What’s next for Deadenddays.com
November 30, 2004
Whew. Again I humbly bow to the amazing amounts of feedback we’ve received on episode 48, my worries that we wouldn’t be able to meet your lofty expectations for the finale were (thankfully) meritless. It’s been really great to hear from all the people who have come out of the woodwork in the last couple of weeks, either via e-mail, the forums, or in person to let us know that they enjoyed the series, and are sad to see it wrap up. It’s been a pleasure to talk with you all.
Alright, on to the promised “things people want to know about D.E.D.” or more exactly “things people want to know about where we’re going from here”: Read more
A Picture is Worth 157.7 Words…
November 16, 2004
Note: Photos included below!
When Brad asked me to write a production journal this week, I originally intended on writing a thorough and well-reasoned argument as to why I am, by far, the superior of the Fox brothers. However, after threatening to leave me out of the credits (as well as punch me in the head), I decided to go with my second idea.
As anyone who has ever been on the set of a Dead End Days shoot would know, one thing that you can almost always expect to see is someone clicking away with a digital camera throughout the day. Usually, this person would be myself (between holding the boom, setting up equipment, and generally taking measured doses of abuse from Brad). These photos were primarily intended to be a resource for future promotional materials (which they have been), as well as a continuity aid. However, another thing that they have become is a method of documenting our production process itself. Since we are a low-budget (i.e. “no-budget” or “out of our own pockets”) production, we couldn’t afford the luxury of having someone with a camcorder record our “making of” process. We do have our stills, though, which are actually not a bad alternative. Read more
The Triumph of Fear
November 9, 2004
Though Dead End Days has a political slant, it is not, by and large, a political film. Though I take pride in layering some level of social or cultural or political awareness into the various projects I’ve worked on, I’m always conscious not to digress into manifesto territory. The goal, I suppose, is to keep our stories relevant. I want these stories to mean something to people with whom I share a social or cultural or political experience, to reflect the experience of living in the world today. For better or worse. I’ve always likened my approach to writing as presenting one side of a debate that is, ultimately, left unresolved. I don’t like to preach, and I don’t like to pander, and I would never presume to have all the answers. It’s enough that I know I’m always right, there’s no need to gloat. Read more
An Evening at DED HQ
October 26, 2004
7:30 pm - Brad arrives home from work. Usually Shane and Matt have arrived first and Shane is “playing” Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, if by “playing” I mean repeatedly driving cars back and forth over old ladies until money comes out of them.
8:00 pm - Decide on priorities for the evening. To date Brads repeated suggestion of “Forget Dead End Days and go see a movie” has been voted down 208 times in a row. Read more
When it rains, it pours…
October 19, 2004
Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve written one of these production journals. Not from any lack of prodding on Brad’s part, nor for any lack of beginnings on mine. I’ve probably got five pages of first paragraphs cluttering up my computer. The fact is, I’m finding reflection at this point in the game extremely difficult, as there is still so much work to do. It feels like trying to cram a strategy session into the middle of a championship soccer match. It’s a great idea, but the timing could probably be better. At the same time, though, how do I make sure I don’t forget something if I don’t record it while it’s fresh in my mind? Read more
Two-and-a-Half Days in the Vortex
August 31, 2004
First, let me apologize for dropping the ball on the production journal front. I promised Brad a piece for last week, and failed to deliver, thought not for lack of effort. After my third aborted attempt, I decided it just wasn’t gonna happen. Partly this is due to the fact that, with preliminary discussions underway, I had mentally moved away from Dead End Days and started the gears turning on future projects. But the primary reason was that despite several potential journal topics, none was substantial nor inspirational enough to provoke the transition from brain to page.
I didn’t have it in me.
Which is not to say that my trip to Toronto, and working, at long last, close and personally with the DED cast and crew, has not been flush with interesting experiences, conversations, tourist activities, and excessive drinking. I’ve been to the Toronto, Zoo, The Art Museum of Ontario, Paramount Canada’s Wonderland (and a big thumbs down to the newly installed television screens and cranked speakers blasting creepy advertisements for tween clothing and accessories. As though waiting forty-five minutes in line for a thirty-second ride in mid-afternoon drizzle wasn’t fun enough already. (Though I have to admire the relentless corporate moxie that devises ever more intrusive ways of advertising to people who, for all intents and purposes, spent fifty bucks to spend the day inside one big commercial)), as well as several excellent films including Garden State, Collateral, and The Bourne Supremacy. As discussed earlier on these pages, I also had the opportunity to see The Control Room, an indispensable perspective on the inner-working of Al Jazeera, the largest Arab cable news channel on the planet. And as though I wasn’t culturally developed enough, I’ve thrilled to the post-modern pop-infused Urinetown, witnessed the most embarrassing, dismal, sub-high-school quality production of Macbeth on Stratford’s mainstage, and had my love of theatre resuscitated by Blackpiggy Under, one of Nightwood Theatre’s annual Groundswell staged readings.
But the most life-altering event, precipitated by my first ever Dead End Days shoot, is my re-addiction to that most beloved North American narcotic: GLORIOUS CAFFEINE!
I’m happy to report that after four long, dreary, dazed years, I have been reacquainted with my good friend coffee. Me and coffee had a falling out over infrequent bouts of insomnia, anxiety, and a subversive desire to buck a trendier arm of social conformity - Vancouver’s Starbucks culture - that is ubiquitous in every sense of the word. Many of you have heard tale of Starbucks on opposing corners, facing off against each other, catering to unique though overlapping demographics. “One Starbucks for the Hell’s Angels, One Starbucks for the Hip Urbanites!” Well I’m here to tell you, it’s all true. These places exist. And I took a stand. I stuck it to the man. I started drinking tea. Exclusively. But I’m back on the wagon. Or am I off the wagon? I could never keep that clich
DED: Behind the Music
August 10, 2004
Hello dedicated Dead end Days audience members, Matt here. I was all set to start this weeks production journal off with an in depth review of “The Battle of Shaker Heights” when I was suddenly derailed. Last night I had the good fortune to bare witness to a performance from one of the most influential bands in rock history… the Cure. Man oh Man, what a great show. While standing at the show, with the lights and the melodies swirling all around me, I started to think about how much of a musical person I am. I thought about my need to use music throughout my creative process and more specifically how I have used music to enhance (and sometimes save) scenes from this crazy on going adventure that you are currently visiting. I feel I should shine the spotlight, this week, on an area of the Dead End Days production that has not yet been discussed. I want to tell you all briefly about how we came to have such a wide variety of kick ass tunes in our little series.
It all starts in my home town in the mid to late 90’s. I was a young lad like any other you would find in a Calgary highschool at the time: a flannel shirt wearing, long hair sporting, walkman carrying drama geek who had fallen in love with the music of our time… grunge. The “Seattle sound” bowled over our generation like a PA caught between Brando and a buffet. It was a great time to be into music. After the early years that were dominated by the fairly straightforward Nirvana’s and Pearl Jam’s radio stations started to promote the idea of “alternative” music. Suddenly the door was open for us youngsters to experience artists that were breaking the rules and were really doing things differently. It was the time of Beck, Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead. Upon discovering these bands and falling in love with them the natural thing to do was to discover their influences. This is how I discovered bands like the Cure, the Smiths and Depeche Mode. Bands whose influence stretched so deeply into the music of my generation.
It was about this time that a monumental event in my life occurred. My 18th birthday. Being 18 in Alberta meant you could drink. Being able to drink meant you could go to the clubs. I was too cheap to justify spending a pants load on drinks just for the hell of it so I would disguise this process to myself by paying pants loads for drinks only at venues with live music. This
desire to be part of the know when it came to live music lead me to a bar
called the Republic [sic]. [Editors Note: Come on man, it was the "Republik" and I only saw a fraction of the shows there that you did. Personal favourite moment - The drunk guy at the Toad the Wet Sprocket gig who kept screaming out "SANDMAN!" to the confusion of the band, who didn't have the foggiest idea if he didn't know the proper name of a song (they had nothing in their rep that had anything to do with a "Sandman"), if he had them confused with another band, or if the guy just really liked the Neil Gaiman comic] It no longer exists, but at its peak it was the centre of a local musical scene so strong, critics were predicting a movement as large of that in Seattle. It was the pop scene. But not pop as it is known now (britney etc.) but pop as in bands whose sound seemed to grow directly out of the alternative pop music of the 80’s. Bands who, like me, had discovered the likes of the Smiths, the Cure, U2, Crowded House, etc., were playing music thatwas pin point right for the time of experimentation and nostalgia that the international music scene had become.
At the heart of the sound was a young band named Red Autumn Fall. They were making a very different type of rock music. Rock music that made you want to wear a suit. They were hailed by Canadian music critics as the net big thing and due to the exposure were asked to open for high profile international acts such as Oasis. Every year RAF would host a festival of independent music called Panacea where like minded musicians would gather. Being in the middle of it made you feel like you were witnessing something special.
But as quickly as it arrived, it disappeared. RAF made the decision after 3 albums and hundreds of shows in Cowtown to move to Toronto. They released their CD, shot a video, appeared on Canadian talk shows… and then disappeared. We out west don’t really know what the hell happened. The evidence of their Toronto days still exists. On Queen Street West there is a vintage clothing shop called the black market and above the door you can still see a very old, very weather beaten Red Autumn Fall poster.
Before the demise of the Calgary scene, the major players got together and each recorded two songs for a collection of Calgary pop entitled “Ooh I’m So Pretty“. It remains for me one of the most played CD’s in my collection.
Throughout my growth as a filmmaker there has always been a goal for me to include this little heard music in my work. When we started posting Days I knew that I needed a lot of music over the course of the year. I also knew I wanted it to sound like… well the Cure. So I did what I could to include the great music from my past. Not having any money to pay for music, Brad and I ( along with the help of my good friend Ed) hunted down and contacted many of the members of the ooh I’m so pretty bands. Many of them agreed to let us use their music, including Red Autumn Fall, for free! I couldn’t believe it.
On top of that, Ed did a great job of sourcing out new Calgary bands that are doing great things and also agreed to let us use them. With the exception of one (insanely talented) young composer by the name of Kevin Dworak, all of the musical acts heard on Days are from [ Or were originally from - Ed] Calgary Alberta. Here now is a brief rundown of the acts:
Red Autumn Fall: Now broken up, but lead singer Simeon Ross and drummer Gail
Thompson have a new band, Charmer with a CD due in the fall. Simeon also has two great solo albums and has just finished a walk across Canada.
Glider: Amazing Smiths-esque sound featured in episode 6. Found on “Ooh I’m So Pretty”, but the band broke up the week the compilation was released.
The Lotus Galaxy: Jazzy and quiet. I have no idea what they are up to. [ Link is way out of date, from a couple of phone calls I had with them, I believe they've been broken up for a while - Ed]
Urban Divide: Calgary Funk, go figure. [That's newfunksoul, thank you very much - Ed] They are a new band responsible for “Daylight”, the great song played during the episode 17 date montage and many others.
Bliss Frequency: One of Jay’s oldest friends, Ethan Cole. Great guy, great musician.
The Livers: The name refers to those who live. Originally half of Calgary’s Interstellar Root Cellar, this cowtown reggae act can be heard in episodes 9 and episosde 29.
Kevin Dworak: Local Celt rocker turned exclusive Dead End Days composer. Creator of Sam and Bridgets theme and is currently brewing up more magic for day 4.
Well there you go. A nice history and run down of some more of the amazingly talented people we have contributing to this little show of ours. All of these artists have work for sale, so if you like what you hear, I encourage you to follow the links and purchase some really great music. You won’t be disappointed.
Peace,
Matt
[ I couldn't shoehorn this link it into Matt's post but Canoe Jam! wrote an intesting article on the rise and fall of the 90s Calgary music scene for their "Decade in Review" features in 1999. Interesting reading for anyone who is interested. - Ed]
Bi Coastal Curious
July 20, 2004
It’s been one year less a week since I was last in Toronto. I can’t remember what movie, if any, played on my flight back to Vancouver. Yesterday, however, my otherwise triumphant return to Canada’s epicentre was dealt ominous undertones by the in-flight presentation of The Whole Ten Yards. I haven’t seen the original Whole Nine Yards – I tend to play it safe and avoid the feature-length exploits of sitcom stars (not that I’ve got a problem with sitcoms or their stars, but there are certain undeniable rules of cinematic avoidance: don’t see movies featuring sitcom actors or the recipients of Best Supporting Actress Oscars. Don’t believe me? Mira Sorvino!) – and perhaps much of my confusion as to how a random series of unrelated scenes makes a movie might be resolved by doing so (though I doubt it), but it got me thinking about sequels.
After thinking about sequels for awhile, I decided it wasn’t a very interesting topic. Yes there have been a rash of high-calibre big-budget mainstream sequels that – contrary to how these things are supposed to go – are equal to, if not superior than, the originals (X-2, Spider-Man 2, and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), but movies are such a frequent front page topic that I’ve decided to go a slightly different route. Though if I ever write a “Movies You Ought to Like, and if You Don’t, You Suck” column, you can be damn sure it’ll be Bride of Chucky, all the way.
I’m in Toronto both to get my hands dirty on two of the remaining three Dead End Days shoots, and lay the groundwork for our sophomore project. Coming from a theatre background, I’m well accustomed to the superstitious aspects of that particular medium. Doubtless many of you are aware that theatre artists must not utter the name Macbeth inside the theatre. (Macbeth was, by all accounts, a respected Scottish king. Eager for leverage to increase her control of Scotland, Elizabeth recruited Shakespeare to write what is essentially a smear campaign to sully the name of the then departed king, and portray Scotland as a den of iniquity badly in need of English intervention. For anyone who has been to Scotland, and knows the popular opinion re: England, you might be inclined to agree that if there were to be a vengeful spirit wreaking havoc in the world, it would be a Scottish king fucked over by the British.) If my experience is any indication, those who are frequently engaged in creative mediums don’t really know how they do what they do, and as with any form of ignorance, we can easily turn to supernatural explanations for the otherwise inexplicable. Be it muse or curse, the spiritual side of the creative arts is very real.
In film, there exists the Sophomore Jinx. That is those artists who establish themselves with a successful first effort are invariably doomed to failure with their second. Upon scrutiny, of course, the theory falls apart. For every Heavens Gate, you have your Pulp Fiction. American Graffiti blew THX 1138 out of the water. And yet the superstition persists.
As has been discussed in earlier production journals, Matt and Shane and Erin and I met in two separate productions of a show called On Deaf Ears, which was a collection of short works that we toured to several Canadian fringe festivals in the summer of 2000. Back at UBC that fall, I set to work on the script for our follow-up fringe tour. Holding firmly to the adage of “write what you know”, I decided to explore the ins and outs of our experiences as a fledgling company about to embark on its sophomore effort. The resultant play, Menace, is about a young screenwriter, Glen Lewis (loosely based of Christopher McQuarrie, of The Usual Suspects fame), whose second film (which he also directed) has just hit theatres. Buoyed by high expectations, increased studio pressure, and the overzealous diligence of his personal assistant Rupert, Glen is crushed as the dismal reviews pour in. With a treatment deadline looming, Glen finds himself struck with a severe case of writers block. Rupert packs Glen off to teach a seminar, and he returns with a script from one of the more eager attendees – Hayden. Much to Glen’s surprise, the script is good. Damn good. Rupert recruits two young recently married hit-people (sound familiar? They are indeed none other than Sam and Bridget) to kill Hayden so that Glen can take credit for the script himself.
Hijinks ensue.
The play is about being young and ambitious, about how much effort and energy goes into the creative process (whether you’re a writer or a killer for hire), how getting that first good gig can seem like the most important thing in the world, and how daunting following up a successful project can seem. It’s also about criticism – what strange bedfellows art and criticism are, and what a bloated sense of importance we artists bestow our critics. The power of opinion.
We immediately started having problems casting the show. (Keep in mind from writing the play, through rewrites rehearsals, our first production and departure was a nine-month process all-told.) I had originally written roles specifically for myself and four other actors, three of whom (including myself) were part of the first tour. Though the two other actors had expressed interest, a three-month tour making just under living wage isn’t the most enticing way to spend one’s summer. We recast three times, waited on one actor for over a month (he eventually declined), and had our lead drop out three weeks before rehearsals began. Matt miraculously cast the part with a friend he knew from Improv competitions – Adrian Prime – and with our full cast in place (myself, Matt, Adrian, Luisa Jojic, and a Vancouver friend – Steve Handelsman as Hayden) we undertook rehearsals.
Though there’s little point rehashing the details here, we had a falling out with our director, and parted ways one week into our three-week rehearsal process. Tobin Mollet, the co-writer and co-director of On Deaf Ears stepped in to helm the second week of rehearsals before leaving for Alaska. For the third week our frazzled cast agreed bring in my friend and MFA directing student from UBC – Stephen Drover (aka Drove). Drove kicked the play into gear and we mounted a five-day run at the (sadly now defunct) Vancouver Little Theatre.
We spent the next five days packing and preparing for our trip and left Vancouver the following Thursday for Montreal, the first stop on our tour. Vancouver’s arts and entertainment weekly – The Georgia Straight – hit stands just as we were leaving the city. Infamous theatre critic Colin Thomas gave the show a great, if not glowing, review.
To set the scene: as for the previous tour, we were driving my grandparents’ 1983 Colony Park station wagon. This is an enormous car with couches for seats, spacious trunk space, and killer faux-wood panelling. Matt was transporting all his worldly possessions back to Calgary (to store at his mom’s house in prep for an upcoming trip to Europe) in a U-Haul rent-a-trailer. All-told, I believe we represented a good thirty feet of vehicular stylin’.
An uneventful three-odd hours go by. A half-hour outside of Kamloops, BC, we hear a loud bang. I pull over, and we discover a tire on the trailer has blown. Matt calls the BCAA, who arrive to replace the tire. After ten or fifteen minutes, we notice our trusty BCAA tire-replacer looks somewhat perplexed. He confides in us that the tire that blew doesn’t seem to be the same size as the other. Regardless, he patches the tire, and we make our merry way into Kamloops to the Kal Tire, where they can replace the tire proper.
As it turns out, it wasn’t so much the tires being different sizes as the wheels. (This is illegal). Not only are the wheels mismatched, but they’re not even trailer wheels. And they’re not even the same kind of not-trailer wheels. One is seemingly off a wheelbarrow. We begin placing calls to the toll free U-Haul customer service phone numbers, of which there are three. Of those three, none seem particularly interested in providing customer service. Eventually an incredible Kal Tire employee convinced the automaton on the other end that we had grounds for a lawsuit. U-Haul reneged, and gave us directions to the local U-Haul dealership. Which was closed. Kindly enough, they’d left another trailer out front.
We loaded all of Matt’s worldly possessions out of the first U-Haul trailer and into the second U-Haul trailer. Though the wheels on this new trailer seemed (to the naked, untrained eye) to match – and, as an added bonus, to be trailer wheels (not wheelbarrow wheels) the brake light wires were not, in a word, working.
Eight hours after arriving in Kamloops, and eleven since leaving Vancouver, we were once again on our way. With no brake lights, but on our way nonetheless.
We drove nine hours through the night, with nothing out of the ordinary save for the strange, sulfury smell the car began to emit. This smell we could not locate, but assumed it wasn’t important because…well…we didn’t have any other choice.
Half an hour outside of Calgary, going a conservative ninety-five kilometres, the rear passenger-side wheel fell off our car.
Well, it didn’t so much fall off as the ball bearing split clean in half, all thirty feet of vehicular stylin’ spun 180 degrees, the trailer containing all Matt’s worldly possessions flipped upside down and the roof tore off like the lid of a tuna can.
Now, facing in the opposite direction, the car in a ditch, we bailed, and fast.
A truck pulled over, and the driver leapt out of the car, fire extinguisher in tow, and proceeded to spray down the rear passenger-side wheel well – sans wheel – which had caught fire. His work done, he leapt back in his truck, and drove away.
The next day (the rest of that day in fact) was something of a blur. I visited the insurance agency in the morning, started contemplating how I might finance purchasing or leasing a car (which, given my credit rating was a patently ridiculous notion). My parents graciously lent us their Pathfinder, but we had to find a trailer to make up from the reduction in space.
Long story short, we drive straight through Alberta, Sakatchewan, Manitoba, and the endless corridor of northern Ontario to Samuel Champlain Provincial Park (just north of Algonquin) to stop for a well=deserved day of rest. We pull into the park at two o’clock am, set up the tent, and everyone except for Adrian trundled off to take a shower. He goes to bed. Bad move.
Luisa and I are making our way back to the campsite in the relative pitch blackness when we hear a car horn honking. “How thoughtless,” we mumble before Adrian’s voice pierces the night: “Help! Help! For the love of God! Help!” (He might not have said “For the love of God!”, but I’m keeping it for dramatic effect.)
With little visibility, and a vague idea of where we’re going, Luisa and I run back at the campsite to find Adrian, tent-pole in hand, fending off six raccoons. The raccoons had infiltrated the tent, scared the living shit out of Adrian, and then proceeded to open my backpack and retrieve my vitamins. Indifferent to Adrian’s pole-swinging, one of the more dexterous raccoons was immersed in an effort to twist the cap off the vitamin container. If the cap hadn’t been childproof, I’d wager he’d have done it.
Long story short, the raccoons proceeded to terrorize our weary band of fringe tourists for the rest of the early morning. They seemed particularly keen on unzipping the door, and climbing on to people. Perhaps they were starved for affection, I’ll never know.
Next day – our “day off” – we decide to go swimming in the lake. A half-hour into our relatively relaxing sojourn, we begin to notice, amongst ourselves, the odd bead of blood appearing at random spots on each others’ exposed skin. Steve’s got one on his forehead, Luisa on her leg, Adrian on his leg and arm, and two on my face. We depart the lake post-haste, and realize that we’re under assault by black flies.
A staple of the Canadian wilderness, these affable little insects literally bite off chunks of your flesh. They’re like mosquitoes, but without the charm. For most, the black fly causes minor irritation and naught else, for others who are allergic – like, apparently, me – these flesh-chunk removals causes the surrounding flesh to swell. After the second night of raccoon terror, I awoke to find a melon-sized welt on my forehead, and my right eye swollen shut. For anyone familiar with the Toxic Avenger, this is pretty much what I looked like. There are pictures somewhere. They are horrifying.
We packed up the truck, and drove the remaining four hours into Montreal. Half-an-hour outside of Montreal, Matt received a call from the Fringe office on his cell phone. Our billeter has backed out. We have no place to stay.
(A billeter is a person who provides accommodation to poor travelling artists free of charge. Of course, like anything in life that’s free, sometimes you get what you pay for. This billeter back-out precipitated an entire summer of accommodation falling-through. Our accommodation did not work out in one single city. Not even Calgary, where both Matt and I are from.)
The next day, en route to tech our show, we got a flat tire. On the plus side, the wheel itself remained in tact.
Now, Fringe Festivals are comprised of anywhere from twelve to one-hundred-and-twenty shows. Montreal, at this point, featured upwards of eighty. Either way, you don’t get much time to tech your show. Three hours is standard. Our tech had been running relatively smoothly – we were behind schedule, but otherwise optimistic – until ten minutes from the end, our venue tech threw up her hands and announced that she couldn’t tech the show. It was just too complicated.
Damn.
To her credit, though I’d written what I’d hoped was not a tech-heavy show, there were a multitude of sound cues that were quite specific. And we’d made the mistake of recording these on a mini-disc, the player for which was small, its buttons smaller and difficult to make out in the pale-blue light of the tech booth, not to mention that, for some reason, there was a delay on the player. Not elements conducive to smooth operating. But given what we’d been through over the past five days, our spirits were not exactly buoyed by this good news.
Good but gruelling events followed. One of the beer-tent volunteers turned out to be a sound designer, and he agreed to run sound on our show. We spent seven hours in the condemned back annex of an abandoned box factory doing sound run after sound run. The show went up, wonkily, and over its six performances coalesced into a reasonably entertaining piece of theatre – so much so that we won the award for best English-language play, and a fall remount at Montreal’s esteemed Centaur Theatre. (This remount was to be overshadowed by the events of September 11th. The Montreal theatre community wasn’t so much in the mood for a black comedy about killers for hire as they were for the despicable but remarkably successful English premiere of Mambo Italliano. The theatre was so not keen to be presenting our “killer comedy” that they refused to allow us to use our poster. I understand that people often confuse tongue-in-cheek homage’s to pulp fiction novel covers with terrorists crashing planes into buildings.)
This isn’t the end of the story, but the remainder is a series of peaks and troughs that plays out over the following three months, and isn’t worth recounting here. I have often wondered if I irresistibly tempted fate by writing a sophomore show about a sophomore jinx. I am not an overly superstitious person, but I will not say Macbeth inside a theatre, I won’t whistle on stage, and I won’t deny that our sophomore effort, at least in this case, was an extraordinary test of endurance. Jinxed? Perhaps. But then, it was no The Whole Ten Yards.
July 6, 2004
Well, it’s time for another Tuesday production journal, and I guess it’s finally my turn again. Judging by the length of time since my previous journal, I’m guessing that Brad doesn’t think too highly of my talents. Egotistical jerk.
Anyway, since (as per normal) I find myself trying to write something as the deadline rapidly approaches, I’ll stick with a centuries-old writing technique specially designed to deal with a lack of creativity – namely, plagiarism.
So, without further adieu, I present to you the first (and possibly only) installment of:
FILMS YOU OUGHT TO LIKE (BUT FOR THE WRONG REASONS) by Rob Fox
Yes, you know what I’m talking about. Those “classic” films that are in one way or another so incredibly bad or completely bewildering that one can’t help but admire them. Those sub-par films that you will likely watch many times in your life simply because they are thoroughly entertaining - but not neccesarily for the reasons that the filmmakers intended. I’m sure that many of you can think of a good half-dozen such movies right off the top of your head, but for me, the title of “Heavyweight Champion” in this collection belongs to but one film…
DOLEMITE (1975) – Starring (and written by) Rudy Ray Moore.
What do you get when a bunch of small-time, b-list filmmakers take on the blaxploitation genre (introduced to a wide audience four years earlier with the release of “Shaft”) with a fraction of the budget, shooting locations almost entirely located in South-Central L.A., and a star/writer who was best known for his “proto-rap” poetry and African-American comedy of the 60’s and 70’s? Well, you get this gem of a film.
The premise is simple: Dolemite, a renowned pimp, hustler, and general badass, is released from prison several years early. The reason is that the prison warden (and local “generic fed”) needs his help in tracking down “Mr. Big”, who has been pushing drugs on the street and generally treating the neighborhood hoes poorly.
Needless to say, after being released, Dolemite actually does very little crime fighting. He eventually tracks down the infamous Willie Green (played by the film’s director, D’Urville Martin), but it’s less about getting drugs off the street and more about Dolomite getting “The Total Experience” (his strip club) back. No sir, Dolomite has no time for crime fighting; what with all the time he spends partying with his hoes, who incidentally possess killer Kung-Fu skills. This shortage of time is exacerbated even further by the fact that he appears to change his clothes every 2-3 hours. But I digress. Early in the film, he also vows to discover who is pushing illegal guns on the streets, since one such weapon led to the death of his young nephew. However, although it becomes painfully clear that a local preacher is responsible, Dolemite apparently decides that it isn’t that important after all, and ignores this side plot for the rest of the film.
Several colourful side-characters add to the dramatic tableau that is this film: the heroin-addicted “Creeper”, who is affectionately referred to as the “Hamburger Pimp”. No, I am not making this up. In fact, he’s so bad that he kicks his own ass “twice a day”. No, I didn’t make that up either. There’s also Mayor Daley, who is obviously corrupt from the first time he takes the screen, but don’t tell Dolomite – that would ruin all the fun! There’s the corrupt, bumbling pair of coke-addicted narcs who continually get the crap kicked out of them by Dolomite. And of course, we have “Queen Bee”, who is… well… the “queen bee” of Dolomite’s hoes. Making the film even better is the fact that in virtually every scene, a boom mike, crew member, or equipment shadow is visible.
In short, anyone who claims to be an expert at the best of the worst can’t truly be if they haven’t experienced Dolemite. The movie (and Rudy Ray Moore) have developed a kind of cult following among some. I own the DVD, and have watched the entire movie at least 2-3 times over the last couple years. And each and every time I fire it up, it never fails to deliver, in the words of the film’s official tagline, “Bone-crushing, Skull-splitting, Brain-blasting ACTION!”
And isn’t that what it’s all about?
Staring out the window at the kids on recess.
June 22, 2004
I apologize for what is becoming “Brad overexposure week” over here at Days. I promise it’s not indicative of any plans of future stardom that me doing a production journal, the first installment of decision 2004 and the surprise return of everyone’s favorite bit-part in the next episode all fall within days of each other. I’ll do my best to stay out of everyone’s face for the next little bit, as I figure my Warhollian 15 minutes are now well and truly up.
It was a weird week in Dead-ville these past seven days; A couple of family events as well as our esteemed Matthew taking a business trip out of town coincided to throw our schedule completely to heck, nothing overtly catastrophic, but in a subtle unnerving way. For better or worse everyone has fallen into a fairly regular pattern for the past couple of months. Ignoring shooting weekends we’ve got a pretty regular schedule of staff meetings, editing sessions, and timing and sound mixing nights… all of a sudden everything was off kilter by a day or two, there were too many people around, or not enough space, or equipment wasn’t where it was supposed to be; Only in scrambling to keep everything on schedule did I get a distanced outside look into a fairly self evident truth that I had blinded myself to: We put a lot of time into Dead End Days. I’m not even talking about the “in the shower musing about the show” time either, just the physical nuts and bolts of doing it. At DED-HQ alone we now have well over 40 hours a week of people over doing things… things that are not necessarily “fun” or “rewarding” or “not a complete pain” but that need to be done to get that episode up every Friday.
Maybe it’s just hitting harder now that the weather has turned nicer, or my day-job is about to pick up exponentially, or City of Heroes is getting such rave reviews, or I got my latest bandwidth bill in the mail (incidentally the data we’ve moved since opening would make a stack of floppy discs roughly big enough to circle the globe - good job!) but last week was a challenge and it would have been so easy to take a day off… maybe two… maybe a week… a very slippery slope indeed.
That brings me to you all. “Dead End Days” is by no means a runaway success. We’ve yet to be flooded with groupies, no one is constructing fan page shrines to Sam (although they should be), I’ll be pleasantly surprised if we ever break even on t-shirt sales and shady bootleggers aren’t selling dodgy VCD’s on eBay. That’s fine and dandy with us, mind you, from inception DED was a project with such a narrow audience that we needed a net as wide at the Internet to hopefully find the few and the faithful to appreciate it. That’s why it means so much to me that you all are still watching (and reading). Every time I notice someone saying kind things in a forum out on the net, or quoting a line, it gives me another reason to not reconfigure the EditingMachine3000 so that it can support DirectX 9. Every time someone cares enough to let us know that they didn’t like the way we did something, it’s also a shove on the back to keep us going the next time we’re shooting. Every e-mail, every anecdote about a friend who watches at work, every guy who runs-up-to-Matt-in-a-mall is just another reason to see this crazy ride through to the end.
I can’t tell you how proud I am of the “Dead End Days” team. While there are websites out there that struggle to find a few hours a month for their audiences, there are many, many folks on our team who give far more than that (and in some cases do nothing else outside of day jobs) to see this thing through. It’s also given me a humble respect for the legions of solo writers and artists out there who create the works that I enjoy reading every day/week and don’t have a peer support group to keep their noses to the grindstone.
I can’t tell you where it’s all going to end. Our shooting schedule has never been as tight as it’s going to be over the next two months, nor have we been trying to do so much – but I can tell you one thing: If no one was watching, we would have stopped a long time ago.
So every time an innocent citizen gets mugged in City of Hero’s and I’m not there to stop them, you have only yourselves to blame.
Thanks.
