Together Again for the First Time
Well, it's been a YEAR since I last posted. 'Told you I wouldn't be any good at this. Of course, the first thing I did upon returning to these pages was to read my previous blogs AND DELETE THEM FOREVER!!! What a load of self-pitying, self-serving crap! Sometimes I should simply not be allowed out among people.
Now, I'm back and ready to try this again. No more whiney bullshit about lost love (women? fuck 'em all! And if you can't, then just bug the shit out of them until they get a restraining order), just some thoughts about my life and the really big questions, like: "Is there an after-life and if so, can they change a twenty?" (sorry, stole that from Woody Allen).
HEY KIDS! LET'S PUT ON A SHOW!
I'm making a movie. I've been writing stories and plays and poems for years now and I'm finally doing what I've always wanted to do, which is put it all on film. If you must blame someone for this, blame Kevin Smith and Robert Townsend. You remember when Townsend burst on the scene back in the early 8O's? He financed his first film, "Hollywood Shuffle" by running up his credit cards and then blundered about the studio system for a few years until "Meteor Man" pretty much ended his career? As slices of the American pie go, it's filling, perhaps, but not very inspirational (not made from good old American apple, but perchance some lesser fruit, like boisenberry). Anyway, I took the Townsend story and filed it away thinking, "Hey, great idea, but my credit already sucks. There's no way I could ever get that many credit cards!" Besides, I kept thinking about the other side of that story; for every Robert Townsend who runs up his plastic and then makes it all back in a juicy distribution deal and boffo box office, there are ten guys who are just up to their eyeballs in debt with nothing to show for it but a two hour celuloid dream that no one wants to see. I chickened out and life stumbled on...
Then came Kevin Smith. Well, actually, first came the personal computer revolution and top of the line editing and special effects software that would enable you to do a shitload of Hollywood quality FX in your laptop for a tenth of the money, then came Richard Linklater and a film called "Slackers", which breathed a gale force of second wind into the indie film industry and THEN came Kevin Smith.
Smith, who was actually inspired to persue his dreams by "Slackers", was a film school drop out who (once again, using credit cards) put up about $28,000.00 of his own money to make a little stoner flick called "Clerks". It blew the competition away at Sundance and, after a small stumble with "Mallrats" (misunderstood and underappreciated at the time, it has gone on to have quite a following), led to a profitable relationship with Miramax and Harvey "The Beast" Weinstein and subsequently, a string of successful films, "Chasing Amy", "Dogma", "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" and "Jersey Girl" (which I thought was much better than most other folks). Anyway, Smith made it really clear that you could make a career out of your own vision; that you didn't necessarily have to have this USC Film School pedigree and monster blockbuster resume' to get people to give you money to tell the kinds of stories you wanted to tell. A lightbulb began to burn way back in some seldom-visited corner of my mind.
Cut to (that's a movie term, you know): June of 2002. My wife left me on Sunday and I lost my job on Monday. Two days "which will live forever in infamy". As depressed and bereft as I was, I also had to scramble. I had house and car payments to make, not to mention child support payments to yet another ex. Oh yeah, and food...somewhere in there, they actually expected me to eat. Anyway, as I scrambled about collecting part-time jobs in much the same way I have been known to collect ex-wives, I began to think about my future. I am almost fifty for crissake, when am I gonna grow up and do what I want with my life? And out of the gloom and doom, came that tiny light, tucked away in that forgotten crevasse of my mental landscape. "Time to make a movie".
Now, I have always done theatre. I was a theatre major at Mississippi College (yes, Mississippi, get over it fer cryin' out loud!) and had always acted and directed for the stage. I had also written a number of plays back in my college days and in the thirty years since had had some success writing comedy for the various morning shows I had hosted on a variety of radio stations from Mississippi to New Orleans to Florida where I currently reside. I had the skills, all I needed was...an idea.
I have always liked Country music (something else for you to get over, I suppose). And I remembered watching a show on CMT called "Devoted" about the behavior of country music fans. I had also seen that show, "FANatic" on either MTV or VH1 about pretty much the same thing and I got to thinking, "What about a flick about an over-enthusiastic fan? Stalking is always good for a laugh, right?" Well, after three rough outlines of stories that, while funny, were also cost-prohibitive, I got the idea to do a "mockumentary" along the lines of what Christopher Guest had done with the hysterical "Waiting for Guffman", "Best in Show" and "A Mighty Wind". I could shoot it on video, or better yet, digital video, which would be cheaper than film, and the documentary "after-the-fact" style of story-telling would better suit my budget. Genius! All I needed was a story.
NEXT: Stories, read-throughs and Steve Baker to the rescue!
Now, I'm back and ready to try this again. No more whiney bullshit about lost love (women? fuck 'em all! And if you can't, then just bug the shit out of them until they get a restraining order), just some thoughts about my life and the really big questions, like: "Is there an after-life and if so, can they change a twenty?" (sorry, stole that from Woody Allen).
HEY KIDS! LET'S PUT ON A SHOW!
I'm making a movie. I've been writing stories and plays and poems for years now and I'm finally doing what I've always wanted to do, which is put it all on film. If you must blame someone for this, blame Kevin Smith and Robert Townsend. You remember when Townsend burst on the scene back in the early 8O's? He financed his first film, "Hollywood Shuffle" by running up his credit cards and then blundered about the studio system for a few years until "Meteor Man" pretty much ended his career? As slices of the American pie go, it's filling, perhaps, but not very inspirational (not made from good old American apple, but perchance some lesser fruit, like boisenberry). Anyway, I took the Townsend story and filed it away thinking, "Hey, great idea, but my credit already sucks. There's no way I could ever get that many credit cards!" Besides, I kept thinking about the other side of that story; for every Robert Townsend who runs up his plastic and then makes it all back in a juicy distribution deal and boffo box office, there are ten guys who are just up to their eyeballs in debt with nothing to show for it but a two hour celuloid dream that no one wants to see. I chickened out and life stumbled on...
Then came Kevin Smith. Well, actually, first came the personal computer revolution and top of the line editing and special effects software that would enable you to do a shitload of Hollywood quality FX in your laptop for a tenth of the money, then came Richard Linklater and a film called "Slackers", which breathed a gale force of second wind into the indie film industry and THEN came Kevin Smith.
Smith, who was actually inspired to persue his dreams by "Slackers", was a film school drop out who (once again, using credit cards) put up about $28,000.00 of his own money to make a little stoner flick called "Clerks". It blew the competition away at Sundance and, after a small stumble with "Mallrats" (misunderstood and underappreciated at the time, it has gone on to have quite a following), led to a profitable relationship with Miramax and Harvey "The Beast" Weinstein and subsequently, a string of successful films, "Chasing Amy", "Dogma", "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" and "Jersey Girl" (which I thought was much better than most other folks). Anyway, Smith made it really clear that you could make a career out of your own vision; that you didn't necessarily have to have this USC Film School pedigree and monster blockbuster resume' to get people to give you money to tell the kinds of stories you wanted to tell. A lightbulb began to burn way back in some seldom-visited corner of my mind.
Cut to (that's a movie term, you know): June of 2002. My wife left me on Sunday and I lost my job on Monday. Two days "which will live forever in infamy". As depressed and bereft as I was, I also had to scramble. I had house and car payments to make, not to mention child support payments to yet another ex. Oh yeah, and food...somewhere in there, they actually expected me to eat. Anyway, as I scrambled about collecting part-time jobs in much the same way I have been known to collect ex-wives, I began to think about my future. I am almost fifty for crissake, when am I gonna grow up and do what I want with my life? And out of the gloom and doom, came that tiny light, tucked away in that forgotten crevasse of my mental landscape. "Time to make a movie".
Now, I have always done theatre. I was a theatre major at Mississippi College (yes, Mississippi, get over it fer cryin' out loud!) and had always acted and directed for the stage. I had also written a number of plays back in my college days and in the thirty years since had had some success writing comedy for the various morning shows I had hosted on a variety of radio stations from Mississippi to New Orleans to Florida where I currently reside. I had the skills, all I needed was...an idea.
I have always liked Country music (something else for you to get over, I suppose). And I remembered watching a show on CMT called "Devoted" about the behavior of country music fans. I had also seen that show, "FANatic" on either MTV or VH1 about pretty much the same thing and I got to thinking, "What about a flick about an over-enthusiastic fan? Stalking is always good for a laugh, right?" Well, after three rough outlines of stories that, while funny, were also cost-prohibitive, I got the idea to do a "mockumentary" along the lines of what Christopher Guest had done with the hysterical "Waiting for Guffman", "Best in Show" and "A Mighty Wind". I could shoot it on video, or better yet, digital video, which would be cheaper than film, and the documentary "after-the-fact" style of story-telling would better suit my budget. Genius! All I needed was a story.
NEXT: Stories, read-throughs and Steve Baker to the rescue!
posted by Don Goodrum at 6:12 AM
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