Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! You have no idea how grateful I am for pretty much everything, especially this past year and a half or so. So many things to be thankful for...
My silence of late was more because I had lots to talk about, but didn't want to say too much. I still have a lot of stuff going on that I can't talk about yet, but I can say this: it's official, Kimyoo Films is now Kimyoo Films, Inc.! Yep, I've taken a giant step forward. two of them, actually, because I've made a sister company for it: Nightbird Studios, Inc.!
Here's the distinction: Kimyoo Films is my baby. It's been with me since 1995 when I decided to name my company after the Japanese word for strange. But, by calling it "Films" I limit its scope, in a sense. Nightbird Studios is for everything else that I have interest in: podcasts / radio shows (I'm talking horror shows here, not awesome podcasts like what my friends Noel (his blog which lists every podcasts he's doing, zomg, Jaye and Tony (who have Zombie vs. Shark), and Miguel (who has Monster Island Resort) do,) comic books, novels, video games...stuff like that. The film festival, when I start it up again, will be under Nightbird Studios and not Kimyoo Films. Hallowscreen isn't about me, it's about the films so I don't even want it to look like it's going to be the "Kimyoo Films Show starring Kimyoo Films!"
I have lots and lots of plans and lots and lots of ideas, but filmmaking comes first and first up is the short film I promised to the Fies sisters for I Hate L.A., Too. This film is slightly more complicated than my past stuff in that I want to film in a business that no one I know owns or even works there. Do to that safely for all parties requires insurance. Well, if I'm going to go through all that, I should be able to get a permit...and if I'm going to get a permit, I might as well go ahead and make Kimyoo Films a corporate reality. It took a lot longer than I had anticipated because I wanted to have the film done a couple of months ago. Ah well, you live and learn. After that film is shot, cut, and on the circuit, I plan on shooting at least one or two more shorts as I prepare for my first feature. I'm hoping to spend half of December and all of January writing another draft of the feature in order to shoot it late next year.
On a side note, it's always easier to ask for funding if you have a fully legal, operating corporation! :D
As I move forward on these projects, I'll be posting more when I CAN post.
And now, to round off this post, some great news! JustUs was accepted to the Little Terrors Film Festival in Toronto for their December edition (date and time to follow) and aftershock has been accepted to Bad Granny's Bazaar's Free Film Night in Oklahoma City on January 26, 2012 as part of Viscera!
Showing posts with label awesomeness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label awesomeness. Show all posts
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Days of the Dead; or Thank God This is About a Convention Because I’m Droppin’ Names!
While most people were getting ready to fire up their bar-be-ques, drink copious amounts of alcohol, and set fire to colourful explosives in celebration of America’s freedom from the tyranny of British rule, I and thousands of others descended on the Wyndham Indianapolis West in Indiana for the very first Days of the Dead convention which boasted one of the most impressive guest lists this side of a Weekend of Horrors with genre luminaries such as Reggie Bannister and his wife Gigi, FX guru John Carl Buechler, P.J. Soles, Linnea Quigley, and Heather Langenkamp.
I was there to see I Am Nancy with the fans for whom it was made. I’ve seen it by myself. I had the honour of co-presenting the West Coast premiere at BleedFest so I got to see it at a film festival, and I showed it to friends of mine who weren’t fans before (and they loved it), but there’s just nothing like the energy of watching it with other fans. I’m getting slightly ahead of myself, however.
I arrived in Indianapolis on Thursday, the day before the festival. The hotel is within walking distance of five other hotels...and nothing else. Well, almost nothing else. I was given a room on the first floor which I didn’t think anything of because I did a quick walkthrough and discovered that it was far enough away from the majority of the action to not be a bother. So then I realize that I hadn’t eaten since a granola bar that morning so I order room service. No answer. Huh. Okay, so I go to the restaurant. No one’s there. Apparently, one needs to be a semaphore to get food in this joint. I go back to my room and try to call room service one more time. No dice.
The Wi-Fi in my room was brilliant, though, so I was able to find a restaurant near by that received some pretty good reviews on Yelp. After some troubles with GPS, I found the proper directions to get to the restaurant, a car race-themed greasy spoon that I don’t want to name. The food was...okay. Very greasy, surprisingly enough (or not at all if you could hear the sarcastic voice in my head), and the chocolate shake wasn’t nearly chocolatey enough.
After an unsatisfying dinner, I went across the street to the gas station and bought some water and went back to my room where I almost promptly passed out and slept solidly until 8 the next morning.
Friday, the first day of the con. Doors didn’t open until 6, 5 o’clock for VIP pass holders (of which I was one of 100) and eventually, I discovered that you could pick up your VIP badge at 3 pm. I went to the restaurant for breakfast where I ordered Belgian waffles and orange juice. There was a buffet, but I’m not a big fan of communal food. The orange juice was so tart I thought my face was going to fall off (and I love tart / sour stuff!)
With HOURS of time to kill, I went back to my room and watched some Death Proof (but actually stopped before the best parts because I have this habit of picking up accents and didn’t want to pick up Zoe Bell’s accent in advance of meeting her...)
Finally, three o’clock rolled around and I got my VIP badge and swag bag, took them back to my room, and went into the lounge / bar thingie for lunch. I grabbed a corner seat and order fish and chips which, on the face of it, doesn’t sound like a great idea considering Indiana is, for all intents and purposes, landlocked, but whatever. I live on the edge.
I was joined soon thereafter by a nice, talkative gentleman named Jewell. It turns out I hijacked his spot, but we got on well and decided to hang out during the con. After a surprisingly delicious lunch and great conversation, I went back to my room to retrieve my bookbag and a surprise to show Heather Langenkamp and I met back up with Jewell and we headed into the convention.
Our first order of business was to walk around to see who all had arrived. Some folks were late due to weather or buggered up flights and the vendors were still setting up. Once the reconnaissance was done, I got ready to see Heather, but the line was a bit strange. For whatever reason, it was in front of Amanda Wyss and Thommy Hutson. I actually stood back because I didn’t get that that was where the line was, but I was able to help a few fellow fans out by taking photos of them with Heather.
Then, it was my turn! I got an I Am Nancy poster which I asked her to sign with her line, “I’m into survival!” and took out the surprise to show her: my St. Auggies’ sweater. Her face seeing it was priceless! She asked me if I wanted her to sign it, but I demurred because I actually wear it! I’m afraid of losing her signature in the wash! I know, I know...that’s supremely geeky of me. I embrace it. It’s a really comfy sweater!
After Jewell got to meet Heather, we went and got into line to see Reggie Bannister. I wanted to meet him because I got to see / ran a film he was in at my festival called Walking Distance (the film has since been picked up by Lionsgate and is now known as Psychic Experiment) and wanted to tell him how much I enjoyed his performance. We met a few more people like the lovely P.J. Soles and Ginger Lynn and then, when Jewell got into like for Roddy Piper, I went over and met the amazing Zoe Bell, a Kiwi stunt performer who doubled Lucy Lawless in Xena, Uma Thurman in the Kill Bill flicks, and herself in Death Proof among others.
I admire stunt people intensely. They’re willing to do the crazy things I and other writers dream up that most Stars are unwilling (or unable) to do. Stunties do NOT get paid enough and absolutely do not get enough recognition for their efforts (think I’m joking?)
/ soapbox
We had a nice, but quick, conversation and then I met up with Jewell again. He decided to get out of the Roddy Piper line because the other VIPs kept using their line cutting perk. He was a VIP, too, but neither he nor I took advantage of that particular perk during the weekend (actually, I think he did for Ace Frehley, but I can’t blame him for that...)
That night was the midwest premiere of I Am Nancy so we went in early (now that's a VIP perk I can get behind!) and grabbed seats in the second row from the front on the aisle. Superfan and Nancy cosplayer Diandra introduced the film and Heather, who sat in the chair in front of me to watch it with the rest of us.
It was so fantastic to see the film with the fans, with the people who understand. The energy was wonderful! At the end, we gave her a standing ovation, then she thanked us all for coming and headed out pretty quickly so she could personally thank everyone as they walked out.
If I didn’t already adore her before that, I certainly did after.
After the movie, Jewell and I headed over to Quincy’s (it’s a bar inside the hotel) for An Evening with Roddy Piper which was billed as a stand up act, but was really more like a stream-of-consciousness recitation of his early years in wrestling. Think of An Evening with Kevin Smith, but less scripted and well-rehearsed. You can’t fit all that on a poster so stand up act it is. I’m not a fan of wrestling, but when I was a kid, I did watch the show every once in a while. Plus, They Live is one of my favourite John Carpenter flicks.
It was HILARIOUS. I’m so glad I didn’t miss that! He was refreshingly up front in the stories he told and I think there were quite a few minds blown wide open by the stories he was telling. There were a few rude people in the audience who kept shouting names out to him, hoping for stories about these people and other than veering off the story he was currently telling, he handled that pretty well. If he were to release an autobiography, I’d most likely pick it up. Considering I have no interest in wrestling, I think that says a lot.
The party was over at that point so I went back to my room and went to sleep. Well, tried to, anyway. It turns out that Quincy’s backdoor was across the hall from my room. Yeah, I didn’t sleep very well that night. People kept running up and down the hall and shouting and all that great stuff. The next morning, Heather was kind enough to ask me how I slept and promptly admonished me for not getting a room higher up... I’ve learned my lesson, Heather!
The next day was the Big Day, the one most people show up for. Saturday. I got in line for Heather first, of course, adding a Just the Ten of Us photo to my increasingly excessive collection of autographs. My current count is now ten (two of which were not attained in person) including one I got from her on the last day of the con. But, but, but...Just the Ten of Us!
Anyway, I roamed a lot on Saturday and got more autographs than I normally have any interest in...says the girl with ten autographs from one person (but two don’t count!) I also walked the vendor room and thought about what I wanted to get, if anything. I had to keep in mind that I was flying home. Of course, I didn’t think about that when I bought the I Am Nancy poster. Thankfully, I was able to carry it onto the plane and home without damaging it, but it was dicy for a while as I thought about actually *gasp* folding it.
Saturday featured the panel I was super excited for: Scream Queens! With P.J. Soles, Linnea Quigley, Heather Langenkamp, and Mark Patton. I can hear the cliche record screech now. Mark Patton played Jesse in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, a role which would be, stereotypically, played by a girl. There are so many good ideas in Freddy’s Revenge that, for me, simply didn’t work in execution, not to mention how it simply doesn’t fit in the canon. The make-up and score, in particular, are fantastic. And the actors are better than the material they’re given. The film just didn’t work.
Anyway, the scream queen panel was fantastic! There were thoughtful questions asked and some really insightful answers from the panelists. YouTube has some video of the panel. (Just so you know, I’m the one who asked about the panelists’ favourite/least favourite practical effects.)
At the end of the panel, the participants were good sports and screamed for the crowd, even in spite of having just said to everyone that you really need to prepare your voice before doing the scream queen thing. By the time they did that, I was already on the way out. I had my VIP pass and was able to sit up front (and without a camera other than the one on my phone), it was time for those who didn’t have one to come up and get photos and stuff.
After an incredible lunch with a surprise guest, it was time for photo ops. Originally, I’d planned on using my VIP voucher for a free photo op with Tom Savini. I mean, he’s Tom Savini for crying out loud! My point n’ shoot had crapped out before I went to the con and I’ve since replaced it with a camera that has a viewfinder on the front as well so I didn’t get any photos with anyone at the tables. My next con or event, whenever that will be, I can take photos and not worry that most people really don’t know how to take pictures (not to mention that I’m pretty picky.) I found out for sure that Savini had to cancel due to car troubles which was a bummer...maybe the third time our paths cross will be a charm.
I used my photo voucher to get a picture with Heather Langenkamp. She’s one of the very few people I get really geeky over so it’s hard to walk that line between fan and filmmaker. However, I recently heard a quote from Guillermo del Toro from when he was at the San Diego Comic Con that makes me feel a little better about loving this genre and the people in it: “I don’t know how many years I’ll direct or be able to produce but I know one thing. The one thing I can finance is I’ll be a fan my whole fucking life.”
I love him.
The photo op line ran a bit long (which makes me incredibly happy for Heather! Her lines all weekend were really long which means a lot of work for her, but at the same time, how awesome is that?!) so I thought I’d missed the Return of the Living Dead announcement that was supposed to happen before a short film package that I wanted to see. Luckily, they hadn’t started yet and while I had guessed what the announcement was going to be about thanks to a few clues that were dropped, I was still incredibly excited to see the trailer.
Thommy Hutson and some of the crew behind the incredible Never Sleep Again documentary are putting together a retrospective on The Return of the Living Dead 1-3! The trailer they showed was amazing and I can’t WAIT to see it! The trailer’s been pulled from the official website, but definitely keep your eye on it for more information.
I stayed for the short film package and then roamed some more before heading back to my room to put my stuff down and then head to the VIP party. Luckily for me, I found a seat with Jewell and two awesome people he met that day, Nikki and Randall. There were a hundred VIP passes sold for the weekend and the majority of them were, for lack of a better term, camped out by the door. Plus, there were mountains of muscle men standing at the table behind me so I couldn’t see a bloody thing.
The VIP party seemlessly transitioned into the Girls and Corpses Beauty Pageant which was totally not my thing so I headed out of there around ten thirty or eleven to try and get some sleep.
Sunday was the most chill day. In fact, most of the guests arrived late or had left early and the vendors were packing up by four. I saw Heather Langenkamp again (big shock) and asked her to sign the photo op picture of us with "Be Nancy," the slogan from I Am Nancy. I'm a fairly introverted person and I've been working really hard on that because you can't be introverted and make movies, especially when you're the one doing everything and you have to prove yourself worthy the trust required to work with actors. I haven't had to pursue funds yet, it'll be fun when I go to get money for the feature. I always have to remind myself that if someone says no to a question or request, I'm no worse off than before I asked so I just have to jump in with both feet and hope I land without spraining something.
I also got to meet Mark Patton. I may not like Freddy’s Revenge, but I started to really admire him after seeing Never Sleep Again and I like him even more after the Scream Queen panel. I didn’t meet Amanda Wyss...she’d had shoulder surgery fairly recently and I didn’t want to bother her or make her sign anything. I thought it was incredibly awesome (and brave) of her to come anyway, but I just couldn’t put her in any more pain than a weekend of signing and photos and accidental brushings had already. I will meet her at some point! Besides, I have to tell her how awesome she was in CSI (as Donna Marks AND as Tina Vincent!)
Afterward, I went to the Fango Film Festival to see the film Dead Genesis. This was a flick that I’ve been waiting patiently for since I saw a clip which turned out to be the first five minutes of the film. The first five minutes were the best of the entire run. It was pretty good, not the game changer a lot of people seem to be touting it as, and it’s very clear that the director doesn’t understand found-footage or mockumentary-style filmmaking.
After the film, I went to the vendor room and was disappointed to see that the vendors were packing up so early, but I was able to buy a couple of prints from Chris Kuchta - a beautiful print of his painting of Bub from Romero’s Day of the Dead, a print of Hellraiser’s cenobites for my friend Rickey, and this amazing print of this Night of the Living Dead painting which I then had signed by John Russo (producer), Russell Streiner (he plays Johnny in the original film), and George Kosana (who plays the Sheriff in the original.)
With the convention winding down, I went to say good-bye to Heather, but she was already gone, and then I went to my room to relax for the rest of the night and came home the next day! A weekend later, I shot my short film JustUs, the trailer for which you can see here. The weekend after that was Viscera (which is two entries before this one...) Just trying to put everything in context since this post is so bloody late.
This was an amazing festival and, unless you knew beforehand that it was their first time out, you wouldn’t have been able to tell. They did a fantastic job and I hope that maybe I can return someday! The hotel was a little too isolated, I suppose, but if I do get to go back, I'll know that ahead of time!
I was there to see I Am Nancy with the fans for whom it was made. I’ve seen it by myself. I had the honour of co-presenting the West Coast premiere at BleedFest so I got to see it at a film festival, and I showed it to friends of mine who weren’t fans before (and they loved it), but there’s just nothing like the energy of watching it with other fans. I’m getting slightly ahead of myself, however.
I arrived in Indianapolis on Thursday, the day before the festival. The hotel is within walking distance of five other hotels...and nothing else. Well, almost nothing else. I was given a room on the first floor which I didn’t think anything of because I did a quick walkthrough and discovered that it was far enough away from the majority of the action to not be a bother. So then I realize that I hadn’t eaten since a granola bar that morning so I order room service. No answer. Huh. Okay, so I go to the restaurant. No one’s there. Apparently, one needs to be a semaphore to get food in this joint. I go back to my room and try to call room service one more time. No dice.
The Wi-Fi in my room was brilliant, though, so I was able to find a restaurant near by that received some pretty good reviews on Yelp. After some troubles with GPS, I found the proper directions to get to the restaurant, a car race-themed greasy spoon that I don’t want to name. The food was...okay. Very greasy, surprisingly enough (or not at all if you could hear the sarcastic voice in my head), and the chocolate shake wasn’t nearly chocolatey enough.
After an unsatisfying dinner, I went across the street to the gas station and bought some water and went back to my room where I almost promptly passed out and slept solidly until 8 the next morning.
Friday, the first day of the con. Doors didn’t open until 6, 5 o’clock for VIP pass holders (of which I was one of 100) and eventually, I discovered that you could pick up your VIP badge at 3 pm. I went to the restaurant for breakfast where I ordered Belgian waffles and orange juice. There was a buffet, but I’m not a big fan of communal food. The orange juice was so tart I thought my face was going to fall off (and I love tart / sour stuff!)
With HOURS of time to kill, I went back to my room and watched some Death Proof (but actually stopped before the best parts because I have this habit of picking up accents and didn’t want to pick up Zoe Bell’s accent in advance of meeting her...)
Finally, three o’clock rolled around and I got my VIP badge and swag bag, took them back to my room, and went into the lounge / bar thingie for lunch. I grabbed a corner seat and order fish and chips which, on the face of it, doesn’t sound like a great idea considering Indiana is, for all intents and purposes, landlocked, but whatever. I live on the edge.
I was joined soon thereafter by a nice, talkative gentleman named Jewell. It turns out I hijacked his spot, but we got on well and decided to hang out during the con. After a surprisingly delicious lunch and great conversation, I went back to my room to retrieve my bookbag and a surprise to show Heather Langenkamp and I met back up with Jewell and we headed into the convention.
Our first order of business was to walk around to see who all had arrived. Some folks were late due to weather or buggered up flights and the vendors were still setting up. Once the reconnaissance was done, I got ready to see Heather, but the line was a bit strange. For whatever reason, it was in front of Amanda Wyss and Thommy Hutson. I actually stood back because I didn’t get that that was where the line was, but I was able to help a few fellow fans out by taking photos of them with Heather.
Then, it was my turn! I got an I Am Nancy poster which I asked her to sign with her line, “I’m into survival!” and took out the surprise to show her: my St. Auggies’ sweater. Her face seeing it was priceless! She asked me if I wanted her to sign it, but I demurred because I actually wear it! I’m afraid of losing her signature in the wash! I know, I know...that’s supremely geeky of me. I embrace it. It’s a really comfy sweater!
After Jewell got to meet Heather, we went and got into line to see Reggie Bannister. I wanted to meet him because I got to see / ran a film he was in at my festival called Walking Distance (the film has since been picked up by Lionsgate and is now known as Psychic Experiment) and wanted to tell him how much I enjoyed his performance. We met a few more people like the lovely P.J. Soles and Ginger Lynn and then, when Jewell got into like for Roddy Piper, I went over and met the amazing Zoe Bell, a Kiwi stunt performer who doubled Lucy Lawless in Xena, Uma Thurman in the Kill Bill flicks, and herself in Death Proof among others.
I admire stunt people intensely. They’re willing to do the crazy things I and other writers dream up that most Stars are unwilling (or unable) to do. Stunties do NOT get paid enough and absolutely do not get enough recognition for their efforts (think I’m joking?)
/ soapbox
We had a nice, but quick, conversation and then I met up with Jewell again. He decided to get out of the Roddy Piper line because the other VIPs kept using their line cutting perk. He was a VIP, too, but neither he nor I took advantage of that particular perk during the weekend (actually, I think he did for Ace Frehley, but I can’t blame him for that...)
That night was the midwest premiere of I Am Nancy so we went in early (now that's a VIP perk I can get behind!) and grabbed seats in the second row from the front on the aisle. Superfan and Nancy cosplayer Diandra introduced the film and Heather, who sat in the chair in front of me to watch it with the rest of us.
It was so fantastic to see the film with the fans, with the people who understand. The energy was wonderful! At the end, we gave her a standing ovation, then she thanked us all for coming and headed out pretty quickly so she could personally thank everyone as they walked out.
If I didn’t already adore her before that, I certainly did after.
After the movie, Jewell and I headed over to Quincy’s (it’s a bar inside the hotel) for An Evening with Roddy Piper which was billed as a stand up act, but was really more like a stream-of-consciousness recitation of his early years in wrestling. Think of An Evening with Kevin Smith, but less scripted and well-rehearsed. You can’t fit all that on a poster so stand up act it is. I’m not a fan of wrestling, but when I was a kid, I did watch the show every once in a while. Plus, They Live is one of my favourite John Carpenter flicks.
It was HILARIOUS. I’m so glad I didn’t miss that! He was refreshingly up front in the stories he told and I think there were quite a few minds blown wide open by the stories he was telling. There were a few rude people in the audience who kept shouting names out to him, hoping for stories about these people and other than veering off the story he was currently telling, he handled that pretty well. If he were to release an autobiography, I’d most likely pick it up. Considering I have no interest in wrestling, I think that says a lot.
The party was over at that point so I went back to my room and went to sleep. Well, tried to, anyway. It turns out that Quincy’s backdoor was across the hall from my room. Yeah, I didn’t sleep very well that night. People kept running up and down the hall and shouting and all that great stuff. The next morning, Heather was kind enough to ask me how I slept and promptly admonished me for not getting a room higher up... I’ve learned my lesson, Heather!
The next day was the Big Day, the one most people show up for. Saturday. I got in line for Heather first, of course, adding a Just the Ten of Us photo to my increasingly excessive collection of autographs. My current count is now ten (two of which were not attained in person) including one I got from her on the last day of the con. But, but, but...Just the Ten of Us!
Anyway, I roamed a lot on Saturday and got more autographs than I normally have any interest in...says the girl with ten autographs from one person (but two don’t count!) I also walked the vendor room and thought about what I wanted to get, if anything. I had to keep in mind that I was flying home. Of course, I didn’t think about that when I bought the I Am Nancy poster. Thankfully, I was able to carry it onto the plane and home without damaging it, but it was dicy for a while as I thought about actually *gasp* folding it.
Saturday featured the panel I was super excited for: Scream Queens! With P.J. Soles, Linnea Quigley, Heather Langenkamp, and Mark Patton. I can hear the cliche record screech now. Mark Patton played Jesse in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, a role which would be, stereotypically, played by a girl. There are so many good ideas in Freddy’s Revenge that, for me, simply didn’t work in execution, not to mention how it simply doesn’t fit in the canon. The make-up and score, in particular, are fantastic. And the actors are better than the material they’re given. The film just didn’t work.
Anyway, the scream queen panel was fantastic! There were thoughtful questions asked and some really insightful answers from the panelists. YouTube has some video of the panel. (Just so you know, I’m the one who asked about the panelists’ favourite/least favourite practical effects.)
At the end of the panel, the participants were good sports and screamed for the crowd, even in spite of having just said to everyone that you really need to prepare your voice before doing the scream queen thing. By the time they did that, I was already on the way out. I had my VIP pass and was able to sit up front (and without a camera other than the one on my phone), it was time for those who didn’t have one to come up and get photos and stuff.
After an incredible lunch with a surprise guest, it was time for photo ops. Originally, I’d planned on using my VIP voucher for a free photo op with Tom Savini. I mean, he’s Tom Savini for crying out loud! My point n’ shoot had crapped out before I went to the con and I’ve since replaced it with a camera that has a viewfinder on the front as well so I didn’t get any photos with anyone at the tables. My next con or event, whenever that will be, I can take photos and not worry that most people really don’t know how to take pictures (not to mention that I’m pretty picky.) I found out for sure that Savini had to cancel due to car troubles which was a bummer...maybe the third time our paths cross will be a charm.
I used my photo voucher to get a picture with Heather Langenkamp. She’s one of the very few people I get really geeky over so it’s hard to walk that line between fan and filmmaker. However, I recently heard a quote from Guillermo del Toro from when he was at the San Diego Comic Con that makes me feel a little better about loving this genre and the people in it: “I don’t know how many years I’ll direct or be able to produce but I know one thing. The one thing I can finance is I’ll be a fan my whole fucking life.”
I love him.
The photo op line ran a bit long (which makes me incredibly happy for Heather! Her lines all weekend were really long which means a lot of work for her, but at the same time, how awesome is that?!) so I thought I’d missed the Return of the Living Dead announcement that was supposed to happen before a short film package that I wanted to see. Luckily, they hadn’t started yet and while I had guessed what the announcement was going to be about thanks to a few clues that were dropped, I was still incredibly excited to see the trailer.
Thommy Hutson and some of the crew behind the incredible Never Sleep Again documentary are putting together a retrospective on The Return of the Living Dead 1-3! The trailer they showed was amazing and I can’t WAIT to see it! The trailer’s been pulled from the official website, but definitely keep your eye on it for more information.
I stayed for the short film package and then roamed some more before heading back to my room to put my stuff down and then head to the VIP party. Luckily for me, I found a seat with Jewell and two awesome people he met that day, Nikki and Randall. There were a hundred VIP passes sold for the weekend and the majority of them were, for lack of a better term, camped out by the door. Plus, there were mountains of muscle men standing at the table behind me so I couldn’t see a bloody thing.
The VIP party seemlessly transitioned into the Girls and Corpses Beauty Pageant which was totally not my thing so I headed out of there around ten thirty or eleven to try and get some sleep.
Sunday was the most chill day. In fact, most of the guests arrived late or had left early and the vendors were packing up by four. I saw Heather Langenkamp again (big shock) and asked her to sign the photo op picture of us with "Be Nancy," the slogan from I Am Nancy. I'm a fairly introverted person and I've been working really hard on that because you can't be introverted and make movies, especially when you're the one doing everything and you have to prove yourself worthy the trust required to work with actors. I haven't had to pursue funds yet, it'll be fun when I go to get money for the feature. I always have to remind myself that if someone says no to a question or request, I'm no worse off than before I asked so I just have to jump in with both feet and hope I land without spraining something.
I also got to meet Mark Patton. I may not like Freddy’s Revenge, but I started to really admire him after seeing Never Sleep Again and I like him even more after the Scream Queen panel. I didn’t meet Amanda Wyss...she’d had shoulder surgery fairly recently and I didn’t want to bother her or make her sign anything. I thought it was incredibly awesome (and brave) of her to come anyway, but I just couldn’t put her in any more pain than a weekend of signing and photos and accidental brushings had already. I will meet her at some point! Besides, I have to tell her how awesome she was in CSI (as Donna Marks AND as Tina Vincent!)
Afterward, I went to the Fango Film Festival to see the film Dead Genesis. This was a flick that I’ve been waiting patiently for since I saw a clip which turned out to be the first five minutes of the film. The first five minutes were the best of the entire run. It was pretty good, not the game changer a lot of people seem to be touting it as, and it’s very clear that the director doesn’t understand found-footage or mockumentary-style filmmaking.
After the film, I went to the vendor room and was disappointed to see that the vendors were packing up so early, but I was able to buy a couple of prints from Chris Kuchta - a beautiful print of his painting of Bub from Romero’s Day of the Dead, a print of Hellraiser’s cenobites for my friend Rickey, and this amazing print of this Night of the Living Dead painting which I then had signed by John Russo (producer), Russell Streiner (he plays Johnny in the original film), and George Kosana (who plays the Sheriff in the original.)
With the convention winding down, I went to say good-bye to Heather, but she was already gone, and then I went to my room to relax for the rest of the night and came home the next day! A weekend later, I shot my short film JustUs, the trailer for which you can see here. The weekend after that was Viscera (which is two entries before this one...) Just trying to put everything in context since this post is so bloody late.
This was an amazing festival and, unless you knew beforehand that it was their first time out, you wouldn’t have been able to tell. They did a fantastic job and I hope that maybe I can return someday! The hotel was a little too isolated, I suppose, but if I do get to go back, I'll know that ahead of time!
Sunday, May 15, 2011
WMIFF's People Choice!
Hi everyone!
The music video I made for World Collision, "Sine," has been accepted by the World Music and Independent Film Festival and is in the running for a People's Choice award! "Essenger" came so close last year, we were in third or fourth place up against national acts like OK Go and Laether Strip. I really want to rock D.C.! Please go and vote for us on their website!
Here's the music video as a refresher:
At this festival last year, my video for "Essenger" was nominated for Best Cinematography and Best Alternative Rock.
THANK YOU!
The music video I made for World Collision, "Sine," has been accepted by the World Music and Independent Film Festival and is in the running for a People's Choice award! "Essenger" came so close last year, we were in third or fourth place up against national acts like OK Go and Laether Strip. I really want to rock D.C.! Please go and vote for us on their website!
Here's the music video as a refresher:
At this festival last year, my video for "Essenger" was nominated for Best Cinematography and Best Alternative Rock.
THANK YOU!
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Film festival announcement!
I received an email a few minutes ago that I've been waiting for. It was the go ahead to announce that the Viscera Film Festival in L.A. has chosen "aftershock" as an Official Selection for their Los Angeles event and for their tour! They're planning on updating the website tonight or tomorrow so you may still see some of last year's information up.
It's a fantastic festival and I'm so honoured to be counted amongst such talented women in this genre! The event will happen on July 17 at the Silent Movie Theatre in L.A. I'll be there for that one, but I will not be touring with my flick to whichever festivals it plays as part of the tour. Too much strain on Ye Olde Finances.
Apparently, it's unprofessional or something to be so excited when one is lucky enough to receive an acceptance letter for their flick...but I can't help it! *chairdances*
It's a fantastic festival and I'm so honoured to be counted amongst such talented women in this genre! The event will happen on July 17 at the Silent Movie Theatre in L.A. I'll be there for that one, but I will not be touring with my flick to whichever festivals it plays as part of the tour. Too much strain on Ye Olde Finances.
Apparently, it's unprofessional or something to be so excited when one is lucky enough to receive an acceptance letter for their flick...but I can't help it! *chairdances*
Monday, April 25, 2011
L.A.: Trip the Second (April 2011)
L.A.: Trip the Second
I visited L.A. again over the first week of April for another edition of the ever-so-wonderful BleedFest! I didn’t have anything in the festival this time, but I was listed as co-presenter for a shorts package because they showed a few films that I recommended to them from my festival last year (they showed Lisa Hunter’s You’re So Undead, Ashley Maria’s Friday Night Fright, and Sage Hall’s Candy.) Plus, they were showing a rough cut of I Hate L.A. which let me know kind of what they were looking for in the content for I Hate L.A. Too in which I will be participating.
I only went for three days, but they were awesomely jam-packed! My first full day in L.A., I met up with a friend who took me sight seeing at Lake Balboa. She’s someone I’ve looked up to for a long time and it was great to walk around this beautiful man-made lake just outside the insanity of L.A. with her! Our conversation veered from industry talk to ducks and everywhere in between and I loved every single second of it! Afterward, we went to lunch at a nice little Japanese place called Hanabichi where we had teriyaki salmon and more wonderfully insightful talk. It was an absolutely lovely way to start my weekend in LA!
My friend had meetings and things she had to tend to so she dropped me back at my hotel. I had a meet and greet later in the day with the ladies of BleedFest, but I had hours to go so I decided to hop on the bus and spend some time at Universal Studios: Hollywood (I’m always daunted by public transportation in big cities I don’t know thing one about, but I like to try them out.) They have a few of the same attractions that we do at the Universal Studios in Orlando, however, Orlando certainly doesn’t have the same amazing views.
(A view of the Warner Brothers campus from Universal Studios.)
The great thing was that Universal was running a deal where you could buy a general admission pass and it would get you in like an annual pass for the rest of the year and it wasn’t just for SoCal residents so I have an annual (‘til December anyway) pass to US:H. :D This worked out because while I had hours to spend there, I didn’t get to do everything I wanted, but I’ll be back in June and July so yippee!!
The main reason I wanted to go to Universal was to see the King Kong attraction that Peter Jackson and weta dreamed up. What I didn’t know was that it was part of the studio tour ride so I wandered around like an idiot for a minute, then figured out what was up and got on the second to last tram. The tour is about an hour long and it takes you through their famous backlots and sound stages. Here, I totally got touristy...I mean, they were filming CSI whilst we rode past! I didn’t see any of the actors (it was a Saturday so it was probably B unit stuff), but still...CSI!
Here are the rest of the photos from Universal Studios: Hollywood:
The tram ride was pretty awesome at points and sucky at others (I don’t care about the Desperate Housewives and I’m STILL freakin’ sick of that stupid Earthquake ride and, up until that point, I hadn’t ridden it in years!) The King Kong attraction was pretty amazing, though I think one of the eyes was slightly out of phase or something.
If there’s one thing that the tram made me truly appreciate, it’s location shooting (well, being indie, really, but we’ll stick with location shooting.) How sucky it must be for these production companies that come in to shoot a scene and have to deal with the tourist bus...especially if you get some stupid people on board who won’t shut up when asked to (everyone on my trip was well behaved, though I did want to shout “I MISS BILLY PETERSEN!” toward the CSI crew...)
I still had some time before I wanted to head out to the BleedFest meet and greet so I hung out at CityWalk for a minute then hopped into a cab and went to Spot 5750. As is my habit and a countermeasure for persnickety LA traffic, I was very early. First one to arrive in point of fact.
Spot 5750 is a swanky, hip Hollywood pool hall on swank, hip Hollywood Boulevard filled with swank, hip Hollywood youngsters. I am neither swank or hip nor am I Hollywood, but soon the BleedFest ladies arrived and it was like we’d never parted company! Our hosts for the no-host meet and greet were the festival directors, the Fies sisters. Maude Michaud and her family flew in from Canada for the festival, which was running a retrospective of her amazing work. Director Katt Shea, Alisha Rayne from Bzzzline.com, actress Melanie Leanne Miller and a whole bunch of other women showed up for the event! It was so fantastic to be surrounded by all these strong horror folks, y’know? Very energizing!
After the meet and greet, I went back to my hotel and got some sleep! The next day was the festival after all!
I didn’t have any wardrobe malfunctions this time, but I decided to wear a t-shirt and jeans for a multitude of reasons. I’m not one of those people who put a lot of importance on what others wear and while I’m aware that appearances are important in Hollywood, I’ve been to a lot of festivals and most of them are “just be comfortable” affairs where you dress up for the awards part. I suppose I’m still sussing out my place in all of these festivals...
Anyway, I arrived at the venue early specifically to offer them some help if they wanted it so I put out postcards and candies and set up the awards and such. I really like the CAP Theatre in Sherman Oaks. It’s a really nice, intimate little venue. Soon, people started pouring in and the day started off with Maude’s incredible work, then we got to the shorts package which I introduced since I was already well acquainted with two of them (the third was give the screenwriting award and played just before the shorts package), we took a break where I got to talk to the ever awesome Heidi Honeycutt from FanGIRLtastic.com and the lovely Miss Tara Cardinal.
During the break before the shorts package, the fabulous Kristin Mellian (who was in my first short film Without/Within) and her husband Aaron showed up to the festival! I hadn’t seen her in a few years so it was great that she was able to come out and we could chat for a bit! (She’s a dream to work with, Casting People Who May Or May Not Be Reading This Right Now.)
After the shorts package, they showed partnership award winner Drew Daywalt’s work. If you keep up with indie horror, you know this guy’s name and even if you don’t, you should absolutely see his work. Fabulous stuff, y’all!
Afterwards was the screening of the rough cut of I Hate LA, an anthology of shorts linked together via a thread the Fies sisters created about a runner who has to go to various neighbourhoods in LA, neighbourhoods that are portrayed by the meat of the project which are the short films from directors like Barbara Stepansky, Maude Michaud, and Tyrrell Shaffner.
After the awards part, the festival ended and I went to dinner with the Fies sisters and Ray McDermott from Film Radar.com, then I went back to my hotel to get some rest before my early-ass flight home the next morning.
It was a fabulous weekend that I didn’t have time to write about until now because almost as soon as I stepped off the plane, I was consumed with projects! I love being so busy. I just need to make sure to not wait so long to blog about things! hahaha!
My next trip to LA is in June, again for BleedFest with a special surprise event that I don’t want to announce just yet. I have more news that I can’t wait to share, but I have to wait for the official announcements before I can squee about anything. :D Whew! I'm exhausted just from writing about all of this and thinking about everything that's coming up, but it's a good exhausted!
I visited L.A. again over the first week of April for another edition of the ever-so-wonderful BleedFest! I didn’t have anything in the festival this time, but I was listed as co-presenter for a shorts package because they showed a few films that I recommended to them from my festival last year (they showed Lisa Hunter’s You’re So Undead, Ashley Maria’s Friday Night Fright, and Sage Hall’s Candy.) Plus, they were showing a rough cut of I Hate L.A. which let me know kind of what they were looking for in the content for I Hate L.A. Too in which I will be participating.
I only went for three days, but they were awesomely jam-packed! My first full day in L.A., I met up with a friend who took me sight seeing at Lake Balboa. She’s someone I’ve looked up to for a long time and it was great to walk around this beautiful man-made lake just outside the insanity of L.A. with her! Our conversation veered from industry talk to ducks and everywhere in between and I loved every single second of it! Afterward, we went to lunch at a nice little Japanese place called Hanabichi where we had teriyaki salmon and more wonderfully insightful talk. It was an absolutely lovely way to start my weekend in LA!
My friend had meetings and things she had to tend to so she dropped me back at my hotel. I had a meet and greet later in the day with the ladies of BleedFest, but I had hours to go so I decided to hop on the bus and spend some time at Universal Studios: Hollywood (I’m always daunted by public transportation in big cities I don’t know thing one about, but I like to try them out.) They have a few of the same attractions that we do at the Universal Studios in Orlando, however, Orlando certainly doesn’t have the same amazing views.
(A view of the Warner Brothers campus from Universal Studios.)
The great thing was that Universal was running a deal where you could buy a general admission pass and it would get you in like an annual pass for the rest of the year and it wasn’t just for SoCal residents so I have an annual (‘til December anyway) pass to US:H. :D This worked out because while I had hours to spend there, I didn’t get to do everything I wanted, but I’ll be back in June and July so yippee!!
The main reason I wanted to go to Universal was to see the King Kong attraction that Peter Jackson and weta dreamed up. What I didn’t know was that it was part of the studio tour ride so I wandered around like an idiot for a minute, then figured out what was up and got on the second to last tram. The tour is about an hour long and it takes you through their famous backlots and sound stages. Here, I totally got touristy...I mean, they were filming CSI whilst we rode past! I didn’t see any of the actors (it was a Saturday so it was probably B unit stuff), but still...CSI!
Here are the rest of the photos from Universal Studios: Hollywood:
The tram ride was pretty awesome at points and sucky at others (I don’t care about the Desperate Housewives and I’m STILL freakin’ sick of that stupid Earthquake ride and, up until that point, I hadn’t ridden it in years!) The King Kong attraction was pretty amazing, though I think one of the eyes was slightly out of phase or something.
If there’s one thing that the tram made me truly appreciate, it’s location shooting (well, being indie, really, but we’ll stick with location shooting.) How sucky it must be for these production companies that come in to shoot a scene and have to deal with the tourist bus...especially if you get some stupid people on board who won’t shut up when asked to (everyone on my trip was well behaved, though I did want to shout “I MISS BILLY PETERSEN!” toward the CSI crew...)
I still had some time before I wanted to head out to the BleedFest meet and greet so I hung out at CityWalk for a minute then hopped into a cab and went to Spot 5750. As is my habit and a countermeasure for persnickety LA traffic, I was very early. First one to arrive in point of fact.
Spot 5750 is a swanky, hip Hollywood pool hall on swank, hip Hollywood Boulevard filled with swank, hip Hollywood youngsters. I am neither swank or hip nor am I Hollywood, but soon the BleedFest ladies arrived and it was like we’d never parted company! Our hosts for the no-host meet and greet were the festival directors, the Fies sisters. Maude Michaud and her family flew in from Canada for the festival, which was running a retrospective of her amazing work. Director Katt Shea, Alisha Rayne from Bzzzline.com, actress Melanie Leanne Miller and a whole bunch of other women showed up for the event! It was so fantastic to be surrounded by all these strong horror folks, y’know? Very energizing!
After the meet and greet, I went back to my hotel and got some sleep! The next day was the festival after all!
I didn’t have any wardrobe malfunctions this time, but I decided to wear a t-shirt and jeans for a multitude of reasons. I’m not one of those people who put a lot of importance on what others wear and while I’m aware that appearances are important in Hollywood, I’ve been to a lot of festivals and most of them are “just be comfortable” affairs where you dress up for the awards part. I suppose I’m still sussing out my place in all of these festivals...
Anyway, I arrived at the venue early specifically to offer them some help if they wanted it so I put out postcards and candies and set up the awards and such. I really like the CAP Theatre in Sherman Oaks. It’s a really nice, intimate little venue. Soon, people started pouring in and the day started off with Maude’s incredible work, then we got to the shorts package which I introduced since I was already well acquainted with two of them (the third was give the screenwriting award and played just before the shorts package), we took a break where I got to talk to the ever awesome Heidi Honeycutt from FanGIRLtastic.com and the lovely Miss Tara Cardinal.
During the break before the shorts package, the fabulous Kristin Mellian (who was in my first short film Without/Within) and her husband Aaron showed up to the festival! I hadn’t seen her in a few years so it was great that she was able to come out and we could chat for a bit! (She’s a dream to work with, Casting People Who May Or May Not Be Reading This Right Now.)
After the shorts package, they showed partnership award winner Drew Daywalt’s work. If you keep up with indie horror, you know this guy’s name and even if you don’t, you should absolutely see his work. Fabulous stuff, y’all!
Afterwards was the screening of the rough cut of I Hate LA, an anthology of shorts linked together via a thread the Fies sisters created about a runner who has to go to various neighbourhoods in LA, neighbourhoods that are portrayed by the meat of the project which are the short films from directors like Barbara Stepansky, Maude Michaud, and Tyrrell Shaffner.
After the awards part, the festival ended and I went to dinner with the Fies sisters and Ray McDermott from Film Radar.com, then I went back to my hotel to get some rest before my early-ass flight home the next morning.
It was a fabulous weekend that I didn’t have time to write about until now because almost as soon as I stepped off the plane, I was consumed with projects! I love being so busy. I just need to make sure to not wait so long to blog about things! hahaha!
My next trip to LA is in June, again for BleedFest with a special surprise event that I don’t want to announce just yet. I have more news that I can’t wait to share, but I have to wait for the official announcements before I can squee about anything. :D Whew! I'm exhausted just from writing about all of this and thinking about everything that's coming up, but it's a good exhausted!
Saturday, March 19, 2011
"Don't care if it's not the way you find the truth..."
Okay, so it’s been about a year since the Big Chain Theatre’s fateful decision to reject my application for Projection Manager and since the Sarasota Film Festival rejected A Hammer Fell in Jerusalem: Anathema. Around this point last year, I had refocused my energies toward my true career and I’d gotten a paying job working for the Sarasota Fringe Film Festival as an editor on not one but three documentaries. I say “paying” instead of “paid” because, well...they’re still working on paying me what I’m owed and since it’s been a year, I feel that I can mention it.
Anyway, in that year of refocusing, I’ve been to New York City, Alexandria, VA, Washington, D.C., New Orleans, LA, Los Angeles, CA, and Orlando, FL, with one or more of my films. Some of these festivals have been so kind as to nominate my work for awards and even give me two of them. It’s been fantastic, I’m not complaining at all, though the next sentence may seem to contradict that. The only problem for me with this past year is that I didn’t get to make any more films than the music video I did for World Collision. I was busy getting Kimyoo Films out there which is vital, but between traveling and doing the job of four people at the theatre, I couldn’t film anything. (yeah, yeah...I know.../whitewhine.)
Four isn’t an arbitrary number, by the way. While I was away on vacation and in New York for NewFilmmakers, I discovered later through emails that were fired back and forth that four people couldn’t pick up my slack. Technically, one of them shouldn’t have had to pitch in at all, but still...FOUR PEOPLE.
The relative dry spell in filming ended late last month when I shot a very short film which fits into my beloved A Hammer Fell in Jerusalem universe called “and be at rest.” It’s vague enough that it can stand on its own, but it is obviously a part of the universe as Chris Cline was kind enough to don the dog collar once more. After it has its premiere, I’ll be posting it on OpenFilm.com and of course, I’ll link to it here. I may already have a premiere lined up, but I always get too excited and ahead of myself and I want to wait for confirmation before I say anything for sure.
The main thing about doing this short was to help me get familiar with some new stuff I bought before I leap in to not one or two, but four more short films this year (I count music videos as shorts.) Chris Cline and I are teaming up to bring one of his scripts to life with him behind the camera. Chris is one of the best writers I know and he knows more about the genre than I do! Once his film is complete, I’m stepping back behind the camera for one of my shorts. After that, I have possibly two music videos for World Collision! There are two more projects on the horizon, but it’s too early to talk about those just yet. They’re moving forward, though, and that’s good!
Also on the horizon is a feature which will obviously be my first. I don’t want to say much more than that, but it’s very exciting!
I’m not your typical filmmaker. I didn't pick up my first camera until I was in middle school and didn't own my own equipment until a couple of years ago. I had four years of Booker High School of the Visual and Performing Arts and one semester of film classes at Manatee Community College (which has since turned into the State College of Florida.) I've always wanted to do this, though. And be an astronaut, but that's beside the point. I learn by doing. I’ll still be learning while I make movies sixty years down the line (I don’t plan on retiring, obviously.) There’s really no right or wrong way so long as you’re learning and putting out what’s in your heart.
Anyway, in that year of refocusing, I’ve been to New York City, Alexandria, VA, Washington, D.C., New Orleans, LA, Los Angeles, CA, and Orlando, FL, with one or more of my films. Some of these festivals have been so kind as to nominate my work for awards and even give me two of them. It’s been fantastic, I’m not complaining at all, though the next sentence may seem to contradict that. The only problem for me with this past year is that I didn’t get to make any more films than the music video I did for World Collision. I was busy getting Kimyoo Films out there which is vital, but between traveling and doing the job of four people at the theatre, I couldn’t film anything. (yeah, yeah...I know.../whitewhine.)
Four isn’t an arbitrary number, by the way. While I was away on vacation and in New York for NewFilmmakers, I discovered later through emails that were fired back and forth that four people couldn’t pick up my slack. Technically, one of them shouldn’t have had to pitch in at all, but still...FOUR PEOPLE.
The relative dry spell in filming ended late last month when I shot a very short film which fits into my beloved A Hammer Fell in Jerusalem universe called “and be at rest.” It’s vague enough that it can stand on its own, but it is obviously a part of the universe as Chris Cline was kind enough to don the dog collar once more. After it has its premiere, I’ll be posting it on OpenFilm.com and of course, I’ll link to it here. I may already have a premiere lined up, but I always get too excited and ahead of myself and I want to wait for confirmation before I say anything for sure.
The main thing about doing this short was to help me get familiar with some new stuff I bought before I leap in to not one or two, but four more short films this year (I count music videos as shorts.) Chris Cline and I are teaming up to bring one of his scripts to life with him behind the camera. Chris is one of the best writers I know and he knows more about the genre than I do! Once his film is complete, I’m stepping back behind the camera for one of my shorts. After that, I have possibly two music videos for World Collision! There are two more projects on the horizon, but it’s too early to talk about those just yet. They’re moving forward, though, and that’s good!
Also on the horizon is a feature which will obviously be my first. I don’t want to say much more than that, but it’s very exciting!
I’m not your typical filmmaker. I didn't pick up my first camera until I was in middle school and didn't own my own equipment until a couple of years ago. I had four years of Booker High School of the Visual and Performing Arts and one semester of film classes at Manatee Community College (which has since turned into the State College of Florida.) I've always wanted to do this, though. And be an astronaut, but that's beside the point. I learn by doing. I’ll still be learning while I make movies sixty years down the line (I don’t plan on retiring, obviously.) There’s really no right or wrong way so long as you’re learning and putting out what’s in your heart.
BleedFest April 2011!
Hey y'all!
I'll be back in L.A. in April for their Thrill Her line-up! I'm not in the festival, but three of the shorts from last year's Hallowscreen are! DGA-award winning filmmaker Ashley Maria's "Friday Night Fright," Lisa Hunter's "You Are So Undead," and Sage Hall's "Candy." are all playing in the afternoon shorts package LIs and Brenda Fies have programmed.
I really love this festival and the Fies sisters. I'd go every month, if I could!
If you have the money and the inclination, please join with me and support this festival which is doing so much to help further the message of women in genre film!
http://www.indiegogo.com/April-BleedFest-event-Thrillher-I-HATE-LA-premier-Maude-Michaud-Retrospective
I'll be back in L.A. in April for their Thrill Her line-up! I'm not in the festival, but three of the shorts from last year's Hallowscreen are! DGA-award winning filmmaker Ashley Maria's "Friday Night Fright," Lisa Hunter's "You Are So Undead," and Sage Hall's "Candy." are all playing in the afternoon shorts package LIs and Brenda Fies have programmed.
I really love this festival and the Fies sisters. I'd go every month, if I could!
If you have the money and the inclination, please join with me and support this festival which is doing so much to help further the message of women in genre film!
http://www.indiegogo.com/April-BleedFest-event-Thrillher-I-HATE-LA-premier-Maude-Michaud-Retrospective
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Picture It...L.A., 2011: The Third Day
So, this was it! The day had finally arrived! A few days before I left, my rosacea went “Oh, you’re going to have photos taken? Well, I say ‘BLA-DOW!!!’ and it was (and still is) pretty bad. Not only that, but the day we took off for L.A., I got the biggest, most painful zit ever right next to my right eyebrow. The day of the film festival, I had the second largest, most painful zit ever on my left temple.
Yay.
And then, I discovered that I forgot a critical component of my wardrobe and I couldn’t be all dressed up for the blood red carpet. I decided to wear my A Nightmare on Elm Street shirt, might as well stick with the Nancy theme, right? Shawn looked pretty, though, in his Chinese style suit.
I look like a rosy-cheeked goofball, but whatever...lol
I sent out invites via Facebook to all of the people I could think of that live in the area so I could see and / or meet them. One of them was actress Brinke Stevens, who I met at my first ever film festival, ShockerFest, two years ago. I’ve mentioned her here before, she’s one of my favourite Scream Queens and I set up a screening of Sorority Babes at the Slimeball Bowl-a-Rama to honour her as our Queen of Hallowscreen.
She mentioned that she might be able to come, but that she was busy filming a documentary called Screaming in High Heels, the Rise and Fall of the Scream Queen as well as a trailer for a book that features her likeness called Video Pirates from Mars. I figured that she’d be too exhausted to come over, but I received a text message from her that said she was on her way! That gave me a great shot of happiness, to know that other than my brother, there was going to be at least one friendly face in the audience!
We headed over to the venue and were really early, but there was already a huge crowd milling around outside, giving blood and chatting. Linnea Quigley was there (Brinke’s co-star in Sorority Babes, another favourite Scream Queen of mine, and a good friend of hers), but Brinke hadn’t arrived yet. At the ticket table, I got to meet Brenda Fies, one of the co-founders of BleedFest. She was co-ordinating the volunteers and obviously very busy, but we were able to talk later and soon after that, we met Elisabeth, her sister and festival co-founder. These sisters are amazing people, y'all. They're lovely, warm, supportive people and great filmmakers themselves. It was so great to meet them finally!
I also finally met the awesome Heidi from FanGirlTastic! She’s an amazing force for recognizing the work of women in genre films!
Shawn and I milled around while they got the background for the red carpet set up and when Brinke arrived, I gave her her fest pass and she introduced me to Ms. Quigley. I saw her in Orlando, but I was focused on meeting Heather Langenkamp and didn’t really work up the nerve to talk to her, but it was awesome that Brinke was the one to introduce us! It turned out that Brinke told Ms. Quigley about the festival! She also introduced me to composer Chuck Cirino and director Kevin Tenney. I was in horror geek heaven!
Linnea Quigley couldn’t stay, but I gave her a copy of my compilation disc so she could check it out. I hope we can work together at some point in the future!
Brenda came out and said that they were getting ready to start the program so Shawn, Brinke, and I went in and found some seats and watched some really great films! First up was “The Horror of Our Love” by Dave Reda who was the Partnership Award winner from January, but there was an issue with his disc during his original screening and they played it again this month. Works out because I would’ve hated to miss that! It was hilarious!
Next up was a special award for Katt Shea as a trailblazer in film for women. She directed films like Poison Ivy and The Rage: Carrie 2. After that was a screening of the Producing Award winning Night of the Hell Hamsters from Elizabeth Pinto. Another hilarious short!
After that was the presentation of the award for Social Commentary to Stacy Title, director of The Last Supper, which was one of my favourite films of 1995.
Then, they jumped into the shorts package. Everything was in competition for the Audience Award and the Film Radar award, but we all received award certificates from the festival. I had two shorts in the package: “Essenger” and aftershock. “Essenger” got the award for “Best Don’t Bite the Apple...”
and aftershock got “Best All American Zombie Slayer.”
I feel confident that I can speak for the band and for Janine, the star of aftershock, when I say that we’re all honoured and thrilled to have received these amazing awards!
There was a break at that point and Brinke, Shawn, and I went out to the back patio with Chuck Cirino and chatted for a while. Kevin Tenney joined us, but I had to run out to the front to work out when I was going to be interviewed and photographed. I got caught up meeting a few filmmakers so I didn’t get to do the publicity thing before the screening for February’s Partnership Award winner Cam McCullouch’s zombie opus Home began and then award ceremony took place.
Tyrrell Shafner won the audience award for her short film Threnody, which I happened to see in New Orleans at the Vampire Film Festival this year. It was a fantastic flick and congratulations are definitely in order! The Film Radar award went to Susan Bell for The Patchwork Monkey, another fantastic film.
There was another break during which I was quickly photographed and interviewed and said farewell to Brinke who needed to go home and get some sleep, and then we watched the feature film the US premiere of the Aussie slasher Slaughtered.
Some of the shots were really good and there were pretty amazing set pieces, but it was in need of another draft or two...or three in the scripting phase.
After the festival was over, the Fies sisters, Deepika Daggubati, Ray from FilmRadar, and my brother and I went across the street and watched the rest of the Super Bowl over appetizers and fantastic conversation. Afterward, Shawn and I went back to the hotel, then got dinner at the Cheesecake Factory and went back to the hotel to go to bed early for our early flight out.
Yesterday, Monday, we got a cab to the airport for our 9 am flight and got home at 6:45 my time. We had an absolutely fantastic time and I’m so glad that Brinke and Linnea Quigley were able to come out and support women in horror and this amazing film festival!
BleedFest is one of the best film festivals I’ve been to. The venue it’s in is small and intimate which leads to better networking, and the sisters Fies have put a lot of thought into the festival and its structure. They’ve done an absolutely amazing job! It’s a wonderful festival with a worth-while message that women have just as much to give to genre film as men and are just as talented.
As long as BleedFest is around, I’ll be sending them my work and supporting the festival as much as I can!
Yay.
And then, I discovered that I forgot a critical component of my wardrobe and I couldn’t be all dressed up for the blood red carpet. I decided to wear my A Nightmare on Elm Street shirt, might as well stick with the Nancy theme, right? Shawn looked pretty, though, in his Chinese style suit.
I look like a rosy-cheeked goofball, but whatever...lol
I sent out invites via Facebook to all of the people I could think of that live in the area so I could see and / or meet them. One of them was actress Brinke Stevens, who I met at my first ever film festival, ShockerFest, two years ago. I’ve mentioned her here before, she’s one of my favourite Scream Queens and I set up a screening of Sorority Babes at the Slimeball Bowl-a-Rama to honour her as our Queen of Hallowscreen.
She mentioned that she might be able to come, but that she was busy filming a documentary called Screaming in High Heels, the Rise and Fall of the Scream Queen as well as a trailer for a book that features her likeness called Video Pirates from Mars. I figured that she’d be too exhausted to come over, but I received a text message from her that said she was on her way! That gave me a great shot of happiness, to know that other than my brother, there was going to be at least one friendly face in the audience!
We headed over to the venue and were really early, but there was already a huge crowd milling around outside, giving blood and chatting. Linnea Quigley was there (Brinke’s co-star in Sorority Babes, another favourite Scream Queen of mine, and a good friend of hers), but Brinke hadn’t arrived yet. At the ticket table, I got to meet Brenda Fies, one of the co-founders of BleedFest. She was co-ordinating the volunteers and obviously very busy, but we were able to talk later and soon after that, we met Elisabeth, her sister and festival co-founder. These sisters are amazing people, y'all. They're lovely, warm, supportive people and great filmmakers themselves. It was so great to meet them finally!
I also finally met the awesome Heidi from FanGirlTastic! She’s an amazing force for recognizing the work of women in genre films!
Shawn and I milled around while they got the background for the red carpet set up and when Brinke arrived, I gave her her fest pass and she introduced me to Ms. Quigley. I saw her in Orlando, but I was focused on meeting Heather Langenkamp and didn’t really work up the nerve to talk to her, but it was awesome that Brinke was the one to introduce us! It turned out that Brinke told Ms. Quigley about the festival! She also introduced me to composer Chuck Cirino and director Kevin Tenney. I was in horror geek heaven!
Linnea Quigley couldn’t stay, but I gave her a copy of my compilation disc so she could check it out. I hope we can work together at some point in the future!
Brenda came out and said that they were getting ready to start the program so Shawn, Brinke, and I went in and found some seats and watched some really great films! First up was “The Horror of Our Love” by Dave Reda who was the Partnership Award winner from January, but there was an issue with his disc during his original screening and they played it again this month. Works out because I would’ve hated to miss that! It was hilarious!
Next up was a special award for Katt Shea as a trailblazer in film for women. She directed films like Poison Ivy and The Rage: Carrie 2. After that was a screening of the Producing Award winning Night of the Hell Hamsters from Elizabeth Pinto. Another hilarious short!
After that was the presentation of the award for Social Commentary to Stacy Title, director of The Last Supper, which was one of my favourite films of 1995.
Then, they jumped into the shorts package. Everything was in competition for the Audience Award and the Film Radar award, but we all received award certificates from the festival. I had two shorts in the package: “Essenger” and aftershock. “Essenger” got the award for “Best Don’t Bite the Apple...”
and aftershock got “Best All American Zombie Slayer.”
I feel confident that I can speak for the band and for Janine, the star of aftershock, when I say that we’re all honoured and thrilled to have received these amazing awards!
There was a break at that point and Brinke, Shawn, and I went out to the back patio with Chuck Cirino and chatted for a while. Kevin Tenney joined us, but I had to run out to the front to work out when I was going to be interviewed and photographed. I got caught up meeting a few filmmakers so I didn’t get to do the publicity thing before the screening for February’s Partnership Award winner Cam McCullouch’s zombie opus Home began and then award ceremony took place.
Tyrrell Shafner won the audience award for her short film Threnody, which I happened to see in New Orleans at the Vampire Film Festival this year. It was a fantastic flick and congratulations are definitely in order! The Film Radar award went to Susan Bell for The Patchwork Monkey, another fantastic film.
There was another break during which I was quickly photographed and interviewed and said farewell to Brinke who needed to go home and get some sleep, and then we watched the feature film the US premiere of the Aussie slasher Slaughtered.
Some of the shots were really good and there were pretty amazing set pieces, but it was in need of another draft or two...or three in the scripting phase.
After the festival was over, the Fies sisters, Deepika Daggubati, Ray from FilmRadar, and my brother and I went across the street and watched the rest of the Super Bowl over appetizers and fantastic conversation. Afterward, Shawn and I went back to the hotel, then got dinner at the Cheesecake Factory and went back to the hotel to go to bed early for our early flight out.
Yesterday, Monday, we got a cab to the airport for our 9 am flight and got home at 6:45 my time. We had an absolutely fantastic time and I’m so glad that Brinke and Linnea Quigley were able to come out and support women in horror and this amazing film festival!
BleedFest is one of the best film festivals I’ve been to. The venue it’s in is small and intimate which leads to better networking, and the sisters Fies have put a lot of thought into the festival and its structure. They’ve done an absolutely amazing job! It’s a wonderful festival with a worth-while message that women have just as much to give to genre film as men and are just as talented.
As long as BleedFest is around, I’ll be sending them my work and supporting the festival as much as I can!
Picture It...L.A., 2011: Day Two
I don’t know exactly what constitutes early in L.A. I woke up at seven o’clock and did some research to find a good breakfast place that was open. Well, most of what was close either didn’t sound good for breakfast or was open after I wanted to be on Hollywood Boulevard so we just ate at the hotel restaurant. I had my first fruity Belgian waffle and, as I said to Twitter, the Belgian who decided to combine fresh fruit with their waffle needs to work on world peace because holy crap that was yummy!
We grabbed the cab and I said to the driver, “We’re going to Grauman’s Chinese theatre, but we need to make a quick stop at 1428 (address redacted).”
I know that the address to the house is easily found on the internet, but it’s still a private residence and you’re not going to get the address from me.
So what is 1428 (address redacted)? Why, I haz pictures, let me show you them...
and
as well as
That’s right...the house from A Nightmare on Elm Street whose address in the movie is 1428 Elm Street.
In the caption for the photos, I mention that I’m not ashamed to admit that I was super excited to actually see the house right there before my eyes. I’m a filmmaker, but I’m also a fan. Technically, I was a fan first. So there! :D
From there we went to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The slideshow below will show you all of the L.A. pictures except for the Chinese New Years ones.
Highlights from the trip to Hollywood Boulevard are seeing Cary Grant’s imprint and various favourite stars. I wanted to meet up with my friend Kimberley, but that didn’t work out since my brother and I decided to do lunch in Chinatown instead of on the Boulevard and then we never made it back, but that’s just one more reason for me to return!
After walking up and down the boulevard a little bit, we headed over to Chinatown to catch the New Years parade and festivities! Words can’t do the beauty justice. I LOVE the idea of two New Years in one year. I know, to the Chinese it’s just one a year, but I don’t see why one can’t celebrate new beginnings whenever they want! Plus, it was gorgeous, just check out the slideshow below!
A quick warning first: There are videos in the slideshow, one in particular of a martial arts demonstration that will make everyone, but especially men, cringe. The videos are all at the end of the slideshow. Consider yourself duly warned...
We walked around Chinatown for a little while, watched the martial arts demonstration at Central Plaza, and then we got lunch. I let UrbanSpoon decide for us and it pointed us toward Yang Chow which turned out to be a happenin’ spot! Betty White, Omar Epps, and LL Cool J are among the famous actors whose photos grace their walls and it was packed! With good reason...the food was delicious! Shawn got their famous Slippery Shrimp and I got their sliced chicken and snow peas, which is something I always get here. Well, not again. Theirs was so amazing that there’s no way I could order chicken and snow peas here. And the slippery shrimp? It has a wicked name, but it’s also delicious!
From there, we walked south on Broadway into downtown L.A. In total, we probably walked about three or four miles, not even how far we walked in NY (from the Bowery area to Times Square and back), but it felt like longer because nothing was open. There were businesses and clubs, places I’d heard of, that weren’t open. I had to check my phone for the time...it as only about 8 at night!
It didn’t seem like the best part of town, but I didn’t feel like we were in danger, either.
As we walked, we happened upon some crane lights and a caravan of trailers. I got excited: maybe it’s Spider-Man and we can see a multi-million dollar movie being filmed so I guided us over. Turns out it was a Verizon commercial.
and
In the commercial, all of these people are driving carphones* when the newest, bestest carphone evar!1 drives by. We couldn’t see the model of the phone so maybe it’s something that has yet to explode on the market, but the cars were cute. So much money being wasted, though, with at least half of the crew just sitting or standing around.
We eventually left them to their devices* and walked around some more, finding ourselves outside a Regal on West Olympic. It was the best, nearest landmark for the cab. We decided to go back to the hotel. I needed to lie down for a minute, I was dizzy (yay vertigo) and then we could decide what to do. It’s so weird that there was NOTHING to do in L.A. at 8 that didn’t involve alcohol, but whatever...
After my lie down, we headed out to the Sunset Strip around ten or eleven to choose which club we were going to check out for a taste of the local music scene. Shawn saw a sign that said that Wino from St. Vitus was playing the Viper Room and the guy at the door said that he was up after the band that played next so we walked up and down Sunset and headed into the Viper. As it turned out, Wino, a headliner, played way early in the night and all that was left were local rock bands. Jesus...is L.A. like this ALL of the time or was it a special occasion because of the Super Bowl?
I don’t want to name the band that played when we walked in, but oh my God, they sucked. They could play just fine, but there was no heart behind the music. Boring. After about a song and a half, we headed over to the Whiskey A Go Go and watched the group there, The Standells. They’re an older group and though the write up I read said they were early punk, they sounded more like a slightly rockier Beach Boys. They were good, but not really our scene so we stayed for a couple of songs, then went back to our rooms for an early night. It was a good idea because the while reason we were there in the first place, BleedFest Film Festival, was the next day and it was going to be a long day.
*Puns intended.
We grabbed the cab and I said to the driver, “We’re going to Grauman’s Chinese theatre, but we need to make a quick stop at 1428 (address redacted).”
I know that the address to the house is easily found on the internet, but it’s still a private residence and you’re not going to get the address from me.
So what is 1428 (address redacted)? Why, I haz pictures, let me show you them...
and
as well as
That’s right...the house from A Nightmare on Elm Street whose address in the movie is 1428 Elm Street.
In the caption for the photos, I mention that I’m not ashamed to admit that I was super excited to actually see the house right there before my eyes. I’m a filmmaker, but I’m also a fan. Technically, I was a fan first. So there! :D
From there we went to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The slideshow below will show you all of the L.A. pictures except for the Chinese New Years ones.
Highlights from the trip to Hollywood Boulevard are seeing Cary Grant’s imprint and various favourite stars. I wanted to meet up with my friend Kimberley, but that didn’t work out since my brother and I decided to do lunch in Chinatown instead of on the Boulevard and then we never made it back, but that’s just one more reason for me to return!
After walking up and down the boulevard a little bit, we headed over to Chinatown to catch the New Years parade and festivities! Words can’t do the beauty justice. I LOVE the idea of two New Years in one year. I know, to the Chinese it’s just one a year, but I don’t see why one can’t celebrate new beginnings whenever they want! Plus, it was gorgeous, just check out the slideshow below!
A quick warning first: There are videos in the slideshow, one in particular of a martial arts demonstration that will make everyone, but especially men, cringe. The videos are all at the end of the slideshow. Consider yourself duly warned...
We walked around Chinatown for a little while, watched the martial arts demonstration at Central Plaza, and then we got lunch. I let UrbanSpoon decide for us and it pointed us toward Yang Chow which turned out to be a happenin’ spot! Betty White, Omar Epps, and LL Cool J are among the famous actors whose photos grace their walls and it was packed! With good reason...the food was delicious! Shawn got their famous Slippery Shrimp and I got their sliced chicken and snow peas, which is something I always get here. Well, not again. Theirs was so amazing that there’s no way I could order chicken and snow peas here. And the slippery shrimp? It has a wicked name, but it’s also delicious!
From there, we walked south on Broadway into downtown L.A. In total, we probably walked about three or four miles, not even how far we walked in NY (from the Bowery area to Times Square and back), but it felt like longer because nothing was open. There were businesses and clubs, places I’d heard of, that weren’t open. I had to check my phone for the time...it as only about 8 at night!
It didn’t seem like the best part of town, but I didn’t feel like we were in danger, either.
As we walked, we happened upon some crane lights and a caravan of trailers. I got excited: maybe it’s Spider-Man and we can see a multi-million dollar movie being filmed so I guided us over. Turns out it was a Verizon commercial.
and
In the commercial, all of these people are driving carphones* when the newest, bestest carphone evar!1 drives by. We couldn’t see the model of the phone so maybe it’s something that has yet to explode on the market, but the cars were cute. So much money being wasted, though, with at least half of the crew just sitting or standing around.
We eventually left them to their devices* and walked around some more, finding ourselves outside a Regal on West Olympic. It was the best, nearest landmark for the cab. We decided to go back to the hotel. I needed to lie down for a minute, I was dizzy (yay vertigo) and then we could decide what to do. It’s so weird that there was NOTHING to do in L.A. at 8 that didn’t involve alcohol, but whatever...
After my lie down, we headed out to the Sunset Strip around ten or eleven to choose which club we were going to check out for a taste of the local music scene. Shawn saw a sign that said that Wino from St. Vitus was playing the Viper Room and the guy at the door said that he was up after the band that played next so we walked up and down Sunset and headed into the Viper. As it turned out, Wino, a headliner, played way early in the night and all that was left were local rock bands. Jesus...is L.A. like this ALL of the time or was it a special occasion because of the Super Bowl?
I don’t want to name the band that played when we walked in, but oh my God, they sucked. They could play just fine, but there was no heart behind the music. Boring. After about a song and a half, we headed over to the Whiskey A Go Go and watched the group there, The Standells. They’re an older group and though the write up I read said they were early punk, they sounded more like a slightly rockier Beach Boys. They were good, but not really our scene so we stayed for a couple of songs, then went back to our rooms for an early night. It was a good idea because the while reason we were there in the first place, BleedFest Film Festival, was the next day and it was going to be a long day.
*Puns intended.
Picture It...L.A., 2011: Day One
The great thing about flying from America’s right coast to the left is that you fly backwards in time. If you go to L.A., you might have an eight or nine hour flight, but you arrive at your destination only a few hours after taking off. Such was the case when my brother and I took off from SRQ at omg o’clock in the morning and arrived at LAX at 12:30 in the afternoon, though it was 3:30 our time.
If you don’t live in or around LA or the suburbs, you may hear about the crappy traffic, but the main issue with the place is how far things are from each other. To get anywhere you have to get on the infamous 405 at some point. LAX is 30-45 minutes from the hotel we were staying at on Ventura even on the highway. It seems like everything is half an hour away from wherever you are which isn’t too bad a drive (except in traffic), but is murder on the wallet. However, actually driving in LA is insane and it’s better to have a native behind the wheel.
I wanted to stay in a hotel that was close to the venue, but still rated as being safe and clean. The Courtyard by Marriott in Sherman Oaks was a 45 minute walk from the venue according to Google Maps (but only 6 minutes by car, figure that one out) and it was near restaurants and shops. I’m no expert when it comes to travel, but I am reasonably experienced in walking everywhere. That’s not entirely feasible in L.A. At least their public transportation runs late, but things close really early there, even on the weekend, and they open relatively late in the day. It’s weird to say, but Sarasota keeps better hours than LA.
We got settled in the hotel and, I don’t know about Shawn, but I was exhausted and we hadn’t eaten for twelve hours. We decided to go to P.F. Chang’s which was a Chinese restaurant in the shopping center down the street from the hotel. I accidentally guided us in the opposite direction (don’t let me navigate when I’m tired...), but we turned around and got on the right track.
The food was delicious (I had crispy honey chicken, omnomnom) and while I was still tired, I definitely felt better so we grabbed a cab and went to Griffith Observatory. Wow, that was far away...but very much worth it.
I did adjust the brightness/saturation a bit on the sunset photos, but only because the camera (my Casio point and shoot) adjusted to 800 ISO and it looked like crap.
Griffith Observatory is amazingly beautiful. Of course, it’s most well known for the James Dean and Natalie Wood film Rebel Without a Cause, but while I was up there, I kept thinking about how Heather Langenkamp and Johnny Depp went to the Observatory in 1983 for a character building date before they shot A Nightmare on Elm Street. God, I’m such a geek...and I love it!
Anyway, my brother and I caught two shows at the planetarium, which is something I highly recommend doing: Centered in the Universe which is about the expansion of our knowledge about the space that surrounds us and how much more is still out there to explore, and Lights of the Valkyrie which is about the Northern Lights and the early vikings’ interpretation of them and the stars. It was really great stuff made even better with a live narration. The woman who narrated the shows kind of sounded like Susan Sarandon (whom I love), and though that was distracting, she was excellent and added a special slice of awesome to the show.
Before we left for L.A., I did research on some things to do and see there. I knew that Kevin Smith recorded his SModcast podcasts live so I looked at the schedule and found out that he and Jason Mewes were doing Jay and Silent Bob Get Old at the Jon Lovitz Comedy Club in Universal CityWalk. Score! We got a cab from Griffith to CityWalk (which was surprisingly close, but definitely not within walking distance, like most of LA) and went right to the Lovitz theatre to make sure we got tickets. The show was slated to start at 10 and we got there around 8:30 or 9. There were still tickets, but a line had already started.
We wanted to see the show, but not THAT badly so we walked around CityWalk. Here in Florida, CityWalk is HUGE, but they had more space to work with. In LA, since it’s next to the working studio park and in the middle of the city, it has to be small and build upwards for more space. It’s not only small, but loud and bright. CityWalk in Orlando would be that loud and bright, too, if it was in such a limited space with every club and bar on the strip vying for your attention.
We stopped in at Things From Another World because I thought it would be awesome. The one I went to in the Portland / Seattle area has a large collection of awesome Japanese toys and cool things like that. The TFAW CityWalk was cool, but not as cool as the one in Washington. So weird to say that... Other than that, we didn’t really stop in any of the shops, even the gigantic GameStop.
We got in line at just the right time because we were still relatively close to the front of the line, but soon after we got in place, the line blossomed into a long, unwieldy snake that wrapped around the sides of the club and possibly further.
We got to the door and the guy asked us how many were in our party and I told him that there were only two of us. So he said, “Would you like to sit up front?”
I wanted to say “Hell yeah we wanna sit up front!” but I calmly replied, “Well, yes, we’d like to...” So he pointed us to these seats:
How great are they? So great! Although, really, it seems like there isn’t a bad seat in the house. The club is small, but it’s also tall with three stories of seats relatively close to the stage.
Eventually, Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith come out and talk for an hour or an hour and a half. The Get Old podcast is really just like the two of them sitting down and chatting, but they have the live, paying audience. It was absolutely worth $40 total to see it live! If you like Smith, you’re in L.A., and they’re recording Get Old at a club, either the SModcastle or at Jon Lovitz or wherever, I highly recommend it. It was hilarious, a great way to end our first day in L.A.!
After the show, we went back to our rooms and collapsed to prepare ourselves for Saturday where we were going to check out Hollywood Boulevard, Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, and the Chinatown New Years Parade with a quick stop by a landmark that's very important to me and my career.
If you don’t live in or around LA or the suburbs, you may hear about the crappy traffic, but the main issue with the place is how far things are from each other. To get anywhere you have to get on the infamous 405 at some point. LAX is 30-45 minutes from the hotel we were staying at on Ventura even on the highway. It seems like everything is half an hour away from wherever you are which isn’t too bad a drive (except in traffic), but is murder on the wallet. However, actually driving in LA is insane and it’s better to have a native behind the wheel.
I wanted to stay in a hotel that was close to the venue, but still rated as being safe and clean. The Courtyard by Marriott in Sherman Oaks was a 45 minute walk from the venue according to Google Maps (but only 6 minutes by car, figure that one out) and it was near restaurants and shops. I’m no expert when it comes to travel, but I am reasonably experienced in walking everywhere. That’s not entirely feasible in L.A. At least their public transportation runs late, but things close really early there, even on the weekend, and they open relatively late in the day. It’s weird to say, but Sarasota keeps better hours than LA.
We got settled in the hotel and, I don’t know about Shawn, but I was exhausted and we hadn’t eaten for twelve hours. We decided to go to P.F. Chang’s which was a Chinese restaurant in the shopping center down the street from the hotel. I accidentally guided us in the opposite direction (don’t let me navigate when I’m tired...), but we turned around and got on the right track.
The food was delicious (I had crispy honey chicken, omnomnom) and while I was still tired, I definitely felt better so we grabbed a cab and went to Griffith Observatory. Wow, that was far away...but very much worth it.
I did adjust the brightness/saturation a bit on the sunset photos, but only because the camera (my Casio point and shoot) adjusted to 800 ISO and it looked like crap.
Griffith Observatory is amazingly beautiful. Of course, it’s most well known for the James Dean and Natalie Wood film Rebel Without a Cause, but while I was up there, I kept thinking about how Heather Langenkamp and Johnny Depp went to the Observatory in 1983 for a character building date before they shot A Nightmare on Elm Street. God, I’m such a geek...and I love it!
Anyway, my brother and I caught two shows at the planetarium, which is something I highly recommend doing: Centered in the Universe which is about the expansion of our knowledge about the space that surrounds us and how much more is still out there to explore, and Lights of the Valkyrie which is about the Northern Lights and the early vikings’ interpretation of them and the stars. It was really great stuff made even better with a live narration. The woman who narrated the shows kind of sounded like Susan Sarandon (whom I love), and though that was distracting, she was excellent and added a special slice of awesome to the show.
Before we left for L.A., I did research on some things to do and see there. I knew that Kevin Smith recorded his SModcast podcasts live so I looked at the schedule and found out that he and Jason Mewes were doing Jay and Silent Bob Get Old at the Jon Lovitz Comedy Club in Universal CityWalk. Score! We got a cab from Griffith to CityWalk (which was surprisingly close, but definitely not within walking distance, like most of LA) and went right to the Lovitz theatre to make sure we got tickets. The show was slated to start at 10 and we got there around 8:30 or 9. There were still tickets, but a line had already started.
We wanted to see the show, but not THAT badly so we walked around CityWalk. Here in Florida, CityWalk is HUGE, but they had more space to work with. In LA, since it’s next to the working studio park and in the middle of the city, it has to be small and build upwards for more space. It’s not only small, but loud and bright. CityWalk in Orlando would be that loud and bright, too, if it was in such a limited space with every club and bar on the strip vying for your attention.
We stopped in at Things From Another World because I thought it would be awesome. The one I went to in the Portland / Seattle area has a large collection of awesome Japanese toys and cool things like that. The TFAW CityWalk was cool, but not as cool as the one in Washington. So weird to say that... Other than that, we didn’t really stop in any of the shops, even the gigantic GameStop.
We got in line at just the right time because we were still relatively close to the front of the line, but soon after we got in place, the line blossomed into a long, unwieldy snake that wrapped around the sides of the club and possibly further.
We got to the door and the guy asked us how many were in our party and I told him that there were only two of us. So he said, “Would you like to sit up front?”
I wanted to say “Hell yeah we wanna sit up front!” but I calmly replied, “Well, yes, we’d like to...” So he pointed us to these seats:
How great are they? So great! Although, really, it seems like there isn’t a bad seat in the house. The club is small, but it’s also tall with three stories of seats relatively close to the stage.
Eventually, Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith come out and talk for an hour or an hour and a half. The Get Old podcast is really just like the two of them sitting down and chatting, but they have the live, paying audience. It was absolutely worth $40 total to see it live! If you like Smith, you’re in L.A., and they’re recording Get Old at a club, either the SModcastle or at Jon Lovitz or wherever, I highly recommend it. It was hilarious, a great way to end our first day in L.A.!
After the show, we went back to our rooms and collapsed to prepare ourselves for Saturday where we were going to check out Hollywood Boulevard, Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, and the Chinatown New Years Parade with a quick stop by a landmark that's very important to me and my career.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Help an Orlando-based filmmaker raise completion funds for his Super8 short!
Tim Anderson is a talented producer based out of the Orlando, Florida, area and he's looking for help raising completion funds for his shot on Super8 short film La Fleur de Mort. If you have a moment, please head to his Kickstarter website, watch the video and if you feel so compelled, contribute!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1267783718/la-fleur-de-mort-an-experimental-horror-film-0
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1267783718/la-fleur-de-mort-an-experimental-horror-film-0
Friday, December 31, 2010
KimyooFilms on OpenFilm!
One of the most common questions I get is "Are your films online?" and for a long time I replied no. They were still out on the festival circuit or I couldn't find a website that I liked that handled films in a way that made me feel comfortable. Then, I heard about this place called OpenFilm. They'll host features and shorts and it's built for filmmakers, not for vbloggers or machinimaniacs or anything that would normally wind up on YouTube. After BleedFest, I'll be putting "Essenger" and aftershock up, too, but for now, if you have an hour to spare, you can now go check out both Without / Within and A Hammer Fell in Jerusalem: Anathema online! Woohoo!!
Also, I've submitted A Hammer Fell in Jerusalem: Anathema to the Get It Made competition, a contest where the winner is given a bunch of dough to make a feature version of their short. If you have the time and the inclination, please create an account and vote for my film! Hell, go watch a bunch of the films and vote! It is free, after all. They say that 60% of the contest is based on viewer impressions so click on the stars (one for crappy, five for MINDBLOWINGLY AWESOME!) and vote honestly!
In closing: this year has been amazing and I feel so blessed. Next year, and the year after that, and the year after that and so on and so forth...they're only going to get better! Thank you all so much for sticking around through my long silences and then sudden bursts of tl;dr fangeekery! Be safe tonight and happy new year!!
Also, I've submitted A Hammer Fell in Jerusalem: Anathema to the Get It Made competition, a contest where the winner is given a bunch of dough to make a feature version of their short. If you have the time and the inclination, please create an account and vote for my film! Hell, go watch a bunch of the films and vote! It is free, after all. They say that 60% of the contest is based on viewer impressions so click on the stars (one for crappy, five for MINDBLOWINGLY AWESOME!) and vote honestly!
In closing: this year has been amazing and I feel so blessed. Next year, and the year after that, and the year after that and so on and so forth...they're only going to get better! Thank you all so much for sticking around through my long silences and then sudden bursts of tl;dr fangeekery! Be safe tonight and happy new year!!
Sunday, November 28, 2010
BleedFest
Now is a pretty exciting time to be a woman in horror, by the looks of things. We've got FangirlTastic, formerly Pretty/Scary, which seems to be kicking thing up a notch, and the wonderful Viscera Film Festival. Now, there's BleedFest, a monthly festival for female genre filmmakers! How great is THAT?! Both Viscera and BleedFest are free to submit and they're both in California and 2011 will mark the second year of the Women in Horror movement started by Hannah Neurotica of AxWound Magazine!
Hmm...I'm not sure I have enough links in this post yet so here's one more for good measure: I Am Nancy because, duh, I'm super excited for this documentary and it totally fits in with my previous topic since the creative team locked picture and have started that torturous process: festival submission!
I'm seeing a lot more women being recognized for their work in the genre and even more coming out of the woodwork, as it were, to make genre pictures. Our work is never done, but at least I, and others like me, won't feel so alone now!
In other news, I'm in pre-production on another short film! I plan on shooting it early next year, depending on funding and all of that. I've got the script locked, which is always a good thing, and I plan on starting the storyboards tomorrow! I also just finished the first draft of a new script. It's almost feature length, but I know the areas I need to address in the next draft which will put it into feature length territory. This particular story is one I've been trying to write for years and I'd love for it to be my first feature. If I were to have my way, I already know who I would cast for the four major roles, but I'm getting ahead of myself, which I tend to do when I get overly excited. :D
I've also got two more music videos to work on for World Collision, one to promote the Nosferatu soundtrack they recorded and one for their next album! I'm very excited for both of them! I've gotten to listen to bits and pieces of the studio version of the Nosferatu soundtrack and, I've gotta tell you, it's pretty fabulous!
Hopefully, I'll be back to my babbling self on this blog soon! Hope everyone's Thanksgiving was fantastic!!
Hmm...I'm not sure I have enough links in this post yet so here's one more for good measure: I Am Nancy because, duh, I'm super excited for this documentary and it totally fits in with my previous topic since the creative team locked picture and have started that torturous process: festival submission!
I'm seeing a lot more women being recognized for their work in the genre and even more coming out of the woodwork, as it were, to make genre pictures. Our work is never done, but at least I, and others like me, won't feel so alone now!
In other news, I'm in pre-production on another short film! I plan on shooting it early next year, depending on funding and all of that. I've got the script locked, which is always a good thing, and I plan on starting the storyboards tomorrow! I also just finished the first draft of a new script. It's almost feature length, but I know the areas I need to address in the next draft which will put it into feature length territory. This particular story is one I've been trying to write for years and I'd love for it to be my first feature. If I were to have my way, I already know who I would cast for the four major roles, but I'm getting ahead of myself, which I tend to do when I get overly excited. :D
I've also got two more music videos to work on for World Collision, one to promote the Nosferatu soundtrack they recorded and one for their next album! I'm very excited for both of them! I've gotten to listen to bits and pieces of the studio version of the Nosferatu soundtrack and, I've gotta tell you, it's pretty fabulous!
Hopefully, I'll be back to my babbling self on this blog soon! Hope everyone's Thanksgiving was fantastic!!
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Downloadable versions of the Hallowscreen Film Festival schedule.
In an effort to reduce how much paper is used at Hallowscreen, I've created two more ways of getting our schedule in addition to the physical, printed brochure and the web-based version of the schedule.
Click here to download our schedule as an epub document hosted by MediaFire.
Click here to download the inside of our brochure as a PDF, also hosted by MediaFire.
If I'd remembered about QR codes earlier, I would've put them on the posters...ah well, next year!!
Click here to download our schedule as an epub document hosted by MediaFire.
Click here to download the inside of our brochure as a PDF, also hosted by MediaFire.
If I'd remembered about QR codes earlier, I would've put them on the posters...ah well, next year!!
Monday, October 11, 2010
Spooky Empire, Part the Second
I awoke and headed down to the hotel restaurant Augustine's for breakfast. I got overpriced silver dollar pancakes, pretty good potatoes, and to see one of the actors brought in for the weekend being a douche because he was running late and he ordered the wait staff around like little more than chattel. I won't say who he is because maybe he was having a bad day and perhaps doesn't deserve to have his name dragged through the mud, but still. Wheaton's Law must always be in effect: Don't be a dick.
After breakfast, I meandered over to the con and got in line for the first photo op: Heather Langenkamp and Robert Englund. Since Robert Englund's solo op was first, I thought it would be prudent because the lines were a bit of a mess. I didn't care about being first (though that was cool because Mr. Englund and Ms. Langenkamp hadn't settled into a rhythm so I got to see a little behind the Con versions of themselves), I just wanted to make sure I got in there! I didn't know that Mr. Englund would have a glove...every picture I saw that he wore one, I just thought it was provided by the fan so I didn't have an appropriate pose in mind when I went in. Guess I'll have to take another one next time the two of them are in a con near me! Oh darn!
The photo op process is one that, by necessity, goes quick. The printing process takes about an hour or so so I went off to take in more of the con. I bought a couple of shirts: one is a composite of the posters for Nightmares 1-6 (although they used an Asian version of the Nightmare 1 poster, but at least Nancy's represented by the original Nightmare 3 art!) and the other is a shirt for Lucio Fulci's Zombie. :D I may have been there to meet Heather Langenkamp, but I'm still a fan of horror!
My next photo op was with Ms. Langenkamp solo and wasn't supposed to happen until 4:30 so I kill some more time walking around and taking in the environment, then I got into line around 3:45 / 4:00. Then I found out that they were going to smush the one-on-one photo ops for Ms. Wyss, Ms. Langenkamp, and Mr. Saxon into the same time frame as the trio photo op and they pushed it an hour. I figured that was to give more time to the John Carpenter photo op, but then I learned that I was the only one to buy the photo op time for Ms. Langenkamp. (Turns out there were two of us, but judging by this book's cover, I was the less scary one...) So, I went outside to chat with my mom until it was time to get into line for the photo op when two ambulances pulled up.
There are a lot of things that happen at cons. There was a table selling real metal Freddy claws (dulled down, I'm sure, but not collapsable and people are stupid.) People cosplay, some with real weapons as part of their ensemble. Some cosplay in outfits they really shouldn't be wearing and for a multitude of reasons. And some people are just jerks and bring these attitudes in with them. I'd been witness to some douchiness already, mind you, so I thought some stupid fan did something stupid. I found out the next day that the ambulances were for John Carpenter because he'd had a seizure.
Ho. Ly. Crap.
He's okay and when he showed up on Sunday for the Q&A, he looked fit as a fiddle, but that was shocking news, especially when I heard it from a source outside of the con. No one talked about it. A stupid fan does something stupid, you don't hear about it. When one of the fathers of modern horror suffers a seizure at the convention where you're conventioning, you'd think it would've been talked about, but no...weird...
Back to Saturday: I got into line for my solo photo op and got my photo taken with Ms. Langenkamp again. She took a moment to thank me (remembering my name!) and said I should stop back by so she could give me an I Am Nancy button (even though I was already wearing one.) I wasn't about to pass up another I Am Nancy button! I lost my first one in New York when I was there for a film festival and Arlene Marechal and the I Am Nancy crew were nice enough to send me more, but I plan on giving some of those away during Hallowscreen if I'm able to secure a special teaser clip to play. I wanted the movie, but Ms. Langenkamp told me they just submitted to Sundance. Sundance gives special attention and consideration to premieres and it wouldn't be a world premiere anymore if Hallowscreen got it. I hope they get in to Sundance!
Once the photo was printed out, I went in to the autograph room and got her to sign it. She couldn't believe that I didn't have a favourite quote, but liked it when I asked her to sign it with a lyric from the Just the Ten of Us theme, "Life is a race and I know I can win it." Uplifting. Wholesome. Not "screw your pass!" or "9, 10 Never Sleep Again!" or anything like that. Hahahaha! I thanked her again and left to go to the special effects panel hosted by Rick Rodriguez.
Rick isn't a very engaging host. He lost the interest of the once-packed house pretty early on and they all started talking amongst themselves which was very rude, but he seemed to be more focused on name dropping and the effects demonstrations than actually talking to us. To be more precise, it felt more like a long, slightly boring version of Universal's Horror Effects Make-Up Show with pauses to sell products that were made by some of his colleagues. Personally, I wondered why they didn't get Ms. Langenkamp's husband, David LeRoy Anderson, to come in and talk about effects. His work is top notch, but he's not local so maybe that's why the organizers didn't bother. Instead, this guy showed the KNB anniversary reel (he's not a part of KNB so I'm not sure why it was there), a clip from the original Day of the Dead (his army zombie ripped out Miguel's throat at the end of the film, but you don't see the zombie in the movie, you just see the rope latex effect of Miguel's throat), and a few effects clips from other movies.
After that, I went back to my room to give myself time away from people before I went to the VIP party. I got there just in time to see G. Tom Mac play "Cry Little Sister" and see a little kareoke, but a large group of people and alcohol do not a friendly mix make so I hung around for a little bit, then went to see She Wolf Rising at the Freak Show Horror Film Festival. The trailer makes it seem a little goofier than it actually is...it's more of a mindtrip fairy tale of sorts, but Tiffany Shepis was excellent. I talked to the associate producer, Glen, after the film was over about picking up a copy for my festival and he said that I could pick up the back up DVD from the festival organizer the next day so with that all worked out and the movie over, I went back to my room to get some sleep. Sunday was a big day after all!!
~~~~~
I got up early on Sunday and the first thing I noticed was that the world was spinning. Again, I don't drink and I don't do drugs so it could only mean one thing: my vertigo decided it wanted to dance. Yay. I was dizzy, depending on the position my head was in, from 9 am until I went to sleep around 10 pm, but I wasn't about to let it put a damper on the final day of the con!
The VIP badges are good for getting into the convention area early. Mainly, that applies to the dealer's room. I planned on going back to get one of the 3D Elm Street posters so I went in, but, alas, they were all sold out and there were several sprinkled throughout the dealer's room. They had a plethora of Friday the 13th 3D posters, but no Elm Street. Ah well. Instead, I found a WGON shirt, then I got into the VIP line for the first Q&A of the day: Return of the Living Dead!
I love RotLD, not enough to get autographs, but I'm so glad I went to the Q&A! They were all hilarious and warm and they were kind enough to pose for group photos after the show. When the Q&A was over, they asked the staff to lower the house lights and for the audience to illuminate our faces with our cell phones. I was the fastest on the draw with the flashlight app on my phone so they all pointed at me and took my picture. If I can find any, I'll come back and post them.
Immediately following them was the Q&A with John Carpenter! All the general admission schlubs had to get out, but us VIPs got to stay where we were. That's the kind of perk I can enjoy! ;D
That is actress Erin Gray next to him. I don't know why she was his handler, but I thought it was pretty cool regardless. He seemed to take the constant Halloween questions (and questions about the sequels that he has no part in) in stride, but when asked about his newest project, The Ward, he didn't really say much. Now, don't get me wrong, I love Halloween and Escape from New York and Big Trouble in Little China and Cigarette Burns and everything, but I really wanted to hear more about The Ward as it's a new project and he says it's old school horror probably coming out next year. Most importantly, though, it was good to see that he felt well enough to be there!
After that, they kicked everyone out, even VIP, to reset for the Elm Street panel...which was pointless because as soon as I got to the back of the VIP line, they ushered us back in. I lost my seat, though, and ended up a whole seat to the right. :D At first, they were saying it was going to be just Robert Englund, which would've been fun, sure, but I wanted to hear from the whole cast, not just him...then, at the very last second, they brought out more chairs! Yay! The whole cast was coming out!
You'll notice that some of the photos use the flash and some don't...this is the story for all of the photos I took during the Q&As. I didn't want to blind anyone because I wanted to take lots of pictures, but the lights on stage weren't quite good enough for flashless photos. Then, the light wasn't all that good to focus by, either. Ah well. I tried!
Anyway, the Q&A was great. Of course, the questions were focused on Mr. Englund, who does talk a lot, but he tried to involve the other cast members. I was able to ask my question before the end of the Q&A and it went something like this: "This is mainly for Ms. Langenkamp, but I'd love to hear Ms. Wyss weigh in as well. Freddy wouldn't be who he is without Nancy, you need to have the strong hero to balance the strong villain. Were you aware at the time that Nancy would be so important or was that something that dawned on you as the popularity in the film grew?"
I meant the question as more of a Feminist / Woman in Horror type question as opposed to a character centric question, but I really liked the response Ms. Langenkamp and Mr. Englund gave which was that the two of them (mostly Mr. Englund) went for a Beauty and the Beast style energy not so much in the romantic sense (though that was there, too), but in the sense of these diametrically opposed beings struggling with each other and yet they're part of the same energy. Originally, Freddy really was just a dream, a part of Nancy's subconscious as a young girl burgeoning into womanhood. A real life pedophilia scandal in the area around the time Elm Street was being filmed made Wes Craven decide to tone down the pedophiliac aspects of the character, and then producer Bob Shaye wanted the possibility of sequels so he and Mr. Craven fought over the ending until we have what now ends the film.
My favourite thing about Nancy is that she defeats this demonic child murdering pedophile without the conceit of superpowers. Even the series' next strongest female character, Alice, has superpowers in the dream as the Dream Master (which really doesn't help her much at all, to be honest.) Nancy doesn't belong to any clique, she's beautiful in a very real way, she's very smart...she's a regular girl who's been thrown into this impossible circumstance and no one will believe her when she warns them about what's happening. The same thing goes for movie!Heather in Wes Craven's New Nightmare unless you want to call being a dedicated mother a superpower to which I would concede.
This very same thing is what I hate about remake!Nancy: they made her a freaky artist chick, said she knew what was going on when she had no flippin' idea until the Glen surrogate told her what was up, and made her little more than a plaything for Jackie Earle Haley's terrifying portrayal of remake!Freddy. Without that equality between the main characters, the whole story is lost.
And I'm babbling. But I won't delete it, so there. :P
After the Q&A, Ms. Langenkamp happened to pass by me out in the hall so I was able to thank her once more and she thanked me, too! By name! I suppose it's silly to be so giddy that she remembered my name, but I don't care. She remembered my name! :D
Still on a high, I wandered around a bit. The con was winding down and I watched actors pack up their wares to head back to their hotel rooms or catch the next flight out. I thanked Linnea Quigley for coming out (and soon after discovered that she was going to be at a film festival in Ybor which is about an hour north of me, but I'll be at a friend's Halloween party) then remembered that she had a presentation at 4:30 so I went to see that. She and this dude named Erik have put together a half hour comedy pilot about paranormal investigators. Funnily enough, Steve Gonzales from Ghosthunters was in the audience. The show needs work...all the jokes are too "hey, look at me, I'm funny! See? See how funny I am?!" There were a couple of funny bits, but they would've been better with a more subtle build up. At least, they would be in my opinion. I booked out of there kinda fast only because I needed to make sure I was able to pick up the back-up DVD for She Wolf Rising from the Freak Show Film Festival and I wanted to attend the awards ceremony. Ms. Quigley's thing was supposed to end within ten minutes of the ceremony starting, but either the presentation ran late or they started the awards early because I made it back in time only to hear the final award: Best Feature went to Kiss the Abyss.
I was able to get She Wolf Rising from Robert Massetti and then went to my room because the return bus was to leave at 5:15 in the morning. The vertigo went away while I watched something on my iPad before turning it off to go to sleep and other than a little bit of dizziness today, which might have just been tiredness, I've been vertigo-free since I woke up! Yay!
So...long story short (too late), I got to meet my heroine and she was absolutely lovely. I had a great time and I'm glad I was able to do the con at my own pace instead of trying to please a group of people because I was there just to meet Heather Langenkamp and I did a lot of waiting to make sure I got to meet her / see her. All of the other experiences were like the sprinkles on top. It was well worth the time, effort, and money to go to the con and I'm so glad I did it!
As I ate dinner last night, the last actor I saw before heading back to my room was Robert Englund...a nice, circular way to close out a fabulous weekend.
Not that she'll ever read this, but thank you again, Ms. Langenkamp! And thank you Spooky Empire for having her as a guest!
After breakfast, I meandered over to the con and got in line for the first photo op: Heather Langenkamp and Robert Englund. Since Robert Englund's solo op was first, I thought it would be prudent because the lines were a bit of a mess. I didn't care about being first (though that was cool because Mr. Englund and Ms. Langenkamp hadn't settled into a rhythm so I got to see a little behind the Con versions of themselves), I just wanted to make sure I got in there! I didn't know that Mr. Englund would have a glove...every picture I saw that he wore one, I just thought it was provided by the fan so I didn't have an appropriate pose in mind when I went in. Guess I'll have to take another one next time the two of them are in a con near me! Oh darn!
The photo op process is one that, by necessity, goes quick. The printing process takes about an hour or so so I went off to take in more of the con. I bought a couple of shirts: one is a composite of the posters for Nightmares 1-6 (although they used an Asian version of the Nightmare 1 poster, but at least Nancy's represented by the original Nightmare 3 art!) and the other is a shirt for Lucio Fulci's Zombie. :D I may have been there to meet Heather Langenkamp, but I'm still a fan of horror!
My next photo op was with Ms. Langenkamp solo and wasn't supposed to happen until 4:30 so I kill some more time walking around and taking in the environment, then I got into line around 3:45 / 4:00. Then I found out that they were going to smush the one-on-one photo ops for Ms. Wyss, Ms. Langenkamp, and Mr. Saxon into the same time frame as the trio photo op and they pushed it an hour. I figured that was to give more time to the John Carpenter photo op, but then I learned that I was the only one to buy the photo op time for Ms. Langenkamp. (Turns out there were two of us, but judging by this book's cover, I was the less scary one...) So, I went outside to chat with my mom until it was time to get into line for the photo op when two ambulances pulled up.
There are a lot of things that happen at cons. There was a table selling real metal Freddy claws (dulled down, I'm sure, but not collapsable and people are stupid.) People cosplay, some with real weapons as part of their ensemble. Some cosplay in outfits they really shouldn't be wearing and for a multitude of reasons. And some people are just jerks and bring these attitudes in with them. I'd been witness to some douchiness already, mind you, so I thought some stupid fan did something stupid. I found out the next day that the ambulances were for John Carpenter because he'd had a seizure.
Ho. Ly. Crap.
He's okay and when he showed up on Sunday for the Q&A, he looked fit as a fiddle, but that was shocking news, especially when I heard it from a source outside of the con. No one talked about it. A stupid fan does something stupid, you don't hear about it. When one of the fathers of modern horror suffers a seizure at the convention where you're conventioning, you'd think it would've been talked about, but no...weird...
Back to Saturday: I got into line for my solo photo op and got my photo taken with Ms. Langenkamp again. She took a moment to thank me (remembering my name!) and said I should stop back by so she could give me an I Am Nancy button (even though I was already wearing one.) I wasn't about to pass up another I Am Nancy button! I lost my first one in New York when I was there for a film festival and Arlene Marechal and the I Am Nancy crew were nice enough to send me more, but I plan on giving some of those away during Hallowscreen if I'm able to secure a special teaser clip to play. I wanted the movie, but Ms. Langenkamp told me they just submitted to Sundance. Sundance gives special attention and consideration to premieres and it wouldn't be a world premiere anymore if Hallowscreen got it. I hope they get in to Sundance!
Once the photo was printed out, I went in to the autograph room and got her to sign it. She couldn't believe that I didn't have a favourite quote, but liked it when I asked her to sign it with a lyric from the Just the Ten of Us theme, "Life is a race and I know I can win it." Uplifting. Wholesome. Not "screw your pass!" or "9, 10 Never Sleep Again!" or anything like that. Hahahaha! I thanked her again and left to go to the special effects panel hosted by Rick Rodriguez.
Rick isn't a very engaging host. He lost the interest of the once-packed house pretty early on and they all started talking amongst themselves which was very rude, but he seemed to be more focused on name dropping and the effects demonstrations than actually talking to us. To be more precise, it felt more like a long, slightly boring version of Universal's Horror Effects Make-Up Show with pauses to sell products that were made by some of his colleagues. Personally, I wondered why they didn't get Ms. Langenkamp's husband, David LeRoy Anderson, to come in and talk about effects. His work is top notch, but he's not local so maybe that's why the organizers didn't bother. Instead, this guy showed the KNB anniversary reel (he's not a part of KNB so I'm not sure why it was there), a clip from the original Day of the Dead (his army zombie ripped out Miguel's throat at the end of the film, but you don't see the zombie in the movie, you just see the rope latex effect of Miguel's throat), and a few effects clips from other movies.
After that, I went back to my room to give myself time away from people before I went to the VIP party. I got there just in time to see G. Tom Mac play "Cry Little Sister" and see a little kareoke, but a large group of people and alcohol do not a friendly mix make so I hung around for a little bit, then went to see She Wolf Rising at the Freak Show Horror Film Festival. The trailer makes it seem a little goofier than it actually is...it's more of a mindtrip fairy tale of sorts, but Tiffany Shepis was excellent. I talked to the associate producer, Glen, after the film was over about picking up a copy for my festival and he said that I could pick up the back up DVD from the festival organizer the next day so with that all worked out and the movie over, I went back to my room to get some sleep. Sunday was a big day after all!!
~~~~~
I got up early on Sunday and the first thing I noticed was that the world was spinning. Again, I don't drink and I don't do drugs so it could only mean one thing: my vertigo decided it wanted to dance. Yay. I was dizzy, depending on the position my head was in, from 9 am until I went to sleep around 10 pm, but I wasn't about to let it put a damper on the final day of the con!
The VIP badges are good for getting into the convention area early. Mainly, that applies to the dealer's room. I planned on going back to get one of the 3D Elm Street posters so I went in, but, alas, they were all sold out and there were several sprinkled throughout the dealer's room. They had a plethora of Friday the 13th 3D posters, but no Elm Street. Ah well. Instead, I found a WGON shirt, then I got into the VIP line for the first Q&A of the day: Return of the Living Dead!
I love RotLD, not enough to get autographs, but I'm so glad I went to the Q&A! They were all hilarious and warm and they were kind enough to pose for group photos after the show. When the Q&A was over, they asked the staff to lower the house lights and for the audience to illuminate our faces with our cell phones. I was the fastest on the draw with the flashlight app on my phone so they all pointed at me and took my picture. If I can find any, I'll come back and post them.
Immediately following them was the Q&A with John Carpenter! All the general admission schlubs had to get out, but us VIPs got to stay where we were. That's the kind of perk I can enjoy! ;D
That is actress Erin Gray next to him. I don't know why she was his handler, but I thought it was pretty cool regardless. He seemed to take the constant Halloween questions (and questions about the sequels that he has no part in) in stride, but when asked about his newest project, The Ward, he didn't really say much. Now, don't get me wrong, I love Halloween and Escape from New York and Big Trouble in Little China and Cigarette Burns and everything, but I really wanted to hear more about The Ward as it's a new project and he says it's old school horror probably coming out next year. Most importantly, though, it was good to see that he felt well enough to be there!
After that, they kicked everyone out, even VIP, to reset for the Elm Street panel...which was pointless because as soon as I got to the back of the VIP line, they ushered us back in. I lost my seat, though, and ended up a whole seat to the right. :D At first, they were saying it was going to be just Robert Englund, which would've been fun, sure, but I wanted to hear from the whole cast, not just him...then, at the very last second, they brought out more chairs! Yay! The whole cast was coming out!
You'll notice that some of the photos use the flash and some don't...this is the story for all of the photos I took during the Q&As. I didn't want to blind anyone because I wanted to take lots of pictures, but the lights on stage weren't quite good enough for flashless photos. Then, the light wasn't all that good to focus by, either. Ah well. I tried!
Anyway, the Q&A was great. Of course, the questions were focused on Mr. Englund, who does talk a lot, but he tried to involve the other cast members. I was able to ask my question before the end of the Q&A and it went something like this: "This is mainly for Ms. Langenkamp, but I'd love to hear Ms. Wyss weigh in as well. Freddy wouldn't be who he is without Nancy, you need to have the strong hero to balance the strong villain. Were you aware at the time that Nancy would be so important or was that something that dawned on you as the popularity in the film grew?"
I meant the question as more of a Feminist / Woman in Horror type question as opposed to a character centric question, but I really liked the response Ms. Langenkamp and Mr. Englund gave which was that the two of them (mostly Mr. Englund) went for a Beauty and the Beast style energy not so much in the romantic sense (though that was there, too), but in the sense of these diametrically opposed beings struggling with each other and yet they're part of the same energy. Originally, Freddy really was just a dream, a part of Nancy's subconscious as a young girl burgeoning into womanhood. A real life pedophilia scandal in the area around the time Elm Street was being filmed made Wes Craven decide to tone down the pedophiliac aspects of the character, and then producer Bob Shaye wanted the possibility of sequels so he and Mr. Craven fought over the ending until we have what now ends the film.
My favourite thing about Nancy is that she defeats this demonic child murdering pedophile without the conceit of superpowers. Even the series' next strongest female character, Alice, has superpowers in the dream as the Dream Master (which really doesn't help her much at all, to be honest.) Nancy doesn't belong to any clique, she's beautiful in a very real way, she's very smart...she's a regular girl who's been thrown into this impossible circumstance and no one will believe her when she warns them about what's happening. The same thing goes for movie!Heather in Wes Craven's New Nightmare unless you want to call being a dedicated mother a superpower to which I would concede.
This very same thing is what I hate about remake!Nancy: they made her a freaky artist chick, said she knew what was going on when she had no flippin' idea until the Glen surrogate told her what was up, and made her little more than a plaything for Jackie Earle Haley's terrifying portrayal of remake!Freddy. Without that equality between the main characters, the whole story is lost.
And I'm babbling. But I won't delete it, so there. :P
After the Q&A, Ms. Langenkamp happened to pass by me out in the hall so I was able to thank her once more and she thanked me, too! By name! I suppose it's silly to be so giddy that she remembered my name, but I don't care. She remembered my name! :D
Still on a high, I wandered around a bit. The con was winding down and I watched actors pack up their wares to head back to their hotel rooms or catch the next flight out. I thanked Linnea Quigley for coming out (and soon after discovered that she was going to be at a film festival in Ybor which is about an hour north of me, but I'll be at a friend's Halloween party) then remembered that she had a presentation at 4:30 so I went to see that. She and this dude named Erik have put together a half hour comedy pilot about paranormal investigators. Funnily enough, Steve Gonzales from Ghosthunters was in the audience. The show needs work...all the jokes are too "hey, look at me, I'm funny! See? See how funny I am?!" There were a couple of funny bits, but they would've been better with a more subtle build up. At least, they would be in my opinion. I booked out of there kinda fast only because I needed to make sure I was able to pick up the back-up DVD for She Wolf Rising from the Freak Show Film Festival and I wanted to attend the awards ceremony. Ms. Quigley's thing was supposed to end within ten minutes of the ceremony starting, but either the presentation ran late or they started the awards early because I made it back in time only to hear the final award: Best Feature went to Kiss the Abyss.
I was able to get She Wolf Rising from Robert Massetti and then went to my room because the return bus was to leave at 5:15 in the morning. The vertigo went away while I watched something on my iPad before turning it off to go to sleep and other than a little bit of dizziness today, which might have just been tiredness, I've been vertigo-free since I woke up! Yay!
So...long story short (too late), I got to meet my heroine and she was absolutely lovely. I had a great time and I'm glad I was able to do the con at my own pace instead of trying to please a group of people because I was there just to meet Heather Langenkamp and I did a lot of waiting to make sure I got to meet her / see her. All of the other experiences were like the sprinkles on top. It was well worth the time, effort, and money to go to the con and I'm so glad I did it!
As I ate dinner last night, the last actor I saw before heading back to my room was Robert Englund...a nice, circular way to close out a fabulous weekend.
Not that she'll ever read this, but thank you again, Ms. Langenkamp! And thank you Spooky Empire for having her as a guest!
Spooky Empire, Part the First
They say that you should never meet your heroes. After meeting one of mine this weekend, I can tell you that meeting one's heroes doesn't always end in tears of sadness.
This past weekend was Spooky Empire's Ultimate Horror Weekend. When they announced Heather Langenkamp, I kept my eye on their website almost every day to make sure they hadn't already started selling, and thus sold out of, the VIP tickets. I don't think of myself as a VIP and I'm not a partier, but I did want to get into those Q&As faster to get the good seats because my good camera has a nice zoom, but not back-of-the-room nice.
I'm also not an autograph hound, but my mom said I should get something signed and suggested the Just the Ten of Us crew shirt that producer / creator Steve Marshall gave to me years ago. At the last second, I decided to also bring my favourite poster which is an original Fango freebie of Heather Langenkamp and Robert Englund as Nancy and Freddy all dressed up. Judging by the Freddy make-up (yes, I can place a Freddy picture by make-up), I'd say it was taken around the time they made Nightmare 3.
I went up on Thursday, catching the Greyhound at 6:30 in the morning (it was late, though...go figure), and went to Universal to partake of yummy, yummy butterbeer at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and to take photos of some of my favourite things in the park with my good camera.
I went back to my hotel around 6 so I could get my VIP badge and on the way to Walgreens, I saw my first actor: Robert Englund. Well, to be more precise, I heard him before I saw him, mostly because his back was to me. As I was walking past, his handler (Mrs. Englund? I dunno...) gave me the greatest death glare ever! I wasn't going to bother him anyway. At most, I would have nodded and said, "Hello Mr. Englund," but that death glare warned me off ! Woe be to he or she who fucks with Robert Englund while that woman's around!
I saw my second actor when I was heading back across the street after Walgreens: Heather Langenkamp! She was too far away to extend a civilized greeting to and she was in the middle of a conversation with her handler (or patient friend) and I'm not that kind of fan. I kept going, but I'd be lying if I said that I didn't squee a little in excitement and, of course, call my mom and text anyone who would've remotely cared. I didn't fansplode and I didn't, as I became fond of saying over the weekend, get any fan on her.
Later on, I went to the pool-side pre-party and watched Jaws 3D. There were quite a few actors there, people I like and all, but I'm not that kind of fan. It's enough that I got to see them, you know? I didn't even ask Stephen King for his autograph the last time I saw him, I just waved like an idiot and kept walking. Anyway, during the party, I saw Amanda Wyss (she played Tina in A Nightmare on Elm Street.) I kept looking around for John Saxon so I could complete my pre-con ANoES sighting set, but alas, I didn't see him there. The night was still young when Jaws 3D ended, and so am I, but I was tired so I broke rule number 2 of con-going and went back to my room where I watched Wes Craven's New Nightmare on my iPad then went to bed.
Side-note: New Nightmare is my favourite of the sequels. I hate the fifth claw and there are things that don't make much sense, but it's a solid, ahead-of-the-curve film and everyone, Ms. Langenkamp in particular, was so brave to do it. I love it and she's spectacular in it.
By the way...the con-going rules are as follows:
1.) Once you get your badge, you never leave your room without it. Even if you're going to a restaurant at 5 in the morning, you never leave your badge behind. This is a rule I follow at film festivals, too.
2.) Whatever you do...don't fall asleep! I learned this one when I missed the late Kevin Smith (Ares from Xena) being awesome in the hotel bar with all the Xenites when I attended a Xena con back in 1998. However, the idea of staying awake to see if any actors are hanging out at the bar has always seemed creepy to me, not the least of which because I don't drink. Or smoke. Or do drugs.
3.) Attend all of the events you can. You never know when, or if, you'll see anything like this again.
~~~~~
The next day was Friday, the first official day of the convention. The zombie walk they had planned, hosted by the Deadite Empire, wasn't scheduled to start until around 4 or 5 so I got up and decided to get some breakfast and go for a bit of a walk. Who should I see as I headed toward Perkins? Heather Langenkamp! I didn't need to abide by con rule 2! I was lucky enough to see her twice pre-con! She was having breakfast at one of the hotel restaurants; I just giggled to myself as I passed and continued on my way to Perkins.
After breakfast, and my walk down to Wonderworks, I had to leave the zombie walk pre-party to attend to some Hallowscreen business back at the hotel. It was then that I realized that I didn't have any sunblock on. At least my rosacea wouldn't be as pronounced in the photo ops with Ms. Langenkamp! By the time I got back to Uno's Chicago Grill (leave it to a restaurant to be ground zero for the zompocalypse), quite a few really amazing zombies and survivours had shown up and I just started taking pictures of every one! There were TONS of ghouls including Mr. Bill Hinzman, who played the first modern ghoul in cinema for George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead, and Mr. Mike Christopher who played the Hare Krishna ghoul in Dawn of the Dead! They were both in costume and joining in on the festivities! How awesome is that?!
The zombie walk lead everyone who participated to the host hotel where the con was already going. I'd never been to a con like this before so I had no idea what the signing schedule would be like. It turns out that the poor actors are cooped up in a large room signing almost the entire time! Granted, they're making upwards of $200 or $300 an hour signing things over and over, but still...I'd want to get up and check out the rest of the event. I guess that's just not feasible for people like Ms. Langenkamp and definitely not for Mr. Englund.
Anyway, I (again) heard Mr. Englund before I saw him and wandered into the big autograph room and then saw Ms. Langenkamp signing away so I squeaked, went back to my room to get my memorabilia, added a fourth rule to the con-goers list (never leave what you want signed in your room during normal con hours!), and returned and took my place in her line. Then I looked around to see who all was around her: The Return of the Living Dead cast was in the middle of the room. Mr. Saxon and Ms. Wyss were to Ms. Langenkamp's right. In front of Mr. Englund were Kim Myers and Mark Patton from Nightmare 2 and next to them was Ken Sagoes from Nightmares 3 and 4. Beyond that, I honestly couldn't tell you who was where. I was there specifically to meet Heather Langenkamp and was trying to think about what I was going to say when I got to her table.
Apparently, the VIP passes were also supposed to get someone to the front of the autograph line, but I don't remember that as part of the perks for getting the passes. As far as the autograph lines are concerned, I'm glad the Spooky Empire crew didn't honour that if it was a perk because it wouldn't have made that much of a difference: I saw a lot more VIP passes than I saw general admission wristbands.
The thing about the lines at a con is that they're long. That's not the bad part, though. The bad part is the attitude of most of the people in the line especially concerning the length of the line they're in. I was willing to wait for however long I had to in order to meet Ms. Langenkamp. I'd been waiting since I was eight or so, what was another thirty or forty minutes? Besides, it gave me time to calm my nerves. ;D
Finally, I got up to her table and we shook hands and I showed her the memorabilia and started rambling: she loved seeing the original poster because not too many people still have that. The shirt, and the fact that I know Steve Marshall, made her do a double take, and she was gracious when I wanted to give her a copy of my movie. She may not ever watch it, but at least I got the courage up to give it to her! I was also able to tell her nearly everything I wanted to, about her being my hero and how she's the reason why I'm in the business and how much I admire her and everything. I may have sounded a bit weird, but I don't care.
When it came time for her to sign something on the photos and the shirt, though...I was stymied for quotes. My favourite Nancy bits aren't really quotable, they're moments, like when she steps between Rod and Glen when Rod takes out his switchblade or when she confronts her mother after the nightmare at the Katja Institute. I left the decision up her to and on the poster she told me not to fall asleep (hahaha!)
Then we had to think of something for the t-shirt. I haven't seen an episode of Ten of Us in so long because Warner hasn't released it on DVD. I've been watching the Gag Reels (also sent to me by Steve back in the day) and I only really know quotes from that! Thankfully, the guy next to her, one of the people behind the wonderful Elm Street documentary Never Sleep Again (get it...seriously) said that the only Marie quote he knew was the one used in the documentary where she says that it's "like A Nightmare on Elm Street up there!" (He got the quote wrong, it's actually "It's like something out of A Nightmare on Elm Street", but he can't be blamed because hell, I didn't get it right at the time either and she can't be blamed because Ten of Us was, what, 22 years ago?) I thought the quote was hilarious in my weird sense of humour way so she put that on the shirt. I thanked her and floated away so others could have their chance to talk to her, too. I went outside to call my mom and tell her that Heather Langenkamp is a sweetheart, then I posted the same to Facebook and Twitter.
I did have my point and shoot camera with me. No, I didn't ask her for a photo. She'd already given me so much of her time and the people behind me...well...I didn't want to get lynched. Besides, as a filmmaker who does her own cinematography, I wouldn't have been happy with what was taken. ;D I already planned on getting the photo ops so no need!
After I got off the phone, I bought my tickets for the photo ops the next day (one of myself with Ms. Langenkamp and Mr. Englund, then one with just Ms. Langenkamp and myself) roamed the con a bit, then watched the ending of A NIghtmare on Elm Street 3 and stuck around for Ken Sagoes' Q&A. He's so cute and a really funny guy as well! I think he'd make a great Coach if they ever make a Left4Dead movie. Not Louis...Louis is a little whiney.
During the Q&A, Ken (he admonished me later for calling him "Mr. Sagoes") mentioned that he had written a screenovel (that's my term for it, it's a mix of a screenplay and a novel) and hoped that everyone would come back and get it. He said his villain is scarier than Freddy and Jason and Michael so I had to pick it up! Besides, I like to see what some of my favourite people do on the side, you know?
Since I'm not a fan of Repo: The Genetic Opera or Kiss, I went back to my room at the end of the night instead of hanging around for the midnight parties, and went to bed. Saturday was another day, after all!
This past weekend was Spooky Empire's Ultimate Horror Weekend. When they announced Heather Langenkamp, I kept my eye on their website almost every day to make sure they hadn't already started selling, and thus sold out of, the VIP tickets. I don't think of myself as a VIP and I'm not a partier, but I did want to get into those Q&As faster to get the good seats because my good camera has a nice zoom, but not back-of-the-room nice.
I'm also not an autograph hound, but my mom said I should get something signed and suggested the Just the Ten of Us crew shirt that producer / creator Steve Marshall gave to me years ago. At the last second, I decided to also bring my favourite poster which is an original Fango freebie of Heather Langenkamp and Robert Englund as Nancy and Freddy all dressed up. Judging by the Freddy make-up (yes, I can place a Freddy picture by make-up), I'd say it was taken around the time they made Nightmare 3.
I went up on Thursday, catching the Greyhound at 6:30 in the morning (it was late, though...go figure), and went to Universal to partake of yummy, yummy butterbeer at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and to take photos of some of my favourite things in the park with my good camera.
I went back to my hotel around 6 so I could get my VIP badge and on the way to Walgreens, I saw my first actor: Robert Englund. Well, to be more precise, I heard him before I saw him, mostly because his back was to me. As I was walking past, his handler (Mrs. Englund? I dunno...) gave me the greatest death glare ever! I wasn't going to bother him anyway. At most, I would have nodded and said, "Hello Mr. Englund," but that death glare warned me off ! Woe be to he or she who fucks with Robert Englund while that woman's around!
I saw my second actor when I was heading back across the street after Walgreens: Heather Langenkamp! She was too far away to extend a civilized greeting to and she was in the middle of a conversation with her handler (or patient friend) and I'm not that kind of fan. I kept going, but I'd be lying if I said that I didn't squee a little in excitement and, of course, call my mom and text anyone who would've remotely cared. I didn't fansplode and I didn't, as I became fond of saying over the weekend, get any fan on her.
Later on, I went to the pool-side pre-party and watched Jaws 3D. There were quite a few actors there, people I like and all, but I'm not that kind of fan. It's enough that I got to see them, you know? I didn't even ask Stephen King for his autograph the last time I saw him, I just waved like an idiot and kept walking. Anyway, during the party, I saw Amanda Wyss (she played Tina in A Nightmare on Elm Street.) I kept looking around for John Saxon so I could complete my pre-con ANoES sighting set, but alas, I didn't see him there. The night was still young when Jaws 3D ended, and so am I, but I was tired so I broke rule number 2 of con-going and went back to my room where I watched Wes Craven's New Nightmare on my iPad then went to bed.
Side-note: New Nightmare is my favourite of the sequels. I hate the fifth claw and there are things that don't make much sense, but it's a solid, ahead-of-the-curve film and everyone, Ms. Langenkamp in particular, was so brave to do it. I love it and she's spectacular in it.
By the way...the con-going rules are as follows:
1.) Once you get your badge, you never leave your room without it. Even if you're going to a restaurant at 5 in the morning, you never leave your badge behind. This is a rule I follow at film festivals, too.
2.) Whatever you do...don't fall asleep! I learned this one when I missed the late Kevin Smith (Ares from Xena) being awesome in the hotel bar with all the Xenites when I attended a Xena con back in 1998. However, the idea of staying awake to see if any actors are hanging out at the bar has always seemed creepy to me, not the least of which because I don't drink. Or smoke. Or do drugs.
3.) Attend all of the events you can. You never know when, or if, you'll see anything like this again.
~~~~~
The next day was Friday, the first official day of the convention. The zombie walk they had planned, hosted by the Deadite Empire, wasn't scheduled to start until around 4 or 5 so I got up and decided to get some breakfast and go for a bit of a walk. Who should I see as I headed toward Perkins? Heather Langenkamp! I didn't need to abide by con rule 2! I was lucky enough to see her twice pre-con! She was having breakfast at one of the hotel restaurants; I just giggled to myself as I passed and continued on my way to Perkins.
After breakfast, and my walk down to Wonderworks, I had to leave the zombie walk pre-party to attend to some Hallowscreen business back at the hotel. It was then that I realized that I didn't have any sunblock on. At least my rosacea wouldn't be as pronounced in the photo ops with Ms. Langenkamp! By the time I got back to Uno's Chicago Grill (leave it to a restaurant to be ground zero for the zompocalypse), quite a few really amazing zombies and survivours had shown up and I just started taking pictures of every one! There were TONS of ghouls including Mr. Bill Hinzman, who played the first modern ghoul in cinema for George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead, and Mr. Mike Christopher who played the Hare Krishna ghoul in Dawn of the Dead! They were both in costume and joining in on the festivities! How awesome is that?!
The zombie walk lead everyone who participated to the host hotel where the con was already going. I'd never been to a con like this before so I had no idea what the signing schedule would be like. It turns out that the poor actors are cooped up in a large room signing almost the entire time! Granted, they're making upwards of $200 or $300 an hour signing things over and over, but still...I'd want to get up and check out the rest of the event. I guess that's just not feasible for people like Ms. Langenkamp and definitely not for Mr. Englund.
Anyway, I (again) heard Mr. Englund before I saw him and wandered into the big autograph room and then saw Ms. Langenkamp signing away so I squeaked, went back to my room to get my memorabilia, added a fourth rule to the con-goers list (never leave what you want signed in your room during normal con hours!), and returned and took my place in her line. Then I looked around to see who all was around her: The Return of the Living Dead cast was in the middle of the room. Mr. Saxon and Ms. Wyss were to Ms. Langenkamp's right. In front of Mr. Englund were Kim Myers and Mark Patton from Nightmare 2 and next to them was Ken Sagoes from Nightmares 3 and 4. Beyond that, I honestly couldn't tell you who was where. I was there specifically to meet Heather Langenkamp and was trying to think about what I was going to say when I got to her table.
Apparently, the VIP passes were also supposed to get someone to the front of the autograph line, but I don't remember that as part of the perks for getting the passes. As far as the autograph lines are concerned, I'm glad the Spooky Empire crew didn't honour that if it was a perk because it wouldn't have made that much of a difference: I saw a lot more VIP passes than I saw general admission wristbands.
The thing about the lines at a con is that they're long. That's not the bad part, though. The bad part is the attitude of most of the people in the line especially concerning the length of the line they're in. I was willing to wait for however long I had to in order to meet Ms. Langenkamp. I'd been waiting since I was eight or so, what was another thirty or forty minutes? Besides, it gave me time to calm my nerves. ;D
Finally, I got up to her table and we shook hands and I showed her the memorabilia and started rambling: she loved seeing the original poster because not too many people still have that. The shirt, and the fact that I know Steve Marshall, made her do a double take, and she was gracious when I wanted to give her a copy of my movie. She may not ever watch it, but at least I got the courage up to give it to her! I was also able to tell her nearly everything I wanted to, about her being my hero and how she's the reason why I'm in the business and how much I admire her and everything. I may have sounded a bit weird, but I don't care.
When it came time for her to sign something on the photos and the shirt, though...I was stymied for quotes. My favourite Nancy bits aren't really quotable, they're moments, like when she steps between Rod and Glen when Rod takes out his switchblade or when she confronts her mother after the nightmare at the Katja Institute. I left the decision up her to and on the poster she told me not to fall asleep (hahaha!)
Then we had to think of something for the t-shirt. I haven't seen an episode of Ten of Us in so long because Warner hasn't released it on DVD. I've been watching the Gag Reels (also sent to me by Steve back in the day) and I only really know quotes from that! Thankfully, the guy next to her, one of the people behind the wonderful Elm Street documentary Never Sleep Again (get it...seriously) said that the only Marie quote he knew was the one used in the documentary where she says that it's "like A Nightmare on Elm Street up there!" (He got the quote wrong, it's actually "It's like something out of A Nightmare on Elm Street", but he can't be blamed because hell, I didn't get it right at the time either and she can't be blamed because Ten of Us was, what, 22 years ago?) I thought the quote was hilarious in my weird sense of humour way so she put that on the shirt. I thanked her and floated away so others could have their chance to talk to her, too. I went outside to call my mom and tell her that Heather Langenkamp is a sweetheart, then I posted the same to Facebook and Twitter.
I did have my point and shoot camera with me. No, I didn't ask her for a photo. She'd already given me so much of her time and the people behind me...well...I didn't want to get lynched. Besides, as a filmmaker who does her own cinematography, I wouldn't have been happy with what was taken. ;D I already planned on getting the photo ops so no need!
After I got off the phone, I bought my tickets for the photo ops the next day (one of myself with Ms. Langenkamp and Mr. Englund, then one with just Ms. Langenkamp and myself) roamed the con a bit, then watched the ending of A NIghtmare on Elm Street 3 and stuck around for Ken Sagoes' Q&A. He's so cute and a really funny guy as well! I think he'd make a great Coach if they ever make a Left4Dead movie. Not Louis...Louis is a little whiney.
During the Q&A, Ken (he admonished me later for calling him "Mr. Sagoes") mentioned that he had written a screenovel (that's my term for it, it's a mix of a screenplay and a novel) and hoped that everyone would come back and get it. He said his villain is scarier than Freddy and Jason and Michael so I had to pick it up! Besides, I like to see what some of my favourite people do on the side, you know?
Since I'm not a fan of Repo: The Genetic Opera or Kiss, I went back to my room at the end of the night instead of hanging around for the midnight parties, and went to bed. Saturday was another day, after all!
Friday, October 1, 2010
Hallowscreen news and other things...
Whew! Things have been crazy around these parts. I've been working feverishly on the Hallowscreen Film Festival (the Sarasota Fringe Film Festival is no longer a part of the name or the organizational team, they're sponsors.) My workload has pretty much tripled and none of it is paid...thankfully, I love what I'm doing and it'll put my name out there in the community so it's a matter of balance...or rationalization. I'm not picky. ;D
I'm still working on the schedule, but you can check out what we'll be screening by heading over to the new website: hallowscreen.blogspot.com. It's going to be so much fun!! Like I said in the blog, I'm not too proud to put my own movies in the festival so aftershock and Without/Within will be shown! (But I'll also pull them if I need time or something. One never knows!)
The Hallowscreen Film Festival is now a completely free event - it costs nothing to submit and there's no admission fee. We'll have donation boxes set up at the venues with the money going to the Avenida de Colores, a 501(c)3 arts education program here in Sarasota. Hallowscreen is part of the Sarasota Chalk Festival, a HUGE, international performance / street art event that's happening over Halloween weekend. Seriously, it's going to be amazing! Amazingly amazing! Edgar Mueller will be here, for pete's sakes, and it's his first American installation!
I know this is pretty last minute, but I'll be at the GreenHome WamaLama Green Business Expo tomorrow at Robarts to promote the event. If you're at the expo, stop by and say hi!
I'm still working on the schedule, but you can check out what we'll be screening by heading over to the new website: hallowscreen.blogspot.com. It's going to be so much fun!! Like I said in the blog, I'm not too proud to put my own movies in the festival so aftershock and Without/Within will be shown! (But I'll also pull them if I need time or something. One never knows!)
The Hallowscreen Film Festival is now a completely free event - it costs nothing to submit and there's no admission fee. We'll have donation boxes set up at the venues with the money going to the Avenida de Colores, a 501(c)3 arts education program here in Sarasota. Hallowscreen is part of the Sarasota Chalk Festival, a HUGE, international performance / street art event that's happening over Halloween weekend. Seriously, it's going to be amazing! Amazingly amazing! Edgar Mueller will be here, for pete's sakes, and it's his first American installation!
I know this is pretty last minute, but I'll be at the GreenHome WamaLama Green Business Expo tomorrow at Robarts to promote the event. If you're at the expo, stop by and say hi!
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