Just got word from composer Rich King that The Familiar will be playing his hometown festival Feb 7th. We are preceding another Canadian flick "65 Red Roses" on the festival's last day: http://www.spokanefilmfestival.org/schedule.html#7
Sounds great to me!
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
The Los Angeles Experience
So this is coming real late. But better late than never. I suppose.
Here I am to talk about the incredible experience that was Screamfest LA and Los Angeles in general.
We (and by we, I mean producer Riley Walsh and co-producer Jen Nick) started our trip off at the great Vancouver International Airport, although it is situated in the not-so-great city of Richmond. Go figure. At any rate, along the "show your passport" line, Jen declared that she had a grapefruit on her, even though she ticked off the "no-citrus-is-on-my-persons" check on her declaration, so she got carted off by US customs officials, only to be returned later just slightly bruised. It is my belief that she actually enjoyed the experience.
We got on the plane after that without further incident -- Jen had been our sacrificial lamb for any more problems to come. The last time I was in LA was when I was like 7 or 8, and never by airplane. The place sprawls like some parking lot. Just squares and squares of gray and concrete everywhere. All I thought of was what it would look like if some zombie-plague had infested the city, or the wave of nuclear fire from "Terminator 2." I come from Vancouver -- city of mountains, grass and trees, a complete dichotomy from the City of Angels. I was in love at first sight.
We found our way to the Magic Castle Hotel, a renovated apartment complex from the '50s or '60s. It was here I realized I made my first miscalculation. This was late October, back home it was raining, back home it was getting cold. I packed nothing but pants, some long sleeves and a jacket. It was fucking HOT there. Like air-conditioner or die hot. Riley, bless his soul, offered to get me some shorts, but a man must have his pride.
"The Familiar" was playing at the Grauman Chinese Theater on Hollywood Blvd. That place was crazy -- filled with make-shift actors wearing make-shift costumes. The Blvd itself goes on forever, the names on the ground endless. I wondered if any of them ever hit an identity crisis and would go look at their star or their feet and hand prints just to remind themselves where they were. I doubt it.
Our band of travelers was increased by my pal/composer Rich King and we all watched "The Tournament" on Friday night -- a nice direct-to-video action film starring Kelly Hu, Robert Patrick and Michael Clarke Duncan. I liked it when heads explode, and this one had some pretty good head 'splodin up. Afterward, we hit a club (have no freaking clue what it was called), but it had a Japanese pop singers serenading fashion show models that reminded me of a Brian DePalma set piece. Somewhere, during all this controlled chaos, someone was getting murdered giallo style.
Saturday was our day as "The Familiar" got a most awesome reaction from the crowd. After the first joke, the audience knew what kind of film this was and digged it. We were one of the only films to get two rounds of applause after it screened, which made me feel pretty damned awesome. Writing, directing, editing almost every day for a year straight -- the sprint of shooting turned into a post-production marathon, which finally became a successful screening. All those headaches of figuring out proper aspect ratios and rendering set-ups were in the past and well worth it. It was great to see Torrance and Paul Hubbard (Sam and Bolivar) get to see the flick with an appreciative audience. Paul even got scooped away by a couple of German gals who wanted their picture with him.
We met a lot of great filmmakers there. Antony Webb and Alex von Hoffman our Australian pals from "Tinglewood"; Jamison Stern, producer of "Forget Me Not;" Xavier Hibon, director of "Bad Mistake;" Carmen Mitchell and Craig "Master Karoke" Oullette of "Rations;" French director Thibault Emin of "Else" and Meredith Berg, director of "Void."
One of the best things about the LA trip was the places we saw. My pal Rick Orner got us into Dreamworks Studios where director Mike Mitchell spent some time talking about making "Shrek 4." We went to Universal Studios and the Jay Leno Show (which sucked by the way). We went to Musso and Frank's, the oldest restaurant in Hollywood, and met Ray Bradbury.
We got home to some great reviews and interviews. All in all, an awesome experience.
Here I am to talk about the incredible experience that was Screamfest LA and Los Angeles in general.
We (and by we, I mean producer Riley Walsh and co-producer Jen Nick) started our trip off at the great Vancouver International Airport, although it is situated in the not-so-great city of Richmond. Go figure. At any rate, along the "show your passport" line, Jen declared that she had a grapefruit on her, even though she ticked off the "no-citrus-is-on-my-persons" check on her declaration, so she got carted off by US customs officials, only to be returned later just slightly bruised. It is my belief that she actually enjoyed the experience.
We got on the plane after that without further incident -- Jen had been our sacrificial lamb for any more problems to come. The last time I was in LA was when I was like 7 or 8, and never by airplane. The place sprawls like some parking lot. Just squares and squares of gray and concrete everywhere. All I thought of was what it would look like if some zombie-plague had infested the city, or the wave of nuclear fire from "Terminator 2." I come from Vancouver -- city of mountains, grass and trees, a complete dichotomy from the City of Angels. I was in love at first sight.
We found our way to the Magic Castle Hotel, a renovated apartment complex from the '50s or '60s. It was here I realized I made my first miscalculation. This was late October, back home it was raining, back home it was getting cold. I packed nothing but pants, some long sleeves and a jacket. It was fucking HOT there. Like air-conditioner or die hot. Riley, bless his soul, offered to get me some shorts, but a man must have his pride.
"The Familiar" was playing at the Grauman Chinese Theater on Hollywood Blvd. That place was crazy -- filled with make-shift actors wearing make-shift costumes. The Blvd itself goes on forever, the names on the ground endless. I wondered if any of them ever hit an identity crisis and would go look at their star or their feet and hand prints just to remind themselves where they were. I doubt it.
Our band of travelers was increased by my pal/composer Rich King and we all watched "The Tournament" on Friday night -- a nice direct-to-video action film starring Kelly Hu, Robert Patrick and Michael Clarke Duncan. I liked it when heads explode, and this one had some pretty good head 'splodin up. Afterward, we hit a club (have no freaking clue what it was called), but it had a Japanese pop singers serenading fashion show models that reminded me of a Brian DePalma set piece. Somewhere, during all this controlled chaos, someone was getting murdered giallo style.
Saturday was our day as "The Familiar" got a most awesome reaction from the crowd. After the first joke, the audience knew what kind of film this was and digged it. We were one of the only films to get two rounds of applause after it screened, which made me feel pretty damned awesome. Writing, directing, editing almost every day for a year straight -- the sprint of shooting turned into a post-production marathon, which finally became a successful screening. All those headaches of figuring out proper aspect ratios and rendering set-ups were in the past and well worth it. It was great to see Torrance and Paul Hubbard (Sam and Bolivar) get to see the flick with an appreciative audience. Paul even got scooped away by a couple of German gals who wanted their picture with him.
We met a lot of great filmmakers there. Antony Webb and Alex von Hoffman our Australian pals from "Tinglewood"; Jamison Stern, producer of "Forget Me Not;" Xavier Hibon, director of "Bad Mistake;" Carmen Mitchell and Craig "Master Karoke" Oullette of "Rations;" French director Thibault Emin of "Else" and Meredith Berg, director of "Void."
One of the best things about the LA trip was the places we saw. My pal Rick Orner got us into Dreamworks Studios where director Mike Mitchell spent some time talking about making "Shrek 4." We went to Universal Studios and the Jay Leno Show (which sucked by the way). We went to Musso and Frank's, the oldest restaurant in Hollywood, and met Ray Bradbury.
We got home to some great reviews and interviews. All in all, an awesome experience.
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