Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas

The windows are opened wide to a hazy, lazy, warm Christmas day in L.A.
I decided not to go back to Pennsylvania this year for a variety of reasons, upon none of which I will elaborate.  

Christmas in L.A. – warm, no snow. Some love it, some find it depressing, you can make as much or as little of it as you like. It has been unseasonably warm, even by Socal standards – meaning that we hit 83 odd degrees yesterday. It’s a pleasant 70 right now.

Last night, I celebrated Christmas Eve with friends and an incredible Victorian style dinner. I made the mincemeat pie, not having any idea of what it was before embarking on a recipe hunt. It came out quite well, if I may say so myself. A Jewish/Moslem couple recently ensconced in the hills of Sierra Madre hosted the evening. The party, a wonderful mix of French, Swiss, Turk, Cuban/German (that’s me) and miscellaneous American heritages, we sang carols, drank eggnog, and feasted till we could drink, eat and sing no more.  

How’s that for celebrating the birth of Christianity?

Anyway, here’s hoping that your feasts and friends are also good. Enjoy the holidays and try not to make religion or consumerism too big a part of them.

screenings - free is best

You’d think, from all the time that has gone by since my last blog that I’ve been in production on something.
Nope.  Tis the season to be doing other things. The screening season and the party season is under full sail.
Watched Memoirs of a Geisha a few nights ago. I think it opens next week. Good movie. Should do well. Glad Spielberg didn’t direct it. His fingerprints aren’t apparent so I guess he left well enough alone.

Went to a screening of A Year and a Day last night. Good. Depressing, but with enough of a “level off at the end with the potential of hope” ending to not be suicide inducing. Very good acting too. Best of luck, Bob.

Tonight – some Harry Potter thing, then Narnia. I wouldn’t waste the time except they’re tech screenings and presented Digitally – which, by the way, makes seeing a movie projected from film a PAINFUL experience. Anybody who is still questioning the superiority of digital projection simply hasn’t seen a movie presented properly.

But of all of them, I am waiting mostly for –

KING KONG

This is the movie I waited years to see when I was seven. I had a big King Kong comic book that I’d memorized long before I watched Cooper’s monster thumping his chest. I remember watching it at 12:30 on a Sunday afternoon. It was the inspiration for so many clay modeled stop action experiments.

I’ve been allowing myself to feel that giddiness that leaves with childhood. It’s good. It reminds me of the simple joy of seeing a movie. I’ve been feeling little tingles of excitement, waiting at lights, as a bus in traffic goes by – the huge Art Deco Letters on the bus proclaiming – KOOOONNGG  KINNGG (The traffic goes slowly past left to right in front of you when you wait at a light)

Anyway, it has been good. It reminds me – after all that damn education about story structure, and journeys of heros, and the three act, the five act, the seven act, the plot points and devices and every other damn blah, blah thing that must be learned…

Be that kid with the wide eyes, listening intently and asking – “then what happens?”


Hey, if you’re in Los Angeles – the original 1933 King Kong is screening at the Egyptian Satrday, Dec 17th.

Pardon the Turkey

There's this tradition, a really dumb one if you ask me (which you didn't) where the president "pardons" a turkey or two during Thanksgiving.
I'm not really sure what that's supposed to imply, but it struck me funny just now as I read about it.

I kid you not, here is an excerpt from the CNN story. You can hit the title link to read the whole thing if you're so inclined.


Pardoned Thanksgiving turkeys heading to Disneyland

President Bush pardons the national Thanksgiving Turkey "Marshmallow" Tuesday."

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush spared two turkeys from becoming Thanksgiving dinner. Instead, the birds are going to Disneyland.

Thousands of people voted on the White House Web site to name the national turkey "Marshmallow" and an alternate called "Yam." At a ceremony Tuesday, Bush peered into Marshmallow's eyes, stroked its white fluffy feathers and patted its red head.

It goes on, but that's the cruxt.

It's too easy - Is Bush's new name Marshmallow?

Passage Link Wray 76

Guitar master Link Wray, the father of the power chord in rock 'n' roll who inspired such legends as Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie and Pete Townshend, died Nov. 5 at his home in Copenhagen, his wife and son said on his website. Wray, who played in his trademark leather jacket, developed a style considered the blueprint for heavy metal and punk music. He is best known for his 1958 instrumental "Rumble," 1959 "Rawhide" and 1963 "Jack the Ripper." The power chord -- a thundering sound created by playing fifths (two notes five notes apart, often with the lower note doubled an octave above) -- became a favorite among rock players. "He is the king; if it hadn't been for Link Wray and 'Rumble,' I would have never picked up a guitar," Townshend wrote on one of Wray's albums. In 2002, Guitar World magazine elected Wray one of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time.


They say that if it’s too loud, you’re too old. Link Wray never got too old.
I was lucky enough to see Link Wray in a club in Philly, 1999. I guess he was around 71 at the time. It was easily the loudest show I’ve ever seen, but damn – it was cool. He looked like a demon with long black hair – down his back to is waist. After the show, I went back stage and after he begged his overly possessive wife to let him sign some autographs, I was able to shake his hand and get the inside of a CD sleeve signed.

Yeah, for some things, I’m quite the fan boy.

Take care, Link.

Bubbles

The last week, when not working on Diamond Road or some AFM type thing, has been spent on the Hot Tub project. The hot tub project began when I found a Hot Springs hot tub on Craigslist at a price I couldn't resist. With the help of four able-bodied friends and a uhaul rental, we had grunted and groaned our way through picking it up and bringing it back here. We set it down behind the garage - a very unobtrusive place that had an old concrete slab. Perfect except for the fact that an avocado tree's roots had pushed up a part of it, preventing the tub from sitting level. I had thought about leveling it with pavers, but over the weekend I decided to dig under the slab in the hopes of getting leveling it. The hot tub sitting on the slab already, it’s a job I pondered a long time before starting. The first couple of shovels in, I felt good. A couple hours and a mountain of dirt, I was really questioning the sanity of what I had undertaken. I couldn’t help but feel like Steve McQueen in The Great Escape – tunneling under the slab. Eventually though, my digging seemed to have an effect as the guilty corner settled down and lined itself up with the rest, allowing the tub to sit right. I filled it with water, and was pleased to see that it’s only about half an inch deeper on one side than the other. Close enough.

Since the tub required a dedicated circuit, and this house is circuit-impaired to begin with, a friend of mine, experienced in the ways of electricity had put another circuit in the breaker box. Good for the backyard, good for the entire house. Thanks John!

Sunday was spent working on completing the electrical to the hot tub.
It began frustratingly as I attempted to push wire through a pipe in the crawl space to the circuit box. Finally, at my wits end, I called a contracting friend, who is one of my sailing mates for some advice. He dropped everything, came over, and with the expertise born of many a similar job (we pulled all the wires out of the pipe, then added the additional wire and pulled the whole bunch with a wire snake) were able to get a new circuit working. Thanks Dykeman!!
Wiring to and through the garage and to the back area went rel-a-tive-ly smoothly. Note the slight hesitation. There’s still work to be done -- but the end result was working electricity on a dedicated line with a GFI circuit. Ha!
Circuit was flipped, the GFI turned on and for the first time since that day of heavy lifting, a month and a half ago – the beast came awake.
It works! It’s alive. It’s alive.
It leaks.

Well, I knew it would leak. The previous owner told me it did. The pump needs to be rebuilt, which is easy enough. Ordered the parts last night. However, the second leak is a major leak and will be the bugger. As the tub ran, water started pouring out from beneath one corner. After careful peaking and poking, I pulled the redwood siding from that corner and ripped into the insulation beneath to reveal – solid, dry, piping, in other words, nothing. A second wet-test (hot tub owners may get the joke) revealed the leak to be from the other side. Unfortunately that other side is eight inches from the outer garage wall – which means that in addition to pulling more redwood siding off the tub and digging into that side’s insulation, I will also have to move the hot tub away from the garage to do the work. GRRR, cause it’s really, really heavy.

It appears to be a jet leak, meaning a replacement jet, and all sorts of pipe cutting, pvc sealant, etc. Overall, it’s a project for sure. Fortunately, there hasn’t been a sickeningly expensive part needed yet, and seeing the tub run was a thrill which has me looking forward to when it’s done – to that first soak. There is nothing so satisfying as a major DIY project successfully brought to completion. There is a side of me though that is having flashbacks to when I owned a Triumph Spitfire. It always seemed so full of promise, and one repair away from Nirvana. Next to that though, building a hot tub from scratch is a walk in the park. I’m guessing the tub will also be just a tad more reliable. Couldn’t be worse.

Ported.

My VOIP journey seems to have successfully pulled up anchor, set the sails and shut off the motor. (any more sailing expressions and I should be keel hauled… DOH! What I’m talking about is my phone. We’ve been shifting to VOIP, and for the last few weeks, we’ve had both a landline and the packet8 VOIP thing going. The last couple of days, the phone rings have gotten strange – and then all calls started coming via our packet 8 line. However, I was still able to use the landline, and when doing a caller id check, it still registered my old number. This morning, the landline went dead. We are now officially a VOIP only house. It happened much faster than packet8 predicted, weeks faster, which is nice. It’s rare that a time estimate is wildly off IN your favor. When we had the landline concurrently with the packet8 we had the comfort of knowing we could use it if we needed it. Now though, we are entirely in the hands of new technology. For the first couple minutes of that realization, I truly felt like I was at sea when we cut the motors and are relying entirely on wind.

Ironically, as I write this, the internet has gone down. A late night hiccup, most likely. Hopefully. It is indeed an adventure.

Today's the day

“I hate people. Do you hate people?”
“I don't hate people. I just like it a lot better when they're not around.”

Name that movie. *

Today was one of those days where I just wanted to work. Just work, be left alone. Thank you very much.
The actual outline for the day went some - thing - like - this.

• Modem acts funny.


• Goes down.


• Damn it!


• Call the cable company (on the land line which I haven’t quite disconnected yet)


• Talk to them for a while.


• Stump them.


• Damn it!


• A service guy will be there between 1:00 and 7:00.


• Be thankful that it’s not Monday instead.

In the meantime, try to work.
No, because:

• Time for a meeting.


• Damn it!


• Cable guy eventually shows up.


• Can’t figure out the problem


• Finally gets cable limping along.


• Schedules a lineman for Monday.


• Cable guy leaves.


• Try to work.


• FIRE ENGINE pulls in front of my house, lights flashing, horns HOWLING – followed by EMT truck doing the same.


• WHAT THE---?


• Watch all the goings-ons through the window because really – what else are you going to do when THAT happens?


• I guess someone with an overly reactive 911 trigger finger made a call -- as the gurney was wheeled out of the house as empty as it went in. That’s a good thing.


• Visit from another filmmaker in town for a festival.


• She leaves and I can sit down to hopefully write.


• Call from another very angry filmmaker seeking advice about crooked distributors and what to do about them.


• Dinner Date.

And so was my day. I wrote one goddamn line of story. Oh, and I had already written that one line about fifty times before.

I’m hoping tomorrow will be better.

I now have a stat counter hooked into this blog. I’m amazed by how many people are reading it. Hundreds, thousands. Well, not really, but more then ten people, I guess. It’s nice, but now I feel this pressure to perform.

So, in order not to completely disappoint, I present a bit of trivial news you can use if you’re up for risking twenty bucks:
I finally got my copy of “The American Astronaut”. I saw this movie at a festival in North Carolina a couple years ago. It blew me away and in scan/checking the DVD, I see it will be as great on second viewing. If you’re looking for the coolest, weirdest movie to blow THOSE friends away - you know, the ones that think they know everything cool before you do - this is the movie with which to knock them out. They will be humbled and see you as the finder of odd, cool movies.
Imagine you’re the one who discovered Eraserhead and was the first to show it to your friends.

Trust me on it.

*

Hunting at Night

Over the last several years, I’ve gotten bunches of email regarding my movies -- fan mail, hate mail, questions, psychos, even a stalker who is now doing jail time, for real.
For every ten fan mails or good reviews, one bad one can really kill you. You develop a thick skin after a while, and the more mass there is to the overall review pool, the less each one matters.

Something I really tend never to do is respond to hate mail, just delete it.

However - Today I got the coolest hate mail yet. So cool, in fact – that here’s the link to the guys who sent it. http://www.myspace.com/theenemies
Check out “The Enemies” theme. Pretty good tune. Bit of a “Ramones” knock off, but hey, better than a lot of stuff I hear today.

It’s not everyday that a punk band writes a song about how much you suck and how much they hate you. It’s even rarer when the hatred of you is cited as an actual influence for the band.

Wow.

Lest someone else think that innovative hate mail is going to impress me… it won’t. It’s the uniqueness of this one that caused me stop, laugh, and acknowledge it.


My rewrite of Diamond Road continues. Like a bad taco, the plot holes are slowly being squeezed through the second act. I’m hoping for them to vanish before act three or this is going to be a painful month. I also hope that it ends with the story feeling better, rather than just leaving a stench to be fanned away.

No matter what, I am determined to make the mistakes on paper, work each and every bug out before I hit the road to production. It’s a slow, frustrating time. I re-remember now, why movies get pushed towards production. It’s easier to see progress then. You’re spending money, the wheels are in motion, people are producing.

Got an interesting Press Release forwarded to me from composer, Vincent Gillioz.

news: October 2005
Shore's 'King Kong' rejected:
Howard Shore's score for King Kong has been rejected and will be replaced by a score from James Newton Howard. The shocking news was confirmed by Universal Studios in a press release today.Peter Jackson, the film's director and producer, says in a statement: ""I have greatly enjoyed my collaborations with Howard Shore, whose musical themes made immeasurable contributions to 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy. During the last few weeks, Howard and I came to realize that we had differing creative aspirations for the score of King Kong. Rather than waste time arguing with a friend and trying to unify our points of view, we decided amicably to let another composer score the film. I'm looking forward to working with James Newton Howard, a composer whose work I've long admired, and I thank Howard Shore, whose talent is surpassed only by his graciousness."Howard Shore had already recorded large portions of his score in New Zealand. The new score by James Newton Howard will, reportedly, be recorded in Los Angeles and has to be written at a very fast pace. The film will open on 14 December.



That’s the kind of thing that sends shivers down any composer’s spine. It’s also yet another reminder that no movie is made without hitches worries and fears about how it’s going.

Here’s one final tidbit to put a different light on things – Howard Shore is no stranger to film scores that are rejected. He was hired at the last minute to replace Elmer Bernstein’s score for Gangs of New York.

VOIP DAY 01

The Packet8 box arrived. Installation was as painless as hooking up a phone. Plug in the box and go. Nice. However, a strange thing happened with my DLINK Router - the wireless portion of it vanished. It required shutting down, waiting, rebooting, to get it to reappear. I hope this was just a hiccup because the last time this happened, the fix required exchanging the router. Don’t think it was coincidence; something about plugging into a packet8 box adapter messed with its head.

So far, the voip phone thing has been working - pretty well. There are the occasional strange digital hits. I upgraded the firmware, so we’ll see if that fixes it in any way. The most novel thing that I have noticed is that caller ID now works on the phone. It’s cool to see your handset suddenly tell you something new.

It’s been a good day of writing (re-re-re-writing) thus far. I’ve been playing with “the big board” again, which means that I’m breaking the story down into plot elements yet again.
For those of you who write or are planning to write, you probably know what “the big board” is. If not, try it – it’s a super tool, and better than anything you can do in front of a computer.

Snippets of paper on a cork board. Some people recommend 3x5 cards. Personally, I think they’re too big for what I do. I cut tiny pieces out of scrap paper. Anyway, time after time, I have found it to be a more effective way of organizing stories than any software solution.

So why am I blogging about 3x5 cards on a supposedly good day of “real” writing?

Because I’m procrastinating!

Today (because of The Big Board), I’m writing inside. I’ve been out on the patio for the past week. Lately though, the birds in the trees have given me pause. In a way, the fears being presented on the news are a bit more insidious than anything presented in that ole Hitchcock film, aren’t they? A Bird Flu case here, one there… all the special reports on CNN describing what could happen. No question, it is scary. Somehow though, with all the orange alerts, and all the “threats” we’ve been warned about over the past several years, I’m getting a bit suspicious.
What exactly is in it for the government if we’re all afraid of birds?
Hmm.

Hopefully, this will vanish like so much SARS.

VOIP

We’re giving it a try. Enough of my friends are using it, and enough annoyance with the phone company has transpired.

After a bit of research and talking to users, I decided to go with Packet8.net. Hopefully my experience will be a good one. Common among reviews (online and from friends) is that their support stinks, but the service is good. Well, that’s okay, I guess. I’m usually a DIY kinda guy, so calling support tends to be a last ditch effort, usually ending with stumping the Indian on the other side, and getting an RMA number issued. I’d rather the product be good then the support. A ‘Maytag” man philosophy, one might say. I ordered it last Wednesday and finally today (Monday) got an email confirming the product and info had shipped. FedEx – two days… One week to get it from Santa Jose, Ca. – about five hours from here. Maybe not the greatest start, but eh… we’ll see. For the moment, we’re using a temporary phone number. If we like it, we’ll ‘LNP’ our land line phone number. That’s “Line Number Portability” for those of you who haven’t had to go through the hell of switching cell phone providers while keeping your phone number.

I’ll report on the status of my VOIP experience.

Talked to a friend at length in Argentina via Skype. That system works pretty darn well – especially, considering the price of the call. HEHE. Since I’m talking into my computer though, I am more accepting of the occasional garble. We’re so used to perfect land lines, that VOIP has a bit of an uphill battle.

We live in interesting times. As I’ve pondered before – the technology is wonderful, allowing us to do things never before possible. It’s also becoming fascinating to see how some companies are making fortunes while others are finding it tougher to continue to make fortunes. Change happens. Nothing you can do about it. Dinosaurs grumble, but will go extinct if they don’t evolve.
The record industry, the telephone industry – change is happening, whether you like it or not.

Next up – the motion picture industry.

In 2000, I had a conversation with Michael Shamberg of Jersey Films – brief, but I pitched him an idea. Let the public see a version – a complete version of a movie before it’s made. For free – give it away on the net. Build hype early. There was a lot more to it, but that was the essence of it. My argument was if you saw a comic book version (or animatic) of a cool movie, you’d want to see the movie when it came out. Conversely, if you saw a comic book of a crappy movie, you wouldn’t waste money to see the real thing. It could allow movies to “test screen” before being made, to evolve in a bigger way. It could lead to much higher quality movies actually being made, and a higher percentage of profitable movies. One could gather so much information, business and artistic, that it’d redefine movie making.

He thought it was a bold, but risky. At least that’s what he told me – he might have thought the idea was the dumbest thing he’d ever heard. He went on to say that he didn’t think it would go far.  I paraphrase, “The movie industry is a mature and extremely slow moving industry”. That was the end of it – and end of my hopes of having a professional relationship with an extremely cool company and person.  At that point in time, he was, most likely, right.  Now, five years later, Peter Jackson has done a very similar thing with his web site for King Kong. Of course it will work now. The movie will do gangbusters – A. because the story is a classic, and being done by a great filmmaker, and B. because the hype is going to be incredible.

The studios don’t know what to do. They fear marketing differently. They fear releasing movies differently. Heck, they still don’t want to do things digitally. Now Mark Cuban is quickly becoming their biggest pain in the ass.

He’ll be a bit harder to ignore than me.

I have maintained now for five years, that there’s gotta be a way how to give movies away for free, legally and still make a ton of money.

Think about it for a while.

Connected

High Speed Internet is fully operational.
And there was much rejoicing.

I know how reliant I am upon the Internet. It is disconcerting how reliant upon high speed Internet I am. It’s a part of my computer, my computer is a part of my life, hence –

Maybe you’ve already heard of this. I had, but never played with it until a friend called me to tell me about it.

Well, if you’re prepared to have your mind blown, and if you’re ready to lose a few hours of your life, and if you have broadband…
You’ve been warned…

Download this toy from Google.
http://earth.google.com/

(Sorry MAC users. It’s not available for you yet.)

See you in a couple hours.

We live in the future. That’s all I can say. I love technology, I just love it. I wish we as humans, could advance ¼ as much as the technology we are creating.

So ends this quick and useless entry.