August 31, 2010 23:42How I Earned My Summer Vacation

I get asked what I'm working on. Often. It's something I don't like to talk about because usually I'm so excited by a project, I don't want to curse it by speaking about it out loud. That or I'm so deathly bored by it, I can't even muster enough energy to describe my crushing sense of apathy. After my last long, grueling contract early this year, I gave myself time off for good behaviour and have been wallowing in a strict regimen of movies and video games.

Which isn't to say I've been completely idle. I managed to option off a couple of screenplays, albeit for a token-dollar fee to friends. That means all I need to do is option off the rest of my 98,000 feature-length screenplays on similar terms and it'll have been a pretty successful year for Eyestrain Productions. I'm sure I have another 50,000 or 60,000 screenplays lying around in a drawer somewhere, but I might have to hustle to write the rest before the Christmas break.

Then there were the meetings with government funding agencies that had me doing a song and tap dance as I tried to explain the contents of a film proposal that had already been overwritten and overexplained in all the documents they demand to see before they even sat down to chat. No word yet if it did any good.

And finally, If you've been reading the blog long enough, you may remember I've been settling my aunt's estate since early 2008. Ten inheritors, eleven tax returns, and two and a half years later, I'm done. The estate is finally closed. I'd tell you all the gory details, but at this late stage I can't muster enough energy to describe my crushing sense of apathy. Or my euphoric relief. All I can say is that at the end of the day, I much prefer writing about dead people than handling their finances.

The battered, bruised and badly coffee stained file case I've been dragging around on estate business for years. It, and a brimming banker's box of financial records, are now ready to be retired. The contents are scheduled for an intense date with the cross-cut shredder.

July 16, 2010 03:45American Blender

Every time a celebrity dies, the movie-night crowd knows to brace themselves for something from their filmography -- assuming it was someone connected in some way, shape or form to the movie biz. I hate being predictable like that, but I just have to face facts. I'm a star-fucker necrophile, and I'm not likely to change my ways at this stage of the game. Despite my pathological determination to expose the Wednesday night guinea pigs to forgotten B-movies every time some obscure cult actor kicks off (Vampira, anyone?), I make no apologies for this past Wednesday.

Comic book author/legend Harvey Pekar died this week. And I always felt he was something of a kindred spirit. Not because we had both been at San Diego at the same time, hawking our independent-comic publications, or because we're both cynical depressives who married our own groupies. But because Paul Giamatti played Harvey in the movie adaptation of American Splendor and everyone says I look like Paul Giamatti. Paul looked a lot like Harvey in the movie, so I guess that means I kinda look like Harvey Pekar by one degree of separation. Lucky me, I know.

So obviously I had to run American Splendor on Wednesday. Now that that's out of the way, I figure next Wednesday I can run another biopic -- something like The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Because I totally look like Brad Pitt too. I swear, it's like looking in a mirror. A broken mirror covered with toothpaste spittle in a steamy bathroom.

July 03, 2010 12:19Stupid Planet Broke My Phone

Says Canada, "Hey, did you feel the earthquake we had last week? It rattled my windows and made one of the paintings on my wall slightly crooked. They say it was a 5.0 on the Richter scale. It was really scary."

Replies Haiti, "Fuck you."

More annoying than the excited buzz about the earthquake a few of us in our sparsely populated country actually felt, was the fact that my phone line went dead for half an hour afterwards. When it came back, there was static on the line that got worse and worse until, nearly a full week later, I had to call up Bell and speak to a very nice computer who dispatched a technician to come and fix it. And by fix it, I mean replace everything, because the earthquake had rattled some shoddy workmanship loose, drawing attention to the fact that the whole thing was held together with tissue and spit.

And speaking of shoddy workmanship, it left me kind of surprised there was no actual measurable damage to Montreal's mafia-built infrastructure. Usually it needs little to no encouragement to fall down, particularly when people are standing under it. Looking at it funny, or sneezing within ten city blocks of it usually suffices. I guess it goes to show that, as seismic events go, this one was a bit of a non-starter. The technician who fixed my phone line didn't even know we'd had an earthquake the week before, and looked vaguely confused when asked if he'd done any other earthquake-related repairs lately.

While Montrealers went about their post-earthquake business in that je-ne-give-a-shit-pas sort of way, either failing to notice the shaking at all, or assuming it was the people in the next apartment over having vigorous French-Canadian sex, Toronto, true to form, panicked. Entire office buildings were evacuated just in case there was any real danger of someone spilling their coffee. This is the same city that calls the military when it snows. Snows in Canada. Really. Not a joke. The entire rest of the country still points and laughs about that one. Oh Toronto, you know we only tease you because we all hate you so very very much...

Anyway, yeah. Earthquake. No big deal. Phone line fixed. No charge because it was all outside stuff. But if you tried to call with a big job offer last week and all you heard was static, do call back soon. Eyestrain Productions wasn't disinterested, merely broken.

June 26, 2010 06:36Cinema History Bursts Onto The Scene (And All Over Your Face)

You'd think it would be easier to find a cumshot on the web.

I mean, really, all you need are opposable thumbs to work a mouse and keyboard, and any search engine. But I guess it gets tougher when you're looking for one particular cumshot that dates back to 1929 and doesn't involve Peter North. Sure, Mr. North has been in the business a long time, but not quite that long.

I've been having meetings about one of my feature-length scripts again. It's one that's peppered with film references. Normally I hate when movies do that, but this particular script is about a trio of film geeks, so it's kind of hard to avoid the shop talk. I figure if I'm obliged to include self-referential movie-buff jargon, I'm going to make it as obscure as humanly possible. There's nothing worse than when a movie has its characters talk about film and all they can reference is fucking Star Wars.

One bit of dialogue in my script dredges up the memory of Soviet propagandist Sergei Eistenstein and his communist-cheerleading feature, The General Line AKA The Old and the New from 1929. In one particularly inspiring moment, Russian peasants are introduced to the wonders of the modern world as an industrial creamer accomplishes, in short order, what used to take them hours of backbreaking labour. It's a glorious moment, and they all beam in delight, confident that the revolution marches on and will deliver all sorts of efficiency miracles in the years to come. Surely if mother Russian can produce this much cream this quickly, communism will prevail in the international struggle of ideologies and all will be well in the world. Oh, and they're also really happy because they've just invented the cumshot.

Or so my lead character postulates in his interpretation of the scene that just happens to mirror my own. Sergei Eistenstein films are somewhat unwatchable by today's standards. Barring the battle in Alexander Nevsky, or the uber-famous Odessa Steps sequence from The Battleship Potemkin, Eistenstein's work has become an historical footnote from a failed political system. It's old, it's dusty, and it's every bit as heavy-handed as the communist ideals it so loudly (in a silent-film sort of way) endorses. Nevertheless, his contribution to cinema was enormous. Just like some of the other early film pioneers who made movies in support of some really reprehensible ideas (D.W. Griffith, Leni Riefenstahl), he somehow managed to help create the basic vocabulary of film despite being on the wrong side of the social-engineering fence. Much of what he and a select few of his contemporaries invented in their movies is part of what we now consider basic elements of how to tell a story with moving pictures. Someone had to come up with these shots, these compositions, these cuts we all take for granted now. Eisenstein was one of the first great director innovators and his contribution to film as an art form cannot be underestimated.

And he created the cumshot. No, really.

Porn is as old as cinema itself. In fact, one of the very first motion pictures, The Kiss, was considered pretty pornographic back in the Victorian era. It didn't take long for people with cameras to start pointing them at naked people getting it on, but the idea of going all the way and showing ejaculation as part of projected erotica took a while longer to get around to. Leave it then, to Eistenstein, to invent what would become the porn industry's "money shot" -- not in a sex film, but in an industrial communist propaganda film. Genius!

Watch this Youtube clip if you doubt me. Eisenstein was so forward-thinking, he not only invented the cumshot, he anticipated the bukkake film.

May 31, 2010 23:02Fund This!

Here we are, at the end of another month, with nothing but a pathetic token blog entry to show for it.

Ah, there's so much more happening, so much news to report or comment on. I guess it will have to wait, since I'll be spending tonight writing more funding-support material to tell bureaucrats what's in a screenplay they would rather read about than actually read.

I'll just keep it simple and sign off saying, "Boy, I regret getting into that gunfight with Gary Coleman the last time I played Postal. Somehow, I feel responsible.

Eat hot lead, Willis!

April 30, 2010 18:33Clear

I have reached a state of clear. And not in that creepy Church of Scientology sort of way.

The last eight months of my life have been non-stop work and contractual obligations. After writing nine more episodes of Kid vs. Kat, a feature film treatment, two Telefilm applications, and a not-so-short short story, I'm finally past all my deadlines.

Now, at last, I have time to comment about the pressing issues of the day. To think of all the Earth-shattering world events that have passed this blog by without so much as a single snarky cheap shot from me. Like Larry King Live's 25th Anniversary coinciding with Larry King's 25th divorce. Or Lindsay Lohan's exploding cocaine shoes. Or Sandra Bullock's black baby that she just adopted from Madonna. Oh well, I'm sure there are plenty of celebrity deaths and shitstorms yet to come this year. I'll just have to console myself with that happy thought.

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