Sweetheart

In 2006, I produced a 38 minute b&w film titled How Did You Lose Your Soul Sweetheart. The script called for a motel room and on a sweltering May day, we filmed a particularly tense scene inside the Travelers Motel on Richmond Highway. 5 years later, I returned to the exact same motel room to shoot a scene for the upcoming horror film Veil. Hopefully, when Veil is completed, we'll be able to screen it at festivals around the country and make it available to people around the world. People worked hard on it and they deserve for their work to be seen. Sweetheart, however, never got that chance. Myself and the other producers went our separate ways and it was orphaned after its sole theatrical screening in June 2007. It was painfully typical of most zero budget DV indie films. Pretentious, derivative, overly talkative, confusing, and shot almost exclusively in disorienting closeups.  But after watching it again for the first time in years, I could see good things in all the clutter. A shot mimicked in a project years later. A strong performance. A clever editing decision. A scene stolen out in the streets. Despite all its flaws, I'm proud of it because I learned a lot from making this imperfect film. We're putting How Did You Lose Your Soul Sweetheart online for people to watch for free because people worked hard on it and they deserve for it to be seen.

Below is the link and the embedded video is at the bottom of the page.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt918xTu1_4

Maladjusted

Over the summer, I worked in the hated position of assistant director on the raunchy sex comedy The Maladjusted. When the actresses (including Troma scream queen Tiffany Shepis) played a round of Mary, Fuck, Kill, they voted to kill me. Regardless, it was a great shoot and the movie is going to be hilarious. I viewed a cut last month and it has amazing potential. The producers have started an IndieGoGo campaign to raise finishing funds to complete the film. They're trying to raise $10,000 to pay for festival costs, color correction, music licensing fees, and the audio mix. They're offering some great perks for donating such as autographed copies of the DVD and script, the BMW used in the film, and artwork by Salvador Dali. Skip buying that 8 ball this week and give them a few bucks.

April

Some very heavy movies this month (Philadelphia, Dancer in the Dark, Into the Abyss, Salvador) as well as a slew of ultra low budget films from the likes of Mike Watne, Gary Ugarek, Chris Seaver, and  Francis Abbey.

4.1 Salvador
4.2 Let It Ride
4.3 Wright Street
4.4 Super 8
4.5 House II: The Second Story
4.6 Lunopolis
4.7 The True Story of Wrestlemania Vol. 1
4.8 The People vs. George Lucas
4.9 Into the Abyss
4.10 JFK
4.11 Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam
4.12 6 Nonsmokers
4.13 Quest for the Egg Salad
4.14 One False Move
4.15 Infinities Lock
4.16 The Fury
4.17 Planes, Trains, & Automobiles
4.18 The Cabin in the Woods
4.19 Bram Stoker's Dracula
4.20 Philadelphia
4.21 Observe and Report
4.22 Deadlands 2
4.23 Factotum
4.24 Some Came Running
4.25 C.H.U.D.
4.26 The Rum Diary
4.27 The Ides of March
4.28 Dancer in the Dark
4.29 Living in Oblivion
3.30 The Woman

Boxing Day

4 years ago, I helped produce a $2000 feature film. A comedy called Boxing Day that was written & directed by Francis Abbey, a film school graduate I had met a few years prior. Since its completion, I've watched it at the American Film Institute theater in DC amongst hundreds of howling people and in the most depressing, ill equipped, makeshift film festival screening rooms. It won awards at festivals and received glowing reviews, but I never felt like it reached its potential. Today, Francis has decided to release the full movie online for free on YouTube so hopefully it will reach people who haven't had the chance to see it yet. We screened it just last week and it still makes me laugh.

March

This is what I watched in March a well as the complete first (and only) season of IFC's Film School and Season 6 of Lost. Mostly docs about wrestling as well as some women in prison movies.

3.1 Chasing Ghosts
3.2 The Hollywood Complex
3.3 Shut Up Little Man
3.4 Cave of Forgotten Dreams
3.5 Middle Men
3.6 The Thin Blue Line
3.7 The Reinactors/Small Town Gay Bar
3.8 Women In Cages
3.9 Caged Heat
3.10 Inferno
3.11 Primal Fear
3.12 The Cat O' Nine Tails
3.13 Flock of Dodos
3.14 Darkon
3.15 Demoniacs
3.16 The Backyard
3.17 Selling God
3.18 The Rise and Fall of WCW
3.19 Beyond the Mat
3.20 Half Nelson
3.21 The Bad Lieutenant
3.22 The Exorcist/Game Change
3.23 Film Geek
3.24 This Film Is Not Yet Rated
3.25 Thirst
3.26 Videodrome
3.27 Made/Swingers/The Happening
3.28 Revenge of the Electric Car
3.29 Misery/Sarah Palin: You Betcha
3.30 Project Nim
3.31 Popatopolis

February

Here are the films I watched this month as part of my New Years Resolution. I watched mostly movies about the devil, the church, and evil in preparation for finishing Veil later in the month.

2.1 In a Glass Cage
2.2 Mimic
2.3 Highlander
2.4 All In the Game
2.5 Gone Forever
2.6 The Last Word (2008)
2.7 Twist of Faith
2.8 Playing Columbine
2.9 The God Who Wasn't There
2.10 Cronos
2.11 Collision: Christopher Hitchens vs. Douglas Wilson/The Outsider/Deadlands: The Rising
2.12 Strangeland
2.13 The Devil's Bible/End of Days
2.14 City Lights
2.15 Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory/The Social Network
2.16 Shame
2.17 Megan is Missing
2.18 Human Centipede 2
2.19 The Astronaut Farmer
2.20 Contagion/Casino/Castaway
2.21 Battlefield Earth/The Fly
2.22 All the Presidents Men/The Silence of the Lambs
2.23 The Big Bird Cage
2.24 Midnight Cowboy/American Swing
2.25 Blood and Lace/The Room
2.26 50/50
2.27 The Dead Zone/The River Wild/The Lincoln Lawyer
2.28 Sideways/Babel/Jagged Edge
2.29 Confessions of a Superhero/Blow/Strictly Background

January

My New Year's resolution was to watch a new movie every day. Some I had seen before, but most I saw for the first time. In January I seemed to watch mostly documentaries and French lesbian vampire movies.

1.1 The Marinovich Project
1.2 The Beaver
1.3 Ninjas vs. Vampires
1.4 Ninjas vs. Zombies
1.5 The Devil Within Her
1.6 Child's Play 2/Best Worst Movie
1.7 Making the Boys
1.8 Welcome to Nollywood/Nollywood Babylon
1.9 Machete Maidens Unleashed
1.10 House on Haunted Hill/Some Kind of Monster
1.11 The Shiver of the Vampire
1.12 Shark Attack 3
1.13 The Nude Vampire
1.14 Senna
1.15 Frozen River
1.16 Murder By Decree
1.17 12th & Delaware
1.18 The Pit (2009)
1.19 No Crossover:The Trial of Allen Iverson
1.20 Hated: GG Allin & The Murder Junkies
1.21 The Phantom of the Opera (Argento)
1.22 Waking Sleeping Beauty
1.23 Dreamaniac
1.24 Two Orphan Vampires
1.25 Wishmaster 4
1.26 The Arbor
1.27 Inferno: The Making of The Expendables
1.28 All Good Things
1.29 Julie and Jack/Punch Drunk Love
1.30 Jules and Jim
1.31 The Best That Never Was/Two in the Wave/Monster's Ball

Veil Official Poster

Production wrapped on Veil Dec 1. There are still a few days of additional photography tentatively scheduled for February but I'm very excited with the way it's all cutting together. I haven't written any blog entries since late October but plan to release a series of retroactive entries covering the funding, casting, and production as well as future entries covering the post-production process. Until then, here is the poster I've worked up for Veil. I think it represents the film extremely well.