The Kindred Dreamers

If you know movies, you know Roger Corman.  You can’t help but know it, because in many circles of fandom Roger is known as the King of Crap, a guy who has produced or directed at least four hundred movies that can be described in two word:  ”Low Budget”.  These days Roger’s work usually ends up on the Syfy Channel (or as I like to say it, “Siffy”), as the Saturday Night Monster Movie, where we have been entertained with the likes of Piranhaconda, Dinocroc vs. Supergator, and that most marvelous of wonders, Sharktopus.

Corman makes movies.  Good or bad, you can argue that all you like.  He has said that he’s never lost money on a film, because he goes cheap and fast.  It is said that he completed filming of Little Shop of Horrors in two days.  A running joke was that he could negotiate a movie over a pay phone, then shoot the movie in the phone booth with the money found in the change slot.

There’s something else he’d done:  he’s pretty much made modern cinema.

No way, you’re saying.  Way, I tell you.  This guy may be a schlock merchant, and he’s done a lot of things on the cheap; yep, no argument there.  He’s also discovered, or gave early roles to, Jack Nicholson, Charles Bronson, Robert De Niro, Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Diana Ladd, and Sandra Bullock.  He worked early on with screen writer Robert Towne.  And he’s mentored and/or given starts to a few directors you may know:  Jonathan Demme, Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, John Sayles, James Cameron, Joe Dante, and Martin Scorsese.

Roger has always been ready to help people get started, to show them what they need to know to keep making moving and being creative. We have ways of doing that today, though most do not involve making miniature flying piranhas.

I have more than a few friends who are in the creativity business.  The majority of them are writers, like me, but I know a few poets, a couple of artists who love to draw, and one film maker.  I’m all over the place, I am, being plugged into this network of magic makers who, for the most part, struggle to get their creations made so that others may enjoy.

My filmmaker friend is Jo Custer.  Her bill paying job involves driving a cab done New Orleans way, and she’s written about the experience a few times.  She made one short film, Hotcakes, and she’s in the pre-production phase of her second film, Sonuvabitch.  There’s a nice website up for the film, to give you all the information you may need, but there’s something else as well–  See, Jo wants to do things a bit different this time around.  She wants to shoot on locations; she wants better equipment, and she needs more actors, because she has one scene that involves about twenty people in frame.

Jo has put up a Kickstarter to help her meet her budget, because she isn’t exactly getting funding from Universal.  I get involved in Kickstarts now and then, only because I’ll see something come along that gets me interested, and I slide a few bucks their way.  I don’t do it very often, but when I can help out the creative community, I do what I can.

I know what you’re saying:  ”Cassie, are you hyping this woman’s project?”  Yeah, I am.  I usually don’t do things like this–hell, I hardly promote my two stories–but I like Jo.  She has something I didn’t have at her age, and that’s tenacity.  She puts in a lot of long hours in an attempt to reach her dreams, and if I had been more tenacious with my creativity when I was her age, I might be sippin’ on cognac right now, thinking about what i’m going to write next–though if I’m sippin’ on cognac at nine AM, I’m probably working on getting drunk by ten.

We should help the dreamers however we can.  I gave money to a young girl who had been accepted into Space Camp, but who didn’t have the finances to travel there, nor to cover her expenses while there.  I gave her money because when I was a kid I dreamed of going into space, and if I could go to Space Camp today, I’d leave in a second.  If there is one thing I could do before I shuck this mortal coil, it would be to go into space.

I know about dreams:  I have them all the time.  Some of them I’m starting to turn into life, and one day, maybe, they will be my life.

Jo’s got a dream.  If you can, help her out.  If nothing else, pass the info along to some friends who might be interested in playing Roger Corman in their own way, ’cause when you make a dream come true, it not only brings you good karma, but it makes the world a better place.

That said, I need to start working on a story treatment I have for a film called Acrocalypse–

I heard Roger might need something for Siffy, and I believe I got a winner here.

Actors to Watch: New Orleans

Reblogged from Sonuvabitch: A Short Stack Series Film:

We held casting for Sonuvabitch in late January and early February of this year and then I sat on the decision-making for a bit. We're only a third of the way through pre-production and already this film has held a steep learning curve for me as a writer, as a director, and as a producer. The most important takeaway from the process is that as I give more specific character descriptions to the actors, the better the audition will be -- monologue included.

Read more… 813 more words

Supporting my film making bud (is she my bud?) down New Orleans way, here's an update on Jo's next movie:

Last Night in Mister Moon’s Drive

I was out last night.  It was another in a long line of visits where I go out, have pizza, chat, and watch shows that either invite snarky commentary about plot holes (Prisoner of Azkaban, why walk back to Hogwatts when someone could have apparated Peter back?  Why not have someone go back and get Dumbledore?  Why not just take Peter to Hogsmeade, which was right next door?  Why did Lupin conveniently forget there was a full moon that night?  Why was the story plot hammered like it was being run by a bad GM?) or something more interesting (like two episodes of Season Two of Sherlock).

Then came the drive back after midnight.  For some reason there was almost no traffic, and my drive home was one of just letting the cruise control do its thing just point the car down the road.  There wasn’t a need to touch the brakes, so I drove and thought . . .

I had a waxing gibbous moon on my left shoulder for most of the drive, and it struck me that this would be my last moonlit drive for 2012.  And it was strange because on so many moonlit drives, I’ve been with characters who have made my stories shine, with ideas that drive me on to produce good stories, and plots that I hope work out once I put them to paper.

I had none of that last night.  It was just me, and a few of my thoughts.  Not that there was anything wrong with that, but as perfect as the night seemed, I really wanted to have someone alongside, sharing the experience.

This is has been a long year, with plenty of ups and downs, things to be remembered and forgotten.  There has been exhilaration and doubt.  Particularly the doubt, which has seemed to increase in the last few weeks.  Don’t ask why, because I don’t know myself.  It’s the way my mind works, and it’s not ways a good thing, that.

The thing about being a writer is there is always doubt.  Is this story good?  Are the characters believable?  Does any of this make sense?  Is the cover nice?  Is this damn thing going to sell?  It’s the nature of the beast, these doubts, because creative people are like that.  Nothing is ever good enough for them; everything is “okay”.  Or, if they are really down on themselves, “not so good”.

Quite honestly, we’re all seconds away from an Admiral Ackbar moment, and it will drive you crazy when all the thoughts of everything bad that could happen to you come knocking.  I had a touch of that last night, then kicked them out of the car because I realize the more negativity you embrace, the longer it stays with you.  That was the problem with my last job:  it was a negative environment, and very little made me happy.

I don’t want negative:  I want happy.

It seemed that once I pushed the bad stuff out of the car, a couple of characters who I hadn’t thought of in some time entered my mind, as if to put me at easy and tell me, “It’s okay, love.  We all go thought this:  you’re no different.”  It was comforting that even someone fictional could bring a smile to my face . . .

Perhaps they needed someone to ride with as well.

The Serpentine Dragon’s Flight

Despite the title of this post, you’ll likely be dismayed to discover nary a dragon in sight.  So is there any significance to those four words?  Maybe.  You’ll just have to roll along with me and find out.

Originally I was going to go off on someone.  There was a set of comments I saw the other morning that sorta rubbed me in the wrong way, and I felt like I needed to get on and rant about stuff.  Because that’s the way I am; every so often my bullshit detector red lines and I gotta say something.

The comment had to do with someone who’d apparently seen The Hunger Games, and who’d become upset that people could find a movie about a group young teens being forced to kill each other for the entertainment of others–the others in the movie, that is, not the people in the theater–to be, well, in a word, entertaining.  This person was upset that people were clapping at the end of the movie, and this was, again, another in a long line of indications that there no morality in our society–as, it would appear, there was also no sense of morality in the main character, Katniss Everdeen, either–and it was criminal that a story like this could be considered suitable for young adults.

All they needed to say was, “This is indicative of the Culture of (name of whatever thing it is that pushes your moral buttons) we live in!” and they’d have pretty much hit the trifecta.  Although a comment seen later–”As long as you are doing it (participating in The Games) to protect your sister, it’s okay to kill”–is pretty much a deal sealer.

But there’s no need to get too caught up in this hullabaloo, or spend a lot of time ripping someone apart for a couple of inane lines.  My twelve year old daughter has read the trilogy, and I’ve yet seen her preparing to go after the neighbors with a bow and arrow, nor is she in need of extensive waxing.  If fact, good person that I am, I gave her my copy of Battle Royale to read, telling her, “You might enjoy this.”  I don’t expect her to get into a life-or-death struggle with the kids at school welding only a cooking pot, though I would give her odds to come out on top were such a conflict to occur.

Nor is there any reason to speak extensively upon the morality of Katniss, either.  If you know anything about the story, you’ll know Katniss is directly responsible for keeping her mother, younger sister, and herself feed.  She is, eventually, the breadwinner of the family, and without her they all starve.  She doesn’t go willingly into The Games; she does, indeed, enter in order to save her sister, who was originally chosen by the government to be one of the contestants to fight to the death, and Katniss knew if her sister entered the Arena, she’d quickly end up a bloody statistic.  But the idea that it’s the kids who want to do this, and are okay with the killing?  Please.  This is something forced upon the people by the government, teaching them a “lesson” about what happens when you fight the power.  And the idea that The Games are being used for entertainment is sick?  Um, read a little history, and then tell me that Fox wouldn’t be the one hosting this show if it were allowed.  Come to think of it, American Idol would be a far better show if the Sword of Damocles were hanging over the heads of each person being sent home every week.

And just so we are straight on this, lets go right to a direct quote:  ”The idea for the trilogy was based in part on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, in which seven boys and seven girls from Athens are sent every nine years against their will to be devoured by the Minotaur, a cycle that doesn’t stop until Theseus kills the Minotaur. (Author Susan) Collins, who heard the story when she was eight years old (about the same time I heard it), was unsettled by its ruthlessness and cruelty. Collins said, ‘In her own way, Katniss is a futuristic Theseus.’  Collins also characterized the novels with the fearful sensations she experienced when her father was fighting in the Vietnam War.”  So much for the story being another example this murder-fest being endemic of our immoral culture.

I know the point the person who made the original declaration was going for:  that these stories happen, and people are entertained by them, because there is a singular lack of morality brought about by a singular lack of religion.  I’ve heard this point made a lot, and I’ve been hearing it since I was about 7 or 8 years old–which is to say, I’ve been hearing it for close to fifty years.

And it was as much bullshit then as it is now.

Morality is learned, that is true.  It is also true you can be a pious person and about as immoral an individual as one can imagine.  As an Indiana native I’m very much aware of one of our favorite sons, Jim Jones, he of the People’s Temple and Guyana Cocktail fame, and it’s pretty easy to say he was both a pious man and as immoral and/or crazy as a shithouse rat.  It doesn’t matter how moral you believe yourself to be; if you’re a sociopath, you’re living your own version of morality–and the odds are ever in your favor you’re extremely eager to get other people to bend to your idea of morality.  Ricky Santorum, I’m lookin’ at you, babe.

By the same token, it’s easy to say one can develop a sense of right and wrong while not being very religious, or religious at all.  I have to put myself in this category, as I’ve been an atheist since I was a teenager.  This downward slide stared when I was kicked out of Sunday School when I was 8 or 9, because I kept asking why no one was upset when Lazareth started walking around after having been dead a few day.  Nowadays he’d get a guest shot on The Walking Dead, but back there–you’re telling me no one freaked out?  After class was over my parents were asked to speak with the sister in private, and when they came out they were pissed, because they’d been told I was “disruptive”, and that it would be best if I not return to class because I was “upsetting the other students with my lack of faith.”

Hey now!

I can tell the difference between right and wrong, and do what I can to help others where it is necessary.  And as far as the characters in my stories go . . . well, a large part of Transporting–the whole third book, in fact–deals with helping people out of something that will eventually become, in a massive case of understatement on my part, “very bad” for them.  The person who instigates the action to save these people–she’s an atheist, as is her eventual partner-in-crime, who is not only also a person who lives without faith, but a lesbian as well.  Yeah, I know.  I should burst into flames right now, shouldn’t I?

Strangely enough, I have written about characters who had considerable faith, and used it to guide them.  You can find them in my story Kuntilanak:  Buana, a traditional Balinese healer, and Indriani Baskoro, a paranormal investigator who is also a Muslim.  Yeah, sorry about that, folks, but when one is writing about people in another country, the chances are good they might just have religious views a little different than what might be considered the “norm” here.

I suppose I have gone off on a rant, but it’s not the sort that I have been known to do.  In part because, from my point of view, I only need state my point of view, enter in a few facts, and be upon my way.  It’s not necessary to jump into the fray with both feet, and slaughter the innocent at the Cornucopia, much as Katniss didn’t do when she first entered The Arena.  Personally, I’ll live how I like, because I find it works for me, and I’ll try to ignore the rantings of others who feel we are like the very Worst Culture EVAR, because there is a whole group of tweeners and teenagers out there who are getting enjoyment from reading the modern retelling of a three thousand year old myth.

Hang on tight to that dragon, baby.  It tends to be a bumpy ride.

I’m Ready For Your Closeup

As this is Speak Out With Your Geek Out! Week, I’m going to spend part of the week blogging about things that gets my geek up, that brings out the geeky part of my personality, that has people turn in my direction, point at me and say, “Geek!”

And I wear this title proudly.

So what’s on tap today?  Movies.

As a kid I grew up in a time where TV was the “vast wasteland”, where there was 5 channels and nothing on, and I do mean that: you had the Big Three networks and WGN on VHF, and WDLD, Channel 32, on UFH.  That was it.  And if you think TV bites it these days, hey, man, I was made to watch My Mother the Car, which is about as close to existential horror as once can get when you are 8.

But there was one good thing about growing up then: there were a lot of movies.  ABC showed literally every monster and sci fi flick from 3:30 to 5:00 PM every weekday, and WGN ran old movies from 10:30 PM on.  Since I was home from school by 3:15 PM–and I was the sort of kid who didn’t do homework because, well, it bored me–I sat down and watched things that you almost never see these days: The Monolith Monsters, Teenagers From Outer Space, The Giant Gila Monster, The Mole Men (which really scared me for some reason–it’s the eyes, you know).  But I also caught Them! and Kronos (the giant energy stealing robot) and It Came From Outer Space and Invaders from Mars (another flick that scared me a lot).

At the other end of the spectrum I had a huge amount of exposure to all things classic: the Jimmy Cagney catalog, Humphrey Bogart and George Raft goodness, the Thin Man series . . . it was all there for the taking, and it was free.  Just con your parents (in this case my mom, who owed me big for the mental torture of having to watch her stuff) into letting you stay up late and promise to get up for school the next day (which I could, since I could get by on 4 hours of sleep without a problem), and you were In Like Flint (which I also saw).

It was by using this scam that I was able to stay up until 11:00 PM one night and, with no one else awake, watch Forbidden Planet for the first time.  That was really a bit of magic that, these days, you’d be hard pressed to match that.

But late night TV wasn’t the only place to find this magic.  To me, the 1960′s and 1970′s were a time of major insanity for film, as it seemed like just about everything and anything was up for grabs.  Sure, I didn’t see Midnight Cowboy as a kid (no getting into X-Rated movies then, you know?), but I remember getting hauled off to a drive-in to watch a double bill of Patton and MASH, and how you can get a greater dichotomy on that subject, I don’t know–triple bill it 10 years later with Apocalypse Now, I suppose.  (And my slice of morning trivia: MASH was the first major Hollywood release to drop the f-bomb, done so in an ad-lib by actor John Schuck.  So I was there at the beginning, so to speak.)

I saw The Godfather; I saw The Exorcist two weeks after it premiered in a theater that was nearly empty; I saw Jaws; I saw Silent Running and The Black Hole . . . I conned some friends into going off to see the original Rollerball and wondered when we could see guys on roller skates beating the hell out of each other.  I hauled at least a half-dozen friends off to see Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid on 5 different occasions . . . let put it this way: if the movie is listed in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, I saw it in the theaters (and if you haven’t read this book, you should).

And as the ’80′s and ’90′s came around, there was the discovery of movies from Europe, of movies from Hong Kong–and if you’ve never seen the pre-Hollywood catalog of John Woo, you should do this while reading Sex and Zen and a Bullet in the Head, ’cause it doesn’t get any crazier.

Sadly, these days I’m not as much a film geek as I once was.  Maybe it’s the feeling that everything these days is little more than an effort to put butts in the seat while convincing movie goers that a billion dollars spent on the production of 3 movies detailing the exploits of a line of 1980′s toys is really a good thing leaves me wanting.  Maybe it’s the feeling that the visual is all and story is something that gets in the way of putting pretty CGI on the screen that bothers me.  Maybe it’s the notion that Touch of Evil and Sunset Boulevard are really a quantum leap ahead in everything when compared to just about anything made today, save that done by Christopher Nolan.

Still, movies have soothed my jones for decades.  They affect each of us differently, and while what you like isn’t likely going to be what I like, never the mind: it’s the magic within that counts.

And this is the glue that real binds all us film geeks together.

Puttin’ the Money on the Screen

First, if it seems like it’s been forever since I last wrote–well, not exactly, but it’s been a few weeks.  Reason being . . . it just has.  Like having a shy character who is shy because they are shy, I haven’t done anything of late because I haven’t.

That said, roll on.

I don’t know why this is pissing me off today.  Maybe because the political season has begun and Teh Crazy has begun full-blown.  Maybe because I’d love to whack me some Conservatives who think playing whore to their moneyed pimps is a great way to live.  Maybe it’s because I’ve finally become completely, utterly, and totally sick and tired of hearing about how “Liberal Hollywood” is corrupting “family values” and the end result of this is that Little Timmy is gonna fall in love with Little Johnny’s butthole and Pretty Penny is gonna have 20 abortions by 19 men and a transsexual when they all grow up if they keep watching TV or going to the movies.

Lets back up on that last shit for a moment.  Liberal Hollywood?  Why is that?  Is it because some actors go out and protest the construction of nuclear plants, or spend a few hours picking lettuce with migrant workers, or get behind their favorite social program for the poor?  Or, worst of all, they are . . . wait, here it comes . . . gay?  Is that really what “Liberal Hollywood” is about?

Let me burst your bubble here: Liberal Hollywood is about a liberal as Barry Goldwater–though I think I hear a Teabagger out there yelling, “He was!”.  Liberal Hollywood has two faces: the actors who are in the public eye and whom need something to get behind (not all, mind you, but more than a few), and the producers and a very few marque directors who are really running the whole damn thing behind the scenes.  And it’s this last group of people who are only concerned with one thing: making money by putting your ass in a seat.

And if it means spending a bazillion dollars on a movie, consider it done.  For example–

You may be unaware of this, but there’s a Transformers movie about to take over theaters for the 4^th of July weekend.  Now, I understand there are a huge number of people out there who love these flicks despite them consisting of bad or non-existent acting, racist caricatures that almost make Jar Jar Binks look noble (almost, I said), more shit blown up than you could ever hope to see in one lifetime, and Megan Fox’s ass (said ass now replaced by a that of a lingerie model ’cause–why not?), but who am I to say they can’t blow their $10+ (based on what they charge where I live) on mindless bullshit?

I mean, I like shit explodin’ as much as the next person, though I don’t enjoy it as much these days mostly because the mindless crap between the ‘plody shit drives me crazy.  But there is one thing that really drives me nuts about the Transformer movies, and that’s the one thing that most people never think about:

The budget.

Making movies are a very expensive endeavor these days.  Dropping $150 million isn’t out of the question, and if a studio spends “only” $60-$70 million on a production, they’re in danger of having said flick labeled an “independent production”.  Most of that money goes into “production values”, also known as Special Effects, also sometimes known as the shit blowing up on the screen, and for the most part you do see the money.

So how much did Liberal Hollywood spend so Transformers fans could get their kicks?  Well, that’s pretty easy to figure out, because in the days of the Internets you can look this up.

The first movie had a budget of $150 million, which again seems about average for a SFX-heavy movie these days.  The second movie had a budget of $300 million, which is now moving into rarefied air, because only a few movies have approached Titanic-level spending.  But seeing how much money the second movie rolled up, it was justified–at least by the studios.

And the budget for the third movie?  Well, now, you may as well ask, “What’s the operating budget for Area 51?” cause the answer is very elusive indeed.  There is no “official” listing for the budget just yet, and the best I could find was an unconfirmed report that the budget hit $400 million and was “still going north”, meaning the final tally is probably very close to the magical $500 million mark.

Liberal Hollywood–which, remember, is all about making sure our kids turn into gay atheists who love Muslims–likely spent a half a billion dollars on a movie about toys made in the 1980′s beating the shit out of each other.  Oh, and destroying Chicago, but, hey: it’s either toy robots or giant grasshoppers, take your pick.

And when you add in to this mix the first two movies, you realize that these crazy liberals have spent a billion dollars on three movies.  Think about that: a billion dollars.  Your school system can’t get $150,000 for new computer labs, but banks lined up to fork over cash so robot trucks can be kickin’ ass while low-ballin’.

Hollywood is about as liberal as Wall Street.  It’s all about domestic and international gross.  It’s all about how to go about maximizing products and spinin’ the toys–I’m sorry, the “collectibles market”.

In the end, it’s all about the green.

I can think of a lot of ways to spend a billion dollars, an none of them involve CGIing a couple of robotic Stepin’ Fetchits.  But then, I understood Inception ($160 million to make) and had no problem following it, so what do I know?