because ... well ... why not ...?

it's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it.

Thanksgiving Day, November 22nd

_20:58PM

Forget the Microwave:

I'd gotten in a hundred and twenty pounds of thermite for a television show (on ebay, where else?) which was enough to do the episodes in question with, as is traditional for the holiday, some leftovers.

- but what can you do with leftover thermite?

- or, more to the point, what *can't* you do with leftover thermite?

So Mark Grove called me yesterday and suggested he come on over we and cook a whole, frozen turkey...with thermite.

It worked great. Take a look: Cooking a turkey in 30 seconds...with thermite

Wednesday November 21st

_21:24PM

"Now With 5% More Mule!"

I'm back from wild, exotic California after another exciting film-filled American Film Market where a fun time was had by all (or at least all of me). If I had to characterize this year's market, I'd say that the one trait that really stood out is that people seemed to be in a hurry. Why, I don't really know, but I made a record number of film sales, many of them just on the basis of distributors liking the poster and the trailer...enough to hand over the cash right then and there and figure they'd actually *watch* the movie sometime later when they got around to it.

Which I think underscores the point I keep making to filmmakers: the top three things that distributors want to know is, "can I sell this movie?" "Who will buy it?" "How will I sell it to them?"

"Is it a good movie?" "What's it about?" and "What artistic statement were you trying to make through what looks to the audience like bad edits and poor choices of camera angles?" are all much, much further down on the list.

It's not that I have anything against art--though I'm not too fond of art that's only understandable to the artist (and has to be explained to anyone else for them to have any hope of getting it)--but just creating great art isn't enough if you want to get paid for it. And the "seeing that you do get paid for your art" is part of what I do.

Though with a whopping big pile of movie sales and impatient distributors, I've been pretty much non-stop busy getting materials prepped and out to everybody since the market. Somehow in the middle of this, that whole Thanksgiving holiday snuck up on me just to make my scheduling that much more difficult, considering that the rest of the world still expects their movies and promotional materials in a timely fashion, no matter how many of the businesses and services I'm working with in this country are closed.

In the meantime, at least I managed to get in a little rest and relaxation, getting hit in the face repeatedly with a bookcase and then stabbed (yes, again). Originally, I was supposed to warm up by jumping off a building onto the top of a car, which I was certainly looking forward to, but logistical details conspired to force the cutting of that scene from the shoot. Darn. Maybe next time. I haven't sat down and calculated this, but I think I've been killed by stabbing more than any other way--especially if you count death-by-pointy or sharp-edged implements regardless of material or construction.

Kevin Koepke flings an evil minion

The project in question that features the age-old epic battle of man versus bookcase (oh, yeah, I won; I hope giving that away won't spoil the movie for you) is an action movie spoof named "Stone Rockwell" in which the tough and talented Kevin Koepke plays the eponymous hero, while I play the strong-as-twenty-mules villain "Borax."

Kevin Koepke flings another evil minion while Richard Taylor and I look on

As side effect of the logistical difficulties that prevented me from jumping off the building, I ended up spending much of the afternoon in the bucket of a cherry picker with Richard Taylor who, among his credits was the "Blood Boy" in the upcoming Troma Epic, Poultrygeist. Fortunately, he's a darned entertaining guy and I was never overwhelmed by the urge to jump off the cherry picker onto a car or member of the cast or crew. (Which, though that would have been logistically possible, wasn't in the script.) Maybe next time. I'd settle for getting set on fire. ...at least it would add some variety to all these stabbings.

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