muses strike him with inspiration.
It's no wonder he was left behind when Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce was formed. When he sees the remains of Peggy's office, he knows he wasn't wanted or valued, a wrenching revelation. It's a cosmic comeuppance Paul doesn't deserve - he may be a prick at times, but he's not an outright asshole like Pete Campbell or Don (please keep in mind that I actually like and enjoy those characters), and he's the only one in the office who went down South to fight for the civil rights movements. Paul may parade around his African-American friends in an attempt to be hip, but at least he tried to do something good. (Speaking of which, when is Carla going to be more than a one-dimensional stereotype?)
Any writer who hasn't "made it" (and likely those who have as well) recognizes some aspects of his or herself in Paul Kinsey, and so we cheer for him and wish him well, even if he's talking down to Achilles the Janitor after getting high and touching himself inappropriately in his office. I'm not looking for wish fulfillment, though. Kinsey could toil in obscurity for the rest of his days and I would be happy, so long as we see him doing it. If he's one of the characters who doesn't make it to the fourth season, it would feel like the show is doing what most of society does to the real Paul Kinseys, tacitly acknowledging "You don't matter." But if we stick with him and watch him fail, it would be some sort of validation for all those who, for whatever reason, never see the fruition of their own dreams.

05 November 2009

The Hard Boiled Productions Website

Chris and I (mostly Chris) have created a website for our production company, Hard Boiled Productions. The site (which you can find here) has all of the films we've made thus far, an interview we did for The Reel Skinny podcast, and a News link we intend to update...well, whenever we have some news. It's still in the beginning stages, so if you have any (constructive) criticism, fire away. And while you're at it, take a peek at Chris' new solo website.

We also wrote something of a mission statement for Hard Boiled Productions, which I'd like to post here in its entirety:

The world of contemporary filmmaking is in a state of turmoil at all levels. Hollywood and independents alike churn out identical films structured with the same rigid formulas and trite characters. Some rays of light shine through, whether it's an epic television series, a dazzling scene in a mediocre film, or a summer blockbuster that contains a shimmer of deeper ideas. Meanwhile, new technology is shifting paradigms. Theatrical windows, Internet piracy, Blu-rays, digital video players, streaming, etc. etc. You've read the articles. In short, no one knows how the upheaval will play out, or even when it will end. Major studios are clinging to recognizable properties, independents are desperately seeking distribution, and micro-cinema guerrillas are clamoring for attention from audiences and high rolling producers.

Into this chaos leaps Hard Boiled Productions.

We believe people will always want to hear and watch good stories populated by intriguing characters. The media formats change, but our baser instincts never do. We believe that while there may be only so many basic stories, there are new ways to tell them and alter or entirely break the existing formulas. Our only rule is "Don't be boring." We acknowledge that this means different things for different people, but embrace it all the same. We believe that stories should contain an honesty and truth about life and how we experience it, no matter the setting or genre. We believe that the audience is smarter than most people give it credit for, and more diverse than the demographics it's normally forced into. Viewers in rural Arkansas can enjoy a cerebral life-in-crisis melodrama as much as viewers in Tribeca can enjoy massive robots smashing cities. We believe profits and awards are wonderful to earn, but do not set the value of a film's worth. Producing a unique work that changes our audience is much more gratifying.

Creating and conveying stories is what we do. If moving images hadn't been invented, we would be novelists, playwrights, or circus performers. It is in our blood, our spirit, our souls, and we will do it for the rest of our lives. We have no other choice.

03 November 2009

TUMBLER: the echo

The sister film to TUMBLER: the boom is now online. I can't find any words better than those Anthony Griffin composed to explain what we were going for, so you'll find his synopsis below the film and another embedded copy of the boom further down.

TUMBLER: the echo from AEG on Vimeo.

Facing a crisis of conscience after scamming people in New York City with his friend Spencer, Wayne returns home to Chicago in an effort to reconcile what he's done with his life to his ex-girlfriend, Michelle.

This film was made as part of Project Twenty1, a filmmaking contest where teams are given three weeks to complete a film based on a common element. This year's element was "key" and Team with No Name (aka UFO) partnered with another team based in New York City, Hard Boiled Productions, to craft a unique story arc that used the theme as a way to understand the characters and situations as a whole shared in both short films. Of course you can also watch the films independent of each other but what fun would that be, right?

Team Hard Boiled's film, TUMBLER: the boom, won the prize for Best Writing while TUMBLER: the echo won for Best Music.

01 November 2009

"If they knew what they liked, they wouldn't live in Pittsburgh!"

I've been thinking lately of Preston Sturges' 1941 comedy, Sullivan's Travels, even though I haven't seen it since I was in college five or six years ago (holy shit, really?). The "message" of the film has remained with me, and as I'm currently in a somewhat fallow period inspirationally speaking (someone give me an assignment fer Christ's sake!), it's cropped up in my mind as a creative beacon.

For those of you who haven't seen it - and though I'm kind of giving away the ending, I'm not really spoiling it for you, and it's not like you were going to watch it anyway - Sullivan's Travels follows a young hotshot film director who wants to make an extremely serious film about the plight of the poor working classes, one with a title you may recognize: O Brother, Where Art Thou? The studios just want him to make more silly comedies, but he says "Fuck that noise" and travels the United States disguised as a homeless wanderer to gain insight for his masterpiece. Zany misadventures involving Veronica Lake ensue. At the end of the film, the director is on a chain gang and living a miserable life. When the prisoners are given a brief respite to watch a Disney cartoon and laugh their asses off, he realizes that silly comedies, by giving the working classes a chance to let loose and be happy, do more good for them than pretentious dramas.

Frankly, I prefer The Lady Eve. Barbara Stanwyck was the shit.

It reminds me of what my college professors told me about Sergei Eisenstein and the invention of montage. He wanted to wield it like a plow, furrowing the brains of viewers so that the seeds of Soviet Communism could take bloom and lead to the true worker's paradise. As it turned out, regular ol' Ivan Ivanov hated that shit, and preferred to be propagandized by Hollywood pastiches. Maybe that's why I Am Cuba never took off as it was supposed to (it is a brilliant fucking movie, by the way).

How does this relate to me? Ideally, I would have oodles of money to make movies about any subject I damn well like - the demolition of the Edwardian Era by World War I, for example, or the colonization of an alien world by rapacious humans (wait...cross that one off). But I don't have oodles of money, so when I write something I want to film, I have to keep in mind what resources I do have - namely, whatever people, props, and locations are available in everyday life, and that's if I'm lucky. And so that leads to ideas of what might be called, for want of a better term, social realism, which have an unfortunate tendency to be not so entertaining.

While I don't agree with Sullivan that all downtrodden people want or need to see are mindless comedies, I do think that if you're going to create a work of art for the general public, it better not bore the fuck out of them. While we cinephiles may be able to endlessly debate and analyze every "Chaos reigns" moment a provocateur throws our way, most folks just want to have a good time. And I want to give them a good time while also telling stories that interest and captivate me, and that hold a certain degree of truth about human life. It's not the type of thing I think about before embarking on a project - "Hold on, what does this torture porn say about our daily existence?" - but if you're being honest with your characters and your story, it will emerge naturally. Star Trek may be sci-fi, but people recognize that all Kirk really wants to do is get his fuck on.

The best compliment I can receive is not an award (sorry, Project Twenty1), but a person coming up to me or a collaborator and saying "I went through something just like that." We get it a lot with Duly Noted - it seems as if everyone has had a roommate who leaves dumb, anal sticky notes as reminders or warnings - and that is probably why it's the film we get complimented on the most. But I've heard stories of former emergency personnel identifying with The Tin God, and a woman once told us that she had dated a guy just like Spencer in TUMBLER: the boom, God help her.

Maybe that's the highest goal of art: letting people know that they're not alone, and that we're all in this together, whatever it is.

After writing all that, I'm no closer to hitting upon a solid story idea than I was at the beginning. This is stuff I think about, but when it comes to brainstorming, I have to put it behind me and search elsewhere. Starting from the point of "I want to write a script that addresses the following modern issues" will result in didacticism. You just have to open your mind and your gut and hope something wanders in. And when it does, you know it instantly. Like the pearl growing in a clam, it starts off as a small grain of sand you latch onto, slowly building it up with additional nuggets and goodies until it's a beautiful curio to place on the shelf.

See what I mean? I wasn't feeling that simile, but I wrote it anyway. And now look at the fine mess we're in.

12 October 2009

Finally Watch Our Award-Winning Film!

TUMBLER: the boom is now online for your viewing pleasure:

08 October 2009

Watch Me On YouTube!

Justice Productions, the team behind the Project Twenty1 Audience Award and Best Marketing Award-winning film The Journal's Paragon, created podcasts throughout the entire production process to give viewers an inside look at the world of low budget filmmaking. They carried on this tradition throughout the festival weekend, and were kind enough to interview the TUMBLER teams during Saturday night's Shorts & Shots event. You can watch the entire podcast below, but if you're lazy and want to skip straight to us, then you should fast forward it to the 6:20 mark. But really, you should watch the whole thing.

It must be said that the Justice Productions team were the most spirited, positive, and all-around good natured group I've yet encountered in my Project Twenty1 experiences. They wholeheartedly supported their colleagues and the other films playing at the festival; I don't think they missed a showing, and if they did, it was because they were attending a workshop. They put us to shame with their enthusiasm, and I hope they continue to make great films in the near and far future.

Thanks for your support, guys. I hope we can return the favor soon.

07 October 2009

"I've got nothing."

The trailer for Zombieland didn't look very promising to me, but a bevy of good reviews from sources I normally trust and/or can gauge fairly well led me to see the film. It was a Monday night, I needed something lightweight, and The Invention of Lying didn't have any major cameos people were salivating to spoil. Zombieland it was. It proved to be disappointingly mediocre. It's far too good natured and easygoing to be called "bad," but I felt a keen frustration throughout; there is so much potential in the set-up and characters, yet all it ends up being is a lackluster road movie where everyone learns a goddamn lesson. For a film that frequently espouses its tagline, "Nut up or shut up," Zombieland has a notable lack of balls. I should have known to consult with the dourly incisive crew at Slant before popping off to the theater.

Zombieland is easily distinguishable from other zombie movies because of its notable lack of zombies. Except for the opening credits, a few strays who pop up to demonstrate the lead character's rules for survival (a promising bit swiped from The Zombie Survival Guide that isn't explored near enough), and the ending, where zombies are required so the heroes can save the haven't-been-dumb-yet-but-now-are-for-some-reason damsels in distress, the undead remain curiously at the corners of the film's world. They are never a threat, and at a certain point we realize that the characters will make it through unscathed, so there is no tension, no scares, no sense of horror underlying the uninspired comedy. We never feel that anything is at stake (how can there be when everyone has unlimited ammo, except when the script requires otherwise?), and so don't become drawn to the characters.

The characters also don't really carry around any of the problems that a person in a post-apocalyptic environment would have. Rather, they're beset with tired tropes straight out of the screenwriter's handbook: Jesse Eisenberg has to learn how to man up and be a hero (conquering a forced and tacked-on phobia of clowns in the process), while Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin's con artists must overcome their paranoia toward their fellow humans. It all ends pretty much how you expect it to. Woody Harrelson's ass kicker holds the potential to be more interesting, but he's the one person who doesn't get a lengthy, unnecessary flashback to his pre-zombie life (save for a few flashes that don't build his character so much as beg you to love him). On second thought, maybe that's why he's the person I most liked hanging out with.

It's all performed with enough competence and zest that we hope the characters reach their expected conclusions. The movie probably plays best in an audience packed with the sort of nerds who can readily identify with Eisenberg's character and delight in Harrelson's antics (yes, I am normally that type of nerd), or on a lazy hangover weekend when you stumble across it while clicking channels. Otherwise? Go back to Shaun of the Dead.

I've deliberately resisted writing about the one truly inspired scene until the end of this review, so all of you who want to avoid SPOILERS should bail now, even though I won't reveal quite everything about it.

The highly vaunted cameo in the middle of the film was the only sequence that had me cracking up. Some of it, as Slant points out, is easy, lazy humor, but I laughed nonetheless, especially at the celebrity's brutally accidental dispatching at Eisenberg's nervous hands and the guiltless, shrugged off aftermath. It was gruesome, morbid, and utterly hysterical. It felt like a scene from another, better film, one that had a few more balls than Zombieland. Perhaps the inevitable sequel will follow through on its nutting up promise.

06 October 2009

"I've never been in this position before."

Those were the first words that popped into my mind when I stood before an audience of peers to accept an award, and so I said them. People seemed to laugh in a good way. I rattled off words of thanks to the cast of TUMBLER: the boom, Tony and Shirley Griffin (my most patient, honest, and incisive critics and fans), everyone in the room, and my parents. It wasn't until I was sitting down that I realized I had completely forgotten to thank my co-director and closest collaborator on the project, Chris Kapcia.

Hey, it was my first time.

Chris outside the P21 venue lookin' like a rock star. Sorry, Chris!

That's right, folks, we have returned from Philadelphia, where I finally received some form of validation as a screenwriter, because our film won the Best Writing award at Project Twenty1. Technically speaking, it was a tie between us and Keystone Jackal, but a win is a win, and I'll tout it regardless. Of course, it wasn't all me; if we hadn't received great feedback from our cast and friends, and if they hadn't improvised so well to fill in the bits between the voiceover and the written lines, the film would not be as good as it is. The award is truly a recognition of their talent as well.

Our sister film, TUMBLER: the echo, won for Best Music, which means that the competition's organizers will be shopping our creations to other festivals together, hopefully leading to further attention and accolades.

The remains of a cheesesteak dinner at Abner's.

Duly Noted also scored a win at Shorts and Shots, the Saturday night event held at the Marathon Grill. It was an informal event where filmmakers brought short films to screen while everyone drank and mingled, with the best film decided by audience applause. Chris and I received the honor, thanks in no small part to Tony's boisterous yelling and entreaties to the crowd.

We spent all weekend in Philadelphia and had a great time watching movies, hanging out, and meeting our colleagues. The theme music for Project Twenty1 is still firmly embedded in my mind, and I don't expect to shake it anytime soon. We're sorry to see it end, but we don't intend to rest on our laurels. Bring on the next challenge!

A brief time for reflection.

30 September 2009

Hear My Voice!

For the past couple of weeks, we've been gearing up for the endlessly mentioned and plugged Project Twenty1 Film Festival, which is finally and excitedly taking place this very weekend. If you haven't gotten your tickets yet, then you are a lame, lame loser who has nothing better to do than slothfully meander through the Internet as your eyes dissolve from screen erosion.
Me too.
But in an effort to get more people off their ass and talking about us, Chris and I subjected ourselves to an interview from the brilliant minds behind The Reel Skinny, a movie review website that you should immediately bookmark and subscribe to, right now. To listen to the podcast and hear me curse (but not too badly - it's PG level blueness), click here.
In other news, the good folks at Project Twenty1 have released the 2009 edition of their film competition screening promotional trailer thingie-majig. It's embedded below. I probably won't update the blog again until after the festival (sorry all two of my followers), but when I do, I hope to have some choice pictures to put up. Last time, I forced myself to take only black and white photos, and am planning to do so once again. If any are mind-blowing enough, I'll slap them up here.
See you in Philly!

18 September 2009


A trusted source has informed me that if I mention Saffron Burrows in my blog posts, I'll get more hits from the many people randomly Googling her name (probably in the hopes of finding naked pictures). So I would like to start this entry by naming my Top 5 Saffron Burrows Movies:

Top 5 Saffron Burrows Movies
  1. Deep Blue Sea - Remember when she got eaten by that shark and everyone was all like"Whoa! I totally thought she'd end up boning Thomas Jane!" It was awesome, right?! Uh, spoiler alert, I guess.
  2. Gangster No. 1 - Paul Bettany tried to run over a naked guy in a parking garage. And then later he tortured someone else to death and we saw it from that guy's point of view. It was pretty sweet. Saffron Burrows was in this movie too.
  3. Frida - According to the IMDb, Saffron Burrows played Gracie. I don't recall that character. Salma Hayek did get naked, though. And those paintings were very nice. OH! And there was that bus accident in the beginning where Frida Kahlo got pwned.
  4. The Bank Job - I haven't seen this movie, but I've heard it's pretty good. And it features merkins. That's a word that doesn't get used often enough.
  5. Wing Commander - I haven't seen this either, but it's supposed to be incredibly awful. Not even fun-awful. I wonder if it's been a My Year of Flops entry yet?
Way back in 2006, I briefly wrote for a film news website. At some point the management changed hands, and I seemed to get lost in the shuffle, so I quietly made my exit and lamented the loss of the spare change they graciously paid me for my reviews and posts. Before I left, however, the new boss told us that we should be writing more lists. It didn't matter what their subject was or what was in them, it was just important that people clicked on them, and forwarded them to their friends, and vociferously debated over your careful rankings of the Top 20 Heist Movies Where Something Goes Wrong Because of a Dopey Bank Employee. In my spare time, I would try to think of list ideas, but not just any ideas - ones that felt new to me, and sparked my interest in actually writing them. That is, lists I would actually feel passionate about and avidly defend.

I couldn't come up with any.

If I were given the challenge anew, I still wouldn't be able to come up with anything (okay, maybe one), and here's the reason why: pop culture lists generally suck balls. Back in the day, when the AFI was first getting into the game, they were helpful and useful, but lists' hasty adoption and rampant proliferation across the face of the Internet have ruined them for our lifetime. One can no longer go to the IMDb Hit List (which is the good kind of list) without finding at least one trash list entry. Just today it was The 10 Most Iconic Opening Scenes in Cinema History. (Also, dude, no Once Upon a Time in the West? Come on. And yes, I'll say it, Blue Velvet is overrated, especially the beginning. "Oh look! There's worms under the ground of this idyllic suburban back yard! Get it?!" Sometimes I think David Lynch took a while to let go of the film school mentality.)

The worst lists are those where the writer has selected only the most obvious choices and provided the minimal amount of words necessary to complete the piece, offering no worthwhile insight, commentary, or criticism. A close number two are the ones that make you click through multiple pages to see their selections one by one in a crass attempt to up their hit counters. (I'm looking at you on both of these, Entertainment Fucking Weekly). The best ones provide you with a fresh angle on old material, or inspire you to add even more selections to your already-bursting Netflix queue.

But my list fatigue is even starting to affect my enjoyment of those. The A.V. Club's weekly Inventory is usually a reliable time waster, well-written if nothing else, and they will soon be releasing a new book that looks very suitable for bathroom material (and I mean that as a compliment). And yet every week, when they put up their new collection of 36 Movies and Television Shows Where Precocious Kids Get Slapped in the Mouth, I can barely find it in me to click through. ME! A writer! Procrastination is our lifeblood! Just in the course of writing this I've stopped three times to play Solitaire! "Can't you just tell me about something you like or don't like on its own terms?" I think. "Why must you arbitrarily cluster it with other things it may or may not be related to?"

The entire point of pop culture lists is to stir debate and get everyone talking about art, ideas, and why or why not something is good. But that never really happens. If you agree with them, you just flit from item to item, nodding your head and thinking "Yes, that is correct," and your knowledge is not deepened or enhanced in any way. If you disagree, you just get indignant for no reason. "How could you leave out that 'Kids in the Hall' sketch from the list of Best Sketches About Dry Cleaning?! How did an ignoramus like you even get this job?!" Ranked lists are even worse, forcing you to quantify the unquantifiable, and then argue about it. I would dread coming up with a list of my Top 10 Movies of All Time, because, naturally enough, I love a lot of different movies for a lot of different reasons. Is Rushmore better than Sunset Boulevard? I don't know. I just want to embrace what I love, and flog what I hate.

Comparing and contrasting films can be very edifying, and can highlight differences and similarities where none were previously seen. When lines and connections are drawn, they reveal a complicated but beautiful patchwork of relationships and causes and effects. And that is perfectly wonderful. But please, can we stop doing this through lists? How about the next time you think of a list idea, write out your choices, and then examine them for a way to link them up in a more satisfying way? For instance, turn your list of the Top 17 Badassed Badasses into a meditation on violence and fear, and what draws us to figures with repulsive morals. Or take Twenty-Three Female Characters Who Need to Man the Fuck Up and apply it to the evolution of feminism as represented in films throughout history.

All I'm really asking is that you think just a little bit more. Now if you don't mind, there's a surprisingly long list of Saffron Burrows movies I have to catch up on.

Top 5 Saffron Burrows Movies I Haven't Seen but Might Actually Watch
  1. The Bank Job - Jason Statham? '70s London? Merkins? Sign me up!
  2. Enigma - Only because I read the book in high school.
  3. Fay Grim - I'll have to see Henry Fool first, though.
  4. In the Name of the Father - Daniel Day-Lewis, mothafuckas!
  5. Welcome II the Terrordrome - I'm going purely on title with this one. I don't even want to know what this movie's about.

17 September 2009

"Things go round and round, don't they?"

If you follow film news in the slightest, you (should) have already heard about Henry Gibson's death today. He was "only" 73, which struck me as odd, because with his white hair and lined face, I've thought he was in his 70s since at least 1989. Every time I saw him in a new movie, I'd think, "Hey! It's Henry Gibson! I can't believe he's still alive! And working!"

I suppose this is a result of repeated viewings of The 'burbs as a child. In that film, Gibson played the head of the Klopeks, a family of [I can't believe I'm issuing a SPOILER ALERT for this] mass murderers who attempt to kill the lovable then-comedic actor Tom Hanks. As I haven't seen it since I was a kid, I don't know if The 'burbs is a good film, but it was certainly one that left an impression, and so will always belong somewhere in the dark cockles of my heart.

It was also the reason for Henry Gibson becoming one of my very first "Hey! That guy!"s. You know what I'm talking about: those actors who wow you more than the leads, yet who aren't famous enough for the press to track their every move, and so when you see them in other movies, you brighten up, as if you have come across an old friend by accident. That's the way I felt no matter what role Gibson played. Even when he was the Neo-Nazi in The Blues Brothers, I wanted to clap my hands in delight. He projected that special type of confidence that says, "I got this acting shit down. You're not gonna be groaning at anything I say or do, no matter how poorly the film is written." It's something all good character actors possess in spades, which is why they should really be the stars.

Now, finally, he really is gone. Most of the time when a celebrity dies, I don't feel much, especially when they've made it to a relatively ripe old age. We all have to go sometime, and it's tough to get sad and pensive about the passing of someone you didn't actually know. I like to think of this as a mature perspective, but I sometimes fear it's disguised callousness. This time, though, it's different. While I still can't truthfully admit to having crying jags all day, I also cannot deny feeling the loss. When I read the news, I gave one of those disappointed "Oh"s. Then I did the closest thing to an emotional outburst in a situation like this: I told a coworker. Even now I'm bummed, and I know the next time I see a movie with him in it (I recommend Nashville, by the way), I'll think "Hey! It's that guy! I can't believe he's--Oh, fuck."

Mourn ya 'til I join ya, Mr. Gibson. (Thanks to the A.V. Club for finding the extremely ghoulish yet entirely appropriate clip below.)

14 September 2009

The Man Behind the Camera

The second (and probably last) official trailer for "TUMBLER: the boom" is now online! This one features more of our very talented cast, and some of the beautiful music Alyssa Robbins generously contributed to the film. Watch it and feel your excitement blossoming.

In the time since my last post, I've been busy writing this, snorting that, and so haven't been as prolific an Interneter as I should be. My apologies. Perhaps most notably and wonderfully holding me up was a visit from Anthony "The AEG" Griffin and Shirley Clemens Griffin, the head and lead actress of our sister team, Team With No Name. Whilst here, they treated Chris and I to a viewing (several, actually) of the complementary film to "the boom," "TUMBLER: the echo."

I should say, first of all, that I co-wrote "the echo," and so you should perhaps take that into consideration when I say that I fucking loved it. Of course, I try to be as objective as possible, and am even harder on myself than I am on other people's films, but at the same time, I'm pretty damn compromised when I give my opinion on it. Perhaps it would be better if I tell you that my writing had nothing to do with why I loved it? What made me squeal in delight was Tony's gorgeous black and white cinematography (hmm...is that the right word to use when it's video?) and Shirley and David Prouty's fantastic performances. As it turns out, our films match up pretty well; there are similarities and differences where there should be, and hopefully they help illuminate our stories and themes. Some of the matches were intentional, but a lot were happy accidents we won't hesitate to take credit for.

We try to keep things in perspective, but we're damn happy with how the films turned out. The true test, though, will come during the festival and we start hearing the opinions of people who haven't worked on the films and don't know us. What will their reaction be? I can honestly say that I do not have a clue. I can see them liking them, I can see them hating them. I hope it's the former. That's all I can really say for now.

Over the past week or so, the good folks at Project Twenty1 have been busy themselves, and they've hammered out the official schedule for the festival. "TUMBLER: the boom" will be playing during the Red Screening on Saturday, October 3rd, at 3:00 pm. "the echo" will playing during the Blue Screening, which is the same day at 5:00 pm. As it turns out, that Saturday will be a big day for us assorted Michiganders, because Fairview Street, a feature film shot by Tony (curiously enough, also in black and white), written and directed by Michael McCallum, and starring me (in a small weaselly role) will also be playing that day at 7:45 pm.

The festival wraps up on Sunday with a third screening of competition films, and then the awards ceremony. So if you're in the Philadelphia area, get your ass to these screenings and watch some quality filmmaking. If you don't like our films, there will be plenty of others for you to enjoy.

29 August 2009

First Trailer for "TUMBLER: the boom"

Here's the first official trailer for our Project Twenty1 film. It was put together by Chris Kapcia, and admirably displays the dickishness of our central character. Enjoy.

27 August 2009

"Where is Spencer?"

As regular readers of this here blog already know, my roommate Chris and I have been hard at work on a film for Project Twenty1. Now that the film is completed and mailed in, and the competition's organizers have informed us that we are officially accepted into the festival and will be up for awards, I can stop holding my tongue and knocking on wood, and can provide you with a bit more background on it and let you know more of its possible future.

The official title for the film is "TUMBLER: the boom." Why does it have a seemingly nonsensical subtitle, you may ask? Because we created our film in concert with another team based in Grand Rapids and Chicago, the highly vaunted Team With No Name, headed by Brilliant in Context repeat offender Anthony E. Griffin. It was this team that I was a member of for the past two iterations of the competition. Their film is entitled "TUMBLER: the echo," and seen together, the two films will, hopefully, tell two sides of one story from separate but similar points of view. We aimed to make them engaging on their own terms, while simultaneously offering further treasures of thematic goodness when seen and/or considered side by side. Both films are dramas told primarily through the possibly unreliable voiceovers of bystanders to the main action.

Have we succeeded? Only time will tell. Both films will play in Philadelphia at the Project Twenty1 Film Festival, October 1st through the 4th. No word yet on which specific day they'll play, but if it's anything like last year's competition, they'll go up on that Sunday, followed by the awards announcements. Our goal wasn't really to win awards (though we certainly wouldn't turn any down), it was to make a film we could be proud of that just might get us a bit more attention for other projects. Together with Team With No Name, we wanted to make a dramatic, compelling, memorable experience for the audience by telling stories we ourselves enjoyed in a way that was fresh and new. Chris and I are happy with the results of "TUMBLER: the boom," and we can't wait to share it with all of you. The fastest way for you to see it, of course, is to attend the Project Twenty1 Film Festival--we're not allowed to distribute it until then. If you can't make it, we may be able to put it up online in the days immediately following.

In the meantime, we'll be working on putting together some promotional materials: trailers, gag reels, posters, promotional art, behind-the-scenes photographs, and the like. Anything we come up with will promptly be posted here and wherever else we can put it up to build buzz and put asses in seats.

See you in Philly.