Category Archives: Uncategorized

My Protracted Pauses

Friday afternoon Chadd from PrimaDonna Productions called.  The question: “Hey, Erik, what are you doing today?” always gets a protracted pause from me.  I made a non-committed murmur and waited.  It seemed that an actor they worked with needed a video audition to send to a casting director working on the TV show Prison Break.  An amount of money was mention.  I did some quick mental calculations, and when I realized that it translated into six days worth of cheap lunches at Pepe's Cafe, I had an answer.  “Yeah.  Sure.”

Three hours later Mark showed up dressed in a suit for the role.  He explained that he had a previous engagement out of state on the date they wanted him to read at their offices in Austin … or maybe it was Dallas.  They suggested he just get someone to video tape his reading the scene.  We looked at the two pages of the script that featured his minor character.  He didn't have many lines, and there were two other characters with whom he was to interact.

“We need more actors.  At least one more.”  Mark agreed with me.  I called up Carlos.  I knew he'd be in the downtown area because he was putting a birthday party together for his friend Wendy (AKA, the Queen of Twilight).  With no hesitation, he agreed to head on over for an hour of acting.  I tried Ryan, but he didn't pick up.  Pete was up to his neck on the deadline of putting together Season One DVD of Alamo City Roller Girls.  I toyed with the idea of trying TJ Gonzales, but I thought I'd already pestered enough people.  We could work around the third character … hell, he only had a single line.

When Carlos showed up, I was glad to see Shelly was with him.  Not just because I like Shelly, but she could stand in as character number three.

If this were just a basic monologue, I would have done a single set-up, and taped the performance, and let Mark take the miniDV tape straight to the Fed-Ex depot.  But we decided that over-nighting on Saturday would be fine.  It'd give me a chance to edit together two or more camera set-ups.

Prison Break is one of about three TV shows I current tune into.  I watched most all episodes of the first season.  But this second season I've missed some big chunks of plot, so I've kinda given up.  But I think the writing's tight.  The acting top-notch.  And most of the characters are compellingly developed.  Mark hadn't really followed the show, but he'd tuned in often enough to know the basic plot-line and the major characters.  Carlos was probably the biggest fan in the room.  And when he realized which secondary character he was to play in this fragment of a scene, he slipped into that character.

We sat Shelly in a chair wearing a knit cap so my over-the-shoulder shot wouldn't have her looking too girly.  She was playing one of the escaped prisoners apparently nabbed by the authorities.

I did three set-ups.  And because I didn't want to throw in a reverse shot of Shelly (“hey, it's a girl!”), what I had to work with were essentially two jump cuts.  #1.) Wide shot — Mark throws hero into chair and Carlos enters.  CUT TO:  #2.) Med. two-shot — Mark and Carlos interact.  CUT TO:  #3.) Close-up on Mark over Carlos' shoulder — intense exchange.  END SCENE.

It worked well enough.  I mean, we pulled it together with no real planning.  I had no fears, because Mark is as serious as an actor comes (well, without being insufferable).  And Carlos is incredibly focused.  They are actors I love working with.  Engaged by the production process.  Quick and humble when offering their ideas.  And both are a joy to edit — they are in the same places at the same time, take after take, set-up after set-up.

I hope Mark gets the part.  It's more likely I'll see him on Prison Break than in his recent gigs in musicals and with the San Antonio Opera (I mean, unless Richard O'Brien or Bertolt Brecht are involved, I want my actors Speaking their dialog).  Besides, he deserves all the success the world throws at him. 

This Fabulous Smoldering Mulch

One of the more amusing stories here in San Antonio at the moment is the Mulch Fire in Helotes.  Helotes is a town to the north.  And this fabulous smoldering mulch is an 80 foot mount of brush cleared from the lands being developed in the Outer Cracker Belt where the rich assholes cohabatate and cavort in their gated monocultural ghettos which are swallowing up some hitherto beautiful countryside.  Teenagers have been blamed for starting this fire.  I have my doubts.  Teenagers as vandals are the 20th century scapegoats.  The current crop lack the cojones to step outside, let alone climb over a barbed wire fence.  But whatever the cause, the fire has become a thing of legend.  It will not die.  The recent monsoons have not fazed it.  And fire trucks and aerial dousings can't kill it.  It's too huge.  The fire is now inside the mountain, smoldering at its own pace.  It's exposed some serious problems with bureaucratic jurisdictions.  No one wants to take responsibility.  I've seen reports in the paper where various companies specializing in, well, I guess, mulch fires, have crunched the numbers and come up with a range of 1.7 to 6 million dollars to take this beast down.

All the absurdity was brought home to me the other day while reading the San Antonio Express-News.  It seems the Mulch Fire has it's own MySpace page.  You bet it's been folded into my friends list.  On the MySpace site there's a very nice piece of video showing the entire humongous mound blazing away during the first night.  I doubt that currently any flames can been seen.  Just smoke.  But, early on — wow!

That was one mean mulch fire!

http://www.myspace.com/mulchfire

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The recent rains had made my weekly hike with Dar problematic.  The parks we normally visited would be muddy as hell.  She suggested the downtown River Walk.

We'd done the River Walk a few weeks back.  Back then it was drained for cleaning.  After New Years, tourism is marginal enough to justify shunting the river around downtown through the networks of tunnels and canals that were part of the whole WPA River Walk project.  But today the water was back, coursing through the middle of town.  This week we bypassed some construction and made our way to the more touristy loop that includes the convention center which we'd avoided previously.

This took us into La Villita.  This is where the historic settlement affiliated with the Mission San Antonio Valero (AKA the Alamo) once stood.  The WPA River Walk project attempted to preserve the buildings.  And by the time of the 1968 HemisFair, the real bastardization must have commenced.  Now we have this hybrid of old buildings and new buildings made to look old to house tourist shops selling scented candles and “starving artist” quality paintings.

La Villita has its charm, but what really caught my attention is that area of the River Walk.  This is where you'll find the Arneson River Theater.  It's an outdoor amphitheater where the tiered seating faces the stage on the other side of the river.

We were climbing around the seating area.  I was wondering how this might be used as a location for a film.  And then I wondered how I might go about arranging to use the theater itself to do some sort of weird puppet theater or something.

At that moment one of the tourist barges nosed around a bend in the river.  I heard the boat captain give the spiel about how this theater had been used for Miss Congeniality.  I had forgotten about that.  And then I realized the captain was my neighbor, Cara.  I waved to her.  She saw me and smiled.  “If you look to the left, you'll see Erik, my neighbor.”  I couldn't help but start laughing as about twenty guileless, smiling tourists waved excitedly at me.  Of course I waved back.  They will all return to Nashwauk, Minnesota and Dime Box, Texas gushing about how “everyone knows each other in San Antonio!”  And, you know, they'd be right.

You Call This An Ice Storm?

Last night I was pleasantly typing away at a slight blog entry when a blackout took me by surprise.  The power cut off with no warning.  No thunderstorm.  No POP of a nearby transformer exploding.  Just a sudden abrupt drop in the juice, effecting the entire block.  Luckily I had about a dozen candles flicking in this and the adjacent room.  But I hadn't saved.  I never save.  (Well, except when editing video.)  Fifteen minutes later, and I was back in business.  Lights up, computer humming.  I started up again for an hour or so, multi-tasking with writing the blog again, and occasionally switching to answering a few emails.  Again, nothing saved.  And the darkness struck again.  I switched on my battery op camcorder light and washed the dishes, made a midnight snack, and read for a bit before going to sleep.  The power came on sometime in the early hours before I got up.

We're calling this an ice storm.  Nothing too dramatic.  Endless rain.  Freezing temperatures.  Sleet — not in my neighborhood, but on the northside of the county.  There's a beguiling appeal to freezing rain.  The way the topside of magnolia leaves wear a turtle shell of ice.  How the eaves of homes  drip with icicles, as festive as refrigerator ads.  And, last night, my truck was encased in a pristine coating of ice that glistened under my neighbor's porch light like a giant canned ham. I never saw ice form on the road, although most of the schools shut down yesterday, and perhaps today as well.

My friend Amy called yesterday offering use of a spare heater she had.  She fled with her husband and kids back to San Antonio when Katrina hit, so she knows how important it is to offer aid when you can.  I explain that, all my whining in pervious blogs about the cold aside, I still had another gas heater I had yet to hook up.  So, I'm doing okay.

Winter-time is, of course, open season for those who live above the 35th parallel to yuck it up about the wimpery expressed by us southerners.  I admit, we often get a bit carried away when the mercury drops to levels below a 7-11 beer cooler.  But the fact is, it's all very foreign to us.  Take San Antonio.  January is usually just another month for us, with flip-flops and t-shirts.  Let me illustrate this durth of winter-wear by an amusing sight I witnessed at Monday's MLK march:  it was about 30 degrees and I saw this boy running to catch up with his family — he was wearing two promo beer koozies on his hands as mittens.  We don't often buy gloves or mittens to wear for only a few days of the year.  We don't understand the concept of anti-freeze.  Rock salt we buy to make ice cream.  Our houses don't have insulation or storm windows.  And this is even more noticeable in the houses in the older neighborhoods, like mine.  The transom over my front door won't fall flat to the casement.  There is a space where I could easily pass a chocolate bar through to someone standing on my front porch (someone very tall).  But that's something I can live with.  Winter in Bexar County is usually an eight day affair.  It's almost done with.

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I've been pestered with emails from at least three different organizations wanting to use one of my shorts for their pay-on-demand download services.  Two of these folks have sent multiple emails.  The film they all ask about is Kitty Loves a Rug Sucker.  I've posted the video on four different sites.  MySpace, Trigger Street, blip.tv, and through my mac.com hosting account.

This whole world of video available for download through the internet to ones computer or wireless devices is fine.  I watch various types of video programing on my computer — in fact, I watch stuff on my computer more than I watch TV (and I'm not just talking about porn and YouTube ephemera — I watch scientific lectures, Democracy Now, the American Avant Garde, work by other filmmakers who provide their own works online, and on and on).  If, as the years go by, we can keep winning the fight for “net neutrality,” this democratization of content and expression will continue to breath life into our culture; we've lost so much of the creative commons of the past, so it's important that we give space for the commons of the present and the future.  But because of this mountain of free video content online (admittedly, some of this is being made available in pirated form), I'm baffled as to why someone thinks that consumers will pay for this stuff.

I should point out here that I'm clueless about most human behavior.  Especially about the whole entertainment licensing question.  I do, on occasion, when I have disposable income (what a strange phrase …), buy CDs.  But what I've discovered is an enormous and exciting world of free music online.  These aren't illicit downloads.  These are artists who make their work available free of charge for any numbers of reasons.  It's often very innovative, because the bands or artists are just starting out and trying to get attention, exposure.  In fact, if you're poor (like me), or simply cheap (again, like me), you can amass quite a play-list of fun stuff to carry around on an mp3 player.  But, again, that's just my perspective.  I know quite a few people who either pay to download their music, song by song, or else, pay a subscription to a music provider service.  So maybe there is a financial future for making video to be downloaded.  (I'm still doubtful, though.  The latest episode of Lost I can understand, but a five minute video from Erik Q. Nobody?  I don't think so.)

Most likely I'll go ahead and give one of these guys their vague “non-exclusive” license, if for no other reason that to try and get a read on how this nascent industry works … or plans to work.

And, please, anyone out there who has experience with these sorts of video services, let me know your take on things.  I have no illusions of making money off the work I've already done (it's me learning the craft), but if there are ways I can expand my audience, that interests me.  Because, don't you see, the world needs to know the brillence of Russ Ansley, Kerry Valderrama, Kathleen O'Neal, and Carlos Pena.  Oh, and me.  Of course.

Sedate Bullhorns

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.  I've heard from several sources that the MLK march here in San Antonio is the largest in the nation (which, I guess, makes it the largest in the world?).  I'm always a bit suspicious of hyperbole.  Besides, the important thing is that the turn-out today was quite massive.

I attended with Dar and Andy.  Last night I had trouble sleeping.  It's been brutally cold lately and I've closed off my bedroom so the rest of the place warms up more.  (I also keep the bathroom door closed because one of the little glass panes is missing from the window.)  This left me with a sofa to sleep on which isn't all that comfortable.  All night long it pissed down with rain.  How this slop failed to freeze, I don't know.  It was about thirty degrees as I drove to the park-and-ride station at the Alamodome.

The wind kept up briskly, but once the march started moving, I warmed up.  There were a couple of moments when the crowd clumped up a bit, and we able to stand there in the middle of the street and turn to see the full length of the march, which strung out a mile and a half or two miles behind us.  But otherwise, the march moved pretty smoothly. 

Here's a photo Dar took of me and Andy.

The organizations running this event had it all down well.  There were plenty of news crews on the streets and 'copters above.  I was hoping more chanting and rousing of the rabble, but I think the cold (bitter as hell for us Texans) kept most of the folks with bullhorns a bit sedate.  But it's always a kick to see entire families out with peace signs and homemade posters.

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Has Dr. King's absence ever been more sad and telling than these last few days?  Five days ago Bush gave his address to the nation explicating this new troop surge.  One of the bizarre elements of this speech was that video was allowed, but not still photographers.  The online and print media outlets were given a choice of using video frame grabs (of questionable quality), or the Big Brother style images provided by the White House.  I have nothing but the most hostile contempt for the world of public relations and marketing.  In fact, they seem to have successfully replaced the world of journalism.  In previous generations, the fourth estate wouldn't have taken this shit lying down.

As I recall, the American people coughed a bit, low in our collective throats, and set forth a fairly clear mandate back in November.  We don't like your war, Mister President.  Yeah.  We said that.  So why is this clown and his vile cohorts continuing to carry forth this abysmally unpopular action?  It gets worse because — not so much in Bush's speech, but from a recent interview with Cheney — it seems Iran is the intended new front.  It all seems so sad and desperate.  And if it weren't for an insane stockpile of our own WMDs this could be quite comical.

We're pushing the third act here.  And it could turn ugly fast.  We the people need to move beyond our vocal yet rather passive actions at the polling place and get active.  We had these guys on the ropes, dammit!  Don't let them bounce back.  And just because some blowhard by the name of Nancy Pelosi says, “Impeachment is off the table,” we need to remind her and all these other officials we've elected, that it is our table, and we'll jolly well pile it with what we want.

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There have been two recent passings that sadden me.  Robert Anton Wilson died on January 11th.  I was reading through the Boing Boing site when I saw the notice.  My sister soon sent me an email.  In her blog she writes about a reading / stand-up performance she's attended in England years ago while studying abroad.  We had also seen him give a performance in Dallas, at, of all places, the auditorium of the Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children,  (does this mean Wilson's Masonic connections were legit?).  Somewhere around here I have a photo Paula took of me getting a book signed by Wilson.  Man, that must have been back sometime in the mid '80s.

I guess I first discovered Wilson by reading the Illuminatus Trilogy which he had co-written with Robert Shea.  It was just at that perfect time in my life and my readings where many of the inside jokes of the novels could resonate.  I was maybe 17.  I was heavily into Lovecraft and all those Weird Tale writers.  I'd gotten deep into Beckett (but not yet Joyce).  Everything William Burroughs had written up to that point I had read.  I was nibbling around the edges of the Edwardian New Age, reading Crowley and Ouspensky and Gurdjieff.  I'd read some of the cheesy popularized forays into the quantum world such as Zukav and Capra.  I'd explored the upper rind of zen with Christmas Humphreys and Alan Watts.  I was pretty much current with all the stuff — fiction and nonfiction — Colin wilson had written.  I had a smattering of knowledge on anarchists and kindred idealists and activists.

Reading the trilogy and all of Wilson's other work made me feel much smarter than I actually was.  I was just getting the references is all.  He wasn't synthesizing all these desperate writers and ideas, he was simply bringing his somewhat obscure interests into the same simmering stew pot.  It was a heady concoction, and I loved it.  He certainly set me off on half a dozen other intellectual pursuits.  The Sufis, Yates, the Warren Commission, forgotten '60s garage bands, and on and on.

He'll be missed.

Also, Alice Coltrane passed away late last week.  When I'm in the mood for post-bebop free jazz, I often find myself pulling out my Alice Coltrane albums.  In fact, it's safe to say I more often listen to her that I do to her husband.  She's probably best known for her work on the harp, but I mostly think of her work as a keyboardist.  When she approached the piano, the sound came out clean and bright, more melodic than Taylor, Monk, or Sun Ra, but still beautifully challenging in its straightforwardness.  Apparently she reappeared from retirement in 2006 for a few performances.  I need to do some research and see if recordings were made.

RIP.  

Nemo’s Bordello

Sunday was the casting sessions for Short Ends.  Annette had helped Matthew arrange us to hold the event at a bar called the Revolution Room.  It's in the stretch of Yuppie wasteland on outer Broadway just before you get to Loop 410 where inane clubs such as The Rebar can be found.  I can only assume that the Revolution Room, during hours of operation, cater to that crowd of men in leather trousers and pinky rings cruising for women with tall teased hair and Gucci Lolita bags all to the back beat of hackneyed pub rock with just enough blues added to have the denizens of cemeteries throughout the Mississippi delta spinning in perpetuity.

That's just my guess.  However, on a Sunday afternoon, with us having the place to ourselves, the Revolution Room proved to be an incredibly groovy place.  They weren't wasting the heat on us, and I could understand.  So it was a bit chilly.  And, as it was something of a raunchy bar, it took some of us a bit of time to get used to the stale beer smell.  There is a bar in the front bit.  Standard island where drinks are served with tables scattered about.  A small stage to the side with a drum kit set up.  The next room had benches along the walls and two or three pool tables.  Down a short corridor, there is a long room with windows on one side.  The cinder brick walls are painted aluminum.  A bar and tables.  A smaller room off to the side had a bar at the back.  The ceiling had a barrel vault with red lights in brass nautical housings.  Two benches ran the length, one on each side, strewn with pillows.  Maroon brocade shot through with gold thread were hung over the pillowed benches.  Very cool.  If Captain Nemo ran a bordello (and I suspect he did), it would look like this.

Matthew separated the productions (there were six of us) throughout the place, so we could have a modicum of privacy to run our auditions.  I was lucky enough to get Nemo's Pleasure Room.  [I should go and add this to yesterday's posting where I vomited out some impromptu titles — and I really want to see Darren Aronofsky direct Nemo's Pleasure Room.]  I had brought along my video camera, just in case.  I wasn't really planning to audition people.  I just wanted to interview some of the actors who showed up.  But as I noticed that everyone else was breaking out a camera, I did the same.  But I didn't bring a tripod.  Nor did I bring any lights.  This was a problem.  Nemo gave me dim red light.  There was a bit of fluorescent up above the bar area, but no brighter.  I hauled in a floor lamp from another room.

Nikki had been conscripted to help out coordinating the actors.  I'm so glad.  It helped make things go smoothly.  This is the sort of thing Nikki has done so often, she can practically do it with eyes closed.  Or at least she gives us that impression.

The actors who showed up had already seen the list of our (the filmmakers) needs.  Nothing much more than the basic gender and age range — with a few projects needing certain ethnicities.  My casting needs were four men 18 to 22.  The script call for one to be from Mexico, so I was also looking for a young Hispanic male who, hopefully was fluent in Spanish.  I have already cast the lead female.  And I needed someone to play her mom.  So to match her look, I needed a 40 or 50 year old range anglo woman.

It was just me and Chris representing Production Number 4.  (To streamline things, Matthew had assigned each film a number.)  I was hoping to get a variety of young male actors.  We didn't get that many coming into our little room.  I think we might have had more women come in for the mom role.

But all in all we met a good range of talent.  When Carlos gets back into town, we'll look at the video and hash things out.

One of the actors really stood out.  He walked up to me and asked if this is the room for Production Number 4.  At this point I didn't know what number I was.  I couldn't imagine he was for our film, because he seemed to be clearly in his 30s.  Maybe he could play mid-20s ….  I found myself rambling if he knew the title of the film he was auditioning for.  Chris tried helping out, saying ours was the romance film.  But the guy didn't know.  I told him to wait a moment, and I went to get conformation from Matthew or Nikki.

When I returned, confident now that we were number 4, the guy was gone.  Chris didn't know where he'd gone to.  I flagged Nikki down and asked her to find that guy again.  He probably wouldn't fit the part because of his age, but I wanted to give everyone an opportunity.  Besides, I want to see actors, dammit!  And I really wish we could have had an entire day where ALL those actors gave readings on a stage, and all of us production people were in an audience to see who could do what — and the whole thing was video-taped, and available to us all online for reference.  So even if someone wasn't fitting my current needs, they might be perfect down the line.

We got him back in the room.

I sat him down in the light and turned on my camera.  From back in the shadows, Chris asked the guy if he knows his brother.  It turns out that Chris' brother and this guy were best friends some years back.  All I did was have a short conversation with him, but he exuded charisma.  He's Jade Esteban Estrada.  When I mentioned him later to Nikki, her face lit up.  “Isn't Jade great?”  Hell, yeah.  I guess I'm still a new-comer here in San Antonio, but still, I feel I've spread myself thin enough throughout the arts, that I've seen most of the local talent.  I'm constantly reminded that by no means is this the case.

I found myself wondering if the script can be modified so as to bring in Jade?  We'll see what can happen.  I spoke later with Andy.  He told me that Jade auditioned for the film that he and Dago are working on.  Andy had nothing but good things to say about Jade's smart and unexpected interpretation of the character he was reading for.

So, I think the casting session went quite well.  I got to meet some new talented actors.  And I saw the innards of a very cool bar, that could well be available as a location in which to shoot.

Oh, yeah, I finally had the opportunity to have a short conversation with Annette, who up to now is someone I have only nodded to in passing.  A very sweet woman.  And she looks exactly like her headshots — and they all look stunning.

A successful day.  Well done Matthew.

Forklift Fondue

I guess I'm still clawing my way out of a grim holiday depression, and a bleak rainy day isn't helping things.  I was able to make it to Friedrich Park for my rescheduled hike with Dar.  The rains of last night had slacked off noonish.  The skies were leaden, and it looked like more rain at any time.  But it was still warmish.  Almost 70.  I put on a pair of shorts and a hooded sweatshirt and headed out.  My friend Jean called up to chat, so I talked on the drive north on I-10.  It was nice catching up with her, but I kept thinking, shit, as the drizzle built up — it wasn't looking good.  But by the time I rolled into the parking-lot of Freidrich, the drizzle had slacked off; however, the temperature had dropped by 20 degrees, easily.  It was wet AND cold, blah!  But Dar pointed out that families with kids were happily tumbling from their SUVs and tackling the hilly trail.  Okay, okay.  It's hard to whine when you're laughing at yourself.

It was a nice hike.  The rains waited politely until we were back to the parking-lot.  Then the stuff started coming back down, and pretty seriously at that.

Back home, I bundled up on the sofa and began Government, the first novel in B. Traven's Jungle Novels.  These are the six novels dealing with the 1910 Mexican Revolution.  They depart from the rest of Traven's Mexican novels in that there is no gringo protagonist to function as Traven's alter ego.

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My plans for this evening was to attend what I gathered to be a meet-and-greet gathering for a new film production here in San Antonio.  I stumbled on this project Wednesday or Thursday while idly roaming through the “friends lists” of people I know on MySpace — you know, in search of interesting people to poach into my fold.  There was a woman whose picture I kept seeing on the sites of some of my friends in the art world.  I finally clicked on her picture.  On her page was a huge ad for a film in which she would be featured.  It's called the Chosen Fallen, to be directed by Joseph Hladek.

I clicked over to Joseph's MySpace page.  He has four short videos posted.  His work is extraordinary.  (Make sure to check out his video on his personal page titled Anti-Interview — a very fun little piece.)  He has a background in graphic design.  He apparently grew up in San Antonio, but has been working for a design firm on the east coast for the last few years.  The video pieces I saw display a firm understanding of visual story-telling, a knowledge of how to play with tension in a narrative, and a masterful skill of using a video layering program (AfterEffects, I presume).  Go to his site and watch his stuff.  Do it now!

His current project is, I assume, to be a feature.

The ad for Chosen Fallen I stumbled on was actually an invitation for this meet-and-greet.  It was to be at a gallery called the Arbor House.  I Google-mapped it.  It was on the westside, and clearly in a residential neighborhood.  Maybe there was a light industrial region around there I didn't know about.  But when I toggled the Google map into the satellite image setting, it looked like a street of small, simple houses in a humble neighborhood.  What the hell?

The advert explained that 8 – 10 pm would be for drinks and mingling.  And because I was going there alone, I didn't want to attempt mingling with strangers for two hours.  So I headed over at nine-thirty.  When I got to the dead end street, it became clear that it was indeed in someone's house.  There were a couple of families on the block having barbecues (I mean, it was on the westside), but it was quickly apparent which house it was.  There were loads of people clustered out on the front porch, shivering and smoking cigarettes.

I decided I'd feel kinda weird walking into someone's house, having only read about this on MySpace.  I still have decades worth of social phobia stashed in the rear brain — as much as I've over-come these neuroses, they still come out on occasion.  And so, I decided against it.

I hope there might be some other event where I can meet some of the people involved on this project.  Joseph Hladek has something that most local productions lack.  Artistic sensibility.

There are, of course, many film projects in the works at this moment in this city, but the only one that has my full attention is “Chosen Fallen.”  However, I don't care for that title.

I keep asking myself this:  Why can't people open themselves up to decent titles?  I have no problem generating them.  The Cabrito Kid Rides Again, Squaredance Beatnik, Power to the Sock, Fuck Bastrop, Terror Incognito, Howard's Tender Pustule, Texas Chainsaw Institute, and Forklift Fondue.  These I offer up to the world.  Need a title?  Pick one.  (Though I'd rather retain Terror Incognito, as it is the working title of my surreal western I'm constantly NOT working on … for over ten years now.)

That's your title, Mr. Hladek.  Forget Chosen Fallen.  Clever word play, yes, I understand.  It's got the sweet Catholic savor of apparent contradiction.  Like a title of a song from the Swans or Nick Cave.  Take the plunge, man, and call your nascent movie Forklift Fondue.  You have my blessing.  And, damn, I'd love to see a film by that title.

Jackie Earle Haley

As a teen I rarely watched many of the films targeted to teenaged boys.  I lived about five blocks from the Granada Theater in Dallas, which at the time was a phenomenal repertory cinema.  They showed Fritz Lang, Fassbinder, Kurosawa, and so on.  I was very lucky.  But on occasion I would see something more mainstream.  One of the films that had a strong influence on me was the great coming-of-age movie, Breaking Away.  Dennis Quaid and Daniel Stern went on to many success over the years.  But of the actors portraying the four central characters, I was much more intrigued with the other two.  Dennis Christopher was so watchable, that when he appeared the following year in Fade to Black, I made myself think that that movie was significantly better than it truly was.  Also still clear in my memory was the performance of Jackie Earle Haley, as Moocher.

Haley is most often remembered in either Breaking Away or the Bad News Bears movies as Kelly Leak.  It seems he struck a chord with many people my age and younger for his work in the Bad News Bears.  When I tell people that not only does he live here in San Antonio, but my friend Nikki Young introduced me to him at La Tuna restaurant, they often seem impressed; in fact, more impressed, I'm sure, than were I to say I'd met Dennis Quaid.

For some time Haley has been on the other side of the camera, running his own production company.  But, at least for the moment, he is back as an actor, with roles in two major films in current release.

One of them opened today here in San Antonio.  Little Children.  It's directed by Todd Field who gave us In the Bedroom, a film I really didn't care for.  The script for Little Children was adapted from a novel by Tom Perrotta.  Perrotta gave us the novel Election which was made into the movie of the same name.  Little Children (the movie) lacks the humor of Election (the movie), but deals with similar themes of social and sexual transgressions.

The setting of Little Children is the upper middle class bedroom community of some east coast city.  Boston, or New York.  I can't recall if we were ever given a specific location.  The film gave us that lifeless sub-genera a writing teacher of mine once referred to as suburban gothic.  I hate this sort of crap, mainly because I can't relate to those who live in the suburbs.  I can't generate sympathy for them.  But Little Children goes a bit further than many of these story-lines by giving us some fairly well developed characters.  It joins company with those other smartly written suburban films of late such as Election, American Beauty, and the films of Todd Solondz.

If there is any inherent draw to audiences to see Little Children, it will be because of Kate Winslet (and several nude scenes with her), Jennifer Connelly (no nudity for her, but there is a scene where she is, inexplicably, wearing green leopard print panties — but I guess that's always in her contract), and some pretty boy I'd never seen before named Patrick Wilson (who shows his ass a lot).  But the audiences should be coming to see Haley.  His is the pivotal character, creating the sense of tension and danger.  We see only photos of him for the first 30 minutes or more.  And for most of the second act I kept wondering why his character seemed so flat.  But by the third act, it all makes sense.  There needed to be that slow build to his final, brilliant performance.  He's amazing.

Also, I want to give a plug to one of my favorite actors.  Jane Adams.  She appeared in the thematically similar films Happiness and The Anniversary Party — though most people will know her from Frasier, where she plays Mel, Niles' short-term second wife.  Her screen time in Little Children is maybe five minutes, but the three consecutive scenes with her and Haley are so tight and true, that I wish the rest of the movie could have maintained that level of acting.

 

My Chiseled Features

Ask and yea shall receive!  All I had to do was moan a spell in yesterdays blog as to why money is not magically finding it's way to my door.  What I blathered about in full facetiousness morphed into the literal earlier this evening.  Cold coin.  The film commissioner swung into my neighborhood to hand off a check (which had gotten lost in a labyrinth of  bureaucracy).  And it was the man himself, not some starry-eyed intern.  (So take that, Nikki — some people still enjoy my company.  Was it something I said?  Did?  Didn't do??  Don't shut me out, babe.)

Perhaps instead of hanging out at the house and wishing money onto my porch, I should be out on the tiles, placing my resume into kind hands.  But, had I been doing that, I wouldn't have enjoyed the half hour or more (trust me, it was more) playing with the Gender Genie.

This is a Java applet that uses a basic set of algorithms to search for the predominance of key words in a sample of text.  You copy and paste 500 words or more from something you (or others) have written, and then you click.  Almost immediately it will make a pronouncement.  The first time I encountered this site, I tried it on a short story of mine.  It came back “male.”  Hell, yeah!  This thing recognizes a hardcore he-man.  It's like the program could peer through my monitor and see the water buffalo head mounted on the wall behind me, just above the bookcase where I keep my complete set of Jim Corbett — and I fancy it could even smell the Old Spice wafting from my chiseled features.

And so today I thought to try a little experiment.  I would copy and paste about 3000 words from a work in progress where the narrator is a woman.  Was I a good enough writer to fool this amazing machine?  ALMOST!  I got a female score of 3463.  A male score of 3610.  Damn, that was close!  Try as I might, I just can't hide my natural maleness.

Then, I started running through my short stories posted on my fiction site.  But, wait!  The results were all over the place.  The program guessed “female” about half the time.  I decided to go back to my female narrator piece and put in the whole thing.  On the previous run, I had stripped out all the dialogue, mainly because I was curious just about the voice of the narrator herself.  This time the results were “female.”  4700 words.  Female score: 5928.  Male score: 5608.

What does this all mean?  I'll tell you what it means: I need to get out of the house more often.

Yeah, and, um, stop listening to all those Ani DiFranco albums.  Go get drunk and, I don't know, smoke a cigar at the dog track?  And leave the god damn crust on my sandwiches!

It's all spinning out of control ….  

More Bitter Than Sweet

It seems some days you never need leave the house.

I'd been contacted from one of Nikki Young's people.  (And yes, Nikki — or should I say PrimaDonna Productions — has people.  Indeed.  Loads of 'em!)  A pleasant intern phoned me to confirm an address to mail me a newspaper article containing a photo of me that Nikki's clipping service (um, her grandmother) had set aside.  For me.  The intern actually drove to my place.  Not only did I get my clipping, but I was able to hand off some DVDs I'd authored for PDP.

The article in questions is from back in late September.  San Antonio Express-News writer Elda Silva had been interviewing Malena, Ramon, and Deborah about the up-coming Dia de Artistas parade / festival on an afternoon I just happened to drop by the Deco Building.  And since I had a part in the event, I spoke some with Ms. Silva.  And then photographer Robert McLeroy showed up.  I wasn't as nimble of foot as I'd thought, and there's a bit of my head in a group shot.  But, they spelled my name right.  On a page deeper in the “S.A. Life” section, there is something of a sidebar mentioning me and the documentary Ramon, Deborah, and I put together.

But the best part, are the notations penciled in the margins by Nikki's grandmother.  The personal touch, you gotta love it!

About an hour later, after I had hung up my laundry, my neighbor Marlyss came by to ask a question about sound effects for an installation she plans in conjunction with a show of her art in a few weeks.  It sounds pretty cool.  I told her I'd give her some samples to work with.  Her family is a part-owner of the La Tuna Grill here in the neighborhood.  I explained I was working on a short film and I needed a location.  A garage, or something similar where a band would practice.  For some reason, this old neighborhood in which I live isn't rife with garages.  She told me she'd ask a friend who has an old warehouse on S. Flores.  Sounds promising.

Now if only cash would come to my door.

I did, however, drag my ass outside … beyond the washing lines.  I headed down the Mission trail for a bike ride.  It was in the mid '60s, but windy as hell.  Fine with me in days, like today, with the wind behind me on the ride back.  The return trip should always be more pleasant.

Afterwards, I hit the Pik-Nik convenience store for an armload of cheap tacos.

As I walked inside, I cringed a bit, because two steps in front of me was this local “character.”  I've already written about him.  A mentally challenged guy who resembles a thirty-year-old Clint Howard.  He can frequently be spotted pan-handling the King William and Lavaca neighborhoods.  I'm pretty sure he lives in the half-way house across the street from Brackenridge High School.  He was looking tan and healthier and ever.  Things were going well for him it seemed.

He stood at the taco counter staring at a spot up on the wall.  I politely stood behind him and gave a cursory nod to the taco woman.  And quite suddenly (as though he were nipped by a flying rainbow lobster only he could see) Clint gave a start.  His eyes fell into focus.

“One bean and cheese taco,” he whispered.

The taco woman's command of English is, effectively, nil.  However, she said, clear enough so I could follow, “Bean and cheese.  One taco?  Two taco?”

I think she wanted clarification because the price break is by pairs of tacos.  A single is, I don't know, like 70 cents.  But for a dollar you get two.  So, I think she heard him, she was just reminding him of the better deal.

Clint was back to watching that little spot high on the wall.  The taco woman repeated herself, holding up one finger, and then two fingers.  Her English (simple, though effective) and her sign language were lost on Clint. He was somewhere else.  I made eye-contact with her and smiled.  She gave just the slightest hint of an eye-roll.  I couldn't hold it in, and laughed aloud.  I was leaning over to nudge Clint, but the lobster nipped anew.  His shoulders straightened, and he said, “One bean and cheese taco.”  The taco woman went to work.

After she's put his order in a bag and handed it off to him, I moved up and asked for, in English, “Four bean and cheese tacos.”  I held up four fingers.  The taco woman did roll her eyes and even forced a smile.

By the time my tacos were ready, Clint was still at the register, trying to mentally focus enough to pay for his taco.  I moved beside him, next in line.  Finally, he just gave up and placed all his coins on the counter.  At this point I assumed he realized that for 30 more cents her could get another taco.  And I was right.

“I'm going back for one more taco,” he said softly, holding aloft a finger.  He nodded decisively, and returned to the grill counter.  I watched the taco woman's lips compress into something that was no smile.

The effete cashier, who wore more jewelry than most men in this neighborhood would wear before nightfall, softly said something to the taco woman so quickly in Spanish that I missed it.  Then, in English, to Clint: “Sir you don't have enough here for two tacos.”

I was hoping things were going to get interesting … and fast.  But, nope.  The cashier rang me up, and Clint walked out with no argument.  He took his taco and left his dimes and pennies on the counter.

I was afraid he'd hit me up for money when I walked outside.  But when I got into my truck, Clint was leaning against the building at the corner where the dumpsters are.  As he ate his taco, I watched him obliviously move closer to a heavily tattooed mexicano talking on the pay-phone.  The guy sneered at Clint, and moved in closer to the security of the abbreviated metal hood surrounding the wall phone.  On top of the phone box, the tattoo guy had placed this adorable Chihuahua puppy, which had gone all chubby, but was still no larger than a blender.  It seemed a precarious place to stick a delicate lapdog, but it was none of my business.  I eased behind the wheel and slammed the door.  It occurred to me that the tattoo guy had come to the pay-phone on his bicycle, which was leaning against the wall beside him.  He didn't have a bag or a backpack — not even a basket on his bike.  He must have been riding around holding the dog.  The tattoo guy clutched tighter on the phone and shook his head.  He fished in his pocket for change.  And then he looked up and stared incredulously at his dog.  Clint, still clutching the wad of foil which had held his taco, was staring again at that little spot.  But this time it was on the roof of the laundromat on the other side of the parking-lot.  The Chihuahua was blissfully licking a bit of bean residue from the corner of Clint's mouth.

I think something little, but something nonetheless, must have died that moment inside the tattoo guy.  He tucked the dog under his arm, held the receiver against his shoulder with his jaw, and began feeding coins in the phone, his back turned resolutely on Clint.  But Clint was a long distance removed from Pik-Nik, the phone booth, and I suspect he was far, far away from those flying rainbow lobsters.

As I cranked the engine, I noticed that hanging from the handlebars of the tattoo guy's bike was one of those illustrated religious air-fresheners that Catholic gift shops sell to hang from the car's back mirror.  It was of Santo Niño de Atocha.  There are those times when a camera would come in so handy.  UFO sightings, and moments like this afternoon.  Those semi-sweet Diane Arbus moments.

This is the best I can manage.   

Pinkies Dangling Over Tea Trays

Through the MySpace bulletin, I read one of those common hoaxes purported to be an actual event.  In this case it involved a woman who almost fell afoul to an abduction in a parking-lot, a Target parking-lot in Wheaton, Illinois, to be specific.  Whenever I see these sorts of viral messages in my email or through the MySpace bulletin, I usually do a simple Google search, and ALWAYS have discovered these stories to be bogus.  In this case all I did was cut and paste “Target” and “Wheaton” into a search engine, and surfed over to a site that explained that no police officials in that particular city had any knowledge of such an event.  I've heard people say that it matters little whether such stories are real or not, because they have some kernel of truth within in them — or at the least, they offer themselves as cautionary tales, to keep us constantly vigilant.

The problem I have, is that we then allow ourselves to be suspicious and paranoid.  Indeed, we let ourselves be terrorized.  Certainly there are murderers and rapists and otherwise bad folk out there, but there always have been and perhaps always will be.  Furthermore, it seems that because of our apparent neurotic desire to be frightened, we (and the media) latch onto the most gristly events (or fictions) that come our way.  There are many splashy headlines of violence in the news on any given day; however, once the reader moves past the first three or four paragraphs, the morbid Hannibal Lecterness dissipate into much more mundane scenarios.  From the “duck and cover” drills of childhood memories of those older than I, to the kids on milk boxes of my childhood, to those equally tenuous, ghostly WMD threats aimed at todays youngsters, it's all empty.

When images on the TV and text warnings on the internet take the place of our experiential and anecdotal evidence of violence, we've lost our cognitive bridge to the real world.

Are we so far away from the day when parents will loose custody of their children because of a charge of abuse when all they do is allow their kids to go outside and play?  Because, you know, there's a pedophile or a cannibal behind every bush.

There are currently 435 individuals caged in the Guantánamo Bay detainment camp.  These men were labeled by the Bush administration as the “worst of the worst” of terrorists.  Hmm?  Yet over 300 have already been released, without any charges or explanations.  Another hundred plus are (supposedly) ready for release.  They served as a public relations buffer, a pathetic canard that helped in the narrative that Iraq was a hotbed of international terrorism.

Whether those involved in this current global black farce are cognizant of the fact from the fiction, the result is the same: a terrible madness has been released on the world.

I've become impatient with those in the media and government who play the role of cheerleaders of doom.

I try to appreciate novelist William T. Vollmann.  But I had to reevaluate him when he published his 2004 7 volume nonfiction treatise of violence, Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means.  It's full of his personal experience in impoverished crime-ridden neighborhoods and war-torn countries from his years of travel.  It's a bleak, bitter pill to swallow.  But what do you expect from this mountain of desperation and hopelessness?  Fold it together with 7 volumes of first-person accounts of successful work in the global peace and justice movements, and there would be something resembling the world as it is today.

This is why I shy away from current war films, even if they are expressly created to be anti-war statements.  When you give thought to millions of dollars spent to provide a realistic depiction of combat, clearly the vast numbers of ticket-holders will be giddy with the adrenaline rush of gun play and explosions.  The nuances of contextual ambiguity can't compete with the trill ride.

Yesterday I saw Children of Men.  It's filled with enough full auto ballistics and naturalistic explosions to veer dangerously close to that territory of the unintentional recruitment film, but it has the additional element of being science fiction.  In this case, a futuristic depiction of a bleak world into which we are heading.

This is a potent, gut-wrenching film.  Alfonso Cuarón is one of my favorite young directors.  When my sister forced me to join the modern consumer world by giving me a DVD, Cuarón's Y Tu Mamá También was my first DVD purchase.

Children of Men played in this country at the 11th hour of 2006, making it available for the Academy Awards.  To think of it as anything but the best film of the year, is to have not seen the film.  Don't be put off by the fact that it's adapted from a PD James novel.  Loosely adapted, that's the key.  This is a far fucking cry from those Dalgliesh adaptations of drawing room murders where pinkies are always dangling over the tea trays.

There are many sites on the internet pushing for a grassroots word-of-mouth campaign to get out to the theaters.  Let me, in my tiny way, add to this.  Go see Children of Men!