Claymation EVIL DEAD in 60 Seconds!

Dead Ends

I had a really urgent topic I wanted to address this week (WATCH ARCHER! SAVE ARCHER!), but as I was writing it, Andrew Koenig went missing and sparked a major search through Vancouver. It ended yesterday, when a group of his friends and his father found his body in Vancouver's Stanley Park.

Koenig, 41, was best known as Mike Seaver's best friend "Boner" Stabone on ABC's Growing Pains, appearing in 25 episodes from 1985-89.

He also guest-starred on shows like My Sister Sam, Deep Space Nine, and 21 Jump Street (his experience shooting the latter would inspire him to move to Vancouver for a time during the early '90s).





In later years, Koenig focused his attention behind the camera as a writer, director and editor, but also pursued interests in art, photography and comedy. He was also known to fans of the podcast Never Not Funny, as he made off-camera asides while operating their camera.

Andrew Koenig's connection with science fiction and fantasy was up to this point less well-known, despite being the son of Star Trek's original Chekov, Walter Koenig. He was also the inspiration for Harlan Ellison's short story "Jeffty Is Five." But as far as his own genre work is concerned, the astute will remember his spin on one of the most iconic characters in popular fiction.

In Sandy Collora's short film Batman: Dead End, the Dark Knight pursues an escaped Joker through a bleak, rain-soaked Gotham City. While it was a fan film, Dead End received critical acclaim across the Internet and a lot of attention. Kevin Smith lauded it as the truest Batman film ever made at the time (note that this was before Christopher Nolan really did hit the nail on the head). And opposite Clark Bartram's grim, determined Batman was Andrew Koenig's take on the Joker. Koenig started out closely replicating Mark Hamill's animated Joker, though he soon injected bitterness and a sort of adolescent rage to the character, creating his own unique portrayal.



So while everyone remembers the sweet yet dim Boner, I prefer to remember a talented man who had much more to offer had he conquered his demons. His versatility is one of the key reasons Batman: Dead End holds a place in the vault to this day.

A History of Pisstivity: My Long Annoyance With Jimmy Osmond Explained

Being annoyed comes easy to me. In fact, if an emotion could become an actual character trait, then the furrowed brow and dark, angry stare that has become permanently embedded into my features is certainly part of who I am. I am almost positive that friends of mine, when pressed to describe me, would come up with one word: Pissed. Not funny or pleasant. Not attractive when drunk or good at math – but pissed.

Which brings me to the point of this column.


As a young child raised in the seventies, I had to put up with a lot: Winnie-the-Pooh bell bottom pants, the Dorothy Hammel haircut, red shag carpeting in a Pepto-Bismol pink room, and of course the lamest of toys, the Sit-n-Spin. But nothing on the planet upset me more than the horrifyingly bland visage of one Jimmy Osmond.


My relationship to the youngest Osmond came in 1976, when I was all of two years old and already developing the pure and undiluted hatred that would come to define me as a human being.

Flash Back: There is a family story that has been told throughout the decades of a car trip to Disney Land from Northern Oregon where I, all of 20 months old, was put through the annoyance ringer by an uncle bent on pointing out EVERY SINGLE COW from McMinnville, OR to Anaheim, CA and, at hour ten, I turned to him, rolled my eyes and yelled, “I KNOW DAVID, I KNOW!” and gave out a sigh that only someone who has reached their thirties and wanted to kill themselves could experience. End of Flash Back.

My parents, having an unnatural, almost pornographic love affair for variety shows, were huge fans of the Donnie & Marie Show, which showcased the talents of squeaky clean Utah youngsters who sang songs and preformed comedy skits that rivaled those put on at the local Junior High School. They were peppy, they were cute, and for my family, they provided one free hour when none of us had to look at each other. In other words, the Osmonds were a gift straight out of Mister Joseph Smith’s hat.

Enjoying the singing and dancing, I would sit and smile at the television screen, lost in the world of soulfully empty white people prancing around between commercials for Alka-Seltzer and Dunkin Donuts. And just when I thought nothing could ruin the magic, out trotted a bowl headed twit named Jimmy who sucked the light from the room as well as my heart.

My mother has often described my transformation from contented toddler to homicidal maniac in regards to the presence of Jimmy Osmond like this:

“As soon as Jimmy walked on the screen, your eyes would narrow and a dark, angry, blackness would cross your face. If I didn’t know any better I would say that you had been possessed by the devil. Thank God you were too little to reach the knife drawer because you scared the crap out of me. The only other time I ever saw that particular look on your face was when Mary Lou Retton was on TV during the ’84 Olympics. ”

The reason behind this hatred is a mystery, even to me. I never had any personal dealings with Jimmy or his family, there wasn’t anyone sinister in my life that resembled him, nor did I experience any traumatic head injury that would cause me to want to tear his body apart and wear him as a coat.

So where did this need to destroy Jimmy Osmond come from?

Again I went to my mother, the keeper and instigator of all my emotional problems.

Me: Why do I hate Jimmy Osmond so much?

Mom: What are you talking about? You hate everyone. Jimmy was just the first person you wished would die.

Me: Really, the first?

Mom: Oh God yes, don’t you remember the album?

Me: What album?

Mom: Someone gave you Killer Joe as a birthday present when you were two or three. Why anyone would give a toddler an album is beyond me, but whatever. You remember, it had a picture of Jimmy Osmond on it in some retarded pose, and he did that cover of My Girl that made you cry until you threw up.

A vague memory bobs to the surface. Me, in a brown patchwork dress, huddled next to my father’s massive stereo system as a pre-adolescent boy warbles out a song called, “Long Haired Lover from Liverpool”. I was sickened by it.

Me: Vaguely.

Mom: After your birthday you threw the record away. It was the first time that I knew you were capable of hating something so passionately that you would destroy it.

Me: So what you’re saying is that the reason I wish Jimmy Osmond harm is because he butchered a Temptations song?

Mom: Yes. You’re a lot like your dad that way. He never forgot what the Captain & Tennille did to the song Muskrat Love. (My dad would play Willis Alan Ramsey’s album over and over while he worked on our house, he was in love with the original song called Muskrat Candlelight which America and Captain & Tennille covered) He hated them so much that he banned them from the house.

Me: So hatred of a poorly done song cover created my bloodlust against the youngest Osmond?

Mom: Absolutely.

Me: Okay then. Thanks.

The realization that my over thirty year hatred of Jimmy Osmond was based on something tangible soothed that part of my brain that feared that I was capable of committing murder for no other reason than I hated the way a person looked.

Of course I hated him because he ruined a great song. Why wouldn’t I? Genetically I was predisposed to react violently when someone lame vocally raped a beautiful set of lyrics. This is great! I am finally free to hate the little bastard because he offended my sense of music snobbery, not because I am some psycho who aches for blood!

After accepting Jimmy Osmond’s trespass against me, I am finally ready to forgive him and, in doing so, I will finally be able to say good-bye to a long, dark chapter of my psychosis. Farewell you little brat. You are forgiven.

Now if I could only figure out why I want to strap down and force feed Stephanie Myers body glitter until she chokes, I may finally have a chance at real happiness.

Cool Crap Five Strikes Again! (Look out below!)

This week I offer up another installment of The Cool Crap Five.

Next column has an interesting book being reviewed, so be sure to stay tuned.

But for now... five things that make my life fun, and could put a shine on yours as well:



Books

Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader
In 1988, someone gave me a copy of the very first Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader for Christmas and going to the can has never been the same. Prior to this, the bathroom shelves groaned under the weight of various magazines and encyclopedias--the preferred bathroom reading material at the time, but time and sloth makes fools of us all and these piles of reading matter often toppled over onto the tile and porcelain.

All that changed when I found these collections of perfectly-lengthed, interesting and entertaining bits of reading material for those times when reading became, ahem, required. It actually spawned my personal favorite euphemism for enthroning the throne. “I’ll be back after I do some, uh, light reading,” I’d say.

Each volume features short articles on matters of trivia, history, personages, geography, pop culture, religion, and pretty much anything else you can think of. The writing style is light without being breezy.

The information is complete enough to satisfy curiosity without getting bogged down with overload.

They’re perfectly digestible chunks of matter and I highly recommend them (although don’t buy them at used bookstores. You know where they’ve been.)

There have been over 23 volumes of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader, plus a number of spin-off titles and titles aimed for children and game nuts. Expect a lot more to come.


Television

The IT Crowd
I don’t know why it took me so long to gig to this outstandingly funny Britcom. A friend claims she told me about it a year ago, but I suspect she pronounced it as “The It Crowd” and I probably wasn’t keen on a TV series about fashionable people. Apparently though, it’s not “It” but “IT” as in “Information Technology.”

It’s a show about computer geeks!


What’s more, it’s a show about computer geeks who are put upon by the mentally inferior sort who don’t know how to turn a computer on and can be made to believe that the entire Internet can fit into a small black box with a blinking light. (Someday maybe, but not yet.) “This box feels so light,” she says. “Haw! Surely you knew that the Internet doesn’t actually weigh anything!” he replies.

Written and directed by Graham Lineham (of Father Ted fame), and starring Chris O’Dowd, Richard Ayoade, and Katherine Parkinson, The IT Crowd’s all three seasons comprise a total of only 18 episodes. (What is it with the British and these short seasons?) DVDs are available, but Netflix on-demand has them all available for immediate viewing. IFC has been showing a few episodes as well, so check you schedules. I credit this show with keeping my spirits up during the recent periods of heavy snow and rain. I warn you now, though. There are times when viewing an episode when laughter might become too overwhelming, and with DVD and Netflix and such there are no commercial breaks. You might want to start off in slow doses and work your way up.
Oh, and you computer geeks and other nerd-types--you’re going to love the IT office. Much of it will be eerily familiar.

“Have you tried turning it off and on? Are you sure it’s plugged in? You’re welcome, g’bye!”

Obsessive Collecting

Flea Markets
Don’t click to a different page yet. Hear me out. The flea market, the dirt mall, is a great place. Yeah, it’s full of snotty nosed kids and their snotty nosed parents. Sure there are loads of dirt cheap merchandise that looks like it wasn’t so much stolen off the back of a truck as it was thrown from the back of a truck.

And yes, those DVDs are pirated no matter what the kid behind the table tells you.

Still, if you’re a collector of... well, anything, this is a great place to find some good deals. You’d be amazed the number of comic books from the 60s and 70s I’ve stumbled across--in pretty good condition--for a dollar or less. Collect rare china patterns? Little spoons? Matchbooks? Tin piggy banks? Scrimshaw? Vintage fishing lures? Pulp magazines? Yeah, you got to get your ass down to a flea market. While some of the dealers know the value of their wares, many don’t, and nearly all of them are willing to dicker around with the price. You’re not going to find a lot of stuff in the original packaging, but if you like old crap like I do, this is the place to go.

My latest find, a tea set from Hokkaido, Japan and two sets of hanafuda cards with instructions in Japanese. Time to get my dictionaries out.

Making a Living In a “Dead” Industry

Print, Not Dead
The Cool Crap Five is a fairly subjective list series. It’s stuff that I think is cool and stuff that makes my life rock--and just maybe yours a bit too. You may or may not care how the print industry is doing. You’re reading this on-line, not on paper. The funny thing is, I could have said the same thing twenty years ago.

Sure, online access may not have been as universal as it is now, and the technology was a little different, but I’ve read electronic magazines dating back to 1978. They were on 8-inch floppies and very specialized toward computer users, but that was still cheaper than print.

My point is, thirty years later, twenty years later, books and magazines are still rolling off the press and despite Kindles and iPads and the like, books and magazines will continue to roll off the press. Sure, I’ll grant that magazines are having a harder time of it.

As a more ephemeral media, magazine are much more likely to be replaced electronically. But check out the periodical racks. Still filled to overflowing. And while publishing companies are all in upheaval in trying to catch up to the implications of new media, books themselves continue to be printed.

Why do I care?

Aside from being a bibliophile, I make my living laying out books and magazines for organizations and various publishers. And I operate my own publishing business. This pays my mortgage and keeps the lights on. In 1984 one Dr. Egon Spengler, Ghostbuster, was quoted as saying “Print is dead.” Ha! Print is still doing pretty damn well. And with more and more small publishers hitting the world (thanks to the economy and print-on-demand technology), a wide variety of titles are available and the stranglehold of the major publishers is starting to slip just a little. And with the ease of online sales and social network promotions, who needs the box stores? Well... store shelves would be nice, but I could also keep that extra bit of profit for myself.

This Week’s Feel-Good Moment

The Wonder of Being a Child
Finally, as I was musing about the fifth item for The Cool Crap Five, I received a phone call from a friend of mine who just wanted to tell me that his seven year old son still talks about the time Santa came to personally pay him a visit last year.

I’m not saying that was me in the red suit.

But I do own a red suit.

And I think it’s pretty cool that some little kids still believe in Santa Claus.

I’ll just leave it at that.

Cheers!

For information on how to get your book, comic, movie, whatever reviewed on Falling Off the Shelf, or to send hate mail, feel free to contact me at john (at) johnteehan (dot) com. No, I don’t grade hate mail.

Hats Made out of Steak • A Look Back at SPACE GHOST COAST TO COAST

Bears are crazy Willie; they’ll bite your head if you’re wearing steak on it.
Space Ghost

It recently dawned on me that I haven’t really watched much in the way of late night talk television in the past few years. This has nothing to do with the quality of programming, to be honest; I just have no real interest in watching interviews with most celebrities.


Sometimes I’ll scan the web for highlights from Letterman and Conan (I guess now Leno) in case I missed something ground breaking. With that being said, the next televised masterpiece I’m going to look at is a parody of those late night talk shows, the delightfully strange Space Ghost Coast to Coast.

Space Ghost Coast to Coast operates under the premise that Space Ghost (the hero of a 1960’s Hanna-Barbera cartoon) has retired from being a hero and has taken a plum gig hosting his own late night talk show.




Riding shotgun with Space Ghost is a rogues gallery of former nemesis who have been forced to work against their will: Zorak who serves as his Paul Schaffer-esque band leader (his band- The Original Way Outs), Moltar his producer, who also happens to be made entirely of lava and Brak who has been left functionally ”slow” after an earlier run in with the Ghost himself.

The show is animated, but all of the guests are real life celebrities (of varying levels of fame) who have been interviewed before the show, sometimes fielding ridiculous questions, that are later played out either out of order or as the responses to wildly different questions posed by Space Ghost. This style of editing the interviews ultimately gives the show its awkward and surreal style, rarely do any of the interviews make any sense and this leads to some solid comedy.



Space Ghost

Tad Ghostal is a retired super hero who hosts a late night talk show from his ship in outer space. To put it bluntly, Space Ghost is an idiot, and he garners no respect from anyone else that works on the show, and alienates anyone who is a guest (Although I do respect his love for Old Kentucky Shark brand bourbon). His interview style, much like Larry King’s, is a mixture of uninformed and misinformed with just a splash of apathy (take that Larry King, you look like an owl...uh oh stolen joke number 2).




Zorak

Zorak, a giant mantis, is Space Ghost’s oldest foe and serves as his band leader as punishment for all of his space related transgressions. Zorak feels nothing but disdain for Space Ghost and revels in the opportunity to insult him and point out his shortcomings (or which there are many) particularly in front of the guests. Zorak’s repeat references to said idiocy is usually met with a healthy blast from Space Ghost’s power bands (causing some severe burns I’m sure).


Moltar

Moltar is the (lava) man behind the scenes, working as the show’s producer and director. Although he doesn’t seem as evil as Zorak, Moltar too hates Space Ghost, and yearns for the day when he can throw off the shackles of production to become the show’s host. Although he too is an idiot (every one of them is a maroon) he seems to maybe register an I.Q. a couple of points above his contemporaries.


Brak

Brak was never a show regular but I want to include him here because he is one of my favourite characters, and he and Zorak later starred in the Leave it to Beaver style spin off “The Brak Show”. Brak looks like an evil space cat, but underneath his tough exterior is the simple brain of a child, not a very intelligent child either...ok fine, a stupid child who also happens to be an idiot. I think what draws me most to Brak is his delightful voice; it immediately makes me giggle like a Japanese school girl.



The show is essentially a string of strange non-sequiturs and hilariously awkward interviews. The list of interview subjects varies wildly with celebrities like Bob Odenkirk, David Cross, Charlton Heston, Thom Yorke, Willie Nelson, and The Ramones. If you are looking for in depth and insightful interviews, you have come to the wrong place, instead Space Ghost will make guest uncomfortable with his insane rambling which in my opinion is much more interesting. It’s awesome to watch these celebrities squirm (especially Thom Yorke who I’ve seen be a douche-satchel in many interviews) and it definitely beats a brainless fluff interview.

Five volumes of the show have been released on DVD spanning the years 1994-2002 and are easily available at any reputable DVD depository. So go ahead and lend your eyes to this strange gem that skewers late night talk shows so well, it ends up doing it better.

Modern Family

I have run the gamut of television show crushes/obsessions this past year, and now that some of my favorites, like Dexter, Nurse Jackie, Mad Men and the like are on hiatus, and the damn Olympics are messing with my 30 Rock viewing, I've fallen deeply in love with a very unlikely suitor: an ABC sitcom.

(I tried to be addicted to Hoarders on A&E for a minute, even going so far as to play an episode for my mother, wherein she sat shell-shocked trying to comprehend the sad, sad lives of these people.

She was so shell-shocked at one point, that I thought she might have lost the ability to blink. The people on the show are the lucky ones however, no longer living in secret, and with the change to recieve help from hoarding treatment centers. So it's shocking yes, and sad, really sad, but for whatever reason, I have reached my threshold of households packed with trash that reaches the ceiling, 11-27 house cats, roaches scampering on the kitchen counter, dog/cat/gerbil feces ground into the carpet and/or having to watch a hoarder make the painful decision of whether or not to keep that jumbo Slurpee cup from 1994. I'm out.)

And as for Lost? I don't think I care anymore. I want to, desperately, but the whole thing has become sort of bad-sci fi/soap opera, and even Jack's tears and Kate's desperation in both universes can't keep my attention anymore.

Which brings me to my latest obsession. Modern Family.


At first I thought the premise was irritating, the gay couple, the older man/younger woman dynamic, the zany traditional family. But then I watched it, and between great writing, fantastic acting and pretty hilarious situations, I have fallen totally in love. My biggest crushes are on Manny, the precocious 11-year-old, and Phil, the bumbling, do-gooding, totally lost father.
Here's the actor who plays Phil and some clips from Phil's book of "Keeping it Real":



Manny, the son of Jay's new (and much younger) wife, Gloria is so sensitive and wise sometimes it breaks your heart to listen to him pine for a girl at school or worry about life in general. I couldn't find the clip, but in one episode, a more popular guy at school stole credit for a poem Manny had written to his crush. When trying to describe the more popular kid's aura, Manny says something to the effect of, "I don't understand it, but at the same time I both admire it and fear it." Let's just say I wouldn't mind a little Manny around the house when things go sideways. Here, he saves the day when Luke's birthday party goes arwy:



I'm not sure exactly what it is about the show that works so well, except that they do touch on real issues in a unique and hiarious way, from Claire and Phil trying to spice up their marriage, to a father trying to understand his son's gay lifestyle. I even teared up at the end of one episode where the whole family was forced into a group hug. (I know, right? Good God.) Phil and Claire nail it here, when real life intrudes on their "two strangers meet at a bar" role playing on Valentine's Day.



Or here's Jay, trying to establish his sexiness on the "gay scale," while Mitchell's partner Cameron does his best heterosexual football fan imitation. Is there a better line than, "Dad, you are really close to ruining gay for me,"?



And last, but not least, one of my favorite clips, as Phil threatens to cancel Christmas if the kids don't confess who's been smoking:



At any rate, it's pretty genius. I will leave you with my favorite episode, "Fifteen Percent." That would be the percentage that any of us can change in any real way. I'd have to say they are on to something here, both about the truth of families and established dynamics as well as how hard we are sometimes willing to try for those we love. That's right, I just wrote that about a sitcom. On ABC.

Extreme Makeover – Home Edition Restores My Faith in Humanity…Sort Of RANT – 2/24

I hope that you’re having a great time watching the Winter Olympics - HOORAY for the black ice skater guy, the tomato, and the kid named after a Greek God {but who spells it wrong}!), drooling over “Lost” (I still don’t get it), and joining that Facebook group to get Betty White to host SNL (it looks like it just might happen, which is crazy). I had a week off from school and had a great time.

Now I’m 3 days in and I'm depressed, my back is killing me, and can’t wait until June.

Or at least until the Oscars.

So for a little pick-me-up, I decided to watch a show that makes me cry every single time I watch it without fail – Extreme Makeover – Home Edition. Remember that show on ABC?


Remember when it began as a plastic surgery extravaganza? Well, it’s been on for 7 seasons and keeps plugging along.

It follows a foolproof formula;

1. Each episode features a family that has faced some sort of recent or ongoing hardship – like a natural disaster or someone in the family may be dying because of their house (like killer mold).
2. The show coordinates with a local construction contractor, then they coordinate with various companies in the building trades to “makeover” that family’s house. That includes interior, exterior and landscaping, which is performed in seven days while the family is on vacation (paid for by the show's producers), which is documented in the episode. If the house is beyond repair, they replace it entirely. The show's producers and crew film set and perform the makeover but do not pay for it because everything is donated, and tons of volunteers do the work!

Now I usually don’t watch this show because if I watch TV on Sunday nights, I’m watching the “The Simpsons", “Family Guy”, “The Cleveland Show”, and “American Dad.” But I watched this past Sunday because KISS was on it! Yes, that’s right, the band many folks love to hate. (Yes, I'm talkin' to you jay Williams)

Anyway, the show was about a young family with 4 kids (the father and sons wear Mohawks!) who run a non-profit music school. Their house was falling apart, had rodents running around the kitchen, and a leaky ceiling. With me being an Art teacher who also thinks that Music is another important thing that schools are cutting every five minutes, I felt this show was important to see.

You can see it HERE

Three minutes and ten seconds in, I was crying. And then I was jolted back to reality by that nutbag Ty Pennington. He’s the host with the crazy hair who’s always screaming into a megaphone when he doesn’t need to. Then I remembered watching him profiled on an episode of E!’s “True Hollywood Story” in which his mother was interviewed and said that he was diagnosed with ADD when he was a kid. Go figure.

So they go to the house, tell the family they’re gonna be rescued, send them off on vacation (to Cleveland? Oh, right, to see the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame) and get to work on the house.

The family get surprised by KISS, the husband gets to play a song ON STAGE WITH THEM, see them in concert, visit a school in the area with a struggling music program with KISS and then the band announces that the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation is gonna donate ALL NEW INSTRUMENTS to the school in the family’s name! Whew!

And after all of that, they came home to a BRAND NEW HOME!

The old one was so shitty, they bulldozed it. This show restores my faith in humanity! People helping each other! Building a house in a week! Marching bands! Hard hats! Guitars! MOVE THAT BUS!

Now, in between crying, watching the family cry, Ty yelling like someone is sawing off his legs, and the volunteers crying, I’m wondering…WHY CAN’T PEOPLE DO THIS SHIT FOR EACH OTHER EVERY DAY? For 45 minutes a week, at least 10 million people watch this show.

How many of them donate blood?

Volunteer anywhere?

Open a door for someone?

And then I really cry.

Victor Crowley Returns in October!

Adam_Fn_Green: THAT'S A WRAP ON HATCHET 2!!! http://twitpic.com/155fh2

When I saw this news today on Twitter, the smile on my face grew from ear to ear.

Why is that, you ask?

I'm a huge Adam Green fan and every time he's been involved with something, I've had to check it out.

Spiral is a great little thriller he made a few years back and I urge people to seek it out or Netflix it.

And when Hatchet came out, it really was a return to the slasher film that was sorely lacking this last decade or so.


Which is sad because all you need in a good slasher film is a crazy killer with personality (even the ones that don't talk can have personality), funny dialogue and some inventive kills. When I heard the special effects were being done by none other than John Carl Buechler, I was already intrigued.

Kane Hodder as the killer? Can it get any better?

And then I checked the film out in theaters and was so happy to see something that harked back to my childhood and sneaking horror movies in my room at night and loving every minute of them.

Then when I was in Austin, Texas for Butt Numb A Thon this past year, Adam Green presented his new film Frozen and when I say, “It's like Open Water. Only a good film.” I'm not kidding. I was simply blown away by the film (and still say if Kick-Ass didn't play there as well, Frozen would have been my new favorite movie.) I saw such growth from his film making in a span of a film and said to anybody that would listen that Adam Green was the future of not only horror, but Hollywood as well. A film maker with a sense of humor? That's what we need.

So of course when he mentioned he was doing the sequel of the film that put his name on the map, and so soon after, I was of course signed up already. The return of Victor Crowley, a deformed killer like Jason but doesn't hide the fact that he is deformed, gets me excited. I just can't wait for October to come already.

Hey Adam, if you're reading this, I'll definitely be happy to watch the film beforehand.

Viva Jeffster!

Looks like they're returning with Chuck on March 1st.

SF Authors: Trailblazers of the Changing Terrain

As the dust settles, for the moment, on the Great E-Book Kerfuffle, it's hard to see what new terrain is being revealed.

Any illusion of a great, flat plain of battle is gone, and given how artificial that idea was in the first place, it is not too surprising that what really lies ahead is a brambly forest with paths going in many directions, full of treacherous dells and hidden pools of quicksand that can make the unwary disappear quickly.


I am beginning to think that the future of book publishing will become more of a guerilla war, as huge companies engage in detente and authors must choose carefully who they ally with and how they approach the market.


Thus, authors will have to shoulder more of the burden of getting their words read and paid for, possibly to the detriment of their creative output.

One of the effects of the recent dustup has been writers talking about where this revelation of the changing publishing landscape leaves them.

For example, historical novelist Robin Maxwell has blogged about her transformation from old-school to hyper-modern novelist; it apparently involves contests, amongst other things. She characterizes it as "the most mind-boggling upheaval in the publishing industry since Gutenberg's printing press."

Over in the UK, the Guardian's Robert McCrum sees plenty of opportunities for authors as "the status and position of the writer has changed irrevocably with the world wide web," while the status of publishers may be even more in doubt. Both of them see the role of the writer changing; authors are obtaining a more public, interactive profile, and are becoming increasingly more responsible for marketing their work.

The thing is, I think that a lot of SF authors have already been this doing to some degree. While some are concerned about the idea of publishers dissolving (and with them, the editorial and marketing expertise that can help books thrive), others have already taken the plunge into areas such as self-publishing (Hi Wil Wheaton!), and most already do a fair amount of self-promotion online. But the habit of doing this is for many old hat, because it is part of the social system of SF. Like a ranger in a Tolkien novel, they are both pathfinder and seeker through the trials ahead.

While I don't think that SF authors are more gregarious than other writers, they often participate in, emerge from, and flourish in the SF subculture.

The convention system is, in one sense, a giant promotional venue for SF literature, and authors can do readings, sign books, appear on panels and discuss the literature and related subjects, and meet 'n' greet fans and other professionals. While couched as a pleasurable activity, it is also an important aspect of the subculture, and a significant method of selling one's work. SF authors often have a more specific social relationship with fans (even if from the distance of letters or blogs), and this has prepared them better for the changing world of publishing.

Many SF authors have adapted to the digital world with more swiftness and confidence than authors in other fields. Some of the revelations that Robin Maxwell discusses are ones that SF authors have been experiencing, and trying to benefit from, for some time. The blog is nothing new (as John Scalzi can attest), but SF authors also used mailing lists and forums early on (Warren Ellis' long-running Bad Signal only very recently was dismantled, mostly because he has other methods of inappropriately touching his fans). The reason they did this is that the Internet was where they could engage fans in new ways, not only to draw in more readers, but to connect with a new appendage of the subculture. Combined with the convention system (and other face-to-face entities such as fan associations and bookstores), the social net was widened, and authors jumped in to participate.

With new methods such as e-books, POD, and the general rise of self-publishing, SF authors will need to hone their strategies for getting their work out and getting it proper exposure.

It is easy to find stuff to read on the Internet, but that is also the problem: good work gets lost in a sea of fanfic, pirated work, or even wacky mashups. Not only are methods of marketing and publishing in flux, but what a book can be composed of, or what form a story can take, is becoming more elastic. Some SF authors are working to adapt to these conditions as well (such as the intriguing online experiment Shadow Unit, which is headed by seasoned SF authors Emma Bull and Elizabeth Bear). But as the terrain keeps changing, authors will need to stay alert and be prepared to change strategies quickly.

Authors must not only write, or promote, but be able to read economic and industry news and respond to it with swift flexibility.

GEEK SCREENING ROOM presents D.C. CAB

Joel Schumacher co-wrote and directed this beloved (at least by me) cult classic focusing on a ragtag group of taxi drivers whose lives are changed by a naive, idealistic young driver who is determined to change the lives of the cabbies around him for the better.

With a ridiculously fantastic cast, D.C. Cab is non-stop (or at least 100 minutes of pure entertainment).

Produced by Topper Carew
Written by Topper Carew and Joel Schumacher
Directed by Joel Schumacher
Starring Adam Baldwin, Max Gail, Mr. T,
Gary Busey, Charlie Barnett, Irene Cara,
Marsha Warfield, Bill Maher, Whitman Mayo,
The Barbarian Brothers, Paul Rodriguez,
Jim Moody, Bob Zmuda

A Nincompoop a Night

“Even though you can't expect to defeat the absurdity of the world, you must make that attempt. That's morality, that's religion. That's art. That's life.”

Phil Ochs.

I took a vacation last week with my girlfriend. It was a lovely jaunt down to the island town of Coronado just off the coast of San Diego. We stayed in the same hotel at which Billy Wilder filmed Some Like It Hot, and where L. Frank Baum wrote the sixth Oz book, The Emerald City of Oz.


We stayed in a villa on the beach and got to relax in the incredibly hospitable February weather that the southern most part of California enjoys and which most other places don't.

We arrived less than forty-eight hours after Valentine's Day, and we stayed through her birthday, celebrating quietly within a stones throw of where the surf lapped the shore. In short, it was beautiful and I didn't write a column last week.

It was a hard transition back to civilization, which I've handled well. I'm going to be moving a gallery and my residence in the next few weeks. And it seems that though I was only gone for two days, I came back to two weeks of missed work. With art consuming my focus, I haven't had much inspiration to write about any other subjects. Or so I thought.


While waiting for my song selection to register at the Karaoke Club I visit most Mondays, I became engrossed in a conversation with a friend of mine who earlier that evening sponsored an even closer friend of mine at his welcoming ceremony into the Freemasons. All of us have dedicated serious study to Neuro-Linguistic Programming, which is a behavioral science taught by people like Tony Robbins and utilized at a high cost by politicians, salesmen and pick-up artists. It's fascinating stuff, and I encourage everyone to google it and learn a little bit about it. Techniques have been customized to maximize persuasion at all levels of interaction. There are easy to spot rapport-building tactics like mimicking body language, and there are really sneaky tools that combine gesture, language and vocal projection to instill a desired emotion in the target. These tricks work, too. Have you ever walked into an appliance store and walked out with something expensive that you don't really need and didn't enter with the intention of buying? Odds are that the commission-based sales person gamed you with some NLP. If there was no sales person, you fell victim to a very complicated maze of ad materials and manipulated environments that are the result of years of marketing feedback. You were powerless to defend against it so don't feel bad. The Irish may be immune to psychoanalysis, but nobody's immune to a good sales pitch.

Politicians are the people who benefit most from these dark arts. In a way, you can think of NLP as a form of black magic for business, because it's always used by one person on another person. People don't use NLP on themselves, so there is always a target, always a manipulation, and generally a philosophy behind it all. Often the message is nebulous. How many people sported a "Hope" bumper sticker in the last election? That was some good old-fashioned NLP at work. What made this recent batch of slogans and empty promises better than the last is that this is a message that is pro-active rather than reactive. the only problem is that is proactive without a clear and obvious goal. That non-specificity is the mother's milk of a successful politician. It's a promise that requires very little follow-through, and therefore it's a difficult concept to deem a failure.

I haven't seen much change since the last administration was in office. I was a harsh critic of the former president, and credit Carl Rove with the genius behind two successful elections (or lack thereof). While I consider him to be an evil genius, I do respect the man's abilities. So I'd really like to know who is the Carl Rove of the Obama administration? There's got to be someone behind all of the propaganda, and as a marketer, I'd like to know who that is.

I'm of the informed opinion that politicians aren't very different, and that the two political parties in the US are practically the same. So it seems to me that charisma not conviction is the deciding factor in the voting booth. We haven't heard much about who the president's vocal coach is, or who preps him for television. Perhaps its a whole army of advisers instead of just one. I'd like to know more. I'm not a hater, and I'm willing to withhold my judgment until the next election, when the successes or failures can be given the proper perspective. But my advise to everyone is to look through the campaign slogans and see what was promised measured against what was delivered. In the end it may very well be that Obama delivered on his campaign promise: that he gave us hope -and that nothing else concrete was promised or delivered, and therefore there's no harm, no foul. Or it may be that a bunch of promises were made and either kept or discarded, for which comeuppance or praise shall be tendered.
Now filter the behavior of all those people around you in your normal, everyday life. Do you have friends that consistently make promises only to break them with astounding regularity? Do you pay attention to your own motivation?

Spend fifteen minutes this week contemplating that. Hopefully it will lead you to ask yourself what it is that you want. That should instill you with some real hope.

IN DEFENSE OFFreddy Got Fingered

Nominated for 9 Razzie Awards, winner of 5 and still in the running for "WORST FILM OF THE AUGHTS," Freddy Got Fingered couldn't be a more misunderstood film. There are a lot of films I'd defend on the Razzie roll, but this one always stumps me. How could so many people miss the point (or in this case lack of point) of Tom Green's completely demented feature debut is lost on me nearly ten years later.



In full disclosure, when somebody tells me something's "not their sense of humor," it usually guarantee's I'm going to laugh my ass off. If there exists a mainstream sense of humor and a somewhat darker, tilted one, I'm going with the later. I blame John Waters, whose Pink Flamingos was way inappropriate for me to see at such a young age.

I had never really been a fan of Tom Green's MTV series, nor did I really follow the guy as a comedian, but I do know one thing. He somehow managed to get Freddy Got Fingered made, and that alone is worth some sort of award. You know, in Cannes, they give away special awards to films for "audacity." Freddy Got Fingered has audacity in spades, whether you laugh or not.

Loosely structured around a Green alter-ego "aspiring animator" named Gord and his aspirations to leave home at the end of his twenties, the movie's really just a long excuse to push comedy to major extremes. Like the Tom Green Show there's the obligatory gross-out shots of animal genitalia and extreme medical procedures. But as evidenced by Kathy Griffin's latest comedy tour (which I highly recommend, btw), anyone can tell a joke, but the true talent is in the timing. A lot of the laughs in the movie come out of a tongue-in-check regard to linger on a sight gag just a tad longer or even repeat a gag you may not have laughed at the first five times, only to give in and giggle on.

Green understands movie conventions and hijacks them in the name of satire, not unlike more successful vehicle movies like Wayne's World. Only, here, the comedy is much more surreal and the sight gags much more physical. Once you get past the "get inside the animals" sequence, you pretty much have a sense of where the film's gonna go and if you should stick around. Most audiences would probably walk out after this point, or at least sign up with PETA.

When Gord first gets his "drawings" in front of a hot-shot animation exec played by Anthony Michael Hall, the critical dialogue exchange could easily be a movie exec yelling at Tom Green a week before this movie's release -- "Listen, your drawings are pretty good, but it doesn't make sense, ok? It's stupid. What you need here is elevation. There has to be something that happens. That's funny. What the fuck's happening here? Gord of course eventually gets his way in spite of the need for a formulaic way of making us laugh. Gord/Green goes to extremes in FGF, and the gross-out humor may be pointless, but it sure is hysterical.

Among a slew of bad reviews, Roger Ebert noted "the day may come when Freddy Got Fingered is seen as a milestone of neo-surrealism." He was somewhat right, but when he said "the day may never come when it is seen as funny," he couldn't have been more off. In a recent radio interview Tom Green pointed out that even though the film was a complete critical failure upon release, he's seen it gain a completely opposite response through time, and even gone on to make more than its money back for the studio.

Who's laughing now?

I WAS A TEENAGE FIGURESKATER...!!

Watching the XXI Winter Olympics currently taking place in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada has been an enthralling and really fun experience.

It's always great to see each of the world's varied nations send their finest athletic representatives to volley for a gold, silver or bronze medal and the bragging rights that go along with it. Over the top commercialization not withstanding, the Olympics still enchants and delights me with a certain innocence about the whole thing, and I wish it were an every year event instead of just once every four years.

Your hosts/mascots for the 2010 Winter Olympics: Quatchi, Miga, Sumi and Mukmuk

This being the Winter version, I have been especially drawn to the insanity that is the Skeleton, the Luge, Snowboarding, Bobsleigh, the Biathlon, Speedskating, Curling, and of course, the usual suspects that are Figure Skating, Skiing and Hockey.

Seeing the skaters brought back many thoughts of ice from my childhood times spent as a kid growing up in New England. Some of these thoughts were filled with a wonderful sense of nostalgia, while others the horror of remembering my attempts to master the, how should I say, Blades Of Glory.

My neighborhood pals and I were pretty much into whatever seasonal sports came up. If it were Summer, we had baseball games, Fall brought on football and "hoop" while the most fun of all was in Winter with our street hockey games.

At that time, hockey was the king because the Boston Bruins were actually winning La Coup Stanley. Sure we had the New England Patriots, but they were relegated to bottom of the barrel status (in fact most of us had our football Quarterback heroes in the then currently winning teams such as The Pittsburgh Steelers, The Miami Dolphins and even The New York Jets—perish the thought now).

We were all huge fans of baseball via our beloved The Boston Red Sox as well, but to be honest, how excited could you be in those days when decades and decades of loss had made you feel fairly pessimistic about their yearly chances at winning a World Series?

Derek Sanderson making snowcones for the kids

Street hockey was really where it was at. Afternoons and evenings after school, as well as being lucky enough to also play in school as part of our Phys Ed classes, we would set up our goal nets in the middle of the street, and whack that "puck" (a rubber ball) around for hours imagining ourselves to be the next great Bruins' star player: Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito, Gerry Cheevers or for myself, Derek "The Turk" Sanderson, who seemed to get into more fights in a game than there was game time itself.

Yes, I really wanted to be an actual skating-on-the-ice professional hockey player in the worst way.


This did not go down well with my folks who thought it was far too dangerous. So the solution, thanks to a suggestion from my best friend's mom, was that we take figure skating lessons at the nearby ice rink instead. This way we still get our skating on ice fun but with a controlled, no checking someone mercilessly into the glass, means of harmless safety.



I struggled with that class for the entire run, having to learn my "figure eights," "spins" and the other not so graceful movements—and then do them all while skating backwards! Most of these I have now conveniently blocked out, as much as I have blocked out the exact age that I was taking this class, somewhere between the age of 10 and 14.



I swear the fact that my equally inept buddy and I made it all the way through and received our cloth "badges" for our efforts was due to the instructor taking pity on a couple of talentless kids who would soon move on to Godzilla and the Creature Double Feature instead.


Yes, any dreams of becoming a decent skater, nevermind a skater in the profession of playing hockey for salary and stardom, were for once and for all squashed into that frozen water. I sucked skating on the ice then, and forever after. While I still worshiped, and to this day love the game of hockey, never again would I feel the need to pursue it either as hobby or career. Rollerskating, inline skates and rollerblading are out as well.

So back to the Olympics. I saw an interview with the winner of a Gold medal for Figure Skating, the U.S.A.'s Evan Lysacek, who stated that he had always wanted to be a hockey player as a kid since the time when his grandmother bought him his first pair of skates for Christmas. His parents, thinking it was too dangerous, pushed...or should I say encouraged him to enter the world of figure skating instead.

The other night, watching Evan's Gold winning and performance/upset against the favorite, a madman/Russian skater named Evgeni Plushenko, in the Men's Free Skating, I recalled my own experiences with the world of skating, of course without Evan's happy and prosperous end results. I'm happy that it worked out for him, and yet I wondered if Evan still held a slight bit of resentment or at the very least a secret wish that he could become that hockey player he once desired to be.


Seeing Evan, resplendent in his black leotard, with a fake snake wrapped around his neck and shoulder pads as high as the sun, I realized that yes, I too briefly entered this glamorous and glittering world and shared a few things with a great Olympian.

Funny how we each took a wrong turn at Albuquerque...

Georgie visits Timely Comics

The success of Archie Comics in pioneering and exploiting the "teen" genre in comics inevitably lead the other comic publishers at the time to follow their lead and produce a slate of Archie clones and knock-offs.

Lighter than the heavy duty romance stuff that was aimed straight at the girl market, the teen genre focused more on humor than romance. Though Archie shared the occasional smooch with Betty or Veronica, his comics could be read without too much embarrassment by boys.

As a result his clones and knock-offs had their romantic interests as well. The focus in the teen genre, however, was always on humor and light, semi-realistic adventures, with romance only a part of the formula.


Timely Comics, always a company to follow a trend rather than start one (until Stan Lee famously turned comics on its head in the early sixties when he and Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko reinvented the Super-Hero) jumped on the Archie bandwagon with a comic called Georgie. Georgie ran for 39 issues, (including a three issue title change to Georgie and Judy in the middle of the run.) If Georgie has any more appearances beyond these issues I've never seen them.


What concerns us here is issue number six. It ran 52 pages and contained four Georgie stories. The third story has no title, but it concerns Georgie Lawson, his best friend Monty, and Georgie's father William going on a trip from their home town of Riverside (Archie lived in Riverdale) to New York City, some twenty hours drive away, in the days before the interstate highway system was built. No reason is given for why Georgie's dad needs to be in New York so suddenly, we assume its a business trip.


That night, Georgie and Monty dream about their upcoming adventure in New York. Georgie dreams of fame and power, while Monty dreams about fame and hot chicks who can't seem to spell the word "gorgeous". Their actual adventure in New York will be nothing like this.


Georgie's dad looks like Mr. Weatherbee, the principal at Archie's school in Riverdale and Archie's chief adult authority figure nemesis. Georgie's mom is a bit of a nag, and Georgie's dad a classic milquetoast, as can be seen in this little exchange. Note Georgie's car, not quite as antiquated as Archie's jalopy, but definitely nearly twenty years old.


Side note: Greer Garson was a British-born actress who was very popular during World War II. As one of MGM's major stars of the 1940s, Garson received seven Academy Award nominations, winning the Best Actress award for Mrs. Miniver (1942). She was often cast in films with Walter Pidgeon as her co-star. (source: Wikipedia)


Here's where things get weird. From the hotel, Georgie can see the Empire State Building, and Monty comments that he knows an editor that works there who puts out a comic called Georgie "almost like you and me." Then comes the classic comic book artist time saving move, the all black panel.


We are then treated to one of the worst street level depictions of the Empire State Building ever committed to print, and we find out that the comic editor works on the 14th floor. The artist does manage to sneak in a hot girl elevator operator.


We arrive at the Timely Comics offices, which are open from 8:30 to 5:00 every day and located on the 14th floor. The most probable editor for the teen line at Timely when this issue of Georgie came out is Stan Lee.

The silver haired Perry White clone greeting Georgie and Monty in no way resembles the 25 year old Stan Lee, and I've got no picture reference for Martin Goodman, the founder of Timely Comics and another probable candidate, to compare him to. I like to think that the artist waving at us in panel five is a self portrait of the actual Georgie artist Frank Carin. He may have written the story, working from a synopsis by Stan Lee, as was the style in those days.


"Yes, coincidence is wonderful!" It turns out that it's just a complete coincidence that Georgie, his girlfriend Judy, Georgie's mother, and Georgie's best friend Monty are all drawn exactly as they appear in real life within the pages of Georgie comics. As the unnamed editor says "If Georgie looks like you it is because he represents American boys generally... You in particular." To which the reader might be expected to say, "What? How does that clear anything up?"


What no one, including Georgie's father seems to realize is that Monty knows this editor. He called ahead to let the editor know that they were coming to visit the office. Is it truly a coincidence or is Monty selling ideas based on his friends to Timely Comics for a profit?

Monty does leave the offices with an armload of Georgie comics, whose to say he's not pocketing some cash as well?

Excited that his son is being featured in a comic book, Georgie's dad calls his wife and she decides to buy some Georgie comics with Georgie's girl friend Judy. They become quite angry with their depiction in the book, because Georgie's mom is shown falling down while skating and Judy gets a big wad of white goo splattered onto her face.


I don't want to be gross, but what exactly is happening to Judy in that last panel?

Meet The Eleventh Doctor! NEW DOCTOR WHO TRAILER!

GEEK SCREENING ROOM presents MIDNIGHT RUN

Director Martin Brest's follow up to Beverly Hills Cop, Midnight Run is an incredibly fun buddy comedy about an accountant who is chased by bounty hunters, the FBI, and the Mafia after jumping bail. The chemistry is phenomenal with Grodin playing the accountant and DeNiro as the tough bounty hunter who apprehends him.

It almost didn't happen as both Cher and Robin Williams were almost cast until Brest felt that Grodin's audition won over Brest and the rest was cinematic history.

The film also had four little known sequels, Another Midnight Run, Midnight Runaround, Midnight Run for Your Life and Witless Protection. The first three were television movies with Christopher McDonald taking over DeNiro's role as bounty hunter, Jack Walsh. In The Larry The Cable Guy film, Witless Protection, Yaphet Kotto reprises his role as FBI agent Ricardo Bodey, without any other mention or reference of the original film.

Midnight Run is a first rate, action comedy that has memorable performances, great dialogue and is pure entertainment.

Written by George Gallo
Directed and Produced by Martin Brest
Starring Robert De Niro, Charles Grodin,
Yaphet Kotto, John Ashton, Dennis Farina,
Philip Baker Hall and Joe Pantoliano

VROOOM! The Persistence of Vision

Persistence of Vision (physiology)
1. The ability of the eye to retain the impression of an image for a short time after the image has disappeared.
2. Not giving up on your vision no matter what.
3. Seriously, not giving up.

I think it was Jean-Luc Godard who said that there are two kinds of film projects—ones that are finished and others that are abandoned. If that’s the case, this is a story of one little film project that was not quite finished and not quite abandoned either. It’s the story of the little film project that could…

So back in the early 1980s, I started making movies. Usually, they were off-the-cuff productions where a group of friends and I would get together, think of a concept, and then film the story, revising and editing in-camera.

First I started with regular 8mm film, then Super 8mm film, and then graduated to VHS video. What I liked about video was that I could dub soundtrack music over the action. Since none of my friends or I owned video equipment, however, I volunteered to shoot the high school football games with the school’s equipment. For payment, I was allowed to keep the camera and recorder over the weekend. Production weekend.

“I’ve got the video equipment!” was the magical phase that I usually chimed over the phone that send my friends diving into their shitbox cars and rolling over to my house to be in an off-the-cuff production which usually ended up with a gunfight, indiscriminate bloodshed, machete battles, or tussling with some kind of monster.

It was in this latter category that was my favorite of productions. They centered around a milquetoast, middle-aged man, Alvin Toffler (yes, the name was inspired by the Future Shock author) who was usually relaxing at home, either reading the evening paper or writing his latest Sunday novel. Inevitably, Toffler would be plagued by toothy ghouls, mysterious serial callers who left threatening messages, and yes, vacuum cleaners.

The latter was our most successful production that people, years later, would always bring up. “Oh, I remember that Vacuum Cleaner Movie you made,” they would say with cheery nostalgia. “That was so funny. You should put that on America’s Funniest Home Videos or something.” Well, I did submit a version to ABC-TV years later, but we’re not quite there in the story yet.

In the autumn of 1983, my friend Scott Logan (who played the leery Alvin) and I were at odds of what to cook up for a weekend production. The video equipment had to be returned Monday, and dammit, I earned that stuff by enduring long bus rides with football players who didn’t really appreciate a “geek” riding among their “studlier” sporting companions. A geek who listened to “elevator music,” which, for the unrefined musical palate, amounted to the scores of Jerry Goldsmith, John Barry, John Williams, and Ennio Morricone. Elevator music—huh! “Hey, you fuckin’ retard,” I remember one eloquent, 240-pound linebacker inquiring. “What kind of faggot shit are you listening to?” Since it wasn’t Foghat or Van Halen or another popular band of the day, obviously I had some ’splaining to do...

So we had movie-making equipment to create a creature feature, a willing victim, and no monster. I don’t remember if it was Scott or I who came up with using my mom’s old Kirby vacuum cleaner—but after some menacing, traveling POV shots, some mono-filament wire attached to a hose, and some overacting on the part of Scott, we had our little monster movie. I dubbed excerpts from Jerry Goldsmith’s score to Twilight Zone: The Movie, “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” and Vrooom! was born.

CUT TO: New York, September 2001. Good Morning America hosted a successful “Show Me Scary Movies” contest the previous year and was about to do a follow-up. It seemed like a given that I only lived 20 blocks from the studio and that I should submit something to the contest. But what?

After a few half-baked, short script ideas, I decided to remake the Alvin Toffler vacuum cleaner opus with my then-girlfriend, Michelle, in the lead. I wrote the script (since there was never one when I filmed the first version) and even added a twist ending. It was a struggle to film it in a tiny New York apartment and with a modern, not a classic vacuum cleaner, but it turned out well.

Since I couldn’t rely on the copyright nightmare of using Jerry Goldsmith’s music, I employed my good friend Frank M. Young to write some “black and white” thriller music for the occasion. He did, successfully, without ever seeing a frame of the video. The three-minute video was edited, dubbed, and turned in an hour before the deadline. It seemed that Vrooom! would finally find a worldwide audience. However, after the unforeseeable and tragic events of 9/11, the contest was canceled.

A few years later, however, my friend and frequent collaborator, Jason François, wanted to make short film. I forwarded him several short scripts I had written. The one that gripped him the most was Vrooom! And in 2006, he filmed it. But there were some technical difficulties, well, mostly with the technical-challenged technicians who he hired. It was scrapped. However, Jason wasn’t to be stopped. He met the energetic actress, Kimber Leigh, and they filmed the movie again. This time, however, people were able to see it.

Kimber took the film to festivals and audiences… loved it. Vrooom! earned accolades such as “The Most Memorable Moment Award” at the Phoenix A3F Film Festival. Kimber was later awarded “Best Actor/Actress in a Film Short” at the 2009 Arizona Comicon Awards. The little film also some earned international honors when it was included in the prestigious WILDsound Film Festival in Toronto.

So, what next? Well, a sequel of course.

And so I crafted a 26-page short script in the spring of 2009 that expands Kimber Leigh’s Anna Crowe character. (Hey, Cameron did it with Ellen Ripley in Aliens, why can’t we, right?) But that wasn’t good enough—investors wanted a feature film!

So that’s where were at now. I wrote a 5,000-word screenplay “beat sheet” which describes all of the major story beats of the film, a teaser trailer, and copy edited some marketing materials. (I’m currently waiting for my marching order to begin the scripting process.)

It seems that Vrooom!, 27 years later, will find a larger audience. Of course, all the effects will be bigger, the story better, and even a gallon or so of the red stuff will be spilled. It’s strange that something like this is finally happening after two 16-year-old boys conceived it so many years ago…

We’ll just have to wait and see what unfolds.

You can of course watch what happens, the minute-by-minute action, on the Facebook fan page.